Okay, in general terms this story isn't news...at least not to us. What
is news, I think, is that this is a page A1 story, above the fold, titled as I've indicated above. Lots of good stuff about Cheney's shady energy commission, the many ways he's favored his former company and how he goes to the shopping mall at lunchtime and stalks mothers with strollers so he can snatch and gobble up their infants as Mom waits in line for a corn dog.
...Unless that last bit's a ploy to keep you reading.
By Tom Hamburger and Alan C. Miller, Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON -- Over the last four years, the Bush administration and Vice President Dick Cheney's office have backed a series of measures favoring a drilling technique developed by Halliburton Co., Cheney's former employer.
The technology, known as hydraulic fracturing, boosts gas and oil production and generates $1.5 billion a year for the company, about one-fifth of its energy-related revenue. In recent years, Halliburton and other oil and gas firms have been fighting efforts to regulate the procedure under a statute that protects drinking water supplies.
The 2001 national energy policy report, written under the direction of the vice president's office, cited the value of hydraulic fracturing but didn't mention concerns raised by staff members at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Since then, the administration has taken steps to keep the practice from being regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act, which Halliburton has said would hurt its business and add needless costs and bureaucratic delays.
In June, the EPA found that hydraulic fracturing doesn't threaten drinking water but the judgement has been criticized by EPA employees internally before the results were released and publicly since. In fact:
One of them, an environmental engineer and 30-year EPA veteran in Denver, last week sought whistle-blower protection in an 18-page statement sent to the agency's inspector general and members of Congress. The statement alleges that the study's findings were premature, may endanger public health and were approved by an industry-dominated review panel that included a current Halliburton employee.
This technique, incidentally, involves injecting substances (water, sand, ceramic, sometimes benign food additives, sometimes toxic chemicals) into the ground under enormous pressure in order to crack open coal beds or bedrock so that methane or oil may be released.
On to Cheney's Energy Task Force:
To the surprise of some of those involved in the effort, the Cabinet-level panel...would consider a narrower topic of importance to Cheney when he headed Halliburton: hydraulic fracturing.
Cheney has cited executive privilege to keep task force deliberations secret. But interviews and records obtained by The Times show that Cheney's office was involved in discussions about how fracturing should be portrayed in the report, and that it resisted EPA attempts to include concerns about its effects on the environment.
The Energy Department drafted language for the task force that described hydraulic fracturing as essential to increasing domestic gas production and that asserted that production would be hurt by regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Documents obtained by The Times show that in the spring of 2001, EPA officials corresponded with the vice president's office at least three times requesting modifications in the proposed language. The EPA specifically asked that the report note that the EPA was studying potential environmental consequences of the technique.
It should go without saying that Cheney's group ignored the suggestion that cautionary language be included.
During the next three years, the administration supported a regulatory exemption for the practice on Capitol Hill and at the EPA.
Cheney participated in House-Senate conference committee negotiations last year that produced a sweeping national energy bill with a provision that would exempt fracturing from EPA drinking water regulation. Bush and Cheney immediately endorsed the energy bill.
In June, the EPA released its long-awaited study which states in part that "injection of hydraulic fracturing fluids into coal bed methane wells poses little or no threat" to drinking water supplies and "does not justify additional study at this time."
Read the whole article to discover what the EPA report doesn't say -- what Cheney had buried -- and why this man...
...Geoffrey D. Thyne, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines who has done consulting work for energy companies and local governments, said fracturing is generally safe but needs to be monitored, particularly in areas where oil and gas deposits are close to water supplies. Exempting fracturing from EPA regulation "is premature, unwise and goes against the public interest."
Then go watch my goofy little Bush flick, "The Preznit Answers a Question."