Aug. 28, 2015 -- Today, the American Water Works Association (AWWA) submitted comments on the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) draft study of hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas and its potential impact on drinking water resources (see: "New EPA report examines potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on water resources").
The study, which has been in development at the request of Congress for several years, focuses on five aspects of the interaction between hydraulic fracturing and drinking water resources: water acquisition, chemical mixing, well injection, flowback and produced water, and wastewater treatment and waste disposal.
AWWA's comments focus on asking EPA to take a long-term, forward-thinking approach to the potential impacts by more thoroughly evaluating the potential impacts of well-casing degradation and other issues that may occur years or decades in the future, in addition to the primarily retrospective data analysis used in much of the study.
Additionally, AWWA identifies several topics for future research that EPA could identify as current research gaps and prioritize for future studies.
See also:
"Hydraulic fracturing water treatment market still worth $1.9B, research finds"
"New USGS publications unveil historical hydraulic fracturing trends and data"
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