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" This week, the president gave a speech on climate change that was loudly applauded far and wide. Meanwhile, as he was composing his big speech, the president&amp;#039;s EPA, was preparing to chicken out in an equally big way. An EPA report released late in 2011, concluded that: (P)ollution from 33 abandoned oil and gas waste pits - which are the subject of a separate cleanup program - (was) indeed responsible for some degree of shallow groundwater pollution in the area. Those pits may be the source of contamination affecting at least 42 private water wells in Pavillion. But the (deep) contamination, the agency concluded, had to have been caused by fracking. On June 20, though, after vigorous complaints from industry and Wyoming that the agency flubbed its study, as well as years of delays, the EPA announced that it is abandoning the project completely. Do not pass go, do not pass through peer review. Instead, the state of Wyoming will conduct its own studies of the integrity of the gas wells in question, as well as evaluate residential water wells. It won&amp;#039;t release its report until 2014. EnCana, meanwhile, has put $1.5 million toward the effort. The administration simply can&amp;#039;t get it right on fracking. It knows what it knows about the environmental impact of the process, but it&amp;#039;s so locked in against coal that fracking for natural gas looks like the only viable alternative that it can get past the hysterical screams of the extraction industries and their congressional hirelings. So, as the author points out here, the EPA comes out tough, only to have its work buried because the national response on environmental issues is hopelessly muddled by politics, money, and the unholy marriage of the two. I mean, Jesus, benzene in the drinking water? Somebody should probably do something about that. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a23276/epa-fracking-report-062713/>