New Fracking Disclosure Requirement (Sort Of)

“New Proposal on Fracking Gives Ground to Industry” reads the New York Times headline.

Apparently the Obama administration gave a lot of ground.

Although the measure will, for the first time, make a federal requirement to disclose the chemicals used in fracking, those chemicals can be disclosed after the fracking has been completed. As originally proposed, the regulation would have required oil and gas companies to disclose the chemicals and solutions 30 days before they started the process of fracking.

If this original regulation had gone forward, we would have been able to see what they were planning on pumping into the cracks and crevices of the rocks that lie thousands of feet below us, and we could have ascertained the risks posed to our groundwater and health as we reviewed the chemicals and mixtures used in fracking. If we found carcinogens or poisons, we would have been able to raise our objections and have the energy company change the fracking constituents or possibly halt the process altogether.

            But with the “significant concessions” they can go ahead and frack away, using whatever chemicals they please, and they only have to tell us what’s in their fracking solutions after those chemicals are in the ground. Does this make any sense? Have you ever heard of anything else working this way? Your city council looking at the design for a community redevelopment after they have approved it? Learning the name of your wife after you’ve married her?

            With industry being so powerful we wind up with legislation that seems like it was written in Bizarro Land and that in reality doesn’t do a whole lot of good.