Oil and Gas and the Safe Drinking Water Act

By Lynn Thorp, National Programs Director - Follow Lynn on Twitter (@LTCWA) While it is widely recognized that Congress exempted hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, it is less understood that SDWA still pertains in several ways to fracking and oil and gas exploration, drilling and wastewater disposal. When SDWA first passed in 1974, Congress authorized the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set up a program to protect underground drinking water from injection practices of various kinds. That’s what the SDWA Underground Injection (UIC) program is meant to do. Oil and gas exploration, extraction and wastewater disposal was then and still is one common injection activity. But Congress tied EPA’s hands in a way that has had repercussions ever since. The SDWA language says that EPA “may not prescribe requirements for state UIC programs which interfere with or impede” injection associated with oil and gas production. Both of the reports we released today reveal problems in the UIC program that result from this almost contradictory mandate in the law. The Aquifer Exemption program is exactly what it sounds like. In order to make some oil and gas activities legal, EPA had to come up with a way of defining some aquifers as “not drinking water” in order to allow injection directly into them. These Exemptions have been used primarily for some kinds of oil and gas extraction, for wastewater disposal and for uranium mining. Our research has found serious gaps in documentation of decisions and in oversight of this program.   Read Aquifer Exemptions: A First-Ever Look at the Regulatory Program That Writes Off Drinking Water Resources for Oil, Gas and Uranium Profits here. The Aquifer Exemption program is part of the SDWA/UIC program, and our report on the overall UIC Class II program for oil and gas activities exposes similar problems. From the language in the law itself to the unique way that states can set up UIC programs that don’t quite mirror the federal requirements, our research found indications that the SDWA UIC Class II program is at risk of prioritizing fossil fuel extraction over protecting potential drinking water sources.   Read Regulating Oil & Gas Activities to Protect Drinking Water: The Safe Drinking Water Act’s Underground Injection Control Program here. Given the exponential increase in oil and gas production and the stresses on our water resources from climate change, we need to make sure that programs meant to protect ground water are doing just that.