The federal government shutdown slams environment protection and natural resource management, plus eye-opening fracking news, this week in CIB:

Washington Watch: Shutdown Hobbles Parks, Protections

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was forced to furlough more than 90 percent of its employees as the federal government shutdown dragged on toward its second week.

The primary exception to the EPA furloughs were personnel whose suspension of work “would imminently threaten the safety of human life or the protection of property”. That wouldn’t include most people working on hazardous waste site cleanup, for example, or monitoring air and water quality conditions, or writing rules (including the critical greenhouse emissions standards).

Shutdown of national parks and monuments to visitors was nearly immediate, and one of the highest profile disruptions of the overall federal shutdown as reported in the press. Much of the rest of the Department of the Interior and the Department of Energy also will go off work during the shutdown.

The longer it lasts, the more disruptive the event will become to the United States’ programs to control environmental pollution and protect human health and natural resources.

Administrative Watch: Weaker Testing Standards for Fracking?

Some members of the state Mining and Energy Commission (MEC) are calling for dramatically weaker standards for testing drinking water wells near fracking drill sites. At the MEC meeting in late September, the advocates of weaker testing requirements called for shrinking the testing perimeter from 5,000 feet around a well site (as required by statute now) all the way down to 1,500 feet.

Commissioners Charles Holbrook and George Howard claimed that it is impossible for fracking fluids to migrate that far from drill sites through groundwater. Holbrook asserted flatly that “it can’t happen”, while Howard called rules designed to guard against the possibility “Bigfoot regulation”–regulating something that does not exist. Critics of fracking vigorously dispute those assertions.

Holbrook is a former industrial geologist for the Chevron oil company. Howard is CEO of Restoration Systems, the environmental restoration firm which DENR Secretary John Skavarla once headed.

While the MEC is bound by current requirements of its authorizing statute, including the well testing radius, it is also empowered to recommend changes to the legislature. The full MEC did not discuss Holbrook and Howard’s suggestions at its September meeting. MEC’s next meeting will be October 24-25 in Raleigh.

Ironically, the comments by industry-leaning MEC commissioners came a week before the release of a new study raising greater concern about water contamination from the discharge of treated fracking wastewater.

Education & Resources: “A Long-term Legacy of Radioactivity”

Is fracking-related water resource contamination really unknown and unthinkable? Not according to a major study just released by Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. According to the study, published October 2 in the peer-reviewed scientific journal, Environmental Science & Technology, elevated levels of radioactivity, salts and metals were found in river water and sediments at a site where treated wastewater from oil and gas operations is discharged into a stream in western Pennsylvania.

The difference in samples collected upstream and downstream from the relevant wastewater treatment plant is dramatic. For example, radium levels were about 200 times greater in sediment samples collected downstream. One of the study authors called that contamination, which is especially difficult to fix, a possible “long-term legacy of radioactivity.” The study found that fracking flowback water from the Marcellus shale gas deposits was involved in the contamination.

In addition, the high level of bromides contained in the wastewater discharges increases the risks for formation of “highly toxic disinfection byproducts” in drinking water produced by downstream water treatment plants. It’s important to note that the contamination at issue here does not even result from the release of untreated waste. It’s a result of the treated effluent from a wastewater treatment plant.

See further details from the study in an article here.

That’s our report for this week.