Tuesday, July 18, 2017 By Mike Ludwig, Truthout | Report
As the Trump administration
moves to gut Obama-era clean water protections nationwide, an environmental
group is warning the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that its draft
pollution discharge permit for offshore drilling platforms in the Gulf of
Mexico violates clean water laws because it allows operators to dump fracking
chemicals and large volumes of drilling wastewater directly into the Gulf.
In a recent letter to the agency, the Center for Biological
Diversity told the EPA that the dumping of drilling wastewater -- which can
contain fracking chemicals, drilling fluids and pollutants, such as heavy
metals -- directly into Gulf waters is unacceptable and prohibited under the
Clean Water Act.
Under current rules
established by the Obama administration, offshore oil and gas platforms can
discharge well-treatment chemicals and unlimited amounts of "produced
waters" from undersea wells directly into the Gulf as long as operators
perform toxicity tests a few times a year and monitor for "sheens" on
the water's surface. About 75 billion gallons of produced water were dumped in
the Gulf in 2014 alone, according to EPA records.
Offshore fracking, which
typically involves injecting water and chemicals at high pressure into undersea
wells to improve the flow of oil and gas, has rapidly expanded in the Gulf of Mexico over
the past decade. The latest draft of the pollution discharge permit, which was
largely prepared under the Obama administration, would require drillers to
collect information on the fracking chemicals they dump overboard. Regulators
want to know what these chemicals are; their catalogue of offshore fracking
chemicals has not been updated since 2001, despite advancements in technology.
"It's absolutely appalling
that EPA is letting oil companies dump fracking wastewater into the Gulf
without any idea of the types of chemicals being discharged, or their effects
on sea turtles, sturgeon or the other marine life that call Gulf waters
home," said Kristen Monsell, an attorney for the Center for Biological
Diversity, in an email to Truthout.
The Center is also fighting
offshore fracking off the coast of California, where a federal court on Friday
rejected the Trump administration's effort to dismiss legal challenges to fracking in the Santa Barbara Channel.
The Center, along with other environmental groups and the state of California, argue in separate lawsuits that
federal regulators did not do enough to study and mitigate the environmental
impacts of offshore fracking before allowing operators to use the technology in
Pacific waters.
The Center may have trouble
convincing the EPA to change the draft pollution discharge permit for the Gulf
of Mexico without taking the agency to court. Under the leadership of Scott
Pruitt, a Trump-appointee with close ties to polluting industries, the EPA is
working to gut environmental regulations with the explicit intent of maximizing
fossil fuel production.
Republicans Put Clean Water
Rule in the Crosshairs
Pruitt is currently working to
repeal the Clean Water Rule, an Obama-era regulation expanding the number of
tributaries and wetlands located upstream from major bodies of water that are
protected by the Clean Water Act. According to the Obama-era EPA, drinking
water for one-third of the country's population originates from such sources.
However, farmers,
agribusinesses and developers fear the rule would expand federal oversight to
small bodies of water and interfere with private property rights. A federal
court has blocked implementation of the rule until legal questions are
resolved.
In late June, Pruitt released
a proposal for rescinding the Clean Water Rule, which would leave federal
regulators with the same definition of protected waters that has been in
place since the late 1980s. It's the first step in a
lengthy process that is required by law to include a scientific review and
public input. However, Republicans in Congress are working to waive these
requirements.
Last week, the House
Appropriations Committee, lead by Idaho Republican Rep. Mike Simpson, approved
an energy and water appropriations bill containing a rider that would waive the
federal administrative requirements for rescinding the Clean Water Rule. The bill would also cut funding for energy
efficiency initiatives while investing in nuclear energy and weapons programs.
If passed in its current form,
the legislation would allow Pruitt to rescind the rule without responding to
public comments or justifying the rulemaking with an extensive record of
scientific facts. The legislation could also make it much more difficult for
environmental groups to challenge Pruitt's legal rationale for rescinding the
rule in court.
"The Trump
administration's proposal to allow more pollution into America's drinking water
sources is senseless," said John Rumpler, a senior attorney and clean
water director at Environment America, in a statement. "For Congress
to exempt such a move from the law is simply beyond the pale."
Water Pollution and the Gulf
of Mexico
Under the Clean Water Act, polluters
must receive a permit from the EPA or state regulators before discharging
pollutants into a body of water under federal jurisdiction. If the Clean Water
Rule were to somehow survive the Trump administration, it would extend these
requirements further upstream in many parts of the country's interior.
In the Gulf of Mexico, which
hosts the nation's highest concentration of offshore drilling platforms, one
general water pollution permit is issued every five years or so for the entire
industry. It's a draft of this permit that is currently under fire from
environmentalists because it would allow the dumping of fracking chemicals and
"produced water" from oil and gas wells.
Offshore fracking has been
used to maximize production in more than 1,000 Gulf wells. Over the past eight years,
the Obama administration approved hundreds of frack jobs without taking a close
look at the technology's impacts on the environment, at least until recently.
Offshore fracking is typically much smaller in scale than its controversial
onshore cousin, but recent investigations into the practice drew public
attention to the industry's habit of dumping billions of gallons of drilling
wastewater into the ocean every year.
A review of the draft water
pollution permit for oil and gas operations in the Gulf reveals how difficult
it can be to uphold federal clean water standards in remote areas -- or in this
case, out on the open sea. Oil and gas operators are allowed to dump an
unlimited amount of wastewater overboard, but certain conditions must be met in
order to keep water quality near drilling platforms within federal standards.
Under the draft permit,
offshore drillers would be required to run toxicity tests of the produced water
and other fluids dumped overboard twice a year. If the fluid fails to pass the
test, it would be considered a permit violation, and operators must conduct
monthly tests until the situation improves. Operators would also be required to
look for "sheens" on the surface of the water and figure out what is
causing them.
In addition, they would either
need to collect information on any fracking chemicals they dump overboard and
share it with regulators, or participate in an "industry-wide study"
on offshore fracking. Regulators would then use this data to determine whether
limits for those chemicals will be needed in the future.
The draft permit tightens
several monitoring requirements, but Monsell says it does not go far enough to
protect water quality. Plus, the monitoring would largely be conducted by the
industry itself, out on the open water.
"The Trump administration
can't just let the oil industry self-regulate, or we're all in huge
trouble," Monsell said. "And the toxicity testing doesn't
prevent the chemicals from being dumped in the first place, and the testing
requirement doesn't even coincide with the dumping of fracking chemicals."
Monsell added that toxicity
testing is not required at the source of the wastewater, but at the edge of a
100-meter "mixing zone" where the discharge mingles with ocean waters
below the platform. This is a major concern because there are thousands of
platforms operating in the Gulf, and the EPA has "no clue" about the
cumulative impact of various "mixing zones" because officials have
yet to completely study the issue. She argues that the EPA must seek to
understand the impacts of fracking chemicals and other pollutants before
allowing discharges, not after the fact.
Monsell and the Center sent a
letter of concern to the EPA last week as a public comment period on the draft
permit came to a close. A spokesman for the EPA's regional office in Houston
told Truthout in an email that officials would consider all the comments they
have received as they work to finalize the permit.
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