Michael Bastasch reports that Wyoming regulators have found hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, did not likely contaminate groundwater supplies in the town of Pavillion four years after the EPA conducted its own botched investigation.
State officials published findings showing groundwater contamination near Pavillion was not likely caused by fracking, but instead by gas that naturally seeped into groundwater wells. The state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) says the evidence suggests that upward gas seepage was happening naturally well before gas well development.
It is unlikely that hydraulic fracturing fluids have risen to shallower depths intercepted by water-supply wells, DEQ writes in its 30-month investigation of Pavillion water. Evidence does not indicate that hydraulic fracturing fluids have risen to shallow depths intersected by water-supply wells. The likelihood that the hydraulic fracture well stimulation treatments employed in the Pavillion Gas Field have led to fluids interacting with shallow groundwater is negligible, DEQ adds.
The state findings are a huge blow to environmentalists (aka adversaries of fracking) who have been using Pavillion as a main source of evidence of how fracking was contaminating groundwater. Pavillion was even featured in the 2010 anti-fracking film Gasland, while the region was being investigated by the EPA and state officials. Gasland featured a Pavillion landowner named John Fenton who said that when they turn on the tap, the water reeks of hydrocarbons and chemicals. The implication was that gas in Fenton water was caused by recently-started fracking operations. Gasland director Josh Fox used Fenton story to bolster his case that fracking was contaminating water.
But the EPA 2011 report was heavily criticized by federal-state officials for shoddy data collection methods that biased results. The USGS basically disqualified one of the two water monitoring wells near Pavillion because it was poorly constructed.
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