Naveena Sadasivam Posts

No one could accuse the oil and gas industry of being run by sweethearts, but a new investigation by the Department of Labor has released some disturbing numbers about just how much the industry underpays and misclassifies its employees.

A new report charges that several oil and gas companies have been illegally using diesel fuel in their hydraulic fracturing operations, and then doctoring records to hide violations of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. The report, published this week by the Environmental Integrity Project, found that between 2010 and July 2014, at least 351 wells were fracked by 33 different companies using diesel fuels without a permit.

Federal environment officials have failed to adequately oversee hundreds of thousands of wells used to inject toxic oil and gas drilling waste deep underground, according to a new congressional report. The report is critical of the 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. The EPA generally agreed with the findings and characterization of the challenges the agency is currently facing.

For years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been frustrated in its efforts to pursue hundreds of cases of water pollution — repeatedly tied up in legal fights about exactly what bodies of water it has the authority to monitor and protect. Efforts in Congress to clarify the EPA's powers have been defeated. And two Supreme Court decisions have done little to decide the question. Just when things seemed to be defined, a new campaign from corporate agriculture is confusing things yet again.

Ohio annually processes thousands of tons of radioactive waste from hydraulic-fracturing, sending it through treatment facilities, injecting it into its old and unused gas wells and dumping it in landfills. With the business of fracking waste only growing, legislators in 2013 had the chance to decide how best to monitor the state's vast amounts of toxic material, much of it being trucked into Ohio from neighboring states. But despite calls to require that the waste be rigorously tested for contamination, Gov. John Kasich and the state legislature signed off on measures that require just a fraction of the waste to be subjected to such oversight.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's labyrinthine rules for complaints has citizens out in the cold when trying to report violations by oil and gas companies, and their fracking outfits littering the state.

Hydrogen as a fuel source is an attractive proposition mainly because it doesn’t emit toxic, heat-trapping pollutants the way gasoline does. However, hydrogen poses several other risks that gasoline does not. It is highly flammable, and can ignite more easily than other fuels. Hydrogen is also colorless and odorless, making it difficult to readily detect leaks. Environmental and regulatory experts have long worried about the threat posed by the vast array of dangerous materials daily being moved across the country.

Federal regulators have released ExxonMobil's 2013 emergency response plan for the pipeline that ruptured in an Arkansas residential neighborhood on March 29, but the document is so heavily redacted that it offers little information about Exxon's preparations for such an accident.