California Halts Injection of Fracking Waste
By Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica
California officials have ordered an emergency shut-down of 11 oil and gas waste injection sites and a review more than 100 others in the state's drought-wracked Central Valley out of fear that companies may have been pumping fracking fluids and other toxic waste into drinking water aquifers there.
EPA’s Abandoned Wyoming Fracking Study One Retreat of Many
By Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica
It will be a long time before the EPA’s national study can inform the debate over fracking.
Poisoning the well: How the Feds let industry pollute the nation’s underground water supply
By Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica
Federal officials have given energy and mining companies permission to pollute aquifers in more than 1,500 places across the country, releasing toxic material into underground reservoirs that help supply more than half of the nation's drinking water.
New study predicts frack fluids can migrate to aquifers within years
By Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica
A new study has raised fresh concerns about the safety of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, concluding that fracking chemicals injected into the ground could migrate toward drinking water supplies far more quickly than experts have previously predicted.
Climate benefits of natural gas may be overstated
By Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica
Advocates for natural gas routinely assert that it produces 50 percent less greenhouse gases than coal and is a significant step toward a greener energy future. But those assumptions are based on emissions from the tailpipe or smokestack and don’t account for the methane and other pollution emitted when gas is extracted and piped to power plants and other customers.
Breaking: New York Senate passes temporary ban on hydraulic fracturing
By Abrahm Lustgarten, Nicholas Kusnetz, Speaking Truth to Power
In a predawn vote Wednesday, New York State's senate passed a bill that reaches beyond the debate over the environmental safety of drilling for gas in the Marcellus Shale and would effectively ban almost all gas and oil drilling in the state until next spring. The bill circumvents an environmental review by the state's regulatory agency that could be finished this year.