DISH -- The Environmental Protection Agency is continuing to devote resources to dealing with concerns over air pollution problems related to natural gas drilling in the Barnett Shale, although progress is slow, the agency's regional chief said Monday night.
More than 15,000 gas wells have been drilled in the last decade in 17 counties. The oil and gas industry says the environmental impact is minimal, but residents have complained about everything from truck traffic to air and water pollution.
"I don't have a way-of-life act I can enforce," EPA Regional Administrator Al Armendariz said. "At the same time, the EPA is not toothless."
Armendariz said he is bringing the head of the EPA's enforcement division to North Texas for a tour.
Meanwhile, the EPA is writing rules on toxic fumes released from oil and gas production in response to an environmental group's lawsuit last year.
One option might be a federal rule requiring setbacks between industrial plants and residential areas. The EPA doesn't have specific authority to enforce such a setback, but it could require one as a way to mitigate the cumulative effect of gas drilling in areas that have other types of pollution, Armendariz said.
He said he is also working with industry groups to get a better inventory of the equipment that might release pollution. Armendariz met with a group of about 100 industry officials recently. "I made it clear to them: We can either do it cooperatively ... or we can do it through legal means," he said.
The EPA's headquarters in Washington is also studying the effects on drinking water of hydraulic fracturing, the technology that made it feasible to extract gas from the Barnett Shale. Armendariz said the study will likely include not just hydraulic fracturing but also the disposal of tainted water from the fracturing process.
"I would be very surprised if Dish and the Barnett Shale in general isn't going to be part of that study," he said.
Dish, a town of a little fewer than 200 people, sits next to a complex of compressor stations and pipelines. The town paid for tests last fall that found high levels of cancer-causing chemicals in the air.
The results were serious enough that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the sta
te agency involved in air pollution, stepped in.
See full story here:
http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/05/10/2178647/epa-still-working-on-barnett-shale.html
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