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21st Century Muckrakerswith examining the processes.Employees of the oil and gas industryoffered seemingly simple answersto the possibility that drilling poseda threat. The quantity of the chemicalsthey used is too small to havean impact, and it is diluted in vastamounts of water, they said. Thosefluids can’t leak underground fromone geologic layer to another becausethe layers of rock provide a watertightseal. Occasional accidents have beenstatistical anomalies. Because of thesefactors, it wasn’t necessary to divulgethe exact recipes used in the fracturingfluids—the process was alreadyproven safe. In fact, they repeatedoften, even though more than a millionwells had been drilled, there hadnever been a single instance anywherein the United States where hydraulicfracturing had been proven to resultin contaminated water.On the other hand there wereshrill environmentalists who claimedthe fluids were highly toxic and whopainted a conspiratorial picture of apowerful industry that had lobbiedthe federal government to pass lawsthat would allow them to look theother way as a burgeoning gas drillingindustry spread quickly across theUnited States.I was tasked with finding my waythrough this minefield of statementsand passionate opinions and discoveringthe truth, along the way striving toanswer questions that sprung up farfaster than they could be answered:• If the fracturing process does notharm water, then why was a waterrelatedexemption sought from thefederal government?• If chemicals could not move underground,then why wouldn’t theindustry release the names—evenconfidentially—to scientists tryingto test water and measure environmentalchange?• What scientific research justified theoil and gas industry earning legalprivileges that are not afforded tothe mining, auto, coal or agricultureindustries?• Most importantly, was it true thatA graphic display of hydraulic fracturing. Graphic by Al Granberg.hydraulic fracturing had never contaminatedwater?These are the kinds of questionsthat take time, travel and funding toanswer.Science and SourcesFirst I began to review spill records,which are not kept in many of the 32states that permit oil and gas drillingbut are substantially documented inboth New Mexico and Colorado. ThenI poured through more scientific literature,including several EPA studiesthat addressed hydraulic fracturingand wastewater—finding critical warningsburied hundreds of pages deepin otherwise boring reports. Finally,I traveled to the quiet rural townsacross the Rockies where drilling washappening most, talked with ranchersand landowners about their experienceswith nearby drilling and heardunpublicized tales about when thingshad gone very wrong.The assertion that fracturing hadnever harmed a water supply, I quicklycame to understand, was based ona narrow interpretation that literallymeant that the actual action ofpumping fluids into the ground underpressure had not been proven to havedirectly resulted in an explosion orother accident that happened duringthat actual pumping process. Itexcluded everything else having to dowith the fracturing process, includingthe mixing of chemicals, their transport,and their disposal.But since this process brings alarge quantity of chemicals to a siteand creates substantial waste stream,I quickly found that if you look beyondthe actual drill bits turning andpumping underground and includeaccidents happening on the surface,there was a sizeable impact.In order to learn more, I focused ona handful of incidents—about a dozento start with—in which the contaminationwas more than an allegation andhad been thoroughly documented bystate inspectors or been written aboutin a published official report of some64 Nieman Reports | Summer 2009