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OIL AND GAS DEVELOPMENT: EXEMPTIONS FROM

HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTIONS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

OCTOBER 31, 2007

Serial No. 110–98

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California, Chairman

TOM LANTOS, California

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland

PETER WELCH, Vermont

TOM DAVIS, Virginia

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

BILL SALI, Idaho

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

PHIL SCHILIRO, Chief of Staff

PHIL BARNETT, Staff Director

EARLEY GREEN, Chief Clerk

DAVID MARIN, Minority Staff Director

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on October 31, 2007 .......................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Grumbles, Benjamin H., Assistant Administrator for Water, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; and Robert Anderson, Deputy Assistant

Director for Minerals, Realty and Resource Protection, Bureau of Land

Management, U.S. Department of the Interior .......................................... 147

Anderson, Robert ....................................................................................... 158

Grumbles, Benjamin H. ............................................................................ 147

Mall, Amy, senior policy analyst, Natural Resources Defense Council;

Kendrick Neubecker, on behalf of Trout Unlimited; Theo Colborn, president, the Endocrine Disruption Exchange; Daniel Teitelbaum, M.C.,

P.C., medical toxicologist, president, Medical Toxicology and Occupational Medicine; Steve Mobaldi, Grand Junction, CO; Susan WallaceBabb, Winnsboro, TX; and David E. Bolin, deputy director, State Oil

and Gas Board, State of Alabama ............................................................... 18

Bolin, David E. .......................................................................................... 108

Colborn, Theo ............................................................................................. 63

Mall, Amy ................................................................................................... 18

Mobaldi, Steve ........................................................................................... 96

Neubecker, Kendrick ................................................................................. 53

Teitelbaum, Daniel .................................................................................... 87

Wallace-Babb, Susan ................................................................................. 101

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Anderson, Robert, Deputy Assistant Director for Minerals, Realty and

Resource Protection, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Department

of the Interior, prepared statement of ......................................................... 159

Bolin, David E., deputy director, State Oil and Gas Board, State of

Alabama, prepared statement of ................................................................. 110

Colborn, Theo, president, the Endocrine Disruption Exchange, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 65

Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Maryland, letter dated October 30, 2007 ................................................ 143

Davis, Hon. Tom, a Representative in Congress from the State of Virginia:

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 14

Various letters ........................................................................................... 125

Grumbles, Benjamin H., Assistant Administrator for Water, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency:

Letter dated January 11, 2008 ................................................................. 164

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 149

Mall, Amy, senior policy analyst, Natural Resources Defense Council,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 21

Mobaldi, Steve, Grand Junction, CO, prepared statement of ....................... 98

Neubecker, Kendrick, on behalf of Trout Unlimited, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 55

Teitelbaum, Daniel, M.C., P.C., medical toxicologist, president, Medical

Toxicology and Occupational Medicine, prepared statement of ................ 89

Wallace-Babb, Susan, Winnsboro, TX, prepared statement of ..................... 104

Watson, Hon. Diane E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of California, prepared statement of ........................................................... 180

Waxman, Chairman Henry A., a Representative in Congress from the

State of California, prepared statement of ................................................. 3

(1)

OIL AND GAS DEVELOPMENT: EXEMPTIONS

FROM HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTIONS

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2007

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m. in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Henry A. Waxman

(chairman of the committee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Waxman, Cummings, Kucinich,

Tierney, Higgins, Braley, Davis of Virginia, Shays, Cannon, Issa,

Sali, Platts, Duncan, and Foxx.

Also present: Representative DeGette.

Staff present: Phil Barnett, staff director and chief counsel;

Karen Lightfoot, communications director and senior policy advisor;

Greg Dotson, chief environmental counsel; Gilad Wilkenfeld, professional staff member; Teresa Coufal, deputy clerk; Caren Auchman

and Ella Hoffman, press assistants; Leneal Scott, information systems manager; William Ragland, Miriam Edelman, and Rob Cobbs,

staff assistants; David Marin, minority staff director; A. Brooke

Bennett and Kristina Husar, minority counsels; Larry Brady, minority senior investigator and policy advisor; Patrick Lyden, minority parliamentarian and member services coordinator; Brian

McNicoll, minority communications director; and Benjamin Chance,

minority clerk.

Chairman WAXMAN. Today’s hearing will examine loopholes in

Federal health and environment protections that are exploited by

the oil and gas industry.

As children, we all learned about basic fairness, and we know

that it is just not fair when someone gets to play by different rules

than the rest of us. But as we will learn today, there is one set of

environmental rules for the oil and gas industry and a different set

of rules for the rest of America.

The Safe Drinking Water Act makes it illegal to inject other toxic

chemicals into underground aquifers, but this prohibition does not

apply to the oil and gas industry. Think about this for a moment.

Oil and gas companies can pump hundreds of thousands of gallons

of fluid containing any number of toxic chemicals into sources of

drinking water with little or no accountability.

The Clean Water Act requires companies and even homeowners

to control erosion while a property is under construction. But even

this simple requirement does not apply to oil and gas production

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facilities. Even the Clean Air Act dropped a key pollutant emitted

by oil and gas operations from the list of regulated hazardous air

pollutants, though it did give EPA authority to add the chemical

to the list.

This wish list of loopholes is terrific for the oil and gas industry

but terrible for our health and environment. In the case of Steve

Mobaldi and Susan Wallace-Babb, who will testify today, unregulated oil and gas development had a disastrous impact on their

lives.

Several of the biggest loopholes were enacted just 2 years ago as

part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. One exemption involves a

practice known as hydraulic fracturing, which has become widely

used in recent years in coal bed methane gas wells. Hydraulic fracturing involves injecting a mixture of water, chemicals, and sand

into a well at high pressure. This mixture, or fracturing fluid, is

put under enough force that it cracks the underground rock formation, allowing natural gas to escape. These fracturing fluids can

contain toxic chemicals.

A Federal Appeals Board ruled in 1997 that this practice, which

Haliburton pioneered, was subject to regulation under the Safe

Drinking Water Act, but in 2005 Congress exempted hydraulic fracturing from regulation.

I and other Members opposed this special interest give-away. We

were right on the merits, but lost the key votes.

We did, however, salvage one small victory: a provision was inserted into the law that requires the Department of Interior to

commission a comprehensive National Academy of Sciences study

of coal bed methane development, including the impacts of hydraulic fracturing. Yet, even this victory proved to be short-lived. As I

explained in a letter I am releasing today, the Interior Department

has essentially ignored the study requirement.

The theory seems to be that the less we know about the dangerous practice of hydraulic fracturing, the better. As someone who

has spent my career working to improve the Safe Drinking Water

Act, I am deeply disturbed by this approach to a serious environmental threat. I would like to ask unanimous consent to include

my letter in the record.

Without objection, that will be the order.

The Bush administration argues that we need oil and gas too

desperately to let anything stand in the way, but there is no way

we can ever drill our way to energy independence. We need efficiency and we need alternatives to oil, and we have a moral obligation to respect our environment.

The loopholes we will learn about today affect the water we

drink, the air we breathe, and the land we live on. I hope that with

today’s hearing we can begin to bring our environmental policy

back into balance.

[The prepared statement of Chairman Henry A. Waxman and the

letter referred to follow:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. I want to recognize Mr. Davis, the ranking

member.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding

this important hearing. I want to thank our panel for coming before us today.

In considering this committee’s hearings today and next week,

one might think the committee seeks to look into regulatory structures of energy exploration and generation, but a closer look reveals something different. These hearings appear to be about the

impact on the environment of oil and gas exploration, coal-fired

power plants, and although the background materials for this hearing describe such environmental impacts as potential, it appears

pretty clear that some people have made up their minds.

Environmental conservation and protection is and should be a

top national priority. Certainly, all responsible policymakers can

agree on that. But how that priority fits in with others is where

the disagreement often begins. I think we can all agree the Nation

is moving toward an energy crisis. Oil already costs more than $90

a barrel, and our dependence on oil from unstable and often unfriendly nations continues, really dysfunctional countries. That is

what we are dependent on.

Yet, many of my colleagues, as well as interest groups and others, seem unable or unwilling to move toward the middle and find

a solution. Instead, we basically have two camps: one which argues

we can drill or mine our way out of the problem, and the other

which says we should focus on reducing our demand and mitigating

carbon emissions.

The reality is we need to do both. We have to find more sources

of energy, we must conserve. And I would add a third thing: we

need to do major, major investments in alternative energies. We

need almost a Marshall plan where we can focus so that 10 years

from now we are not dependent on these dysfunctional nations

around the world for our energy supply.

The gridlock up here, I will just tell you from one Member’s perspective, is very disillusioning that we can’t come together. This is

something all Americans ought to agree on.

Henry and I may have some differences, but sitting around the

table I think we agree that we need some solutions.

I am disappointed that as we go into the 11th month of this new

Congress we continue to move further away from the energy independence and national security. Our energy bill not only fails to include any new sources of energy; it takes some existing sources off

the table. It provides no new measure for addressing climate

change or energy dependence. Meanwhile, some Members seek

stringent regulations to provide Kyoto-like carbon dioxide reductions and place off-limits promising sources of energy within our

border. To me, in the House bill we didn’t even have higher CAFE

standards, something I have voted consistently for and has to be

part of any conservation package.

Given the widespread concern for the damaging effect of excessive carbon dioxide accumulation, a sensible energy policy should

focus on both securing additional sources of domestic available energy and reducing carbon emissions, while ensuring regulations deVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:22 Jan 30, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\45610.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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signed to protect the environment are sensible, complete, and enforceable.

What we can’t do now is take potential sources off the table. I

worry about this in the subtext of the hearing. I worry again about

poking small holes in the bottom of the boat.

I look forward to these hearings as an opportunity to work together to create solutions, not bigger problems.

Again, the chairman and I disagree on some issues, but I appreciate him bringing this issue forward and for bringing this distinguished panel today. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Tom Davis follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Davis.

We will see after this hearing whether we have some disagreements on these issues, but I agree with your sentiment that we

need to work together, because that is the only way we are going

to get things done.

We have a number of members of the first panel, and I want to

introduce them, but Mr. Issa, would you like to make an opening

statement?

Mr. ISSA. I would appreciate it. I will be brief.

Chairman WAXMAN. OK.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for convening this hearing.

I agree with the ranking member, Mr. Davis, that we should acknowledge and plan for a carbon-constrained world. That, for me,

includes nuclear and other forms of zero emissions, something that

we have not yet begun to look at in this Congress.

Further, the debate is not a question on additional production or

conservation. As Mr. Davis said, we need to do both, especially at

a time in which we see oil prices heading toward $100 a barrel, in

our home State gasoline heading toward $3.30. We cannot simply

say that we need to re-look at issues which, on a bipartisan basis,

have been previously resolved and in the courts have been previously heard and in the Clinton administration have been previously resolved as the panacea for fixing all items.

I appreciate that the chairman’s consistent view toward clean

water has included, for all practical purposes, an end to mining,

certainly an end to exploration of natural gas and other petroleum

products.

From 2000 to 2005, the Democrat congressional leaders worked

in the shadows to stall an agreement on the energy bill. I believe

today we should be fair in saying that there were minor changes

in the 2005 bill; however, they were minor. For all practical purposes, we operate on an energy basis under laws which have been

codified for decades and which the courts and the EPA have reviewed and find reasonable.

What we don’t need today is to tell the oil and natural gas markets that the rules of the road are going to be changed, and

changed retroactively, as many pieces of legislation and some of the

views on the dais would do.

I look forward to this hearing. I certainly look forward to being

clear and concise that this practice does not include the use of diesel fuel. That has already been eliminated. In fact, what we are

talking about is pressurizing water in order to let loose minerals

that are vital to our society. Every drop of oil, every cubic foot of

natural gas that we take out of American soil is one less that we

need to take out of unstable regions around the world.

With that, I yield back.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Issa.

Without objection, our colleague, Diana DeGette from Colorado,

wishes to sit with our panel, and I would ask unanimous consent

that she be permitted to do so.

For the first panel we have Ms. Amy Mall, who is a senior policy

analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council working on

issues affecting the environment, public lands, and oil and gas regulation.

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Mr. Kendrick Neubecker is the vice president of Colorado Trout

Unlimited. Mr. Neubecker has 25 years experience as a land surveyor and has worked for the oil and gas industry in both Colorado

and Wyoming.

Dr. Theo Colborn is president of the Endocrine Disruption Exchange. Dr. Colborn has a Ph.D. in zoology, with distributed minors

in epidemiology, toxicology, and water chemistry. She also has a

master’s degree in fresh water ecology.

We are pleased to welcome you.

Mr. Daniel Teitelbaum is a medical toxicologist. He is an associate professor of preventive medicine at the University of Colorado

Medical School and adjunct professor of environmental sciences at

the Colorado School of Mines. Dr. Teitelbaum works in the field of

environmental and occupational toxicology.

Mr. Steve Mobaldi was a resident of Rifle, CO, from 1995 to

2004. Mr. Mobaldi will share the story about how his life and the

life of his wife Chris changed after oil and gas development began

near their home.

Ms. Susan Wallace-Babb was a resident of Parachute, CO, between 1997 and 2006. Ms. Wallace-Babb is here today to share her

story of how oil and gas development affected her life.

And Mr. David Bolin is the deputy director of the Alabama State

Oil and Gas Board. Mr. Bolin has held technical and supervisory

roles in the State Oil and Gas Board since 1982 and has worked

for the State of Alabama for nearly three decades.

We welcome all of you to our hearing today.

It is the practice of this committee that all witnesses who testify

before us testify under oath. I would like to ask each of you to

please stand and raise your right hands to take the oath.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Chairman WAXMAN. The record will reflect that each of the witnesses answered in the affirmative.

Your prepared statements will be in the record in full. What we

would like to ask each of you to do is to limit your oral presentation to no more than 5 minutes so that we can have all the witnesses and opportunity for questions from the panel.

There is a little clock in front, and when it is green that is fine.

Last minute it will be on yellow. That means you have a minute

to go. And then when it is red it means the 5-minutes is up.

Ms. Mall, why don’t we start with you.

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STATEMENTS OF AMY MALL, SENIOR POLICY ANALYST, NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL; KENDRICK

NEUBECKER, ON BEHALF OF TROUT UNLIMITED; THEO

COLBORN, PRESIDENT, THE ENDOCRINE DISRUPTION EXCHANGE; DANIEL TEITELBAUM, M.C., P.C., MEDICAL TOXICOLOGIST, PRESIDENT, MEDICAL TOXICOLOGY AND OCCUPATIONAL MEDICINE; STEVE MOBALDI, GRAND JUNCTION,

CO; SUSAN WALLACE-BABB, WINNSBORO, TX; AND DAVID E.

BOLIN, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, STATE OIL AND GAS BOARD,

STATE OF ALABAMA

STATEMENT OF AMY MALL

Ms. MALL. Thank you, Chairman Waxman, Ranking Member

Davis, and members of the committee. Thank you for the invitation

to appear here today.

My name is Amy Mall and I am a senior policy analyst with the

National Resources Defense Council [NRDC]. Today NRDC is releasing a report entitled, Drilling Down: Protecting Western Communities from the Health and Environmental Effects of Oil and

Gas Production. You should each have a copy of the report. It discusses hazardous materials associated with oil and gas exploration

and production, loopholes in Federal laws that allow industry to release these contaminants into the environment, technologies available to control pollution, and stories of the impacts of contamination reported by individuals in the Rocky Mountain region.

The oil and gas industry is expanding rapidly in the United

States and coming closer to homes and communities. The McCoy

Elementary School in Aztec, NM, for example, is located less than

400 feet from two wells, and the playground is less than 150 feet.

Among the toxic materials that can be released during oil and

gas operations are benzene, toluene, xylene, radioactive materials,

hydrogen sulfide, arsenic, and mercury. Their potential health effects range from cancer to respiratory problems to eye and skin irritation.

What are the statutory loopholes for oil and gas exploration and

production that need to be closed? The Safe Drinking Water Act

has an exemption for hydraulic fracturing, which usually involves

the underground injection of toxic chemicals. Hydraulic fracturing

is a suspect in impaired drinking water in Alabama, Colorado, New

Mexico, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

Additionally, the Safe Drinking Water Act has lower daily fines

and sets a higher hurdle for regulating certain oil or gas operations

than for other industries.

The Clean Water Act has an exemption from stormwater permit

requirements, expanded by Congress in 2005. The EPA has interpreted this new exemption as allowing unlimited discharge of sediment into the Nation’s streams, even if it contributes to a violation

of State water quality standards. In addition, the Clean Water Act

definition of pollutant excludes certain materials injected into an

oil or gas well.

The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act [RCRA], has an exemption from most hazardous waste associated with oil and gas

production, including drilling chemicals, hydrocarbons, and hydraulic fracturing fluids, even if they contain toxic materials.

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The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation,

and Liability Act [CERCLA], or the Superfund law, has an exemption for petroleum and natural gas which contain toxic substances.

The Clean Air Act contains exemptions from the national emission

standards for hazardous air pollutants. In addition, hydrogen sulfide, which can be a serious health threat, is exempt from regulation as a hazardous air pollutant.

Exploration and production are not covered by the toxic release

inventory of the Emergency Planning and Community Right to

Know Act, so that companies can withhold information about

chemicals, even if the information is needed to make informed decisions about protecting health.

Why were these exemptions created? The hydrogen sulfide exemption was called a core scientific decision by an EPA official. An

EPA study on hydraulic fracturing used to bolster the Safe Drinking Water Act exemption was declared scientifically unsound by an

EPA whistleblower.

Another EPA official stated that the RCRA exemption was approved despite a scientific determination of the hazardousness of

the waste.

It is time to end these loopholes. There is sufficient evidence that

toxic materials that can harm human health are being released

into the environment. The oil and gas industry should be required

to comply with the same statutory provisions as any other industry.

There are numerous methods available to industry to comply

with our environmental laws, and in many cases they are actually

profitable. Devon Energy, for example, spent $15,000 to capture

gas emissions from a well instead of venting them into the air and

sold the methane captured for $35,000. A company representative

called it a win/win for everybody.

Regarding hydraulic fracturing, there are nontoxic alternatives to

harmful chemicals, one of which is water. Company studies have

found that some gas wells fractured with water produce more gas

and/or cost considerably less to fracture than wells fractured with

chemicals.

For stormwater pollution prevention, there are approaches that

are quite low-tech, such as installing vegetative ground cover,

berms, or silt fences.

For managing waste, options include closed-loop drilling fluid

systems that studies have found can dramatically lower the volume

of waste, maximize re-use and recycling of drilling fluids, and create savings in the long run when compared to open air disposal

pits, up to tens of thousands of dollars per pit.

Many environmental improvements such as substituting less

toxic materials, disclosing information to the public, or improving

monitoring and maintenance can be implemented quickly, without

new equipment or great burden. Instead, industry is sometimes

purchasing the homes of people who voice concerns about their

health in return for signed agreements that the complaints will not

be made public.

The free pass to pollute given to the oil and gas industry is a

privilege that is unjustifiable when weighed against the risks to

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human health. The time for Congress to take action is long overdue.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Mall follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Ms. Mall.

Mr. Neubecker.

STATEMENT OF KENDRICK NEUBECKER

Mr. NEUBECKER. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee,

thank you for this opportunity to testify. My name is Ken

Neubecker. I live and work in western Colorado and have been involved in water issues through Trout Unlimited for many years.

Today I am testifying on behalf of Trout Unlimited, the National

Wildlife Federations, including the Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming Wildlife Federations, and the Back Country Hunters and Anglers. I am here to testify about our concerns with the current

stormwater discharge exemptions from the Clean Water Act for the

oil and gas industry.

TU and our partners urge Congress to take action to repeal the

Clean Water Act exemptions that the oil and gas industry currently enjoy.

I have been in the land development business for nearly 30

years, most of that in western Colorado. I have personal experience

with the damage caused by sediment and uncontrolled erosion from

constructionsites, including those for oil and gas.

This damage impacts all of us, whether we are avid fishermen,

farmers and ranchers, or small town water providers. Nearly all

land development in Colorado and the west are required to comply

with stormwater discharge regulations. The fact that the oil and

gas industry is not simply defies logic.

Over the past few years, this industry has become the largest

single developer in the west. Well pads, roads, pipelines, compression and pumping stations, man camps, and other related infrastructure cover large areas of the intermountain west like a vast

spider web. Thousands of acres of disturbed land lay open and exposed to runoff. The land doesn’t care who owns the bulldozer or

what political connections they may have; it erodes freely in the

face of any disturbance.

Subsequent damage to fish and wildlife habitat also occurs without regard to the source. Oil and gas activity is no exception.

Sediment in a stream can be extremely damaging to aquatic and

riparian life, wildlife habitat, and to the local communities. Aquatic

insects upon which fish and other organisms feed are smothered.

The gravel bars fish need for spawning are buried. The eggs and

developing fry in the gravel are lost. Gas development often occurs

in the smaller tributary drainages, some of which are among the

last refuges of cut-throat trout. These fish are particularly vulnerable to sediment from uncontrolled stormwater runoff.

Over 80 percent of the wildlife in Colorado depends on riparian

areas for all or part of their lives. For the elk, in particular, these

areas are their nurseries. I have seen tributaries of the Colorado

River choked with sediment from constructionsites, well pads with

unstable fill slopes ready to collapse into a stream, and

constructionsites with deeply cut gullies filling large debris fans

into the fields and streams below.

Further, this is not just a sportsmen and recreation issue. Sediment chokes the intakes from municipal water supplies, irrigation

ditches, and damages the irrigated field where it comes in with the

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water. Just as the riparian and wetland areas, layers of mud and

silt can wash over a field, smothering the crops and poisoning the

soil. When sediment buries native vegetation, noxious weeds come

in, rendering the area unusable by wildlife and humans, alike.

Any further loss and degradation of streams, riparian areas, and

wetlands in Colorado and the West are a matter of grave concern

for sportsmen and for the bedrock economies and values of the

small communities that dot the area. Hunting and fishing and a

myriad of other recreation-based activities form the fundamental

economy of much of the West. This brings in billions of dollars each

year.

The oil and gas boom may go on for another 10 or 20 years, but

what then? Without adequate controls and environmental protection on all types of land development, including and especially oil

and gas, there will be precious little left in 20 years to support the

wildlife and recreation that our economy will then be even more dependent on.

Because of this Federal exemption, individual States have been

forced to deal with this significant problem as best they can. The

Colorado Water Quality Control Commission ruled twice to make

the oil and gas industry comply. Support for this mandatory compliance was overwhelming throughout western Colorado and included a bipartisan mix of local governments, water districts, various organizations, and numerous State and Federal legislators.

In Colorado the industry has agreed to comply fully with the

stormwater discharge regulations and permitting requirements.

Despite predictions of higher production costs and delayed development, the rush to drill doesn’t seem to have slowed down at all.

This success needs to be translated to oil and gas construction

activity uniformly throughout the West. Water is the most precious

natural resource we have, not oil and gas. Water quality in the

West is a vital concern, especially given climate change. To continue exempting the oil and gas industry from Federal water quality and land use regulations is unconscionable.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Neubecker follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much for your testimony.

Dr. Colborn.

STATEMENT OF THEO COLBORN

Ms. COLBORN. Mr. Waxman and members of the committee, good

morning. I am Theo Colborn, president of TEDX, a nonprofit organization concerned about the adverse health and environmental effects of chemicals.

I am here to speak as an environmental health analyst and as

a resident of western Colorado whose watershed and air are being

threatened by natural gas production and delivery.

I had no intention of getting involved with natural gas development when I began in 2002 to set up my nonprofit in Colorado,

until someone handed me the formula for the fracturing fluid to be

used in 17 proposed gas wells on the Grand Mesa National Forest,

which my family and I consider our back yard. When I found out

that each fracturing incident, commonly called fracking, uses approximately one million gallons of fluid, and that each well can be

fracked as much as 10 times or more, that caught my attention.

Soon TEDX became a clearinghouse for any information about

the products that were being used in natural gas operations. To

handle the data, we set up computerized spreadsheets, searched

the peer-reviewed literature, and Government and industry documents for the adverse health effects of the chemicals on our list.

We now have over 1,500 citations to back up the Colorado health

data.

The last time TEDX updated the Colorado spreadsheet, there

were 171 products and 245 chemicals on the list. Of the products,

92 percent had adverse health effects. The other 8 percent are

products for which there is no information because it is either proprietary or no health studies could be found.

Most of the products had multiple health effects, with some having as much as 14. And, much to our surprise, some of the products

are developmental toxicants, as well as endocrine disruptors; that

is, they have the potential for adverse health effects on the hormone systems that control the construction of our bodies and how

we function.

As the list of products grew, a consistent pattern of health effects

kept emerging. From 68 percent to 83 percent of the volatile chemicals on the list cause mild to severe irritation of the skin, eyes, sinuses, nose, throat, lungs, and the stomach. And they have neurotoxic effects ranging from headaches, blackouts, memory loss, confusion, complete exhaustion, and permanent neuropathies. Many of

these chemicals are called sensitizers because they have a tendency

to cause allergies. Less frequently, but about 55 percent of the

chemicals cause disorders that develop slowly and would not appear immediately, such as cardiovascular and kidney damage, with

cancer at about 35 percent.

Physicians have no way to link health effects like these with an

environmental contaminant.

We also found out that drilling muds are not as safe as industry

claims; their health pattern matches the health pattern of our overall analysis. It is not general knowledge that when methane surfaces it is wet. When this water is removed, it is called condensate

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water. In most instances, it is being stored in open evaporation

pits, often on the well bed, or stored in tanks on the site and then

trucked to huge offsite fluid receiving pits.

It takes fleets of trucks to handle the water coming off the wells

around the clock. This condensate water disposal problem will continue for the life of each well, which could be as long as 20 years.

It is also not general knowledge that when methane surfaces it

brings along with it some very toxic gases called volatile organic

compounds [VOCs], that are being vented by the tons each year

from each operational unit. And vast amounts of fugitive methane,

itself a VOC and a greenhouse gas, escapes during numerous

stages of production and delivery.

In addition, tons of nitrogen oxide gases are produced to keep the

equipment running, from the combustion of diesel and natural gas,

during drilling, fracturing, trucking the water, and compressing the

gas.

In the presence of sunlight, VOCs and nitrogen oxides produce

ground-level ozone that damages lung tissue and vegetation. Ozone

is now an emerging environmental and health issue that extends

beyond the gas fields as the result of natural gas development.

Recently we were sent results of the chemical analysis of the residues for six waste pits. The 51 chemicals that were detected in

those pits produced a health pattern far more toxic than anything

we found so far.

Most important is that 45 of the 51 chemicals detected in the pits

were not on our list of chemicals being used during natural gas operations. And many of the oil’s chemicals had concentrations well

above State and Federal safety levels. Of the chemicals detected,

72.5 percent are on the CERCLA Superfund list, which suggest the

possibility that every well pad and waste pit has the potential to

become a Superfund site when it is closed.

Findings such as these have raised a number of questions that

only adequately designed testing requirements and protocols can

address, but only after full disclosure.

In our conclusion, our data show that the operations that are involved in natural gas production are releasing large amounts of

volatile toxic substances directly into the air. They are introducing

water soluble and volatile compounds into the ground, posing longterm, unpredictable hazards to our already marginal water resources, and an undetermined amount of toxic products are ending

up in our soils, threatening our life support systems, the outcomes

of which have the potential to adversely affect public health and

the quality of our western environment.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Colborn follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Dr. Colborn.

Dr. Teitelbaum.

STATEMENT OF DANIEL TEITELBAUM

Dr. TEITELBAUM. Good morning, Chairman Waxman, Mr. Davis,

and members of the committee. Thank you for allowing me to express my concerns about the public health implications of oil and

gas development on the western slope in Colorado and New Mexico.

I am Daniel T. Teitelbaum, M.D., a board certified occupational

physician and medical toxicologist from Denver, CO. For more than

40 years I have practiced as an occupational toxicologist in Denver,

and I have evaluated and treated many patients whose medical

problems arose from within industry and from side effects of industry.

There is a web of laws to protect the integrity of the environment

and to prevent some toxic exposures to humans from industrial activities, but because exemptions have been granted to the oil and

gas industry from some environmental laws and regulations that

require them to identify and mitigate the impact of their activities

on human health through air, water, and soil contamination, toxic

exposures can take place.

Despite the extraction activity underway, the toxic impact on the

human and animal populations of the resource areas is

unevaluated. There is no public health oversight. There is no data

base of those exposed at work or as residents. No surveillance of

the human impact of the activities on worker families and other

resident populations near the extraction and processing sites is underway or planned. No meaningful evaluation of exposure of these

persons to such toxics as crude oil or its components, benzene, toluene, xylene, naphthalene, produced mercury or arsenic, of hydrogen

sulfide—sour gas and its co-riders—nor of MTBE, barites, or any

other drilling chemicals used in the industry is done.

There have been documented health complaints by residents of

the area. There are also anecdotal stories of medical problems in

those exposed. Although it is likely that there are completed pathways to residents of the oil and gas extraction areas as defined by

the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, no investigation of exposure by any route has been called for. Contaminated

water sources, point emission sources, and soil contamination are

not identified, nor is mitigation of contaminated sites required.

Use of oil and gas toxics contaminated well water as domestic

water sources leads to much larger exposure to volatile hydrocarbons like benzene through shallow water and by other routes

than through the drinking water.

Point source air contamination and soil contamination with oil

and gas and extraction materials can lead to respiratory and dermal irritation, and to respiratory and dermal absorption of toxins

and carcinogens.

Some of the natural components of oil and gas and the chemicals

formulated into extraction materials are allergens, respiratory irritants, neurotoxins, developmental and reproductive toxins, and carcinogens.

In past mineral extraction programs, the workers and area resident populations have suffered life-threatening and even fatal outVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:22 Jan 30, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00091 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\45610.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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comes as the result of fugitive emissions, abandoned recovery

waste, and air and water pollution. For example, mining tremolite

asbestos contaminated vermiculite in Libby, Montana, impacted

the entire town of Libby and beyond. Numerous cases of death and

illness occurred there.

Extraction of uranium at the Summitville Mine in Colorado and

in Uravan, CO, has caused serious environmental damage that

threatens human health. The residues of lead, cadmium, and arsenic left behind from smelting and refining in the Globeville

neighborhood of Denver has impacted the area residents, and the

cleanup has cost huge amounts of money.

All of these environmental toxic impacts were ignored until well

after the activity was underway. In some instances, nothing was

done until the work had been abandoned. Had the hazards been

recognized or anticipated earlier, health and economic outcomes

would have been far less.

Prevention of late consequences of oil and gas extraction must be

undertaken now. The health consequences of oil and gas extraction

must be identified, assessed, and addressed. Measurement of point

air exposures using saturation monitoring, assessment of local potable water supply contaminants, and soil contaminate evaluation

should begin immediately. A data base of those exposed must be

assembled now so that the ultimate outcome of the exposures they

have undergone can be followed and secondary prevention can be

undertaken.

The ATSDR has undertaken registry activities for groundwater

contaminant populations in other areas and with other toxic chemicals like benzene and trichloroethylene, and it follows the exposed

populations. The ATSDR should immediately be directed to address

the issues in the oil and gas regions on the western slope. We cannot wait until years after the oil and gas extraction have taken a

toll like that in Libby, in Uravan, or other places.

We must close the loopholes in toxic exposures to residents of the

oil and gas extraction areas, and identify and quantitate the pathways and extent of toxic exposures.

The opportunity to do the studies is clear. The fact that neither

Government nor industry has undertaken these critical exposure

outcome studies is inexcusable. When the bells are tolled for those

injured, who will be willing to take the blame for these failures in

preventive medicine?

Thank you for your attention.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Teitelbaum follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Dr. Teitelbaum.

Mr. Mobaldi.

STATEMENT OF STEVE MOBALDI

Mr. MOBALDI. Good morning, Chairman Waxman, Mr. Davis, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Steve Mobaldi. My wife, Elizabeth, and I moved to Rifle, CO, in June 1995 to a 10-acre ranch.

Soon after, the oil and gas industry moved in. They began drilling

on a property about 3,000 feet to the west. Within a few weeks of

the drilling, Chris and I began to experience burning eyes and

nosebleeds. Later, Chris began to experience fatigue, headaches,

hand numbness, bloody stools, rashes, and welts on her skin. When

she showered, she would turn red. Tiny blisters covered her entire

body. The blisters would weep, then her skin would peel.

This happened several times. Canker-type sores appeared in her

mouth and down her throat, and they would disappear the next

day.

She explained the feeling on her skin was like little wheels of

needles turning. The racking pain was unbearable.

She saw her doctor and was given lotions and told she was going

through menopause, prescribed pain medication, and then sent

home. The blisters continued for weeks. She would return with

complaints of pain many times, and was given different pain medications. Nothing worked.

Soon after she was diagnosed with chemical exposure, but the

doctor was unaware of what the chemicals were that were causing

her symptoms. We were baffled and sought another doctor, who diagnosed the same. Chris’ joints began swelling and large bumps

started appearing on her elbows and hands. Months had gone by,

and the pain continued. I began to experience rectal bleeding, and

two of our dogs developed tumors. Our neighbor’s dogs also had a

tumor.

We planted trees on the property that year, and they all died.

We noticed several dead birds at different times in our yard

through the next few years. Existing trees on the property were

dying.

In 1997, employees from the oil and gas company were on our

property when we arrived home. We were informed a natural gas

well was being placed across the street and drilling was going to

go under our property. They operated for months about 300 feet

from our house. There was an open unlined pit closer than the

road, and they began flaring. It shook the house day and night for

weeks.

Chris lost her voice. We had headaches, burning eyes, and odor.

The gas well was finished in 1998 and, already having problems

with her health, the neighbor’s water well had exploded and

fracking fluid spewed, causing them to evacuate their home.

The next day, oil and gas employees came to our door and told

us to stop drinking our water. They said water would be provided.

This went on for about 4 months, and the same employees told us

the water was tested safe for drinking. Although the water would

fizz like soda with small bubbles, we were told the water was safe.

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Sand began to accumulate in our water. If we set a glass of

water out overnight, an oily, thin film would float on top. We

stopped drinking it.

In 2000, Chris began saying words that sounded like a foreign

accent. A few words in a sentence. Months later, more. Now Chris

has a severe speech disorder which continues.

In March 2001, she developed a pituitary tumor. In 2001 our

water well pump had to be reinstalled 10 feet higher because the

sand was filling the water well shaft.

In 2000 we started raising llamas, and we had our first baby,

which died about 8 months later of respiratory problems. Our

llama became pregnant again, and that baby died.

In March 2003 she had another pituitary tumor. In 2003 our

house was sided with a high-quality siding. In 2004 the paint

began peeling on the siding. The siding company wouldn’t warranty

the chemical damage. The insurance company wouldn’t honor the

claim from industrial pollution.

Later, in 2005 Chris’ gallbladder had to be removed. It was the

size of a small pineapple with excessive adhesions in it and a tail

growing from it.

In 2006 she was diagnosed with severe chemical sensitivity from

exposure by an environmental specialist and is being treated. Several times Chris said, Something is killing me living in this house,

so we packed up and abandoned the house after trying to sell it for

years. We now believe the oil and gas industry is to blame for the

unexplained illnesses. We now have learned by many of our old

neighbors that animals and they are still suffering from exposures.

If they were required to produce the information on the chemicals used, less people would suffer.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Mobaldi follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you for your testimony. I am sorry to

hear what you have all gone through, you and your wife.

Ms. Wallace-Babb.

STATEMENT OF SUSAN WALLACE-BABB

Ms. WALLACE-BABB. Thank you, Mr. Waxman and Mr. Davis, for

hearing me today.

In January 1997, I purchased my property in Morrisania Mesa

above the town of Parachute, CO. Its residents enjoy 360-degree

views of varied geological formations, wildlife, irrigation water, and

mostly excellent neighbors, the kind who still know one another

and come to help when you need it.

I had seven irrigated acres for pastures for my horse and hay

fields, where I grew my own hay. I had a barn, outbuildings for the

equipment used for haying and organic gardening. I could ride my

horse from my property onto the BLM lands that surrounded me.

It was my life’s dream come true.

But it was all ending as the oil and gas industry moved in to foul

the water, air, land, and lives. My personal experience with the oil

and gas industry led me narrowly to avoid death. I now live a very

different life from the one I was living seconds before I became

chemically damaged.

I knew about the wells at the end of my rural road that were

fractured in 2003 or 2004. I wasn’t concerned, because I believed

this industry was regulated to prevent damage, that human lives

would be deemed worth protecting. In late March 2005, I began

working near the wells as an irrigator. I was unknowingly exposed

to fugitive gases coming from the two wells and open condensate

tanks less than 100 feet from the water headgate. Within 10 minutes of being at the headgate, I experienced a pounding heart rate,

weakness, burning sinuses, eyes, and skin, coughing, ringing in my

ears, and blurred vision, but the symptoms gradually abated at

home. I didn’t suspect the wells.

On April 4th and April 11, 2005, I went to my family doctor and

an ENT because my sinuses were so raw and painful. I was given

two rounds of antibiotics, resulting in no improvement. My symptoms worsened.

During May 2005, I was near the wells on a daily basis, sometimes twice a day. The original symptoms were greatly intensified.

I had shooting pain in the nerves of my legs and bottoms of my

feet, making walking nearly impossible.

Being home, away from the wells, reduced the symptoms.

On June 7th and June 15, 2005, I was back at the ENT’s getting

more antibiotics and medicines to reduce respiratory inflammation

and breathing difficulties. Had I made the connection between my

symptoms and my increasing time near the wells, I would not be

writing this. But I didn’t.

At 9 p.m. on June 24, 2005, arriving at work, I stepped out of

my truck into a cloud of gas from the condensate tanks. With one

leg out on the ground, I turned to reach the charcoal mask I had

taken to wearing while I worked at the headgate. Suddenly, a

crushing headache overcame me and I began to collapse. As I was

falling, I grabbed the top of my truck door and clung there as my

consciousness faded. I don’t know how long I was there.

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As clarity returned, I dove into my truck, grabbed my mask, and

sat there until I could think.

From home I called the sheriff to report something going on at

the wells. I called the fire department and the Williams Production

representative to the site. They were still down there at 1 a.m.

when I finally fell asleep, despite extreme nausea, body pain, and

a crippling headache.

The next morning I awakened to the meaning of being chemically

sensitized: all the original symptoms plus vomiting, explosive diarrhea, bloody mucus from nose and lungs, headaches, tiny ulcers,

mental fogginess, and neurological problems.

On July 4th I called the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation

Commission [COGCC]. I heard nothing until I told my story in

front of a full audience during a COGCC meeting in Rifle, CO, on

July 11, 2005.

I finally was given a report that said one of the condensate tanks

created the gas cloud. The report said this off-gassing was a common event.

Williams Production’s solution was to place a top on the tank. No

one was concerned about the damages I received. One of the two

regulators for hundreds of wells in Garfield County came to my

house during July or August, along with the Williams Production

representative, promising to help me in any way possible. When I

called the Williams representative asking what chemicals I was exposed to for my doctor’s information, I was told no one in that company knew what chemicals were in condensate and no records were

kept of such incidents.

The next I heard from Williams was by letter from their senior

attorney in Oklahoma. She assured me Garfield County had everything under control and there were no chemicals involved with oil

and gas production that were harmful to people. Since I no longer

could expose myself to the air inside or outside my house without

triggering all the symptoms, I put little faith in her words.

My family doctor diagnosed me as chemically sensitized by the

event, and said I wouldn’t be able to tolerate the environment that

had been healthy for me for nearly 10 years.

I must avoid the air until I could sell my house and find some

environment I could tolerate. I purchased three powerful air cleaners, closed my house up tight, and wore a full-face respirator with

gas-neutralizing cartridges each time I went outside to do minimal

chores.

The approaching winter showed me my natural gas heating used

for nine previous winters now triggered all my symptoms, plus

hives. With four electric space heaters, I maintained a 58-degree

temperature inside and was a prisoner inside my house.

Through intense research online and conversations with scientists, doctors, and EPA toxicologists in Denver, it became apparent that one of the chemicals that had damaged me was hydrogen

sulfide. Each scientist I spoke with told me I was lucky to be alive,

because I had been exposed to high levels of hydrogen sulfide that

caused my collapse and loss of consciousness. The fact I was able

to cling to the truck door avoided me hitting the higher levels of

gas.

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It took 9 months to find a place where I could breathe the air

without triggering symptoms. I have spent thousands of dollars

being evaluated and treated by environmental doctors. I still don’t

know the full extent of the physical damage. I am hopeful the resultant neurological problems will stabilize.

So has the oil and gas industry changed my life? Yes. It has

caused me to lose my home, my friends, my way of life, my health,

and my belief in my Government. I once believed Governmental

agencies like the EPA protected its citizens. I now know the EPA

has been stripped of its power to do its defined job.

All of the activities related to exploration for and recovery of oil

and gas are exempt from the laws made to protect our environment

and citizens. The oil and gas industry in Colorado is regulated by

those who benefit from irresponsible actions. In a situation where

the fox guards the hen house, it is deadly being a hen.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Wallace-Babb follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much for your testimony.

That was very moving to hear what you have gone through, and

I want to extend my sympathies to you.

Dr. Bolin.

STATEMENT OF DAVID E. BOLIN

Mr. BOLIN. Good morning, Chairman Waxman, Ranking Member

Davis, and members of the committee. My name is David Bolin,

and I am the deputy director of the State Oil and Gas Board of Alabama. I am representing the Board, the State of Alabama, and

other member States of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission [IOGCC].

I am here today to address the proposition that two provisions

of the Energy Policy Act of 2005—that being section 327 concerning

hydraulic fracturing, and section 328 regarding stormwater—have

resulted in harm to drinking water resources in the United States.

The evidence would strongly suggest otherwise. These two provisions simply removed unnecessary administrative burdens on the

production of oil and natural gas in the United States.

Let me first begin by addressing the hydraulic fracturing issue.

I am a groundwater hydrologist and a petroleum engineer by training and I have served in technical and supervisor roles with the

Board since 1982. My first responsibility with the Board was to develop and implement the State’s class two UIC program, which was

approved by EPA in August 1982. Prior to that time, the Board had

actively implemented groundwater protection programs to include

the regulation of hydraulic fracturing operations. Protecting drinking water resources is part and parcel of every State’s conservation

statute, which preceeded the establishment of the Safe Drinking

Water Act.

In the LEAF v. EPA legal proceedings, the 11th Circuit Court of

Appeals ruled in favor of LEAF, holding that hydraulic fracturing

constitutes underground injection, and therefore must be regulated

as such under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The court did not

reach any finding of actual harm to drinking water, deciding the

matter strictly on the definitional issue.

The State of Alabama was then required to revise its class two

UIC program. The end result has been higher operating costs for

the producers and significantly higher administrative costs for the

State.

In June 2004 EPA published a final report summarizing a study

to evaluate the impacts on underground sources of drinking water

by hydraulic fracturing of coal-bed methane reservoirs. In that report, EPA found no confirmed drinking water well contamination

cases linked to hydraulic fracturing. National surveys conducted by

the Groundwater Protection Council and IOGCC support the conclusions reached by EPA.

State regulatory agencies have a proven track record with regulations that are in place now. These regulations have proven sufficient to adequately protect public health and the environment from

hydraulic fracturing operations.

Stormwater discharge management became an issue when it was

determined that EPA’s proposed rule could have a significant cost

impact on the oil and gas industry, even though the industry was

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not the focus of the rulemaking, and even though there was no indication of inadequate regulation during construction related to oil

and natural gas activities.

In response, the States, through IOGCC, and the industry engaged working groups to examine the matter. The State’s working

group found that it was not feasible to develop a single standard

to fit the diverse requirements for appropriate stormwater discharge management throughout the United States. It concluded

that States had been managing discharges at large sites and that

there was no indication of a significant threat to the environment

from stormwater discharges by small exploration and

productionsite activities.

The industry effort resulted in the creation of a document entitled, Reasonable and Prudent Practices for Stabilization [RAPPS],

as an effective voluntary tool for reducing pollutants in stormwater

discharges.

Based on the conclusions of the IOGCC study, the States are already adequately regulating this activity, supplemented by improved industry practices based on RAPPS, the conclusion can be

drawn that there has been no adverse environmental impact as a

result of the passage of section 328 of the Energy Policy Act.

Elimination of sections 327 and 328 would not make production

of oil and natural gas in the United States any safer, but could

substantially increase domestic oil and natural gas production

costs, thereby decreasing domestic supply.

In conclusion, I would say that the sections 327 and 328 have not

resulted in harm to drinking water resources in the United States

and do not need to be eliminated. Instead, the regulations at the

Federal and State level should focus on that which will, in fact, further protect public health and the environment.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear here today. If we can

provide any additional information, please do not hesitate to ask.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bolin follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Dr. Bolin.

We are now going to proceed to 5 minutes for each Member to

ask questions or make comments. I am going to recognize myself

first.

It is easy to get lost in the jargon of the oil and gas industry,

so I would like to briefly clarify one of the issues we are discussing

today, that is hydraulic fracturing.

Ms. Mall, hydraulic fracturing is the practice of injecting hundreds of thousands of gallons of a chemical solution into the ground

at high pressure in order to fracture underground formations and

enhance natural gas production; is that correct?

Ms. MALL. Yes, sir.

Chairman WAXMAN. And EPA has found that hydraulic fracturing is routinely conducted on formations within underground

sources of drinking water; is that correct?

Ms. MALL. Yes.

Chairman WAXMAN. And, Dr. Colborn, how easy is it to learn

what the chemicals are that are being injected into these sources

of drinking water?

Ms. COLBORN. It has been very difficult. Thank goodness for the

Oil and Gas Accountability Project, who has lawyers who are able

to get us some of this information. We have never been able to get

the full disclosure of what is being shipped into and used in western Colorado, and then when we do get a product, if you look at

the name of the product and then try to find out anything about

it, you will find that you may get 1 to 2 percent of the content, 50

percent of the content, but you never know what the full amount

of chemicals are in this particular product.

Even if you look at an MSDS sheet, they may list one or two

chemicals——

Chairman WAXMAN. What is MSDS?

Ms. COLBORN. Material Safety Data Sheet, which must accompany anything that might be harmful on immediate use, and it is

there for the use of the handlers who are using it directly or in case

of accidents or spills, so it is there for the emergency cleanup people, as well.

Very, very seldom do you get the full content of what is in the

product.

Actually, I should have brought one with me. We just found one

yesterday that came in where the name of the product and then everything in it was proprietary. So we keep running into the word

proprietary.

Chairman WAXMAN. Why wouldn’t the companies just disclose information as to what chemicals are in the fracturing fluid?

Ms. COLBORN. Well, I have asked the companies about that, and

basically when they make a product that they think is going to facilitate releasing gas or making drilling easier, there are companies

now in competition doing this. Haliburton makes products, Encada

makes products under the name of CalFrac.

Chairman WAXMAN. So it is proprietary?

Ms. COLBORN. So they claim it is proprietary and they don’t want

others to know.

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Chairman WAXMAN. OK. Is there evidence to suggest that we

should have concern about these chemicals being in our drinking

water?

Ms. COLBORN. Yes.

Chairman WAXMAN. Your research shows that they commonly

contain toxic substances that are known to cause adverse health effects.

Ms. COLBORN. Yes.

Chairman WAXMAN. Is that the concern?

Ms. COLBORN. Yes. As I said, 91 percent of the products had one

or more effect. That was in Colorado. We are breaking them out by

State and trying to keep the States separate.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Mobaldi, I want to thank you again for

testifying today. I know it must be hard to discuss the situation

you and your wife have endured.

Did you have any symptoms before the drilling activities began

near your home?

Mr. MOBALDI. None at all.

Chairman WAXMAN. And did any of the symptoms go away after

you moved away from the drilling activities?

Mr. MOBALDI. Some of them, but it seems that detoxing takes

quite a while.

Chairman WAXMAN. Dr. Teitelbaum, I know you can’t make a diagnosis. I am not asking you to do that. But these kinds of situations are awfully hard to deal with in hindsight when we don’t

have adequate information. In this case, we have oil and gas activities near the Mobaldi’s residence, oily films appeared in their

drinking water, they got sick, and all of this is occurring in the context of an unregulated activity in which undisclosed chemicals are

being widely used in sources of drinking water.

As a medical toxicologist, what insights can you give us into this

situation?

Dr. TEITELBAUM. Mr. Chairman, the problem we have is that

none of us have adequate information. I helped to work on the hazard communication standard, the OSHA hazard communication

standard, which requires that material safety data sheets give this

type of information and, in fact, that those data sheets be made

available to a treating physician who, with that in his hand or her

hand, might be able to put together the symptom complex described, the physical findings, and the materials to which the individual is exposed.

However, because of the proprietary exemption in those, most of

the active chemicals don’t appear on the material safety data sheet.

Chairman WAXMAN. Yes.

Dr. TEITELBAUM. And it is extremely difficult, although theoretically possible, to get that information by a physician, but it is terribly difficult at any given time.

Chairman WAXMAN. Would it be prudent for the companies to at

least disclose the chemicals that they are injecting into the drinking water?

Dr. TEITELBAUM. Absolutely. I think the reality is there should

be a community right to know provision so that the community,

itself, is provided with that information. The physicians then have

it available and it is an open process.

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Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much for your testimony.

Dr. TEITELBAUM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Let me just pick up on that. Dr. Bolin,

let me just ask you, from the regulatory side, would there be any

problem with disclosing what they are putting in the wells?

Mr. BOLIN. I don’t think so. I think it is more of a competitive

type situation that they claim proprietary information. I will say

that in the years since we have revised our UIC program to implement our program to do hydraulic fracturing, we have required the

operators to comply, basically to provide affidavits as to what those

components are, and they have done that for us.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. That seems pretty common sense.

It is a fact that when diesel is utilized in this, that does have

some very dangerous components; isn’t that a fact?

Mr. BOLIN. Yes, sir. That is true.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. And is diesel utilized much today?

Mr. BOLIN. It is not used at all in Alabama in regard to hydraulic

fracturing.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. But it is not illegal anywhere?

Mr. BOLIN. I do know that the EPA executed a memorandum of

agreement with the major service companies that handle about 95

percent of fracking operations in which they agreed not to use diesel in fracking operations.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. That is good for the 95.

Mr. Chairman, I have just a couple of letters that were submitted to us in the record. One is from the American Petroleum Council and the other from the Groundwater Protection Council, if we

could put these in the record.

Chairman WAXMAN. Without objection, that will be the order.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Let me ask Mr. Mobaldi. What a terrible

story, and I appreciate your being here to share this today. I was

just looking over the records from the State of Colorado and their

Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. I know they tried to come

and looked at the wells and the property and inspected. According

to their letter, you wouldn’t let them on. That was your attorney’s

advice?

Mr. MOBALDI. Yes.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. So they never really had a chance to

come on and do the comparison so that they could take a look at

what the components were; is that right? Or did anybody?

Mr. MOBALDI. They eventually did come on the property and do

some testing, but we were unable to get the results because Encana

had to approve it.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. OK. So there are some results somewhere, is what you are telling me?

Mr. MOBALDI. I think so.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. OK. I think really having that linkage

would be very, very important for the record. That may be something, Mr. Chairman, we could have the committee look at, if there

are some results from that. That could help tie this down a little

bit more.

Let me ask Dr. Colborn, Our Stolen Future, your book, was mentioned at a hearing we did last year on the fish in the Potomac

River, where we found endocrine disruption, that common contaminants can interfere with the natural signals controlling development of the fetus, and we are finding males with eggs and premature with eggs and that kind of thing.

Ms. COLBORN. Yes.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. What is your read on it? Can you elaborate on that a little bit more in terms of what ecological problems

you can have interfering with the endocrine system? Does this create dangers for human consumption and the like, or are we just not

sure where this all goes?

Ms. COLBORN. Right now we are at the stage where we are beginning to look at maybe 10 to 15 years of new studies not done

using toxicological approaches but using different kinds of assays

to test chemicals at very low doses. The old testing protocols used

high dose looking for obvious changes and cancer. The new testing

protocols that are not being done by the Government but are in

academic laboratories around the world now, we have a vast number of studies that support that many chemicals can interfere from

the moment of fertilization until an individual is born that alters

how that individual is structured and how they behave later.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Yes.

Ms. COLBORN. The obvious one, which we discovered way back in

the 1970’s, were the bisexual fish in the Great Lakes. There are

still fish there. I mean, we stock the Great Lakes to get the fish

that they want there for the commercial recreational purposes, but

we now know that some of these chemicals actually that are endocrine disruptors, some of the surfactants are being used and injected underground. So they are on the list.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Are we not doing enough research in this

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non just on the Potomac River. As you noted, it is in the Great

Lakes and everywhere else. If it is underground, who knows what

else. Are we not doing enough basic research into this area?

Ms. COLBORN. We are not. I would like to talk to you about that.

Look at the front page of USA Today. There are three pages devoted to just two chemicals that have been overlooked, and there

has been a tremendous amount of suppression on using.

I have sat on EPA study groups, you know, the committees trying to design these studies to develop these assays, and EPA would

not give up using the old toxicological approach. Until we switch

over and start using this new approach, the young people and the

new people who are coming along doing endocrine research, starting with low doses, looking at embryonic development, we are not

going to get these chemicals out of our environment. They are slipping through our safety net, truly.

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Thank you very much.

Ms. COLBORN. Thank you.

Mr. HIGGINS [presiding]. Thank you, Mr. Davis.

On the issue of injecting diesel fuel, in 2002 it was publicly revealed that gas and oil companies were using diesel fuel as a hydraulic fracturing fluid. That meant that oil and gas companies

were injecting diesel fuel directly into underground sources of

drinking water in order to enhance oil and gas production.

In 2003, the Environmental Protection Agency entered into a voluntary agreement with Haliburton and two other companies to discontinue the practice of injecting diesel fuel directly into sources of

drinking water. Unfortunately, the agreement was in no way mandatory or binding. The EPA was concerned that using diesel fuel

for hydraulic fracturing could introduce BTX chemicals into drinking water.

Dr. Teitelbaum, could you tell us what BTX chemicals are and

why exposure to them would be of concern?

Dr. TEITELBAUM. The BTX chemicals are benzene, toluene, and

xylene. Benzene is a class one human carcinogen, probably one of

the best-studied chemicals in industrial use. Its presence is extremely threatening, not only as a carcinogen, but also as a liver

toxin, developmental toxin, and so on.

Toluene and xylene are at the moment not considered to be carcinogenic as class one as benzene is listed; however, they are both

highly toxic. They are neurotoxins. They are developmental toxins.

When they are present in potable water—let’s not say drinking

water just for the moment, but potable water used for all sources

of domestic water supply—it is common that people shower with

that water. The dose delivered of these volatile organic chemicals

through showering is far greater than the dose delivered through

drinking water.

Mr. HIGGINS. Right.

Dr. TEITELBAUM. And in many situations people have substitute

drinking water supplies but continue to use their well water as the

source of general domestic water, and the dose simply stays very

high, even though they believe, because they are drinking a different source, their dose of BTX chemicals has gone down.

Mr. HIGGINS. Another question. By eliminating diesel fuel from

hydraulic fracturing fluids, do we completely eliminate any chance

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of introducing BTX chemicals to underground sources of drinking

water? Or can BTX chemicals be found in other substances, as

well?

Dr. TEITELBAUM. Well, they are naturally present in crude oil,

Mr. Higgins. They are also present in the condensate, and so there

is every reason to believe that, as the gas is extracted from the

ground, there is contamination by the BTXes carried in the fugitive

gas and the crude oil being extracted, and so on.

What has happened with the industry is the fractionation fluids

are using different molecular weight oils, higher molecular weight,

where you never really eliminate the low molecular weight chemicals, even if you go to a different compound or a different mix,

something not called diesel fuel. You still have BTX from that, as

well.

Mr. HIGGINS. I see.

So if diesel fuel is actually eliminated from use, can we be confident that BTX chemicals will be completely eliminated from hydraulic fracturing fluids?

Dr. TEITELBAUM. On the contrary. I think we would be certain

that they were still present, although perhaps in lower concentration.

Mr. HIGGINS. Well, the EPA tells us that they were worried

about BTX chemicals being injected into the underground sources

of drinking water, so they seek a voluntary commitment from oil

and gas companies to not use diesel fuel in fracturing fluids; however, BTX chemicals are found in other petroleum products in addition to diesel fuel, and there is no limitation on their use of these

petroleum products.

My question is: wouldn’t it make more sense to simply prohibit

BTX chemicals from being used in hydraulic fracturing fluids?

Dr. TEITELBAUM. That would certainly be reasonable to do that.

We would still not eliminate the problem. We would have to monitor the drinking water because of the other sources.

Mr. HIGGINS. OK.

Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. I appreciate the majority having a hearing on this

issue, and I am sorry I wasn’t here for all of our witnesses’ testimony. This is a hugely difficult issue because we want energy independence, we want a quality of life that improves, doesn’t put us

in jeopardy, we want a clean environment, and we want to deal

with global warming. I will tell you, as a Member of Congress,

sometimes you feel like you are punched in the stomach because

everything is moving so quickly and you begin to wonder if we have

the capability to deal with it. We do if we are going to be honest

with each other.

One of the challenges becomes that we all seem to be asked to

be politically correct, so when I ask questions, then people evaluate

my questions as if somehow I have my mind made up or I am insensitive. I don’t mean to be insensitive on these issues. I tend not

to like trial lawyers, and lawyers can keep you out of jail, but they

make you look guilty as hell.

Mr. Mobaldi, I want to first say to you I am very moved by your

testimony. I believe it is very sincere, and I happen to believe that

we totally underestimate chemical exposure. This committee that I

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was chairman of was really working on the issue of chemical exposure to our soldiers and our military personnel in the Gulf war, but

for me it is difficult to understand why the lawyers should have

anything to do with whether or not your well is tested. If your well

is not healthy, test the well and know. The only implication I can

concur is that your lawyers didn’t want the well to be tested because there may not be anything wrong with your well. Why would

they not want your well tested?

Mr. MOBALDI. They wanted to be present when it was tested.

Mr. SHAYS. That is fair. And why wouldn’t you have it tested?

Mr. MOBALDI. I don’t know what coincided with the testing people and the lawyers.

Mr. SHAYS. I mean no disrespect at all, because I really believe

that you have a very serious problem and I believe there was chemical exposure. That is intuitively what I believe. There would be

more credibility if you eagerly wanted the well tested, all parties

there. You tested it yourself with the other parties there, and let’s

find out.

Mr. MOBALDI. I tried to get it tested on my own and I couldn’t

get anyone to do it.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Well, bottom line is: let them test it, but let your

people be there, and let’s get it done.

Mr. MOBALDI. Right. Well, we no longer own the property.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. That is a significant factor.

What I think has to be at the very top of all our concerns is the

water table, more than anything else. I am stunned that people

keep moving to parts of the southwest oblivious to a huge challenge

that we are going to have in the future, and we in Government

don’t seem to want to deal with that issue because there are so

many issues on our plate. But I would like someone to tell me if

they think there is anything more important than the water quality and the water table. What would be more important than that

issue? Dr. Colborn.

Ms. COLBORN. May I just add something here? I was amazed how

that came across. It is the stuff that is coming off right immediately. It is the air pollution that is contributing to the problem.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Ms. COLBORN. It is the air that the people are breathing, apparently. This is what I didn’t understand. What we are looking at is

the immediate exposure during the activity of the development of

the well, the action of the well, the equipment that is running.

They are producing volatile compounds, and it is the volatile compounds that seem to be affecting these people early on.

Mr. SHAYS. So you mean more than the quality of the water it

is the air?

Ms. COLBORN. It is the air, as well. And believe me——

Mr. SHAYS. Let me ask you, once the water is contaminated, it

becomes a much more difficult long-term problem to resolve,

doesn’t it?

Ms. COLBORN. That is right. One of the products that got me involved in this is a problem called 2BE, tubutoxyethanol. It is odorless, it is colorless, and tasteless, and it mixes with water. It evaporates at room temperature. I began thinking about that being inVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:22 Jan 30, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00138 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\45610.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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jected underground, if it came up into someone’s home in the water

it would evaporate.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me ask——

Ms. COLBORN. And they would be breathing it, just as Dr.

Teitelbaum mentioned.

Mr. SHAYS. Ms. Mall, how do you come down on this issue between water quality and the quality of the air? They are both important, but which becomes the more difficult issue to deal with?

Ms. MALL. Well, ultimately I would really hate to have to make

a choice. One of the issues that we are dealing with——

Mr. SHAYS. They are both bad.

Ms. MALL. Right.

Mr. SHAYS. Which is the more difficult issue to deal with in the

long run? Isn’t it true that it is easier to clean up our air than it

would be to clean up the water table if the water table becomes

contaminated?

Ms. MALL. Once the water is contaminated, actually, there is a

GAO report from 1989 that says it can take up to 250 years for a

natural underground aquifer to start cleaning itself, because the

water migrates so slowly.

Mr. SHAYS. And my argument, if I can just make this last point,

my argument would be people are going to see the air, they are

going to feel it, they are going to demand it be cleaned up, and the

long-term damage, there is clear damage, but the long-term damage is not as great as it will be. Once the water table is contaminated, it seems to me we have an unbelievable problem.

Now, would the argument be that the water table would only be

contained in a small area, or would it continue to expand if nothing

is done to clean it up? That is my last question.

Ms. MALL. Well, the water can migrate, and part of the problem

when you are dealing with underground is we don’t really know

where it goes or where it is going to come up.

One of the things the GAO report looked at were abandoned

wells that were never plugged properly. Lots of the new wells are

near abandoned wells, for example, and the water can migrate not

only underground but through the wells that were never plugged

properly.

There are examples in Colorado and in Wyoming of places where

chemicals originally from wells have migrated.

One of the issues we are dealing with, these laws where there

is a range of loopholes for air or water or ground contamination,

and some of these chemicals can be found in all of these places. For

example, hydraulic fracturing, there might be chemicals left underground. Research shows that up to 30 percent of the chemicals may

be left underground in a hydraulic fracturing operation. They may

contaminate groundwater. Those chemicals, when they come up to

the air, may evaporate and contaminate our air. And they may be

left in a disposal pit that could be breached, for example, and contaminate the ground.

One of the things we are talking about today, I know you talk

about a tradeoff. NRDC does have a very detailed proposal for energy security; it relies on efficiency and renewables. I don’t have

the details of that today, but we don’t think that cleaning up oil

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and gas exploration production is inconsistent with energy security.

I think that is a really important point.

Mr. Davis talked about solutions, and really we are talking about

solutions today. The fact is that there is information from State

and Federal agencies and other researchers about solutions for all

of these types of pollution. They are available. They are affordable.

In many cases they are profitable for industry.

I quoted in my spoken testimony an industry official in a newspaper article who said it was a win/win situation, and it really can

be.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Chairman WAXMAN [presiding]. Mr. Cannon.

Mr. CANNON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am a little confused. I thought, Dr. Bolin, you might be able

to answer my question. I apologize for not being here, but I have

been up in my office watching. What I picked up, I think, from your

testimony is you have been a regulator for about 25 years?

Mr. BOLIN. Yes, sir, that is correct.

Mr. CANNON. So you are not bought by industry?

Mr. BOLIN. No, sir, not at all.

Mr. CANNON. Great. That is so good to hear, because I have

heard from several people asking questions here the characterization that we are injecting these chemicals into drinking water, into

potable water. Is that happening? That was done in connection

with coal-bed methane, which I think you are particularly the expert in, but as a practical matter, when we are doing fracking with

gas, that is at a much, much deeper level, and so I am quite confident that is not the issue here.

Are we, in the relatively more shallow environment of coal-bed

fracking, injecting these chemicals into drinking water?

Mr. BOLIN. Well, I can tell you what our situation is and our experience has been in Alabama. We have coal beds that do exist at

shallower depths than most conventional oil and gas resources, and

they are within what is defined by EPA as underground sources of

drinking water, which is defined as anything less than 10,000 milligrams per liter of chlorides. It does not mean that is being used

as drinking water.

In our program, we evaluate each fracturing operation and we

find and we review all of the groundwater wells that are in the

area, and typically we obtain our drinking water from wells, they

are in the depths of typically 50 to 200 feet.

In our circumstances, most coal beds that are being produced are

greater than 1,000 feet in depth, and we will review each frack to

ascertain and to ensure that these fracking operations would not

reach the shallower depths and have a possibility of compromising

anyone’s water supply wells.

I would also say that we receive affidavits, sworn statements

from the operators and from the service companies after reviewing

their information that they provide on the components of the hydraulic fracking fluids where they aver that the applicable parts of

the Safe Drinking Water Act, as it relates to drinking water standards, are complied with, and State staff people, technical people,

review those and verify that is, in fact, the case.

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Mr. CANNON. Could we focus just for a moment on the verification?

Mr. BOLIN. Yes.

Mr. CANNON. There are ways to verify things that these companies, these for-profit—I think somebody actually made a big point

out of the for-profit nature of these companies. There is a great

deal about this process that can be verified?

Mr. BOLIN. Yes, sir. Yes, sir, our current revised UIC program

that includes hydraulic fracking, we do that in Alabama, and we

do receive that information.

Mr. CANNON. Let me just ask another question, because my time

is up. Dr. Teitelbaum talked about these compounds as being naturally occurring. There is a current commercial—I think it is Geico

maybe—where Jeb of the Beverly Hillbillies shoots into the ground

and oil comes out, and then it says buy insurance or something.

But, of course, that was a great show when it was a current show.

We do have these compounds occurring close enough to the surface

in some cases where maybe a shotgun could create an oil well? I

don’t know. But they are at various levels.

We have a problem with these kinds of compounds. Is there, Dr.

Bolin, a clear connection anywhere that you are aware of between

fracking and the pollution of people’s groundwater wells or the potable aquifer that we tap?

Mr. BOLIN. No, sir. And, as I alluded to in my testimony, there

has been surveys and studies done where we have obtained information from the various State regulatory agencies. As I indicated,

there have been no confirmed groundwater well contaminations

that have resulted from hydraulic fracturing in studies that were

done by EPA and national organizations such as the Groundwater

Protection Council and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission.

Mr. CANNON. Mr. Chairman, I recognize my time has expired.

Let me just add that we have cases of individuals who are hurt

here, and I appreciate those cases. The problems are complex, and

I hope that, as we develop policy, we will do it in the context of

science.

Thank you. I yield back.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much.

Mr. Sali.

Mr. SALI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Bolin, I guess I am kind of confused, because I hear you saying on the one hand that there has been a study that there has

been no contamination of water resources from fracturing, from the

study that you referred to; is that correct?

Mr. BOLIN. That is correct.

Mr. SALI. Well, I am not sure who to direct this question to.

Maybe Ms. Mall. Are you suggesting that there is something that

is not measured, or that somehow the report is faulty? I mean, Dr.

Bolin is saying there is no indication that there has been any pollution. Are you saying there is pollution? And if so, what is it and

how is it we missed it?

Ms. MALL. Certainly the testing is an issue. If the public doesn’t

understand what chemicals might be involved, doesn’t have that information, and doesn’t know what to test for, it can be easy not to

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find something if you are not actually looking for it. That is a really important issue.

The EPA study from 2004 found that, in some cases, hydraulic

fraction fluids are injected directly into underground sources of

drinking water.

Mr. SALI. Let me ask you this. Are you saying there are things

that are in the water from fracturing that we are not measuring?

Ms. MALL. I think in some cases that has definitely been the

case. Yes.

Mr. SALI. So you are saying there is some kind of pollution going

on that we don’t know about and that we are not measuring?

Ms. MALL. That is my understanding. That is one of the issues

in Alabama in the LEAF case that not all chemicals that could

have been involved in the hydraulic fracturing were tested for.

Mr. SALI. But we could find those if we did additional testing?

Ms. MALL. It may be. Dr. Colborn’s research—and she can speak

more to this than I can—has shown that there is a universe of

chemicals that may be used in hydraulic fracturing.

Mr. SALI. OK. Dr. Colborn, let me I guess direct this to you then.

Is this just a matter of additional testing?

Ms. COLBORN. This is a matter of additional testing, and if we

had access to what is being used we would know what to look for.

There was an incident in Garfield County right near——

Mr. SALI. Let me stop you right there.

Ms. COLBORN. OK.

Mr. SALI. Are you saying that there is no way to do sufficient

testing of water today without somebody telling you what to look

for?

Ms. COLBORN. That is right. Yes, because there is such a broad

expanse of chemicals of different classes, and so it is very expensive

to do this analysis to begin with, to know even what to look for,

just to start looking for the BTX and the methane and——

Mr. SALI. OK. Thank you.

Dr. Bolin, do you agree with that, that there is no way to know

what to look for unless somebody tells you what to look for? There

is no way to find what is in the water unless somebody tells you

what to look for?

Mr. BOLIN. From our standpoint as State regulators, we do everything and base all of our decisions on sound, technical data, and

we try to obtain sufficient technical data to——

Mr. SALI. Let me ask the question a different way.

Mr. BOLIN. OK.

Mr. SALI. Do you ever find things that you haven’t been told look

for this but you find it anyway in testing?

Mr. BOLIN. No, sir.

Mr. SALI. So it is just a matter of knowing what to look for? That

is the whole issue here?

Ms. COLBORN. That is why I am here to ask for full disclosure.

Yes.

Mr. SALI. OK. And is your point, Dr. Colborn, that somehow the

Federal Government has to be involved and that this isn’t something that the States can do?

Ms. COLBORN. Definitely, because this chemical testing is expensive. States don’t have the money. Colorado hasn’t had the money

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to do the testing. People like Steve Mobaldi and Susan had no

place to send their water. I was lucky. I was working with a lab

in Texas. I was able to send something away, but they did it for

me out of kindness of their heart.

Mr. SALI. Dr. Bolin, do you agree with that, that somehow the

Federal Government can do something efficiently that the States

can’t do?

Ms. COLBORN. Yes.

Mr. SALI. I am asking Dr. Bolin.

Mr. BOLIN. Well, I would say that our experience has been that

the States can do things more efficiently, and have the expertise

to do it if they have the resources to do that. Quite often, resources

may be at issue in terms of the extent of the testing and that type

of thing. But LEAF and Alabama have been able to conduct the

tests that we need to determine the constituents in hydraulic fracturing operations.

Mr. SALI. Mr. Mobaldi, you don’t own your place any more?

When did you sell that?

Mr. MOBALDI. We abandoned it.

Mr. SALI. I thought you said earlier it belongs to someone else.

Mr. MOBALDI. It does now. Somebody has moved into it.

Mr. SALI. And as a part of that sale did you disclose the issues

that you had been having?

Mr. MOBALDI. I had nothing to do with the sale.

Mr. SALI. You weren’t the owner?

Mr. MOBALDI. Well, my wife and I, we just walked away from the

property. It was foreclosed on. The disclosure went to the mortgage

company, I believe. It went to the real estate company when we

tried to sell it.

Mr. SALI. Do you know if the current occupants are having the

same kind of problems that you had?

Mr. MOBALDI. I don’t know. I have no idea.

Mr. SALI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Sali.

Mr. Kucinich.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Neubecker, your organization is committed to protecting

trout habitat across the country. What do you see as the biggest

threat to maintaining healthy watersheds for trout population? It

is my understanding that there are some pretty standard mitigation practices to help deal with the stormwater runoff problem associated with constructionsites. It is also my understanding that

these mitigation measures are fairly universally applied to

constructionsites and other industries besides oil and gas, so I

would like your comment on that.

Mr. NEUBECKER. Well, I would think that at the national level

development and encroachment on habitat, both of aquatic species

and for wildlife, is the biggest single threat right now. Especially

in the stream ecosystems, sedimentation is probably by far and

away universally the biggest single threat. It is in the west. It is

the biggest problem we have.

All other development activity does have to comply with

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ing the construction phase but also during the entire time that

ground is exposed to the elements.

Mr. KUCINICH. What about the mitigation practices? Are there

some that are pretty standard?

Mr. NEUBECKER. There are some pretty standard mitigation

practices.

Mr. KUCINICH. Can you describe them?

Mr. NEUBECKER. Things like silt fencing, contouring, revegetation.

Mr. KUCINICH. Sediment fence, hay bales? Are those standard?

Mr. NEUBECKER. Things like that, yes, and also detention ponds

that can catch larger events where the water can clear up.

Mr. KUCINICH. Now, is it true that even a person building a

home, for example, has to take steps to protect against stormwater

runoff?

Mr. NEUBECKER. In many places, yes. I had to do that when I

built my house in Needle.

Mr. KUCINICH. In 2005 the Energy Policy Act exempted construction of oil and gas production facilities from the Clean Water Act

stormwater rules, didn’t it, Mr. Neubecker?

Mr. NEUBECKER. Yes, it did.

Mr. KUCINICH. And it doesn’t make sense to me that everyone is

required to take common sense efforts to prevent sediment runoff

except the oil and gas industry. Does that make sense to you?

Mr. NEUBECKER. It doesn’t make sense that they should be exempted from it.

Mr. KUCINICH. Right.

Mr. NEUBECKER. It doesn’t make sense to me at all.

Mr. KUCINICH. Now, Colorado has State regulations that go beyond the Federal stormwater runoff regulations. According to your

testimony, you were very engaged in putting these regulations in

place; is that right?

Mr. NEUBECKER. Yes, sir.

Mr. KUCINICH. And, Mr. Neubecker, would you say that the oil

and gas industry is suffering a great deal because they have to

comply with the stormwater runoff regulations in Colorado?

Mr. NEUBECKER. Not in Colorado, no, they are not suffering at

all.

Mr. KUCINICH. So why is it important that the Federal Government regulate stormwater runoff when your State has already done

so?

Mr. NEUBECKER. I would say because it is an exemption at the

Federal level, Federal law that requires this. Plus the fact that we

need to have a uniform standard across the country for this type

of activity.

Mr. KUCINICH. Do all States have the ability to regulate

stormwater?

Mr. NEUBECKER. Not all of them, to my knowledge. I know New

Mexico is one State that does not have that ability to go beyond

what the Federal Government has done. Colorado does. I am not

sure. I am not a lawyer, so I am not sure how many States do.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you very much, Mr. Neubecker.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Kucinich.

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Mr. Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

One claim that we have heard today is that there is no confirmed

cases of hydraulic fracturing fluid contaminating drinking water

wells, which is very interesting.

Dr. Colborn, your testimony included a description of a woman

you met in Garfield County with a rare adrenal tumor. You stated

that hydraulic fracturing fluid used near her home contained a

chemical that has been shown to cause adrenal tumors; is that correct?

Ms. COLBORN. Yes.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Was there sufficient testing to be able to determine if the hydraulic fracturing fluids occurred in her drinking

water?

Ms. COLBORN. No.

Mr. CUMMINGS. How long did it take for the company to actually

test for the chemical of concern in her drinking water?

Ms. COLBORN. Three to 31⁄2 years after the eruption.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Would you think it would be hard to find these

chemicals if you waited for years to sample them?

Ms. COLBORN. Definitely. Yes.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Do you know why it takes so long to do the testing?

Ms. COLBORN. Because this isn’t what you traditionally test for.

I know they came in and did test her water, told her her water was

safe, as I said earlier, and delivered some water to her home for

her to use, but she was breast feeding a baby during this period

after this happened for another 18 months. She breast fed her baby

until she was 2 years old, and they were using the water that was

being hauled, but also the water in their home and the water that

was coming into their house, they used it for tubs, toilets, dish

washing, and that sort of thing.

But they didn’t look for 2BE and they don’t look for 2BE today,

or any of a number of the chemicals that are on our list that we

find that they are using.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Are you aware, going back to the case that we

just mentioned, whether there was a settlement in that case?

Ms. COLBORN. Yes.

Mr. CUMMINGS. So this lady was paid some money in the settlement, to your knowledge?

Ms. COLBORN. Yes. She was able to pack up with her family and

purchase another place and move away.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Dr. Colborn, the committee actually contacted

the woman you are referring to, and we had hoped to have her testify today. Unfortunately, we learned that as a part of her settlement the oil and gas company required her to agree to never, never

publicly discuss her experience. I can’t blame her for accepting the

settlement for what she went through, but it does make it harder

for policymakers to understand the scope of the problem.

I would like to introduce into the record a letter from Lance

Astrella, Mr. Chairman, an attorney in Denver, CO. Mr. Astrella

represents individuals who are adversely impacted by oil and gas

production. He confirms that these settlements are, indeed, a problem.

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According to Mr. Astrella, ‘‘Claims that are asserted are often

settled under confidentiality agreements, thereby limiting access to

information which would be helpful in assessing risks associated

with oil and gas operations.’’

Mr. Astrella also notes that there has been very little effort on

the part of Federal or State governments to study the potential adverse health impacts associated with oil and gas production. This

lack of scientific study acts to shield the industry from change.

One of the interesting things, too, you know, I often sit in these

hearings and I think about whether Members of Congress would

allow their families to drink this water, whether we would allow

our families to go through this. Sometimes I do believe that there

is a disconnect, because the Bible says do unto others as you would

have them do unto you. I just wonder about that sometimes. I

guess the answer is clear. They wouldn’t.

With that, I will yield back, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much. The letter you talked

about will be put in the record without objection.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. I want to thank each of your for your testimony today. There may be additional questions that Members will

want to have you respond to in writing for the record, and we

would very much welcome that.

Dr. Teitelbaum, there is a Washington lobbyist by the name of

Michael Berman who wants me to ask you questions for the record

that you may or may not want to respond to.

Dr. TEITELBAUM. I would be very happy to respond to Mr. Berman’s questions.

Chairman WAXMAN. I told him he should talk to you directly.

Thank you all very much. We are going to break now.

Mr. Issa, do you want the panel to come back to answer your

questions, because we have a vote and I was just dismissing the

first panel.

We do have authorization to submit questions in writing and

have them respond for the record, if that would be acceptable to

you. If you want to ask questions for the record we can do that;

otherwise, we are going to have to make them stay here while we

vote.

Mr. ISSA. I would be glad to come back and ask questions. I

apologize. I thought I was coming back just in time to ask questions.

Chairman WAXMAN. I thanked you all too prematurely. If you

don’t mind, we have to respond to some votes. We should be back.

Let’s reconvene at 12:15.

[Recess.]

Chairman WAXMAN. The committee will come back to order.

We are pleased now for our second panel to have Mr. Robert Anderson, Deputy Assistant Director for Minerals, Realty, and Resource Protection in the Bureau of Land Management, and the

Honorable Benjamin H. Grumbles, who was confirmed as the Assistant Administrator for Water for the Environmental Protection

Agency in November 2004. Prior to this appointment, Mr. Grumbles was a Deputy Assistant Administrator for Water and Acting

Associate Administrator for Congressional Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations.

We are pleased to have both of you here today.

It is the practice of this committee to ask all witnesses to take

an oath.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Chairman WAXMAN. The record will indicate that the witnesses

responded in the affirmative.

Mr. Grumbles, why don’t we start with you. Your whole statement will be part of the record. We would like to ask you to try

to keep it in 5 minutes.

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STATEMENTS OF BENJAMIN H. GRUMBLES, ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR FOR WATER, U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY; AND ROBERT ANDERSON, DEPUTY ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR MINERALS, REALTY AND RESOURCE

PROTECTION, BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

STATEMENT OF BENJAMIN H. GRUMBLES

Mr. GRUMBLES. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you

Congressman Shays and other members of the committee.

I am Benjamin Grumbles, Assistant Administrator for Water at

EPA. It is a pleasure to be here before the committee to testify on

the public health and environmental protection activities of the

Agency, particularly as they relate to oil and gas sector.

The President charged the Administrator with accelerating the

pace of environmental protection while maintaining the country’s

economic competitiveness and, Mr. Chairman, a key part of that is

to foster innovative technologies and to improve the coordination of

permitting to advance and promote the clean development of energy resources.

When it comes to ensuring environmental protection and the protection of public health, there are a variety of tools and statutory

authorities, as you are very familiar with. Many of those that the

Agency uses relate to the review of possible projects and project activities such as through our NEPA authorities.

Mr. Chairman, we are experiencing a marked increase in the review of proposed oil and gas projects, in part because of America’s

push for energy security. The Agency is fully committed to carrying

out those authorities, reviewing potential projects for the many different types of environmental impacts and associated transportation-related infrastructure impacts of potential projects.

We use every tool available to do our job. I am going to focus in

particular on some of the tools and authorities we have under the

Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act, which has been

the key part of this discussion.

Mr. Chairman, I listened to the testimony of the first panel. I

would say there are a couple of lessons. One is compassion toward

all who have public health problems. Another is the importance of

pollution prevention and using the tools that we have and working

with Congress to implement those statutory programs, and also

work with Congress to revise or establish new provisions or programs or approaches.

When it comes to the Clean Water Act, we are in the midst, Mr.

Chairman, of conducting a national detailed study of the coal-bed

methane industry. In December 2006 we released a plan for effluent guidelines under the Clean Water Act. Environmental Protection Agency experts have just completed a national tour of seven

States, looking specifically at the coal-bed methane industry to help

inform us, to then carry out an information collection request. And

so in the next couple of years we will be in a position to determine

whether to issue a new subcategory of effluent guidelines specifically for the coal-bed methane industry.

Under the Clean Water Act, as you know, and the Energy Policy

Act of 2005 there was a provision included that clarified and speciVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:22 Jan 30, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00151 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\45610.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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fied that stormwater runoff from field-related work, specifically

construction-related aspects of oil and gas facilities, was exempt

from Clean Water Act stormwater permitting. We are faithfully implementing the provisions in that statute. We also issued a rule.

We are in the midst of litigation over that rule, but what the rule

did, Mr. Chairman, was state that, as it relates to sediment from

construction activities, that our interpretation of the provision is

that still does not trigger a Clean Water Act permitting requirement.

However, we made clear that States should be carrying out best

management practices, and States are free to use additional authorities should they decide to require permitting under the Clean

Water Act.

The other aspect which has received considerable attention and

understandably is the practice of hydraulic fracturing and the Safe

Drinking Water Act provisions and programs that may relate to hydraulic fracturing. In 2004 we issued a report, Mr. Chairman. I

know you are aware of it. We spent many years working on it. We

did have a technical expert peer review of that report, and the report concluded essentially that hydraulic fracturing did not present

a significant risk to underground sources of drinking water. However, we did note and were concerned about the potential for problems with diesel fluids as the fluid for hydraulic fracturing.

In December 2003 we entered into a memorandum of agreement

with the major providers for a voluntary commitment to cease the

use of diesel fluids, and we have been monitoring that over the last

several years and are pleased that they seem to be living up to that

commitment not to use diesel fluids.

As you know, the Congress enacted in the 2005 Energy Policy

Act a provision that prohibits EPA from regulating the practice of

hydraulic fracturing, except if it is diesel fluids that are being used.

Mr. Chairman, we are committed to using the tools we have

under the various authorities, including not just the Clean Water

Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act, but NEPA and the various

programs to meet the Administrator’s challenge to all of us in the

Agency, and that is to promote the clean development of energy resources through innovative technologies and using our current authorities to protect public health.

I would be happy to answer questions at the appropriate time,

Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Grumbles follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Grumbles.

Mr. Anderson.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT ANDERSON

Mr. ANDERSON. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee,

thank you for the opportunity to appear here today to discuss the

applicability of Federal requirements that protect public health and

the environment in the context of oil and gas development.

My testimony will focus on the on-shore Federal mineral estate

entrusted to the BLM.

Thank you for including my entire submitted statement in the

record.

The BLM manages 258 million acres of public land, as well as

700 million acres of mineral estate. Under the Mineral Leasing Act,

the BLM is responsible for managing oil and gas leasing on BLM,

National Forest, and other Federal lands, as well as private lands

where the mineral rights have been retained by the Federal Government.

Resource protection is considered throughout the land use planning process and when applications for permit to drill are processed.

The BLM is required to review proposals to develop and produce

oil and gas wells on Federal land. We also ensure adherence to numerous laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the

Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the Endangered Species

Act, the Clean Water Act, and other statutes and regulations. Compliance with NEPA can range from developing an environmental

impact statement to application of a categorical exclusion.

Categorical exclusions are categories of actions which do not have

a significant effect on human environment.

In addition, the BLM has policy guidance to ensure protection of

the environment and public health. Onshore Order No. 1 addresses

water quality by restricting operations in riparian areas and lake

shores unless otherwise approved.

Regarding groundwater, Order No. 1 requires operators to identify zones potentially containing usable water and their plans for

protecting such water resources. This plan typically requires isolating usable water zones to avoid potential cross-contamination with

other geologic formations.

The BLM also inspects oil and gas operations to ensure compliance with statutes, regulations, and permit stipulations that serve

to protect the environment, human health, and safety.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to

discuss the application of Federal statutes, regulations, and policy

guidance that work to protect public health and the environment

during oil and gas development and operations on Federal lands.

The BLM is committed to ensuring that energy production on public land is achieved in an environmentally sound manner.

Thank you. I will be happy to address questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Anderson follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Anderson.

I will start off the questions.

I want to start off with Mr. Grumbles. In EPA’s June 2004 report

on hydraulic fracturing, EPA expressed concern about the use of

diesel fuels in hydraulic fracturing fluids. EPA determined that the

use of diesel fuel could introduce BTX compounds into underground

sources of drinking water. Those BTX chemicals, which include

benzene and toluene, are toxic chemicals that people should not be

drinking.

EPA has entered into a voluntary agreement with Haliburton

and two other companies to not use diesel fuel in fracturing fluids,

and you mentioned that in your testimony.

Mr. GRUMBLES. Yes.

Chairman WAXMAN. But this agreement is completely voluntary,

with no enforcement mechanism.

Mr. Grumbles, during the last panel we learned that BTX chemicals can be constituents of other petroleum products in addition to

diesel fuel. Does EPA maintain a list of fracturing fluids that are

injected into underground sources of drinking water?

Mr. GRUMBLES. Mr. Chairman, I am going to need to provide two

answers. One of them is I need to get back to you on the specifics

of what the national water program staff have with respect to the

different types of constituents or hazardous constituents of hydraulic fluids.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. GRUMBLES. The other immediate answer is when we entered

into that memorandum of agreement we knew full well that it was

a voluntary agreement. We felt it was important to be proactive,

to also work and provide technical assistance to Congress. Congressional committees were looking at the subject. And we were also

committed to, on an annual basis, monitoring to see if the three

signatories were living up to that agreement.

I know, Mr. Chairman, that if——

Chairman WAXMAN. If they weren’t living up to the agreement,

what would you do?

Mr. GRUMBLES. What I would do is I would talk to two offices

in the Agency. One would be the General Counsel’s office to see

what other mechanisms we might have under our existing authorities and tools to continue to take steps to ensure that diesel fluids

were not used. The other office I would work with would be the Research and Development Office to see what research, what information we have, along with the Environmental Information Office.

Chairman WAXMAN. Let me ask and see if I can get a response

to my question, because you say you are going to get back to me,

but do you know whether you maintain a list of fracturing fluids

that are injected into underground water sources?

Mr. GRUMBLES. I know that we have information on what constituents may be included. I don’t know if it is a complete list or

not, Mr. Chairman. During the hearing I have been asking staff,

as well, to get a good sense.

Chairman WAXMAN. We will look forward to getting your response.

Mr. GRUMBLES. Yes, sir.

Chairman WAXMAN. But my understanding is that the Agency

does not maintain such a list. Can you assure us that there are no

other hydraulic fracturing fluids that are used that contain BTX

chemicals?

Mr. GRUMBLES. I can assure you that, based on the information

from this hearing, we are going to be looking to see. We are going

to coordinate with the Groundwater Protection Council, with the

Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, and with State drinking water agencies to ask exactly that question: what other constituents are out there besides BTX that we view——

Chairman WAXMAN. You are going to ask the questions, and I

think it is appropriate, although I wish you had been able to answer this question now, but how can EPA guarantee that no fluids

containing the BTX compounds are injected into sources of drinking water? How can you assure us that you are going to be on top

of that?

Mr. GRUMBLES. Well, I don’t think we can absolutely guarantee

it, but what it tells me is that we need to do additional information

gathering, not just on the BTX but to see what other constituents

might be in the hydraulic fluids, recognizing though——

Chairman WAXMAN. I don’t think you can give us that assurance.

That is what I think is the response to my question. You may want

to do more in this area. Today you discovered that you want to

learn more about this area.

Mr. GRUMBLES. Right.

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Chairman WAXMAN. But I don’t think you can give us any assurances. Given this situation and EPA’s concerns about protecting

drinking water, would the administration support removing the hydraulic fracturing exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act?

Mr. GRUMBLES. I can’t answer that question right there, Mr.

Chairman, because I would need to coordinate with others in the

Agency and in the administration. I can tell you that as the language was being developed, while the Agency did not have an official position on that legislation in 2005, I can tell you that we were

providing technical input and we were very concerned about not

having a broader savings clause.

Chairman WAXMAN. Let me ask, Mr. Anderson, the other part of

what we did in the Energy Policy Act, we took away EPA’s authority to regulate, but we also said that the Secretary of Interior

would enter into an agreement with the National Academy of

Sciences to conduct a comprehensive study on the effects of coalbed natural gas production on surface and groundwater resources

in the western United States. The law requests recommendations

from the National Academy on necessary changes to Federal law.

This report was to have been completed by NAS in August 2006.

It is now November 2007. No such study has been initiated.

I wrote, Mr. Anderson, to the Department of Interior on September 5, 2007, to find out why the Department had not completed the

study as required by Congress. The response I received from the

Department of Interior revealed that the administration had not

complied with the law and is not intending to. Instead of conducting a full NAS study with recommendations as required by law, the

administration is planning to convene a single policy public meeting with the National Academy, which wouldn’t even produce a

written document.

Mr. Anderson, the National Academy doesn’t only think this falls

short of what the law requires; they tell us that it will be inappropriate to even refer to this effort as a study.

Can you explain how the administration’s plan for a single meeting will comply with the statutory language of the Energy Policy

Act?

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes, Mr. Chairman. Well, let me first say coming

up this morning I thought that there may be great expectations,

and I know that we had great expectations in reading and following up with this section of the act, and I know certainly you do,

too.

Let me just say that there are 11 sections in EPAC, the Energy

Policy Act.

Chairman WAXMAN. Before you get into other sections, how can

the administration plan a single meeting and then say that fits the

expectations, as great as they may be, that some might have, the

expectations of the statute which called for you all to do the study,

to get the NAS to do a study with recommendations? They don’t

think that this is a real study, and I don’t think that it is a real

study.

Mr. ANDERSON. The single meeting that you are talking about to

be held this spring is to have the EPA, the National Academy of

Science, and BLM get together, along with other experts, authors

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pacts. From that meeting, we hope to determine as a group where

we need to go from there.

What I wanted to say just a few minutes ago, there are 11 other

sections in EPAC that direct us to do something, reports to Congress or studies. One is 833, and that is the renewable resources

study by the National Renewable Energy Lab. And none of these

sections, by the way, were funded by Congress. We funded that one

to the tune of $50,000. However, in looking at the one in 1811, you

know, I have been around for a long time, and the last study that

the Academy did was 1999 on——

Chairman WAXMAN. I have limited time, which I have already

exceeded. I don’t understand your answer. You do not have enough

funds for it? Have you asked for funds from Congress to do the

study? Congress passed a law asking you to do a study. If you don’t

have funds, why don’t you tell us?

Mr. ANDERSON. Well, when the——

Chairman WAXMAN. I mean, to convene a meeting and say where

do we go from here is not complying with the law.

Given everything we heard this morning, why wouldn’t the BLM

want the benefit of an analysis of the National Academy of

Sciences? It seems to me——

Mr. ANDERSON. Absolutely, and we plan to go there, Mr. Chairman, but first I think it is fiscally responsible on our part to determine what studies have been done so that the National Academy

can accurately portray what kind of cost it is going to be for us to

complete further studies if further studies need to be done.

Chairman WAXMAN. If you asked them to do the study and you

entered into an agreement, as Congress directed you to do,

wouldn’t they be able to figure that out?

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes. They will be. But first I think we need to

determine, along with the Academy and EPA, what studies have

been done and do they answer the questions that the Congress

wanted us to answer. And if not, then we know that the magnitude

of the study will be much more than we think it is right now.

Chairman WAXMAN. Well, I do think that the study being delayed is resulting in ignorance, which is doing a great deal of harm.

I wrote to Secretary Kempthorne this morning asking him to abandon this ridiculous approach of calling a meeting to then decide

whether you are going to do a study that Congress didn’t ask you

if you wanted to do but told you to do. When we tell you to do

something, it is not just a request that is at your leisure or if you

approve of the request, it is a law.

Mr. ANDERSON. I totally agree.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Issa.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Grumbles, I will give Mr. Anderson a break here for a

minute. Wes Wilson, he is characterized by the first panel and by

the committee as a whistleblower. Does he fit your definition of a

whistleblower?

Mr. GRUMBLES. Mr. Chairman, I guess the definition—I don’t

know if there is a textbook definition.

Mr. ISSA. Let’s assume for a moment that a whistleblower is

somebody who has previously undisclosed information and then

brings it to our attention around the chain of command, around

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those who would want to keep it as a secret. That is at least this

Member’s understanding of what a whistleblower is.

Isn’t it true that Wes Wilson essentially wasn’t part of it, looked

at the information, and disagreed with it, and that is how we

ended up with a ‘‘whistleblower’’ in this case?

Mr. GRUMBLES. That is correct, Congressman. He was not involved. He was not viewed as a technical expert and was not involved in the issue in the underground injection control program,

but was more involved in the NEPA process. The headquarters, as

we were working on the report, the first time we learned of his concerns was when he released his report.

We respect the right of employees to express their personal views

and opinions, but I think it would be difficult to view him as a

whistleblower, and I think the Inspector General’s office of EPA,

when asked to look into this matter, had a similar conclusion.

Mr. ISSA. I appreciate that. I think when Jim Hanson came here

and said that global warming was settled science, I wanted to respect the fact that he thought global warming was truly happening,

and happening at the speeds he calculated. I also hope he will respect those who think it is happening faster or slower. And I certainly would hope that EPA has a similar attitude that nothing is

ever settled science, because settled science had the earth flat, the

human body not to ever be cut into for an autopsy because you

couldn’t do it, and people were excommunicated for doing things

that today save lives every day. So hopefully there is no such thing

as settled science in our Government.

Let me ask you a question though. The question of clean water

relative to areas which have entrapped methane, entrapped oil, including all of its various byproducts, benzene, all the things that

were mentioned by the earlier panel as poisons and toxins. They

are all in there. Isn’t it true that, whether you inject in the fracturing process or not, that seepage and water activities and so on, this

goes on naturally anyway.

I am from California, Santa Barbara. The Indians used to harvest—and this is a well-known story in Los Angeles, where the

chairman is from, and up the coast—they used to harvest the tarlike oil that came ashore and they burned it. So to a certain extent,

not belittling the effects of putting in compressed water to hydraulically fracture, isn’t it, in fact, a naturally occurring event?

Mr. GRUMBLES. I believe it is. There are naturally occurring substances. I would also say, Congressman, that some of the naturally

occurring substances get a considerable amount of attention from

us and with our regulatory tools. Arsenic is a naturally occurring

substance.

Mr. ISSA. I am glad you brought that up.

Mr. GRUMBLES. And we are committed to implementing the 10

parts per billion standard in the arsenic drinking water rule and

working with States and communities on compliance assistance

and using cost-effective technologies to meet that standard.

Mr. ISSA. And let me followup on that. Because we mandated

that during my relatively short tenure—the chairman has been

here for the Clean Water Act and beyond for many years.

Chairman WAXMAN. Yes, sir.

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Mr. ISSA. But I watched the arsenic debate, the high cost, the

predictions that, in fact, it was going to take years and cost a very

large fortune, that it was going to shut down small municipalities

or at least cost them huge amounts of money. As you compare arsenic, a poison that is in the water, to the possibility that in some

cases some amount will be in a local area from this type of mining,

which has gone on for many years, how do you weigh those if you

only had one basket of dollars and only enough to do, let’s say, half

of one of them? Where would you put the money and why?

Mr. GRUMBLES. Well, the first thing we need to do as an Agency

that reports to Congress and implements the laws that Congress

writes is to look to see what are our authorities and what flexibilities we have. A preference is always to pursue a risk-based approach, and therefore that requires sound science and looking at

what are the greatest risks and helping State drinking water administrators and local health officials make the best decisions on

how to reduce the most significant risks.

Mr. ISSA. But let me characterize it, because the time is short.

Realistically, if you only had a limited amount of money, dramatically reducing, as Congress told you, the amount of arsenic to what

would be considered to be a safe level from what Congress felt was

an unsafe level is clearly a mandate on which the science has been

settled under Christine Todd Whitman’s time that we have said,

for better or worse, that we want you to do this regardless of any

other. We have settled the science by saying you shall do that. Is

that correct? And thus that is where you know your dollars will

lead to something which we have mandated, rather than a study

of something which somebody says on a panel affected their life

and they didn’t report it for 9 years?

Mr. GRUMBLES. Congressman, we have a mandate under the

Safe Drinking Water Act to use the best available science. With arsenic, we were convinced that the best available science and the

risks led us to affirm the 10 part per billion standard, and so now

we have focused on implementation tools and compliance assistance.

However, Congressman, the science always evolves, and in the

spirit of always looking for what is the best available science, we

have looked to the Science Advisory Board and others to continue

to look at the science of arsenic and the risks associated with it.

But the agency is committed to going with the best science, the 10

part per billion, particularly given the effective dates under the

regulation.

Mr. ISSA. I appreciate that. A final question for Mr. Anderson.

In your written testimony you said there were 48,000 off-shore

oil and gas leases, of which 23,000 are producing. I just want to

clarify. You also said that there were nearly $12 billion in royalties

between 2001 and 2006, and that is over and above the taxes paid.

Are you also aware of the status of the $9 billion plus that was not

paid based on the Clinton administration era failure and the Bush

administration’s continued failure to make sure the contracts were

consistent with the law? Are you familiar with that? And how

much has been agreed to by the oil companies?

Mr. ANDERSON. You mentioned off-shore. It is actually on-shore

wells.

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Mr. ISSA. I am terribly sorry. On-shore. I apologize.

Mr. ANDERSON. I was thinking ahead to the second part.

Mr. ISSA. On-shore, but are you familiar also with the off-shore?

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes, I am familiar, mostly newspaper articles

and the like. That is a Minerals Management Service issue.

Mr. ISSA. Well, I am thrilled with the $12 billion you got, but as

long as I have anyone here on a committee that did considerable

oversight in the last Congress on this, I wondered whether either

you have knowledge or could have your organization respond for

the record on what has been done, item-by-item, company-by-company, because that was a major part of this committee’s work in

the last Congress.

I never forget about accounts receivable, no matter how small,

even if it is just a few billion.

Mr. ANDERSON. Absolutely. I can tell you that the Secretary has

appointed a special subcommittee for the Faka-chartered royalty

policy committee that is held a couple of times a year through the

Minerals Management Service hosting of it, and that subcommittee

is doing some work on that issue.

I also know that the GAO is also investigating production accountability and verification as we speak.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you.

Thank you for your indulgence, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. You are welcome, Mr. Issa.

Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, thank you for having this hearing.

I believe that there are a few issues that obviously are intertwined, and I think others, do, as well. One is energy security, or

what I would call energy independence, which I don’t think is pie

in the sky over the long term, intertwined with the environmental

concerns and health care concerns.

I believe that one of the ways that we are going to deal with

these concerns is conservation, I mean, just getting better use, conservation and greater efficiencies.

We obviously have coal and we are going to use it. We have oil

and we are going to use it. We have gas, which is a cleaner, more

efficient fossil fuel, but it is still a fossil fuel dealing with global

warming. We are going to get back into nuclear power. And we are

obviously going to deal with the whole issue of renewables.

What interests me, I want to not overstate where the problems

are, or understate them, so when we talk about our effort to get

gas in Colorado and elsewhere, methane, and so on, and fracturing,

I want to be clear. When we are going after gas, does that impact

the water table and the quality of the water?

Mr. GRUMBLES. I would be happy to respond first.

Mr. SHAYS. I want to ask both of you to. We will start with you.

Mr. GRUMBLES. It does have the potential to impact the water

table, and, as we have learned over the last decade, it has the potential to impact surface water. One of our priority actions in the

national water program right now, in promoting the clean development of energy resources, including natural gas and, in particular,

coal-bed methane, we will use our tools and authorities under the

Clean Water Act——

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Mr. SHAYS. OK. You answered my question. So it does.

Mr. Anderson.

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes. If I could, before the hearing when I found

out that I was coming today I had somebody ask one of our field

officers, in fact in Buffalo, WY——

Mr. SHAYS. Give me the answer and then give me the details. I

mean, the answer is yes, it does, or no, it doesn’t.

Mr. ANDERSON. It has potential, but I am not the expert in that

area.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. So the answer is it has the potential, and now

you want to tell me what?

Mr. ANDERSON. Well, I want to tell you that the BLM, in addition to what is required under the Clean Water Act, we have our

own requirements when we issue approval for a drilling permit. I

just wanted perhaps to read a couple of stipulations to give you an

idea of what kind of protection we do.

Mr. SHAYS. No. I will just accept that you have protections, OK?

Mr. ANDERSON. OK.

Mr. SHAYS. So the next question I wanted to know, when we go

after methane coal—correct?

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes.

Mr. GRUMBLES. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. And we use this for also oil and gas, which tends to

be the greater concern? Is the gas further down, and therefore not

as big a concern? In other words, can we get under the water table

and not impact? So tell me which of the fossil fuels represents the

bigger concern, or maybe they don’t. Maybe they are all equal. We

will start with you.

Mr. ANDERSON. Well, sometimes you get oil and gas in the same

formation, and sometimes you just get gas. Sometimes you get a

little bit of condensate, which is the light end of the oil.

Mr. SHAYS. So is the depth, the further down we go the less likely the water table becomes an issue, or——

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes. Absolutely.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. And which of these do we tend to find is further

down? Oil? Gas?

Mr. ANDERSON. Both. It just depends where it is.

Mr. SHAYS. Do you agree? Does EPA agree?

Mr. GRUMBLES. I would defer. I don’t disagree. I would just defer

to expertise on that. We don’t typically—in fact, we are prohibited

under the Safe Drinking Water Act from regulating the practice of

mining. Where we get involved is on the injection of fluids through

the UIC program, and also our NEPA authorities looking at potential impacts, depletion of aquifers, the comments we make to other

agencies when we are a commenting agency.

And the Clean Water Act, which is another critical part of this

whole discussion, ensuring that when mining practices occur, such

as coal-bed methane mining, that State water quality standards

are complied with, and that the best technologies are used.

Mr. SHAYS. See, the problem I have, though, some States can be

concerned, but if the spill-over is into another State, I mean, this

administration sincerely has taken the position that the market ultimately will deal with these issues, but my view is it only does it

if the market represents a market that considers all cost. But if

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there is a spill-over cost, then the market fails to operate. We knew

that when Mr. Waxman and others were dealing with this issue before I was even here.

When I went to Gary, IN, and I saw the whole community looked

red, or I went through Pittsburgh in the 1950’s and they spilled

over to other communities, the fact is the market wasn’t working

because they didn’t have to deal with all the costs.

Mr. GRUMBLES. Congressman, I can tell you the U.S. EPA very

much agrees with you that there are needs, there are important

situations where interstate, in particular, where we should be involved, and on this precise issue we were asked and we are participating heavily in facilitating discussions between an upstream

State and a downstream State over coal-bed methane and the management of produced waters which may be very salty and have an

adverse impact in some situations on the plants and the wildlife.

Mr. SHAYS. Right. Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Mr. ISSA [presiding]. The gentleman from Utah, Mr. Cannon, for

5 minutes.

Mr. CANNON. Thank you, Mr. Issa. I approve of your positioning

on the panel today. Short-term, unfortunately, but maybe not different long-term.

I want to thank the chairman in his absence for holding the

hearing. I think it has been informative. Certainly we have had

some victims here today that have had some very serious problems,

and we are concerned about those things, but never in the history

of the world have so many people lived so well and avoided the brutal effects of nature as we have in America today. The really nice

thing about where we are and why this hearing is so important is

that if we do it right here, everybody else gets the benefit. If we

solve a disease in America, we can solve that disease for people

worldwide at a very, very low cost. So nothing pollutes like poverty,

and what we are doing here I think is remarkably important.

In fact, I would like to associate myself with Mr. Shays’ comments. We talked about balancing and being self-sufficient in energy, and his views about new technology and efficiency and alternative resources, these are all very important things that we have

to decide as a group. We can’t do that on the basis of victims. That

is very important that we identify the problem based on victims.

How we solve those problems I think are exceedingly important.

In that context, I have a few questions I would like to ask Mr.

Grumbles.

You mentioned that environmental groups have challenged

EPA’s rule regarding stormwater. Is there any group who has testified at the hearing today that is involved in litigation?

Mr. GRUMBLES. I believe so.

Mr. CANNON. Do you know which groups?

Mr. GRUMBLES. I believe NRDC has challenged the July 2006

rule that we issued interpreting the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Mr. CANNON. So is this hearing a way to advance their discovery

process?

Mr. GRUMBLES. It certainly advances the issue, and the issue is

whether some are supportive or opposed to the language in the

statute and how EPA has interpreted it.

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Mr. CANNON. Thank you. We actually have used this. In fact, we

had a hearing of this committee that was directed they plaintiffs’

attorneys in another matter, and I suspect that actually distorts

our processes here.

Your testimony on page 8 regarding stormwater permits, you

refer to EPA’s concern for sediment and erosion control, and that

you encourage oil and gas operators, in the absence of requiring

permits, to use best management practices to minimize these impacts; is that accurate?

Mr. GRUMBLES. That is accurate.

Mr. CANNON. Could you describe why for us?

Mr. GRUMBLES. Well, we think that it is very important to recognize that there can be adverse environmental impacts. We know

that there can be adverse environmental impacts when sediment

and erosion are not controlled at constructionsites, and so we have

been working with our State partners and with oil and gas industry to advance their RAPPS, their reasonable and prudent measures. And after Congress acted and took away the regulatory tool

under the Clean Water Act for construction runoff at oil and gas

facilities, we felt it important to faithfully implement that provision, but also to encourage the continued development of best management practices, even if it is not under a Federal Clean Water

Act permitting program.

And we also made clear, Congressman—I hope we made clear—

that if States choose to use authorities—for instance, Colorado,

which was very interested in regulating and requiring permits for

constructionsite runoff—that our July 2006 rule would not preempt

them from doing that; that they could do that.

But the key is best management practices and taking steps to reduce the sediment and erosion.

Mr. CANNON. And underlying all of this I think is the recognition

of a distinction between what happens on a large constructionsite

like a sub-development or subdivision being put in, and what happens on a relatively small site when a company drills.

Mr. GRUMBLES. Yes, sir.

Mr. CANNON. That yes, sir means there is a huge difference, a

vast, huge difference?

Mr. GRUMBLES. It is an excellent question to point out that a

one-size-fits-all approach is not the most sustainable and effective

way to get environmental results.

Mr. CANNON. Thank you.

Mr. Anderson, has it been your experience that groups who oppose the expansion of oil and gas recovery have used NEPA review

processes to hold up or stall BLM decisionmaking?

Mr. ANDERSON. Repeat that again, please?

Mr. CANNON. Sometimes I speak too fast. I apologize.

Have people who oppose oil and gas recovery used NEPA to stall

the BLM processes, slow it down?

Mr. ANDERSON. We have quarterly sales where we issue leases,

and quite frequently, especially in Utah, we have protests.

Mr. CANNON. I feel that pain in Utah particularly.

Mr. ANDERSON. We do have protests appealing our decisions to

lease, and even protests about issuing our applications to drill once

they come in. So yes, we do. We do have quite a few protests.

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Mr. CANNON. Time, of course, is money. These delay tactics, are

they significant or influential in decisions by drillers as they decide

where to invest their drilling capital?

Mr. ANDERSON. I would say yes. They are significant.

Mr. CANNON. I’m sorry. That was like an obvious question, but

the point I think ought to be well taken that a lot of what is going

on here is about dissuading people from developing oil and gas. Of

course, that would mean that we like people living in poverty and

without the basic energy needs that make our lives so good, but

that is my comment and not yours. Thank you very much for that.

How long does it take for your Agency to perform a traditional

NEPA analysis before moving forward on an application for permit

to drill [APD]?

Mr. ANDERSON. It is varied. The Energy Policy Act thought we

could do the job in 30 days. That is assuming that NEPA has already been taken care of. However, that is not the case. We do

NEPA on our applications to drill. I think our average is up somewhere around 150 days.

Mr. CANNON. Has the categorical exemption under the 2005

EPAC regarding redundant NEPA analysis saved your organization time and resources?

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes.

Mr. CANNON. Has it meant more drilling?

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes.

Mr. CANNON. Good. I don’t want my predispositions to be disguised here.

Just one final question. What kinds of activities are BLM employees able to undertake now, since being freed up from conducting these redundant NEPA analyses?

Mr. ANDERSON. We are able to do more inspections out on the

land. We have responsibility to inspect our applications or our drilling permits that have been approved, so we have natural resource

specialists out on the ground more frequently. We can address

more of the demand placed on us for more APDs, or applications

for permit to drill.

Mr. CANNON. So you get to do your job better? People often call

these America’s lands. I actually think of them as Utah’s or Colorado’s lands, and I think that is the obligation that the law puts

on us.

Mr. SHAYS. Objection.

Mr. CANNON. Good friends can disagree. But we do agree on the

fact that currently they are public and that we have responsibility

for their good stewardship and management.

My mother-in-law lives on the edge of the fires in southern California. My wife went down to help out after the fires. These are

terrible problems that we need to minimize through appropriate

management of our public lands. I appreciate the fact that you are

able to do that better.

I think my time expired some time ago, Mr. Chairman. Thank

you for your indulgence. I yield back.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you. I thought it was only fair that I give you

the benefit of the doubt.

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The Chair seeing no more questions, I would ask unanimous consent that those who are not here be allowed to submit questions

for the record.

Would you both agree to answer those questions for the record?

They would come within 5 legislative days.

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes.

Mr. GRUMBLES. Yes.

Mr. ISSA. OK. Seeing no one else, we stand adjourned. I thank

you.

[Whereupon, at 1 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

[The prepared statement of Hon. Diane E. Watson and additional

information submitted for the hearing record follow:]

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