EPA Plans to Allow Unlimited Dumping of Fracking Wastewater in the Gulf of Mexico

Wastewater injection is an entirely different process that’s used for disposing of waste fluids from a number of industrial activities, a number of which are unrelated to energy development.

In the 1998 reissuance, EPA Region 6 authorized new discharges of seawater and freshwater to which treatment chemicals, such as biocides and corrosion inhibitors, have been added. The maximum discharge rate limit for produced water was removed and the critical dilutions required to be met for the produced water toxicity limit were updated based on the new discharge rates and more current models. To account for advances in drilling fluid technology, the permit was modified on December 18, 2001 (66 FR 65209), to authorize discharges associated with the use of synthetic based drilling fluids.

Section 301(a) of the Clean Water Act (CWA or the Act), 33 USC 1311(a), renders it unlawful to discharge pollutants to waters of the United States in the absence of authorizing permits.

the group estimates companies in 2014 were allowed to release more than 76 billion gallons of waste fluid into the ocean based on an analysis of federal wastewater discharge permits.

Oil companies were also allowed to dump about 76 billion gallons of waste fluid into Gulf waters in 2014.

“The Obama administration is essentially letting oil companies frack at will in Gulf ecosystems and dump billions of gallons of oil waste into coastal waters,” said Kristen Monsell, a Center attorney. “Every offshore frack increases the risk to wildlife and coastal communities, yet federal officials have been just rubber-stamping this toxic practice in the Gulf of Mexico for years.”

Application for Permit to Modify (APM)

Defendant has failed to meet continuing nondiscretionary duties under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) to review and revise regulations and guidelines to keep up with this growing source of wastes and the threats these wastes pose to human health and the environment

 "The Obama administration is essentially letting oil companies frack at will in Gulf ecosystems and dump billions of gallons of oil waste into coastal waters," said Kristen Monsell, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, in an online statement.

Federal regulators quietly gave the green light to more than 1,200 oil company fracking operations s in the Gulf of Mexico between 2010 and 2014, according to documents environmentalists obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

In February 2014 we petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to ban the discharge of fracking fluids into the ocean and to strengthen ocean discharge criteria — at a time when oil companies were allowed to dump up to 9 billion gallons of wastewater, including fracking chemicals, into the ocean off California every year. In 2015, the Center sued the Obama administration for failing to disclose the extent of offshore fracking in the Gulf of Mexico.   In January 2016 the Center settled a lawsuit with the Obama administration requiring a halt to offshore fracking in federal waters off California pending the Department of the Interior’s completion of a final environmental review. Unfortunately just three weeks after our settlement, Interior released a draft review that fails to adequately analyze offshore fracking’s impacts on water and air pollution, as well as on the risk of earthquakes, accidents and toxic spills. In fact, the document proposes to let oil companies resume fracking off California’s coast — and even to go back to dumping fracking chemicals, mixed with wastewater, into the ocean.

 The Environmental Protection Agency recently announced a new permit condition that requires oil companies to maintain an inventory of the chemicals used in offshore fracking activities and in doing so has placed new, higher limits on the amount of offshore fracking wastewater that can be dumped under the Clean Water Act, the Center for Biological Diversity warned in a Sept. 17 letter.

Lee Fuller, executive vice president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said liquids such as fracking fluid shouldn’t even be part of this discussion. He said that’s regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The lawsuit – filed Wednesday in federal court in Washington, D.C.

The report, titled "Dirty Water," also alleges that discharge and drilling permits were being rubber stamped in California's Santa Barbara Channel using generic, outdated environmental reviews and without stringent enough testing of overboard water.

The Environmental Impact Statement for offshore drilling in the central Gulf of Mexico calls fracking "small scale by comparison" with the onshore version.

Under the EPA's current and draft permits

Regulators and the fossil fuel industry say offshore fracking operations have a good safety record

In a letter sent to EPA officials last week, attorneys for the Center for Biological Diversity warned

"The EPA is endangering an entire ecosystem by allowing the oil industry to dump unlimited amounts of fracking chemicals and drilling waste fluid into the Gulf of Mexico," said Center attorney Kristen Monsell.