Katie Brown reports that the Casper Star-Tribune and Greenwire have both reported that the lead researcher of the Stanford Pavillion study, Dominic DiGiulio, was also the author of the EPA Pavillion study, which has been thoroughly discredited. In other words, not only does this new study rehash the same debunked data from the two EPA monitoring wells, which were widely criticized by federal and state officials, it also has the same author.
This information was not included in the original embargoed materials, although it was apparently conveyed to the press. In a new study examining water quality in Pavillion, Wyo., Stanford researchers claim to have for the first time, demonstrated impact to Underground Sources of Drinking Water (USDWs) as a result of hydraulic fracturing, a theory that many critics of drilling have promoted for the same region. But the research team did not take any new samples, choosing instead to reinterpret the same data that state officials used to exonerate drilling.
The research team was led in part by Dr. Rob Jackson. If the Jackson name sounds familiar, it is because he was one of the Duke University researchers who published studies in 2010 and 2013, which also claimed fracking could have contaminated groundwater. Those reports suffered from a number of major flaws, several of which were conceded by the authors, including a lack of baseline data, the decision not to randomly sample wells, and the presence of high levels of methane in water wells that were nowhere near natural gas drilling. Numerous studies by USGS, Syracuse University and other reputable research organizations, have thoroughly debunked those claims.
So it is not surprising that Dr. Jackson has published yet another paper alleging a link between drilling and water contamination. But Brown suggests that we need to take a deeper look at his latest project.
Interesting read .....
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