EPA Completes First Phase of Fracking Study

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

February 28, 2012 | 1:07 PM

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson Makes Announcement About Clean Air Act

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EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announces the new regulations in Washington

The first phase of an Environmental Protection Agency study of hydraulic fracturing has wrapped up, according to the Times-Tribune:

The first round of sampling at five case-study sites has been completed in a landmark federal study of the potential impacts of oil and gas extraction on water supplies, the Environmental Protection Agency’s study coordinator said Monday.
Results from those tests, which include drinking water and streams sampled between July and November 2011 in Susquehanna and Bradford counties, will be reported in a draft of the study expected to be released in December.
The multiyear, congressionally mandated study is investigating a possible link between water contamination and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the process of injecting a mixture of water, sand and chemicals into underground rock formations to crack the rock and release the oil or gas trapped there.