The Environmental Protection Agency has failed to adequately oversee hundreds of thousands of injection wells used in oil and gas drilling, says a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The report criticizes EPA's "inconsistent handling
of safety inspections, poor record keeping and failure to adjust its
guidelines to adapt to new risks brought by the recent boom in domestic
drilling, including the understanding that injection wells are causing
earthquakes," Naveena Sadasivam reports for Pro Publica.
EPA, which oversees more than 700,000 injection wells in the U.S., delegates oversight of the wells to state agencies, Sadasivam writes. The problem with that, the report found, "is that
the EPA has not consistently inspected those state programs to ensure
that state regulators comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act and EPA
guidelines. The EPA also has failed to incorporate requirements it has
placed on some of its state programs into federal regulations, making it
difficult for the agency to take legal action against violators."
Another problem is budget constraints, Sadasivam writes. "Between 2003 and 2012, funding for state injection well
programs stagnated at about $10 million a year, which—factoring in
inflation—effectively meant resources had declined, the GAO concluded. The report also blamed the EPA for not taking steps to collect complete, consistent and reliable data on injection wells to use for reporting at
a national level, mirroring some of ProPublica's key findings." (Read more)
No comments:
Post a Comment