{"id":12100,"date":"2015-09-11T06:03:25","date_gmt":"2015-09-11T11:03:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12100"},"modified":"2015-09-11T06:03:25","modified_gmt":"2015-09-11T11:03:25","slug":"exclusive-battle-over-flaming-water-and-fracking-reignites-as-analysis-prompts-call-for-renewed-epa-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12100","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: Battle Over Flaming Water and Fracking Reignites As Analysis Prompts Call for Renewed EPA Investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Exclusive: Battle Over Flaming Water and Fracking Reignites As Analysis Prompts Call for Renewed EPA Investigation<\/a><\/h3>\n

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At the heart of the international controversy over\u00a0fracking<\/a>\u00a0has been the contention that the oil and gas drilling technique can contaminate people’s drinking water, sometimes even causing it to light on fire. One poster child for this claim has been Steven Lipsky, a Texas homeowner who has appeared in a\u00a0viral video<\/a>\u00a0with a garden hose spewing flames and says his water was fouled by\u00a0fracking.<\/p>\n

For years, Mr. Lipsky has fought legal battles \u2014 most often with federal\u00a0EPA<\/span>investigators finding his claims of contamination credible, while Texas regulators and the drilling company, Range Resources, taking the opposite\u00a0view.<\/p>\n

An\u00a0analysis<\/a>\u00a0released this week, describing research by scientists at the University of Texas at Arlington, may open this case once again. It offers new evidence that the tests taken at Mr. Lipsky’s well water by Range Resources and Texas regulators, who reported little or no contamination, were flawed and potentially\u00a0inaccurate.<\/p>\n

In the videotaped presentation,\u00a0Zacariah Hildenbrand<\/a>, a visiting scholar at the University of Texas at Arlington, lays out a detailed case that the Lipsky family’s water carries high levels of contamination, including methane matching that found in the gas from two nearby Range Resources Barnett shale gas wells, and presents evidence that past test results reported by the Texas Railroad Commission and Range were not\u00a0reliable.<\/p>\n

Much of the research he describes in the video was conducted by a team from the University of Texas at Arlington, and Dr.\u00a0Hildenbrand was later hired by Mr. Lipsky’s legal team to explain those findings on\u00a0tape.<\/p>\n

Dr. Hildenbrand’s research has broad implications not just because Mr. Lipsky has become something of an icon for the anti-fracking movement. The Lipsky case was also at the center of a\u00a0jurisdictional showdown<\/a>\u00a0between Texas and the federal government, after the\u00a0EPA<\/span>\u00a0stepped in and issued an emergency order over the water contamination, and then Texas pushed back and the\u00a0EPA<\/span>\u00a0dropped its\u00a0investigation.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Exclusive: Battle Over Flaming Water and Fracking Reignites As Analysis Prompts Call for Renewed EPA Investigation At the heart of the international controversy over\u00a0fracking\u00a0has been the contention that the oil and gas drilling technique can contaminate people’s drinking water, sometimes even causing it to light on fire. One poster child for this claim has been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[5317,3185,1470,331,412,8892,8893,866,4845],"class_list":["post-12100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-desmog-blog","tag-environmental-protection-agency","tag-epa","tag-fracking","tag-hydraulic-fracturing","tag-range-resources","tag-steven-lipsky","tag-water","tag-water-contamination"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12100"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12101,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12100\/revisions\/12101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}