While we’re waiting for the Environmental Protection Agency to issue their report on hydraulic fracturing, I thought I’d write some more detailed posts on how the Agency is approaching their overall study to determine whether there are impacts to drinking water. I read through their work plan again and their 2012 progress report on their research.

In many ways science reminds me of a good who done it. You take a lot of facts, put them together, form a theory, and then track down all your leads to see if your theory is right. But instead of sending the butler to jail, you publish your work in a peer reviewed journal. So how do you prove or disprove that hydrofracturing is resulting in contaminated water wells. Well one way is to look at areas where there have been complaints of water well contamination and try to look at all possible avenues and sources for the contamination. Forensics can include sampling of domestic and commercial water wells to analyze for additives found in fracturing fluid, assessing oil and gas production wells in the area to see if cementing and other groundwater protections are intact and working as engineered, examining whether there are faults, fractures and abandoned oil and gas wells in the area through which fluids might have traveled, and identifying potential other sources for contamination like agriculture or water well treatments. Based on that information you form a site conceptual model and apply numerical models to determine the likelihood of your concepts.

Another way to prove or disprove whether hydrofracturing is resulting in contaminated wells is to look at an area where a new well is going to be hydrofractured. You characterize the area by taking samples from newly installed monitoring wells and domestic water wells before the fracturing process take place. You examine the processes involved in constructing the well pad. You examine the data from the well logs to make sure the cement is all properly set. You examine how the well performs during the fracturing process. And you examine the well after the fracturing process. Then you go back and sample all the monitoring wells and water wells you previously sampled. And you continue to sample those wells over time.

EPA is doing both of these methods. They are busy with five areas that have current complaints of water well contamination. They are also examining and working with some oil and gas companies to find some sites that might be eligible for study before and after hydrofracturing occurs. EPA originally had two of these types of sites selected but it looks like coordination of the studies has been difficult because of scheduling conflicts. EPA is well underway studying the five areas with complaints of contamination. EPA is calling them “retrospective” studies. But EPA is behind on studying sites that have not been hydrofractured yet. These sites are being called “prospective” studies.  EPA anticipates data from prospective studies will be published much later than their other findings.  So we probably won’t see that information in EPA’s upcoming 2015 report.