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Big Win Against Fracking

Emily Wurth

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Dec. 15, 2016

 

This week, the EPA finally confirmed what we’ve known all along: fracking contaminates drinking water. 

Last year, after a 5-year study on the impacts of fracking on drinking water, the EPA released a highly flawed draft report. The topline claimed that there were no "widespread, systemic" impacts on drinking water from fracking.

Why did the EPA make such a dangerous and unsupported statement? Because the oil and gas industry infiltrated the process and influenced the outcome of the draft.

I am proud to say that Food & Water Watch supporters and staff jumped into action. You helped us submit more than 100,000 public comments to the EPA and get 51 members of Congress to send a letter to the EPA telling it to back the claim or drop it from the report. We also testified before the agency's science advisors on numerous occasions and wrote a letter signed by over 200 public interest groups calling on the EPA to correct its report.

We made sure EPA heard from the individuals whose drinking water was made unusable by fracking in Dimock, PA, Pavillion, WY and Parker County, TX. EPA had abandoned the people in these communities and left the cases out of the report.

We called foul. We brought individuals from these impacted communities to the doors of the EPA to demand they tell the truth about the real people whose water, communities and lives have been hurt by fracking.

And we won! This week the EPA released the final report and stated it could not support its dangerous and misleading claim from the draft report and highlight the stories of impacted communities. It now clearly states that fracking can and does cause drinking water contamination.

Now, we must take this report to communities across the country as we continue our work to ban fracking everywhere. We know that under the new Trump administration our local efforts to ban fracking will be more important than ever, and the EPA's report will help us make the case, from California to Maryland. There is no safe way to frack, and to protect our drinking water we must ban fracking everywhere!

You can support this ongoing work to ban fracking everywhere and to protect everyone's drinking water by donating today.

Thanks for everything you do,

Emily Wurth

Water Program Director

Food & Water Watch

act(at)fwwatch(dot)org