"with proper safeguards in place fracking operations pose no threat to local air quality"

[Agony]

so says the industry... http://www.energyfromshale.org/environment/air-quality-concerns

and here is the reality...

http://eagleford.publicintegrity.org

For the past eight months, the Center for Public Integrity, InsideClimate News and The Weather Channel have examined what Texas, the nation’s biggest oil producer, has done to protect people in the Eagle Ford from the industry’s pollutants. What's happening in the Eagle Ford is important not only for Texas, but also for Pennsylvania, Colorado, North Dakota and other states where horizontal drilling and high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, have made it profitable to extract oil and gas from deeply buried shale.

Our investigation and records obtained from Texas regulatory agencies reveal a system that does more to protect the industry than the public. Among the findings:

Texas’ air monitoring system is so flawed that the state knows almost nothing about the extent of the pollution in the Eagle Ford. Only five permanent air monitors are installed in the 20,000-square-mile region, and all are at the fringes of the shale play, far from the heavy drilling areas where emissions are highest.
...
Thousands of oil and gas facilities, including six of the nine production sites near the Buehrings’ house, are allowed to self-audit their emissions without reporting them to the state. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), which regulates most air emissions, doesn’t even know some of these facilities exist. An internal agency document acknowledges that the rule allowing this practice “[c]annot be proven to be protective.”

Companies that break the law are rarely fined. Of the 284 oil and gas industry-related complaints filed with the TCEQ by Eagle Ford residents between Jan. 1, 2010, and Nov. 19, 2013 , only two resulted in fines despite 164 documented violations. The largest was just $14,250. (Pending enforcement actions could lead to six more fines.)

etc

Leaving me to wonder why President Obama would possibly think that the industry talking point is appropriate to use in his SOTU speech... “One of the reasons why is natural gas – if extracted safely, it’s the bridge fuel that can power our economy with less of the carbon pollution that causes climate change.”

if only, it could be done safely... doesn't strike me as leadership.

[KT2000]

1. make them prove it

demand air monitors

[Art_from_Ark]

2. Gee, ain't that great

What about WATER quality?