The only safe fracking regulation is a ban by Ann Bristow, December 19, 2016, Baltimore Sun
On Tuesday, the General Assembly‘s Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review committee will hold a hearing on regulations drafted by the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) that pave the way for the natural gas industry to access Maryland’s natural resources locked into tight rock formations a mile or so underground. These regulations would permit drilling in all Maryland counties known to have gas deposits, including Garrett County (where I live) and neighboring Allegany County, which both overlie the Marcellus Shale. State regulators are heralding these as the most stringent regulations in the country.
Last month, Physicians for Social Responsibility and Concerned Health Professionals of New York released the 4th edition of their Compendium of Scientific, Medical and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking. The report contains more than 200 studies published this year alone; its top finding is that growing evidence shows that regulations are incapable of preventing harm.
Whether Maryland’s draft regulations are truly the most stringent is debatable, but it is also irrelevant. They fail to adequately protect public health and the environment, and that is all that matters. For example, these “most stringent” regulations loosen safeguards to protect our water with the unsubstantiated claim that adding more cement and steel will prevent groundwater contamination. In fact, all that we know about extra containment layers is that more cement will crack and more steel will corrode.
As a public health researcher who served on Gov. Martin O’Malley’s commission on fracking, I have serious concerns about MDE’s regulations because I know firsthand what has not been considered. In 2014, the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health (MIAEH) issued a report showing that the likelihood of negative public health impacts was high or moderately high in seven of the eight categories analyzed, including air and water quality, and cumulative impacts. Nonetheless, public health recommendations made by MIAEH are largely ignored in these draft regulations.
MDE Secretary Ben Grumbles assured citizens of Maryland that regulations for drilling would be based in science; however, these draft regulations fail to meet this promise. They go backward in time to a best management practices (BMP) report whose latest research citations were from 2012 and included only two public health studies. Furthermore, the goal for this report was to “identify and recommend specific BMPs that would provide maximum protection of Maryland’s environment, natural resources and public safety.” Public health is notably missing from the list to be protected.
When the temporary fracking moratorium became law in 2015, prohibiting fracking through October 2017, many health professionals were dismayed that the bill did not give the public health community or Maryland voters what they wanted — a moratorium that would provide sufficient time to study the long-term health effects of fracking. But in just the past year and half, a series of studies have come out of Johns Hopkins School of Public Health based on health data from Pennsylvania with alarming findings on shorter-term effects. Their research shows that residents living near the most dense and active drilling and fracking sites are more likely to have asthma exacerbations, premature births, high risk-pregnancies, migraine headaches, severe fatigue and chronic sinus and nasal infections.
There are now over 900 publications on the effects of fracking — on air, water, soil, animal and human health, earthquakes and on methane’s contribution to climate disruption, another public health threat. Of the health studies in this body of work, 84 percent demonstrate clear associations between unconventional gas development and public health harms.
The more that people find out about fracking, the more they oppose it. Recent polling shows that nearly 60 percent of Marylanders support a ban on fracking. Maryland residents’ vocal opposition includes Garrett County, where voters reject fracking at a 2 to 1 ratio and identify threats to water and health as their top concerns.
Despite the claims you might hear from MDE and the industry about these draft regulations, it is clear that they have little or nothing to do with protecting public health. When public health is in the driver’s seat for fracking policy, no fracking is permitted, as witnessed in New York State in 2014. The only way to protect public health and safety in Maryland is to ban fracking in the 2017 legislative session.
Ann Bristow is an emeritus professor at Frostburg State University and commissioner with the Marcellus Shale Safe Drilling Initiative; her email is email hidden; JavaScript is required.
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Emerging Trends
1) Growing evidence shows that regulations are simply not capable of preventing harm. Studies reveal inherent problems in the natural gas extraction process, such as well integrity failures caused by aging or the pressures of fracking itself. These issues can lead to contamination, air pollution with carcinogens and other toxic chemicals, and a range of environmental and other stressors wrought on communities. Some of fracking’s many component parts—which include the subterranean geological landscape itself—are simply not controllable. Compounding the problem, the number of wells and their attendant infrastructure continue to proliferate, creating burgeoning cumulative impacts.
Conclusion
All together, findings to date from scientific, medical, and journalistic investigations combine to demonstrate that fracking poses significant threats to air, water, health, public safety, climate stability, seismic stability, community cohesion, and long-term economic vitality. Emerging data from a rapidly expanding body of evidence continue to reveal a plethora of recurring problems and harms that cannot be averted or cannot be sufficiently averted through regulatory frameworks. There is no evidence that fracking can operate without threatening public health directly or without imperiling climate stability upon which public health depends. In the words of investigative journalist Andrew Nikiforuk:
Industry swore that its cracking rock technology was safe and proven, but science now tells a different story. Brute force combined with ignorance … has authored thousands of earthquakes … [and] called forth clouds of migrating methane…. The science is
complicated but clear: cracking rock with fluids is a chaotic activity and no computer
model can predict where those fractures will go. The regulatory record shows that they
often go out of zone; extend into water; and rattle existing oil and gas wells, and these
rattled wells are leaking more methane.923
And in the words of a new commentary about fracking in the American Journal of Public
Health:
Mounting empirical evidence shows harm to the environment and to human health … and we have no idea what the long-term effects might be…. Ignoring the body of evidence, to us, is not a viable option anymore.924 ]