Has Your Water Been Tainted by Fracking? Scientists Who Said It Was Safe Now Say They Were Censored

Six years ago, Bryan Latkanich agreed to let an energy company tap natural gas beneath his property using fracking. Soon after, the well water at his property in rural Deemston, Pa., started tasting metallic. He developed stomach problems, and his 7 year-old son one day emerged from a bath covered in bleeding sores.Testing by state regulators and a researcher at nearby Duquesne University showed the well water had deteriorated since gas extraction started -- but found no proof of the cause. The state recently began more testing.Latkanich is a single parent, jobless and blind in his right eye from brain surgery. “I worry about my son getting sick, about my getting sick and what would happen to him if I did,” he said. “I keep asking myself, ‘How do we get out?’”Latkanich and many other people in states including Texas, North Dakota and Pennsylvania believe their water has been tainted by fracking -- but they have few remedies. Congress took away the most powerful one in 2005, prohibiting the Environmental Protection Agency from safeguarding drinking water that might be harmed by fracking and denying the regulator the authority to find out what chemicals companies use, along with water and sand, to break up rock formations and release gas.That provision of the Energy Policy Act was justified by an EPA study about fracking used to tap methane from coal formations. Completed under the George W. Bush administration, the study concluded that fracking posed no risk to drinking water.  Continue reading...