Public Health Issues / Toxics

The purpose of the Oil and Gas Accountability Project's public health issues and toxics work is to protect citizens, wildlife and livestock from the threats of unregulated hazardous and toxic oil and gas wastes released around the nation.

The oil and gas industry has extracted from Congress, state and tribal governments numerous exemptions and subsidies that favor large corporations and release them from liability for the devastating impacts of their development. For example, oil and gas waste is not included in key federal pollution laws such as the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the Community Right to Know Act and the Clean Air Act.

In areas where oil and gas development is prevalent, the ground and surface water is polluted. Citizens commonly report that their drinking water wells are contaminated from drilling activities. Ranchers describe how their cattle are dying from drinking out of oil and gas production pits. These pits store toxic, hazardous and carcinogenic production fluids in open, unfenced and unlined holes. These pits are common in oil and gas fields; energy companies typically just bulldoze them under when their well development is complete.

Exploration and production activities also generate unknown amounts of hazardous and toxic wastes that seep into water resources. No company or agency tracks how and where these waste streams travel and what impacts they have on people, animals, and soil and water quality. Emissions from compressor stations, handling facilities and oil and gas fields remain unrecorded by the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), a critical tool in our public right-to-know policies, even though TRI covers the distribution side of oil and gas products. Today, approximately one million operating and abandoned wells dot the landscape across the United States. Despite the volumes of toxic and hazardous waste generated by the oil and gas industry and the health and environmental risks this waste presents, energy corporations, with the strong support of the Bush Administration, are planning to develop tens of thousands of new wells in the next decade.

Resources:

• Oil and Gas Wastes
  • Oil & Gas Wastes Fact Sheet  
• Waste Disposal Issues
  • Pits (Why worry about pits; what are some alternatives to pits; what is the pit situation in New Mexico)
• Hydraulic Fracturing
  • Hydraulic Fracturing Fact Sheet  
  • Expert testimony on Hydraulic Fracturing Impacts by John D. Bredehoeft, 15 May 2003
  • OGAP-led coalition's 8 October 2002 comments on Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) draft study report Evaluation of Impacts to Underground Sources of Drinking Water by Hydraulic Fracturing of Coalbed Methane Reservoirs. 
  • Hydraulic Fracturing of Coalbed Methane Wells: A Threat to Drinking Water (Prepared by the Natural Resources Defense Council, January 2002)

This page last modified on 08 October 2004 . © 2003-2004, The Oil & Gas Accountability Project and Naked Essence Web Designs.