{"id":45166,"date":"2013-06-25T18:00:38","date_gmt":"2013-06-25T17:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/duke-study-links-fracking-to-water-contamination-as-epa-drops-study-on-fracking-water-contamination\/45166\/"},"modified":"2013-06-25T18:00:38","modified_gmt":"2013-06-25T17:00:38","slug":"duke-study-links-fracking-to-water-contamination-as-epa-drops-study-on-fracking-water-contamination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/duke-study-links-fracking-to-water-contamination-as-epa-drops-study-on-fracking-water-contamination\/","title":{"rendered":"Duke Study Links Fracking to Water Contamination as EPA Drops Study on Fracking Water Contamination"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) kicked the can down the road on a key study designated to examine the connection between\u00a0hydraulic fracturing (\u201cfracking\u201d)<\/a>\u00a0and groundwater contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming.<\/p>\n

A study originally scheduled for release in 2014 and featured in\u00a0Josh Fox\u2019s \u201cGasland 2,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0it\u00a0will not be complete until 2016<\/a>\u00a0in a move that appears to be purely politically calculated by the Obama Administration, akin to the\u00a0EPA\u2019s dropped and censored groundwater contamination study in Weatherford, TX<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, just days later, a damning\u00a0study conducted by Duke University researchers published<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em>\u00a0again links shale gas fracking to groundwater contamination. The Duke researchers did so by testing samples of 141 drinking water samples of Pennsylvania\u2019s portion of the Marcellus Shale basin.<\/p>\n

This is the Duke professor\u2019s\u00a0third<\/a>\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0linking fracking to groundwater contamination, the source of drinking water for hundreds of thousands of citizens in the Keystone State. The industry is likely to come out with the familiar chorus that the contaminated water is \u201cnaturally occuring,\u201d but the latest Duke study shows otherwise.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey found that, on average, methane concentrations were six times higher and ethane concentrations were 23 times higher at homes within a kilometer of a shale gas well,\u201d a\u00a0Duke University press release explains<\/a>. \u201cPropane was detected in 10 samples, all of them from homes within a kilometer of drilling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Robert Jackson, a professor of environmental sciences at Duke\u2019s Nicholas School of the Environment and one of the study\u2019s co-authors, pointed to the the fact that some of the contaminated water samples exhibited the chemical signature of Marcellus Shale gas.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe methane, ethane and propane data, and new evidence from hydrocarbon and helium content, all suggest that drilling has affected some homeowners\u2019 water,\u201d\u00a0said Jackson<\/a>. \u201cIn a minority of cases the gas even looks Marcellus-like, probably caused by poor well construction.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) kicked the can down the road on a key study designated to examine the connection between\u00a0hydraulic fracturing (\u201cfracking\u201d)\u00a0and groundwater contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming. A study originally scheduled for release in 2014 and featured in\u00a0Josh Fox\u2019s \u201cGasland 2,\u201d\u00a0it\u00a0will not be complete until 2016\u00a0in a move that appears to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-45166","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}