ProPublica has a look at a new study of fracking fluids contaminating underground water in the US - Feds Link Water Contamination to Fracking for the First Time.

In a first, federal environment officials today scientifically linked underground water pollution with hydraulic fracturing, concluding that contaminants found in central Wyoming were likely caused by the gas drilling process.

The findings by the Environmental Protection Agency come partway through a separate national study by the agency to determine whether fracking presents a risk to water resources.

In the 121-page draft report released today, EPA officials said that the contamination near the town of Pavillion, Wyo., had most likely seeped up from gas wells and contained at least 10 compounds known to be used in frack fluids.

“The presence of synthetic compounds such as glycol ethers … and the assortment of other organic components is explained as the result of direct mixing of hydraulic fracturing fluids with ground water in the Pavillion gas field,” the draft report states. “Alternative explanations were carefully considered.”

The agency’s findings could be a turning point in the heated national debate about whether contamination from fracking is happening, and are likely to shape how the country regulates and develops natural gas resources in the Marcellus Shale and across the Eastern Appalachian states.

Some of the findings in the report also directly contradict longstanding arguments by the drilling industry for why the fracking process is safe: that hydrologic pressure would naturally force fluids down, not up; that deep geologic layers provide a watertight barrier preventing the movement of chemicals towards the surface; and that the problems with the cement and steel barriers around gas wells aren’t connected to fracking.

The Colorado Independent has an article on pressure being brought to bear on opponents of hydraulic fracturing, who believe it contaminates ground water supplies - Colo. School of Mines professor says he was threatened with firing over hydraulic fracturing comments.

Dr. Geoffrey Thyne is no Ward Churchill. He’s a geologist and an academic with three decades of field work and experience as a research scientist in the oil and gas industry, including the last 13 years at Colorado School of Mines in Golden.

Thyne said in an interview that he was caught completely off-guard in late May when his bosses at the 135-year-old school threatened to fire him for comments he made to reporters on hydraulic fracturing — an increasingly controversial but equally common practice of injecting natural gas wells with high-pressure water, sand and chemicals to force open rock formations and free up gas.

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, a Denver Democrat, is co-sponsoring legislation that would remove a Safe Drinking Water Act exemption for the process, also known as “fracking,” that was put in place by the Bush administration in 2005. Oil and gas industry trade groups have mounted a massive — and expensive — campaign to fight DeGette’s bill and maintain the exemption, which no other extractive industry enjoys.

Thyne said he was threatened with termination as a research associate professor at Mines, a position he still holds through the end of the summer, because of pressure put on the state school by powerful players in the oil and gas industry who were upset with his position that federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing may ultimately be necessary if oil companies don’t find other solutions.

“I was shocked,” Thyne said. “It’s fine to call up and complain. It’s fine to call up and say, ‘Hey, we want an explanation of why you said this.’ I think that’s totally reasonable. What I found so interesting is no one’s ever called me, except my bosses, and they just come in and go, ‘Your ass is going to get fired if we can find a way to do it.’”

As it turns out, a position came open as a senior research scientist at the Enhanced Oil Recovery Institute at the University of Wyoming, and so Thyne is transitioning there by the end of the summer. But he clearly was rattled with the fallout from comments he made to both National Public Radio and Denver’s KUSA Channel 9 TV in late May.

“There’s some really powerful people that are making a lot of money off of this, and when they see any kind of opposition, their response is to pick up the phone and say, ‘Fire this guy,’” Thyne said. “I’m first surprised that a state institution can be influenced that way …”

Colorado School of Mines public relations officials did not return a call requesting comment Thursday. Late Thursday afternoon a spokeswoman provided an e-mail response (see related blog item).

Thyne contends there needs to be much more rigorous study of fracking to determine the extent to which it can contaminate groundwater supplies. Industry money currently being poured into the aggressive and highly defensive campaign to defeat DeGette’s legislation would be better spent building a credible scientific case for why the exemption was necessary in the first place, he adds.

Grist has an article taken from ProPublica.org on some of the hazards associated with hydraulic fracturing used in natural gas drilling (particularly for shale gas, which has driven the resurgence in US gas production) - Buried secrets.

In July, a hydrologist dropped a plastic sampling pipe 300 feet down a water well in rural Sublette County, Wyo., and pulled up a load of brown oily water with a foul smell. Tests showed it contained benzene, a chemical believed to cause aplastic anemia and leukemia, in a concentration 1,500 times the level safe for people.

The results sent shockwaves through the energy industry and state and federal regulatory agencies.

Sublette County is the home of one of the nation's largest natural gas fields, and many of its 6,000 wells have undergone a process pioneered by Halliburton called hydraulic fracturing, which shoots vast amounts of water, sand, and chemicals several miles underground to break apart rock and release the gas. The process has been considered safe since a 2004 study [PDF] by the Environmental Protection Agency found that it posed no risk to drinking water. After that study, Congress even exempted hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act. Today fracturing is used in nine out of 10 natural gas wells in the United States.

Over the last few years, however, a series of contamination incidents have raised questions about that EPA study and ignited a debate over whether the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing may threaten the nation's increasingly precious drinking water supply.

An investigation by ProPublica, which visited Sublette County and six other contamination sites, found that water contamination in drilling areas around the country is far more prevalent than the EPA asserts. Our investigation also found that the 2004 EPA study was not as conclusive as it claimed to be. A close review shows that the body of the study contains damaging information that wasn't mentioned in the conclusion. In fact, the study foreshadowed many of the problems now being reported across the country.

The contamination in Sublette County is significant because it is the first to be documented by a federal agency, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. But more than 1,000 other cases of contamination have been documented by courts and state and local governments in Colorado, New Mexico, Alabama, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In one case, a house exploded after hydraulic fracturing created underground passageways and methane seeped into the residential water supply. In other cases, the contamination occurred not from actual drilling below ground, but on the surface, where accidental spills and leaky tanks, trucks and waste pits allowed benzene and other chemicals to leach into streams, springs and water wells ...

In the past 12 months a flurry of documented incidents has made such reports harder to dismiss.

"We've kind of reached the tipping point," says Dhieux, the EPA inspector in Denver. "The impacts are there."

In December 2007, a house in Bainbridge, Ohio exploded in a fiery ball. Investigators discovered that the neighborhood's tap water contained so much methane that the house ignited. A study released this month concluded that pressure caused by hydraulic fracturing pushed the gas, which is found naturally thousands of feet below, through a system of cracks into the groundwater aquifer.

In February a frozen 200-foot waterfall was discovered on the side of a massive cliff near Parachute, Colo. According to the state, 1.6 million gallons of fracturing fluids had leaked from a waste pit and been transported by groundwater, where it seeped out of the cliff. In a separate incident nearby in June, benzene was discovered in a place called Rock Spring. Three weeks later a rancher was hospitalized after he drank well water out of his own tap. Tests showed benzene in his water, and the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission cited four gas operators, not knowing which one was responsible for the spill. Colorado state records show more than 1,500 spills since 2003, in which time the rate of drilling increased 50 percent. In 2008 alone, records show more than 206 spills, 48 relating to water contamination. ...

State regulators and Washington lawmakers though are increasingly impatient with voluntary measures and are seeking to toughen their oversight. In September, U.S. Congresswoman Diana DeGette and Congressman John Salazar, from Colorado, and Congressman Maurice Hinchey, from New York, introduced a bill that would undo the exemptions in the 2005 Energy Policy Act. Wyoming, widely known for supporting energy development, has begun updating its regulations at a local level, as have parts of Texas.

New Mexico has placed a one-year moratorium on drilling around Santa Fe, after a survey found hundreds of cases of water contamination from unlined pits where fracking fluids and other drilling wastes are stored. "Every rule that we have improved...industry has taken us to court on," said Joanna Prukop, New Mexico's cabinet secretary for Energy Minerals and Natural Resources. "It's industry that is fighting us on every front as we try to improve our government enforcement, protection, and compliance...We wear Kevlar these days."

The most stringent reforms are being pursued in Colorado. Last year it began a top-to-bottom re-write of its regulations, including a proposal to require companies to disclose the exact makeup of their fracking fluids -- the toughest such rule in the nation.

In mid-August, the Colorado debate intensified when news broke that Cathy Behr, an emergency room nurse in Durango, Colo., had almost died after treating a wildcatter who had been splashed in a fracking fluid spill at a BP natural gas rig. Behr stripped the man and stuffed his clothes into plastic bags while the hospital sounded alarms and locked down the ER. The worker was released. But a few days later Behr lay in critical condition facing multiple organ failure.

Her doctors searched for details that could save their patient. The substance was a drill stimulation fluid called ZetaFlow, but the only information the rig workers provided was a vague Material Safety Data Sheet, a form required by OSHA. Doctors wanted to know precisely what chemicals make up ZetaFlow and in what concentration. But the MSDS listed that information as proprietary. Behr's doctor learned, weeks later, after Behr had begun to recuperate, what ZetaFlow was made of, but he was sworn to secrecy by the chemical's manufacturer and couldn't even share the information with his patient.

News of Behr's case spread to New York and Pennsylvania, amplifying the cry for disclosure of drilling fluids. The energy industry braced for a fight.

"A disclosure to members of the public of detailed information...would result in an unconstitutional taking of [Halliburton's] property," the company told Colorado's Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. "A number of studies have concluded there are no confirmed incidents of contamination of drinking water aquifers due to stimulation operations...EPA reached precisely this conclusion after undertaking an extensive study."

Then Halliburton fired a major salvo: If lawmakers forced the company to disclose its recipes, the letter stated, it "will have little choice but to pull its proprietary products out of Colorado." The company's attorneys warned that if the three big fracking companies left, they would take some $29 billion in future gas-related tax and royalty revenue with them over the next decade.