EPA Releases Study of Fracking's Impact on Water Resources, Finding No Widespread Harm - but Potential 'Vulnerabilities'

摘要

Perhaps no environmental issue over the last decade has attracted more attention - and inspired more studies - than hydraulic fracturing as a technique for stimulating natural gas and oil well productivity. Now, EPA has released its long awaited, Congressionally directed study (dated June 2015) focusing on whether fracking really does, as many environmental groups and community activists have strenuously claimed, pose a systemic threat to drinking water resources. The report's central finding is that, while several "mechanisms" triggered by well-fracking operations have the potential to harm drinking water resources (and have done so), there is no evidence of "widespread, systemic impacts" on drinking water supplies in the U.S.