![]() The state released a series of reports without firm conclusions, and, as of last month, has said it has no firm plans to take further action. Three years later, having never finalized its findings, EPA turned its investigation over to Wyoming. The EPA report, which linked shallow fracking to toxic compounds in aquifers, was met with heavy criticism from the drilling industry as well as state oil and gas regulators. Environmental Protection Agency issued a preliminary report putting the tiny town at the center of a growing fracking debate. He and his colleagues have done various studies across the United States and in the Pavillion Field, an area of Wyoming’s Wind River Basin pocked by more than 180 oil and gas wells, some of them plugged and abandoned.īack in 2008, the residents of Pavillion complained of a foul taste and odor in their drinking water and questioned whether it was related to physical ailments. The study, based on publically available records and documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, is part of Jackson’s ongoing research on shallow fracking and its impact on groundwater. “There are no rules that would stop a company from doing this anywhere else,” said Jackson, who is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and at the Precourt Institute for Energy. When the wastewater comes back up after use, it often includes those and a range of potentially dangerous natural chemicals. These are not best practices for most drillers,” said co-author Rob Jackson, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Provostial Professor at the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences.Īs part of the so-called frackwater they inject into the ground, drilling companies use proprietary blends that can include potentially dangerous chemicals such as benzene and xylene. “Decades of activities at Pavillion put people at risk. This may be causing widespread impacts on drinking water resources.” ![]() ![]() “It’s perfectly legal to inject stimulation fluids into underground drinking water resources. “This is a wake-up call,” said lead author Dominic DiGiulio, a visiting scholar at Stanford School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences. The well field has gone through several corporate hands since the 1960s, but various fracking operators have used acid and hydraulic fracturing treatments at the same depths as water wells in the area. ![]() The research paints a picture of unsafe practices including the dumping of drilling and production fluids containing diesel fuel, high chemical concentrations in unlined pits and a lack of adequate cement barriers to protect groundwater. (Image credit: Dominic DiGiulio)Ī new study by Stanford scientists published in Environmental Science & Technologyfinds for the first time that fracking operations near Pavillion have had clear impact to underground sources of drinking water. ![]() A Stanford study in Pavillion, Wyoming, finds that practices common in the fracking industry have affected the community’s drinking water. Environmental Protection Agency staff members sample a monitoring well for contaminants from hydraulic fracturing. ![]()
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