The Environmental Protection Agency finally released their “Draft Assessment of the Potential Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing for Oil and Gas on Drinking Water Resources” last Thursday June 4, 2015. They held two webinars on Friday about the contents of the report. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you knew that the report was due for release, you’ve also gotten the background on what the Environmental Protection Agency has been studying and why. If you are a new reader of this blog, go back and check out previous posts. The posts will give you information on the studies the Environmental Protection Agency has been conducting.

I was excited to see the report come out even though it is 998 pages and I am committed to reading the whole thing. In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency published a bunch of new scientific papers on hydrofracturing. So I will be reading up for a while on all this new scientific information. I will be posting about the contents of the report so you can get the in-depth information without having to read the whole 998 pages yourself. The Environmental Protection Agency will be accepting comments until August 28, 2015.

The Environmental Protection Agency said that their studies found no widespread contamination of drinking water resources by hydraulic fracturing. That is a pretty strong statement. However, The Environmental Protection Agency also stated their studies have identified vulnerabilities that need to be addressed by state regulators when permitting hydraulic fracturing wells. So it was a good news, bad news sort of message. Look for future posts on this blog about the report results.