Wyoming Governor Matt Mead dialed USEPA Director Lisa Jackson’s
direct line last November and persuaded her to delay for weeks release of USEPA
data on well water contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming which EPA had concluded
was a result of increased fracking operations in the area. During the delay,
Wyoming officials mounted a vigorous campaign attempting to debunk the federal
agency’s conclusions and persuade Pavillion residents that shale oil and gas
operations in their neighborhood hadn’t polluted their wells.
According to e-mails between Wyoming state officials, the
state took advantage of the delay until December 8 in releasing USEPA findings
to “take a hard line” and coordinate an “all-out press” against the federal
agency’s conclusions about the cause of the pollution. Wyoming’s State Oil and
Gas Supervisor Thomas E. Doll worried over the effect the EPA findings could
have on the state’s revenue from shale oil and gas operations there. One of
Doll’s agency engineers, Gary Strong, warned that state objections to the EPA findings would be ineffective. “It’s already too late,” Strong wrote. “The
White House has already seen the report with conclusions.” Lamenting the likely
ineffectiveness of a surreptitious lobbying campaign to modify or weaken EPA
conclusions about fracking pollution in the state, Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation
Commission natural resource analyst Tom Kropatsch described the situation at a
November 16, 2011 meeting: “Once local folks received the data and it showed
what it did they had the responsibility to take it to HQ and in fact it ended
up with them in front of the White House. HQ and the White House decided that
now that data is released EPA must release conclusions quickly.”
Now, Governor Mead is complaining that USEPA has tested well
water in the Pavillion area from private wells as well as the two monitoring
wells the agency drilled itself. “I won’t tell anybody not to test,” Mead said
April 30. “But if you’re going to test, you need to bring everybody into the
process.” EPA Region 8 Director Jim Martin responds that EPA “has been
transparent and relied on the best science” in keeping Pavillion area residents
informed about the pollution in their wells.
Almost all of the oil and gas in Wyoming comes either from
coal mine beds or from fracking operations, and amounts to a $7.7 billion/year
industry accounting for 20% of the state’s gross domestic product. Summarizing
the reasons behind Wyoming’s attack on the EPA pollution findings, Oil and Gas
Supervisor Thomas E. Doll circulated an e-mail message among top state
officials. “Limiting of the hydraulic fracturing process will result in
negative impacts to the oil and gas revenues to the state of Wyoming. A further
outcome will be the questioning of the economic viability of all unconventional
and tight oil and gas reserves in Wyoming, across the United States, and
ultimately in the world,” Doll wrote.
USEPA testing of its fracking monitoring wells in the Pavillion
neighborhood found the carcinogen benzene at 50 times the allowable level. EPA
tests also found high pH water in the
wells due to potassium hydroxide, a chemical used in fracking operations. Pavillion
Area Concerned Citizens Chairman John Felton is unhappy about USEPA’s delaying
the release of its findings for several weeks, but reflects his neighbors’
distrust of Wyoming government and Supervisor Doll: “Those of us living out
here, we don’t trust the state.”
When it comes to pollution of private wells and Wyoming tax
revenues, the big money wins every time.
