04/28/11 11:17am

Article By: Amy Mall

According to news reports, yesterday at a conference in Washington, D.C., Gene Sperling, Director of the White House National Economic Council, called for "common-sense regulation that builds the public trust that fracking does not put at risk clean or safe drinking water....." NRDC thinks common sense regulations are federal regulations that provide national standards for protecting drinking water wherever hydraulic fracturing takes place, with the opportunity for states to design their own programs and be the primarly regulators.

At the same conference, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson stated that her agency will soon be clarifying its rules for regulating fracking when diesel fuel is used in the fracking process.  As I reported last year, companies have been using diesel in hydraulic fracturing without reporting it to the EPA or getting the necessary permits.

Meanwhile, in Arkansas, a former natural gas company executive has called on the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission to halt all hydraulic fracturing of natural gas wells near lakes, rivers and streams --based on the dangerous blowout of a well in Pennsylvania. A "time-out" is being imposed in locations around the world by government officials who see that there are too many unknowns to assure safe operations.

 

This post originally appeared on NRDC's staff blog Switchboard.

 

 

 

 

Amy Mall is senior policy analyst at Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Read her blog at http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/amall/.