Name: Matt S                                                                                  Current Event Number: 4
Topic: Politics
Title of Article: New Proposal on Fracking Gives Ground to Industry
Author: John Broder
Publication Name: NY Times      Date of Publication: May 4th 2012
Length of Article: 810 Words / 2 Pages

Hydraulic Fracturing is the process of injecting highly pressurized water and hundreds of other chemicals deep into the ground in order the "fracture" the ground. This is done to extract oil and natural gas from various wells in the ground - it is a very profitable but at the same time, a very hazardous/toxic industry. On Friday May the 4th, the Obama Administration issued a proposed law the would dictate the way in which Hydraulic Fracturing (fracking) can be done. The original version of the law said that companies would be required to disclose the chemicals that they use in the process of hydraulic fracturing 30 days before they can actually start fracking. This was going to be put in place because recently, lots of reports of groundwater and surface water contamination have been filed that could possibly be a result of hydraulic fracturing - this was to be a safety measure in order to prevent/track the movement of the toxic chemicals moving through the environment. The change to the law states that the companies will  need to disclose the chemicals used only after they have began drilling/fracking. This changed occurred after a series of meetings that were held at the White House after the bill was originally proposed in February; lobbyists representing the oil industry and individual corporations such as ExxonMobil, XTO Energy, Apache, Samson Resources and Anadarko Petroleum. The companies argued that the original proposed rules would overlap state regulations, the cost of compliance, and the additional paperwork would slow the process which could potentially reveal trade secrets. Officials from the Department of the Interior said that from a scientific standpoint, whether the companies disclose the chemical contents 30 days before or a few days after drilling does not matter when it comes to tracing future contamination. Obama is very supportive of Hydraulic Fracturing, and as he puts it, it is a "boon to the economy" - one reason for his slightly more conservative standpoint on this issue is that recently he has been criticized by Republicans and oil industry officials on his energy policies.

Hydraulic Fracturing is a potentially-dangerous process if the waste contents are not disposed of correctly. It has sparked huge controversy in the past few years however it is undeniably a huge part of the economy - America runs on coal, oil and natural gas. The proposed bill would affect drilling operations on 700 million acres of public land and a majority of the 13,000 wells drilled each year by fracking which had been run by state laws for the past 60 years. Until now (or at least the very near future), companies never had to disclose any information about the toxic slurry that they inject into the ground in the process; this bill would greatly improve the way in which the contamination/pollution from Hydraulic Fracking is investigated. It would also integrate the state and federal reporting efforts, which would make it much easier to track illegal waste dumping and  the pollution that Hydraulic Fracking causes.

I am currently enrolled in AP environmental science, and based on what I have learned throughout the course of the year, I am comfortable with saying that this process is extremely harmful to the environment and should be banned altogether. I think that the monetary benefits we obtain through the process of Hydraulic Fracturing does not outweigh the negative impacts on our environment.