"What they don't often consider is whether that waste will flow outside that zone of influence over time, and there is no doubt that it will," said Mike Wireman, a senior hydrologist with the EPA who has worked with the World Bank on global water supply issues. "Over decades, that water could discharge into a stream. It could seep into a well. If you are a rancher out there and you want to put a well in, it's difficult to find out if there is an exempted aquifer underneath your property."
Aquifer exemptions are a little-known aspect of the government's Underground Injection Control program, which is designed to protect water supplies from the underground disposal of waste.
The Safe Drinking Water Act explicitly prohibits injection into a source of drinking water, and requires precautions to ensure that oil and gas and disposal wells that run through them are carefully engineered not to leak.
Areas covered by exemptions are stripped of some of these protections, however. Waste can be discarded into them freely, and wells that run through them need not meet all standards used to prevent pollution. In many cases, no water monitoring or long-term study is required.
The recent surge in domestic drilling and rush for uranium has brought a spike in exemption applications, as well as political pressure not to block or delay them, EPA officials told ProPublica.
"The energy policy in the U.S is keeping this from happening because right now nobody — nobody — wants to interfere with the development of oil and gas or uranium," said a senior EPA employee who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject. "The political pressure is huge not to slow that down."
Many of the exemption permits, records show, have been issued in regions where water is needed most and where intense political debates are underway to decide how to fairly allocate limited water resources.
In drought-stricken Texas, communities are looking to treat brackish aquifers beneath the surface because they have run out of better options and several cities, including San Antonio and El Paso, are considering whether to build new desalinization plants for as much as $100 million apiece.
And yet environmental officials have granted more than 50 exemptions for waste disposal and uranium mining in Texas, records show. The most recent was issued in September.
The Texas Railroad Commission, the state agency that regulates oil and gas drilling, said it issued additional exemptions, covering large swaths of aquifers underlying the state, when it brought its rules into compliance with the federal Safe Drinking Water Act in 1982. This was in large part because officials viewed them as oil reservoirs and thought they were already contaminated. But it is unclear where, and how extensive, those exemptions are.
EPA "Region VI received a road map — yes, the kind they used to give free at gas stations — with the aquifers delineated, with no detail on depth," said Mario Salazar, a former EPA project engineer who worked with the underground injection program for 25 years and oversaw the approval of Texas' program, in an email.
In California, where nearly half of the nation's fruits and vegetables are grown with water from as far away as the Colorado River, the perennially cash-strapped state's governor is proposing to spend $14 billion to divert more of the Sacramento River from the north to the south. Near Bakersfield, a private project is underway to build a water bank, essentially an artificial aquifer.
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12 Comments
Add CommentIn many areas, communities cannot get water from wells because it causes subsidence, so all of their drinking water comes from surface sources. For decades these waters have been polluted by numerous industries, agriculture and even the waste discharge of other communities upstream. Farmers continue to drench our water with fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFederal officials have given these entities permission to pollute water in many places across the country...
And now all the focus seems solely on energy companies.
Well, if aquifers can't afford campaign or SuperPac contributions, what do you expect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn top of that, I've never seen an aquifer hire a congressional slug as a lobbyist, so what do you expect?
The EPA is misnomer and an empty shell. They have long been a rubber stamp for any kind of environmental assault so long as someone profits from it. EPA has fought to have their authority diminished and have had to be prosecuted to force them to do their job. Counting on the EPA to protect the environment is like counting on republicans to protect lower income families. Well call up the lawyers because this isn't going to be fixed any other way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't see any proof of contamination of potable aquifers in the article. Only a presumption that they will be contaminated. Why is that assumed?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm the author of the article. To clarify -- There are no assumptions here about contamination, and these are not cases of "risk" of contamination. These are cases in which the EPA has set up a process and overseen the ongoing injection of pollutants. The site permits list the contaminants being injected, the volume, the flow rate, and the aquifer formation receiving them. When the SDWA designates a USDW - an underground source of drinking water -- it has by definition defined it as potable and a viable source.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI personally like a bit of fracking fluids, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and fertilizers in my drinking water. Especially in the morning. It gives me that extra boost of energy I need to make it through the day. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Yea, it might kill a kid or older person, but who cares about them anyways.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDestroying tomorrow to cash in today... why is this perverse, self-cannibalizing behavior still tolerated in the United States? How do the dynamics of greed, cronyism, corruption and influence-peddling make destruction of our fresh water supply acceptable? One suggestion: Require insurance coverage on all fracking operations to place in escrow an environmental trust fund sufficient to repair any environmental damage from operations, regardless of cause. Counter greed with responsibility.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe issue not being addressed is that the people who want to dispose of their industrial waste in the underground aquifers do not want to pay to clean up their waste. Instead, they want to pass the cost of cleanup to others, namely the public.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCapitalism at it's best.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo much for the governments interest in its people. You guys are right, we are freakin corporate slaves and always will be because no good man can take the political job without the intent of their own greed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEPA is pathetic and powerless! As long as power and fuel companies are allowed to pay off politicians, this bending over of America will absolutely continue. Make lobbyests illegal in Washington. Make it illegal for politicians to go on "vacations" on the lobbyest's dime. Make the idiots in Congress (opposite of progress) do their own research and actually have their constiuant's best interest in mind for once. But..... probably not.... in America!!!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWant to see what's in store for poor and underrepresented peoples?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisList to a snake. Grover Norquist. He's running a coup on the U.S. He has never been elected to sh:t.