Hydraulic Fracturing in the News

Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is getting more and more attention. Here’s some of the reporting out this week. The documentary Gasland premiered Monday on HBO. Here’s the Daily Show interview and the Science Friday interview. Vanity Fair: A Colossal Fracking Mess Scranton Times-Tribune: Little oversight, looming problems for Pa. gas industry, Impact of natural gas drilling […]

With characteristic audacity, the Wall Street Journal editorial page today is arguing against the precautionary approach to environmental policy that undergirds our system of environmental laws, even as the oil continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico. Instead, they want to shift the burden of proof and only allow regulators to restrain corporate greed when […]

The latest from ProPublica and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune: At least a half-dozen homebuilders, installers and environmental consultants knew as early as 2006 that foul smells were coming from drywall imported from China – but they didn’t share their early concerns with the public, even when homeowners began complaining about the drywall in 2008.  

CPR President Rena Steinzor has an op-ed in this morning’s Baltimore Sun on the various regulatory failures at work in the BP oil spill. She writes that important questions need to be answered “about how the federal regulatory system allowed BP and other oil companies to drill in waters so deep without effective fail-safes,” and continues: In […]

If further proof were needed that appointments to the Supreme Court matter, it was provided today by the Court’s decision in Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The so-called conservative wing of the Court came one vote short of issuing a decision that would have revolutionized the law of property […]

CPR Member Scholar Dan Farber was on the PBS NewsHour on June 14 discussing the Obama Administration’s plan to force BP to establish an escrow fund to compensate victims of its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  You can see the entire interview with Ray Suarez, on the NewsHour site.  Here’s a snip of the […]

It’s fascinating to listen to the media, with lots of encouragement from the right wing, inch its way toward blaming the BP Oil Spill on President Obama. Apparently the President’s job description includes a previously unknown provision about deep-sea plumbing expertise.  Let’s follow the media’s path for a moment here. First we heard media whining that the […]

(Cross-posted from Legal Planet.) In January 2009, the Sixth Circuit in National Cotton Council v. EPA struck down a Bush-era rule declaring that pesticide application to or over waters was exempt from the Clean Water Act’s NPDES permit program, under which a permit is required for any discharge of pollutants to waters of the U.S. […]

  Cross-posted from Legal Planet. On Thursday, the Senate voted down a resolution from Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) to halt EPA regulation of greenhouse gases. The vote was 53 to 47.  What are we to make of the vote? The resolution was offered under the Congressional Review Act, which provides a fast-track mechanism for Congress […]