Tag Archives: loopholes

•Oil and gas companies are exempt from the Safe Water Drinking Act. (It wasn’t always that way—thank the 2005 Energy Policy Act, passed under Bush and now known as the Halliburton Loophole.)
•Waste related to oil and gas exploration and production is exempt from the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. (So there are no regulations on its disposal, meaning it can be handled in any way a company pleases, from being injected into the ground—regardless of its proximity to water supplies, animal habitats, etc.—to just being left on the land.)
•Because of loopholes in the Clean Air Act, oil and gas wells are not subject to restrictions on hazardous air pollutants. Garfield County, Colorado, for example, a site where a lot of fracking has taken place, has shown elevated levels of several hazardous air pollutants. Continue reading →