Fukushima - The Elephant in the Room

By lila york





Recent map of iodine contamination, North America by Nowegian Institute

Remember Chandra Levy?   Her disappearance following an affair with her congressman was the national obsession in the summer of 2001 - until we awoke one Tuesday morning to see the World Trade Center towers on fire     In the summer of 2011 the nation, or at least the nation's media, seems similarly obsessed with the murder trial of Casey Anthony and the twitter account of a New York congressman.   Meanwhile, the crisis at the Fukushima Daichi plant rages on with no resolution in sight and a cold shutdown now projected to be years away.   

Until last week there was an apparent media blackout on the crisis, although some Americans, this writer included, have followed the status of the reactors daily at Energy News andFairewinds, the website of nuclear energy expert, Arnie Gundersen.   

The Fukushima reactors were built by General Electric, which also owns Comcast, NBC, CNBC and MSNBC, so the absence of timely information is not surprising.   

One article early on in the crisis suggested that the reinsurance on Fukushima was held in part by AIG and Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway, a supposition I cannot substantiate, but that may be true.   There is no doubt that we live in a time when corporate profits trump human safety and well-being, and we are seeing that manifest in this current crisis.   

The best MSM sources for information over these last months have been Bloomberg, online and on television, and The Wall Street Journal, which have tracked the crisis primarily because it affects investment in Japanese companies.

Last week the Japanese government made startling announcements. Three of the five reactors experienced total meltdowns on March 11th, the day of the initial earthquake, and all three reactors have "melted through" leaky containment vessels, molten masses of melted fuel rods now fissioning  on the basement floors of those reactors.   

The statement further confessed that levels of radiation released from the explosions were actually twice as high as initially reported, blaming the miscalculation on bad math.   (Indeed in the days after the March explosions plutonium was discovered on the ground in northern California and tritium in Vermont.)   

In light of these revelations Arnie Gundersen did an interview on CNN last week, recommending that Americans wash produce thoroughly and stop drinking milk and eating dairy products.   He also suggested that any Americans wealthy enough to relocate to the southern hemisphere consider doing so, adding that Seattle residents were inhaling 5 "hot particles" or "fuel fleas" per day in the weeks following the explosions.   

Democracy Now, Amy Goodman's radio and television news program, which has not ignored the story over these months, did an extensive update on yesterday's broadcast. 

Should we all be constructing fallout shelters and stockpiling food and water?   Should we be shipping our children to South America until the crisis ends?   I have no idea, but neither does anybody else, including the nuclear experts.   

They know that the crisis is more serious than Chernobyl.   The world has never experienced a "china syndrome" event, and there is no way to calculate the potential outcome.   

One nuclear physicist who posts regularly at enenews.com suggests that another explosion is unlikely given the current status, but warns that reactor 4 is in danger of collapsing on itself from even a minor earthquake or aftershock.   A collapse would negatively alter the scenario and could cause another major release of radioactive particles into the jet stream.   

Chronic low-level radiation produces a myriad of diseases in animals and humans, and even the IAEA recently admitted that no level of radiation is safe, as radiation is the prime cause of cancers.   In any event, radiation exposure from a cross-country flight is in an entirely different category from a "hot particle" that would become an internal emitter once inhaled or ingested.   Of the isotopes released in nuclear accidents, the most dangerous are plutonium, strontium 90, which attacks bone tissue, iodine 131 which attacks the thyroid gland, and cesium 137 which attacks soft tissue, including the liver, kidneys and lungs.   

Of these plutonium is the most lethal -- 1/10,000th of a micron will kill a human.   Fukushima's reactor number 3 illegally used MOX fuel, which is a mixture of uranium, depleted uranium, and plutonium. (The MOX fuel was sold to Japan by the United States during the Reagan administration).

The Norwegian Institute (NILU), a Scandinavian organization that measures air quality, akin to our EPA, had, for the first six weeks following the explosions, issued forecast maps for the northern hemisphere which tracked fallout clouds containing radioactive iodine, cesium and xenon, a gas.   Those maps were disturbing to all who saw them, as they showed North America literally blanketed in radioactive fallout at levels that vastly exceeded normal background radiation. 

The EPA announced in early May that it would cease testing air, rainwater, tap water and milk, as iodine 131 levels, the isotope with the shortest half-life, had fallen to normal atmospheric levels (EPA test results here).   

It has been reported at several websites that both NILU and the EPA were pressured to discontinue testing -- or at least to discontinue publication of the test results.   The "pressure" has been variously attributed to the U.S. government, the Japanese government and the United Nations, although I have seen no hard evidence to substantiate any of those claims.   NILU began to publish more recent and updated historical maps in an alternate hidden file it code-named Zardoz, after the 1970's sci-fi film about a post-apocalyptic future.   

The previously hidden maps, showing emergency-level fallout contamination across North America, were subsequently re-published by two 20-something bloggers, here (scroll down the page) and here.   

The Nuclear Engineering Dept at U.C. Berkeley has continued to test rain water, tap water, raw and commercially made milk, topsoil and an assortment of vegetables.   While radiation contamination has dropped significantly since the explosions of March 11, recent tests show new highs in contamination levels of topsoil and milk for cesium 137 and cesium 134.   

Since only UCB is publishing test results, we cannot know for certain what levels persist in other areas of the country. In early April, the government of France advised that pregnant women and young children avoid milk, soft cheeses and leafy vegetables.   

No such missive came from the U.S. government - and Western Europe has been receiving only 5% of the fallout that has blanketed North America. Last week Food Processing.com, the website for the U.S. food and beverage industry, published a very informative article entitled "Fukushima in Our Food," a good overview of contamination that has been recorded in North America since March 11th . Greenpeace, which conducted tests on marine life outside of Japan's 12 mile limit last month, found levels of contamination in fish and seaweed to be above legal limits.

Yesterday Counterpunch published an article by two doctors on the spike in infant deaths in the U.S. since the explosions at Fukushima, a spike which mimics infant deaths in Europe following the Chernobyl disaster.   In North America the contamination comes largely in rainwater, which will, in turn, affect tap water, topsoil, vegetables, meat and dairy products over time.   

The most vulnerable populations are pregnant women and women planning to become pregnant, infants and young children, the elderly and any person suffering from an immune system-compromising illness, such as AIDS.   

The most logical preventative measures Americans can and should take are these: Avoid going out in the rain and always carry an umbrella, avoid fresh dairy products, wash all produce, increase intake of potent antioxidants, such as CoQ10 and alpha lipoic acid, and buy a reverse osmosis water filtration system for your home or at least for your kitchen faucet.   

If you want to be prepared for a possible emergency down the road, also look into N95 face masks, which are widely available, HEPA air filters, and stockpile at least a few weeks of canned and dried food and filtered or spring water sufficient for your household.   

(Well water and spring water are safe as they are filtered by the clay in the soil.)   

Consult the links below for methods of protection from and detoxification of radio isotopes.   

(These methods are also valuable to protect against radiation exposure from x-rays and CT scans).

Resources for news on Fukushima and results of testing :
Energy News.com   http://enenews.com/

Fairewinds, Arnie Gundersen http://www.fairewinds.com/home
EPA test results http://opendata.socrata.com/Government/RadNet-Laboratory-Analysis/cf4r-dfwe
UC Berkeley Dept of Nuclear Engineering test results air and water monitoring teamhttp://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/UCBAirSampling
American Nuclear Society twitter page   http://twitter.com/#!/ans_org
NILU historical maps   http://www.woweather.com/weather/news/fukushima?LANG=us&VAR=eurad2500
NILU Zardoz file http://zardoz.nilu.no/~flexpart/fpinteractive/plots/?C=M;O=D

Three Mile Island Haunts US Nuclear Policy

32 Years Later, Industry Still Recovering From Its Worst US Nuclear Disaster

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Related Stories/Links

THREE MILE ISLAND Map: Three Mile Island Survey: Do You Remember?

Updated: 6:17 am PDT March 28, 2011

At about dawn on March 28, 1979, Pete Velez was cruising through Middletown, Pa., past the Blue Room saloon where some of the guys from work drank after their shifts.

Velez was headed to work at Three Mile Island nuclear plant, where four 370-foot cooling towers stood proudly over the countryside, signs of a new age of technological progress, according to the 1982 book "The Warning -- Accident At Three Mile Island," by Mike Gray and Ira Rosen, an inside account of America's worst nuclear accident.

The book describes how Velez arrived to find cars backed up and figured it must be a security issue -- maybe someone left a door open. He chatted with the gate guard.

"What's the matter, you lose somebody?" Velez smiled.

"No."

"Well, what's going on?"

"Radiation emergency."

"A drill? At 6 o'clock in the morning?"

"It's no drill."

As radiation-protection foreman, Valez's job was to make sure no one was unnecessarily exposed. Fueled by adrenaline, he raced up stairs to the Unit Two control room and threw open the door to startling chaos. Packs of engineers, technicians and plant managers were huddled in the cavernous room, all talking over each other. The 90-foot long arching wall of lights and gauges, along with a shorter console that followed the same arc, were lit up like Christmas trees. Radiation alarms went off one after another, jangling the nerves of the trouble-shooters.

Velez carried a little green notebook for scribbling notes about anything that he thought might be important. At that moment he simply wrote, "Aw [expletive]."

It's been more than three decades since the worst nuclear plant crisis in the nation's history, and U.S. nuclear plants have boasted a mostly spotless safety record since then. But anxiety over radiation leaks at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan have have again renewed fear over nuclear plant safety.

Ultimately, it was deemed that the Three Mile Island accident was caused by faulty equipment and bad decisions made amid chaos -- "a combination of personnel error, design deficiencies, and component failures," as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission summed it up.

Investigations and cleanup revealed that the core of the plant partially melted down, unbeknownst to the harried officials working feverishly inside the plant at the time. The plant was dangerously close to a total meltdown -- a full-scale national disaster.

Remarkably, most of the radioactivity released by the partial meltdown was contained inside the plant and it resulted in no long-term health effects or environmental damage, most experts agree.

But five days of panic in Pennsylvania left lasting legacies. Three Mile Island became synonymous with nuclear catastrophe, stoked public fear of nuclear power, led to an overhaul of plant safety rules and effectively drained the steam from an entire industry – no new nuclear plants were ordered for 28 years.

Three Mile Island "remains the single most important event in the fifty-year history of nuclear power regulation in the United States," leading Three Mile Island expert J. Samuel Walker, says in his 2004 book "Three Mile Island – A Nuclear Crisis In Historical Perspective."

What Went Wrong

Nuclear power plants generate energy by boiling water into steam that turns turbines, which produce electricity. To generate steam, nuclear plants use heat from fission – the splitting of atoms of uranium fuel. More than 36,000 zirconium alloy rods packed with about 100 tons of uranium pellets were bundled and placed inside the reactor core.

The chaos that Velez found when he arrived at work was set in motion inside Unit Two at about 4 a.m.

Media reports and books that chronicle the inside story of the crisis – including reports by PBS, in the Washington Post and the books by Walker, Gray and Rosen, and "TMI: 25 Years Later" by Bonnie Osif, Anthony Baratta and Thomas Conkling -- explain how it unfolded.

Pumps that move water through the reactor failed, prompting the plant's massive steam-powered turbines and the reactor itself to shut down.

When heat and pressure inside the reactor increased, a relief valve popped open. But the valve malfunctioned and did not automatically close when the pressure decreased.

Cooling water flowed out of the valve, and that led to partial meltdown – the zirconium rods failed and uranium pellets melted, releasing highly radioactive vapor, some of which was vented into the atmosphere in the following hours.

Communications Fail Amid Chaos

Plant managers and technicians tried to diagnose the fast-multiplying problems as instruments showed conflicting information about the temperature and pressure in the core. Radiation meters started clicking and officials at times were awkwardly communicating through respirators. They missed clues that would have tipped them to the source of the trouble. They made mistakes that made problems worse.

It wasn't until late in the day that plant officials circulated enough water through the reactor that it covered the melting core that had been exposed for hours. The temperature began to decrease.

But public fear was growing fast as officials tried to regain control of the plant. By March 30, concern was spiking about the radiation that had been leaked into the atmosphere. Panic spread as scientists fretted over a hydrogen bubble that built up inside the reactor, which officials initially were worried could burn or explode.

Communications broke down. Politicians, health officials, federal bureaucrats, plant officials and executives with Babcock and Wilcox, which designed the plant, initially did not have their stories straight, which fed public anxiety.

Solid information was scarce. Increasingly hostile journalists couldn't get straight answers.

In the early hours, it was hard for officials outside the plant to get a direct phone line to the control room. Even President Jimmy Carter couldn't get through and ordered that direct lines be established.

"There was just the most bizarre flow and lack of information," Susan Stranahan, who was part of a Philadelphia Inquirer team that won a Pulitzer Prize for its Three Mile Island coverage, said at a 20-year anniversary event.

'The China Syndrome'

Public fear was further stoked by a bizarre coincidence. The movie "The China Syndrome," the fictional story of a nuclear plant accident cover-up starring Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon, had been released just 12 days before the Three Mile Island incident. The title is a reference to the suggestion that if a nuclear plant core ever melted down it would burn a hole through the Earth all the way to China. In the movie, a scientist says that a meltdown would make "an area the size of Pennsylvania" permanently uninhabitable. In combination with the real-life drama, the film became a blockbuster.

This crisis was an early test for Pennsylvania's Republican Gov. Richard Thornburgh, who had been on the job just 68 days, he has recalled in media interviews.

"The minute I heard that there had been an accident at a nuclear facility, I knew we were in another dimension," Thornburgh told PBS for a 1999 special on Three Mile Island.

The governor quickly grew frustrated with conflicting information from officials at the plant, its owner Metropolitan Edison, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The following day, Thornburgh ordered the evacuation of pregnant women and preschool-age children within a five-mile radius. About 140,000 fled.

Carter watched developments closely. The president was a nuclear engineer and understood the potential danger. On April 1, Carter and his wife Rosalynn went to the plant to help restore calm. The visit was brief but eased public fear and marked the end of the immediate crisis.

Health, Environmental Effects

Unit Two never operated again. It had cost about $700 million to construct but was open just three months. Cleanup, which continued until 1993, cost about $1 billion, the New York Times reported. The reactor's two cooling towers stand quiet to this day, in contrast to the two steam-belching Unit One towers.

Operations of the Unit One reactor were halted after the meltdown but restarted in 1985. The NRC is considering relicensing it through 2034.

It is generally agreed that the radiation released by Unit Two caused no lasting harm.

According to the NRC, among the agencies that did detailed studies of the radiological effects of the meltdown were the NRC, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department Health and Human Services, the Department of Energy, and the state of Pennsylvania. Studies suggest that the average radiation dose to about 2 million people in the area was only about 1 millirem -- a safe dose, according to the NRC. A chest X-ray delivers about 6 millirem.

Among the recent follow-up studies was a University of Pittsburgh study of 32,100 people who lived within five miles of the plant. It found no significant difference in the rate of cancer deaths compared to the general population, the New York Times reported.

The NRC also says that investigators believe the environment was not damaged. The agency says that thousands of samples of air, water, milk, vegetation, soil and food were collected in the months following the meltdown and only "very low" levels of radionuclides were attributed to the plant.

Three Mile Island's Legacy

Nuclear power in its early days was hailed as a brilliant, futuristic answer to the nation's energy woes. The plants would produce power that was "too cheap to meter" with no greenhouse gases, industry advocates claimed.

But Three Mile Island left a legacy of public skepticism and fear that lingers a generation later. Industry advocates say that anxiety had largely faded -- at least until the disaster in Japan -- but the crisis at Three Mile Island dramatically altered the way Americans think about nuclear energy.

Three Mile Island effectively halted the advance of nuclear power in the energy-hungry U.S. In the wake of the crisis, plans that were under way for 74 new plants were canceled, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Since 1979, a number of plants have been decommissioned and no new plants were ordered for nearly a generation.

Today, 104 aging U.S. reactors produce about 20 percent of the nation's energy. In recent years, amid a race to develop "clean" energy and reduce oil dependence, nuclear power has enjoyed a renaissance, with powerful lawmakers singing its praises. In the last two years, nuclear utilities have filed license applications with the NRC to construct up to 26 new plants, although it would take years for the new reactors to be approved and constructed.

Proponents note that, unlike coal plants, nuclear power produces no greenhouse gases. They cite an excellent safety record since 1979. New plants also generate jobs, advocates say.

But the industry still faces obstacles, including heightened fears about safety renewed by the disaster in Japan.

The industry also is mired in a long-standing toxic debate over waste storage. Because it's extremely expensive to build nuclear plants, economic forces also remain a hurdle to industry expansion.

So does the ghost of Unit Two.

"Three Mile Island was almost 30 years ago, so perhaps the industry and the NRC have forgotten about it," Dave Lochbaum, a director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said at a 29th anniversary event last year. "But you can bet that even the people who welcome new plants in their communities will want to know if what happened at Three Mile Island could happen to them. As of right now, the industry and the NRC haven't done enough to ensure them it won't."

Related Sites:

• Map: U.S. Nuclear Plant Locations
• 2002 Study On Health Effects Of Three Mile Island
• Washington Post: Three Mile Island Chronology
• PBS: Nuclear Technology Timeline

EPA hydrofracking - Weston Wilson whisleblower

Public Citizen on hydrofracking ..

Hydraulic Fracturing; Unsafe, Unregulated

Some environmentalists, desperate to address greenhouse gas emissions from coal and oil, have wrongly identified natural gas as the primary "cleaner" alternative .While it is true that burning natural gas emits half the emissions of coal, natural gas extraction around the country creates dangerous risks to drinking and freshwater resources, and local air quality. Hydraulic fracturing, also called “fracking,” is a federally unregulated extraction process used in many natural gas drilling sites. The process can contaminate drinking water supplies with cancer-causing chemicals and significantly deplete freshwater aquifers. Natural gas extraction poses a grave threat to families, communities and ecosystems.

While for decades fracking was mainly conducted by smaller natural gas companies, the discovery of large gas reserves under shale formations in new areas of the country (such as New York and Pennsylvania) has resulted in the larger oil majors - ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and BP - becoming the largest frackers in the country. And now the Obama Administration's State Department is promoting America's fracking technologies to export fracking overseas - putting the administration in a position of a cheerleader for the industry. Cleaner, cheaper and quicker solutions to meet our energy demands are available. Renewable energy coupled with energy efficiency should diminish our dependence on dirty and dangerous fuels.

What is Fracking?

Hydraulic fracturing is the high-pressure injection of fracking fluid – a mixture of water, sand, and toxic chemicals – into the ground to break open and “fracture” rock formations to release liquid gas. The controversial technique was developed in the 1940s by energy services company Halliburton. Modern practices such as horizontal fracturing and high-volume hydraulic fracturing allow drillers to extract greater amounts of gas than previously possible. But at what cost?

The chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing often include substances that are toxic to humans and wildlife as well as carcinogenic. While particular fracking fluid chemical combinations differ based on the company and drilling location, many include toxic substances such as benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, xylene and naphthalene. Other chemicals used include a variety of acids, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, methanol, formaldehyde, ethylene glycol, glycol ethers, hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide. Fracking fluids may contain mixtures of hundreds of chemicals and agents. Yet, the precise chemical compositions used are secret; drilling companies refuse to disclose the composition of their fracking fluids, citing proprietary interests. The amount of these chemicals used can reach upwards of 50,000 gallons during the fracturing of a single well.

The infiltration potential of these fracking fluid chemicals into drinking water supplies is alarming. Even though the hydraulic fracking process is designed to remove these chemicals, a large percentage – anywhere from 25-60 percent – are often left in the ground and never fully recovered. Furthermore, both the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and industry leaders have acknowledged that the potential exists for frack fluid to migrate away from intended fracture lines and into nearby aquifers.

More than 30 states are involved in oil and gas production, and hydraulic fracturing is used in 9 of 10 gas exploration operations in several parts of the country including Texas, Alabama, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Montana.There are approximately 450,000 of these gas wells across the country, with a proposal for 100,000 more to be drilled in New York and 100,000 in Pennsylvania. A variety of new drilling techniques using hydraulic fracturing are also opening up gas deposits that had previously been too expensive to drill. One particularly large area, known as the Marcellus Shale, expands through Pennsylvania and parts of New York, Ohio and West Virginia.

In addition to the large oil majors, other companies involved in hydraulic fracturing services include Chesapeake Energy, Cabot Oil and Gas Co., BJ Services Co., Complete Production Services, Key Energy Services, Patterson UTI, RPC Inc; Schlumberger, Superior Well Services Inc. and Weatherford. To date, companies involved in this process have had thousands of accidents and racked up a number of safety violations.

Risk to Drinking Water

Hydraulic fracturing’s potential impacts on both water usage and quantity can be significant. A single fracture of one well may require anywhere from 1 to 5 million gallons of water. To compare, a single fracture using 1 million gallons of water would roughly be equivalent to 2 Olympic size swimming pools. This also translates into as many as 200 truck loads of water per fracture of a well. Many wells require multiple fractures, some up to 18 times.

With fracking comes an enormous threat of contamination of residential wells, groundwater aquifers and nearby surface water sources such as rivers and steams. From Virginia to Wyoming, hundreds of documented cases have surfaced regarding water quality and quantity problems in residential wells located near natural gas drilling operations. These reports include incidents of water wells being contaminated during and directly following hydraulic fracturing operations. Gases such as methane and hydrogen sulfide have been reported in drinking water, along with murkiness and discoloration of water. Cases of skin rashes and sickness after unknowingly showering in contaminated water supplies have been documented.

Federal Regulation: Unregulated and Unproven

Since 1974, regulatory protection of drinking water has fallen under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The act calls for monitoring of underground injection of chemicals that may come in contact with drinking water supplies. As a result of the 1997 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Legal Environmental Assistance Foundation v. Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA was charged with regulating hydraulic fracturing under the Safe Drinking Water Act. This decision led the agency to undertake an analysis in 2000 to determine the dangers posed by hydraulic fracturing to underground drinking water supplies.

During the same period, a special presidential task force on energy policy led by then-Vice President Dick Cheney convened in 2001. Because of Cheney’s recent departure as CEO of Halliburton to return to politics, the secretive nature of the task force and its motivations were called into question. Aided by industry professionals from Halliburton and other energy companies, the task force ultimately recommended that Congress exempt hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act. The EPA finished its fracking study in 2004 and found that fracturing “posses little or no threat” to drinking water and concluded no more research was necessary. However, comments from whistleblowers and reviews of the report, notably by the Oil and Gas Accountability Project (OGAP), found that the EPA’s conclusion that no further investigation of hydraulic fracturing was needed to be unpersuasive.

Congress ultimately exempted hydraulic fracturing from the regulatory authority of the Safe Drinking Water Act in the 2005 Energy Policy Act. This exemption, known commonly as the “Halliburton loophole,” created a unique situation where oil and gas companies are the only industry entities allowed to inject known hazardous chemicals either directly into or nearby underground drinking water supplies. Hydraulic fracturing is also exempted from other federal regulations that protect air quality, water treatment infrastructure and
Landowner’s rights

Congressional efforts to close the Halliburton loophole began in 2008. In 2009, the Fracking Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act (FRAC ACT) was introduced by lawmakers in an attempt to close the Halliburton loophole.  However, the bill has failed to win passage to date.

The EPA is also studying hydraulic fracturing’s effects on drinking water supplies. Commissioned in 2010, the current study will likely conclude in 2012.  As of Nov. 9, 2010, the EPA had requested chemical compositions from nine of the leading energy companies that participate in hydraulic fracturing. All but one of those companies complied with the EPA’s request.  Halliburton refused and was issued a subpoena to provide the chemical makeup of the compounds it uses.

Patchwork State Regulation

Because federal regulation of fracking is absent, states are left to determine monitoring protocols for hydraulic fracturing. As is the case with many issues where a clear lack of federal regulation exists, a patchwork of state regulations governs the natural gas exploration process. Most state regulation does the bare minimum of merely collecting data on fracturing operations. The majority of states that do have some drilling regulations in place enforce these through the permitting process. New Mexico, Colorado and Alabama regulate fracking through the permitting process.  These controls monitor well depth, availability of freshwater supplies, disposal of chemicals and observation of open air fluid pits.

Some states like Pennsylvania allow for neighbors of a drilling operation to request an investigation when they believe their water may have been contaminated by fracking.

However, even with established monitoring and guidelines, states are stretched to handle the workload.  The frenzied pace of new well drilling combined with state budgetary woes are hindering state level regulation. For example, according to the Citizen’s Campaign Fund for the Environment, New York State lacks the funding and the trained professionals to ensure enforcement of any fracking operation in the state.

Recommendations:

• While the EPA study is under way, no new fracking operations should be permitted.
• Congress must close the 2005 Halliburton loophole for hydraulic fracturing. Injecting toxic substances into the ground falls squarely under the provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act and thus the exemption for hydraulic fracturing should be eliminated from the 2005 Energy Policy Act. 

PDF version with references available, here.