As Trump vows to boost drilling, fracking foes turn to court
Janet McIntyre has heard President-elect Donald Trump praise fracking and the jobs its created. Shes living the other side of the story.
For six years, the western Pennsylvania woman and dozens of her neighbors have blamed their tainted groundwater -- turned foamy, foul-smelling and undrinkable -- on a drilling technique that slams sand, water and chemicals underground at high pressure to unlock oil and natural gas caught in the shale below.
Now McIntyre and others on the front lines of the fracking debate are getting support from an Environmental Protection Agency report, released Tuesday, that says drilling can harm groundwater. The report, quickly denounced by the industry, comes as Trumps naming of a fossil-fuel champion to lead the EPA has activists despairing. Theyre vowing to turn to the states and the courts to fight a technology they blame for water pollution, earthquakes and climate-warming methane emissions.
For drillers, Trump is a hero, unchaining an overregulated industry. To anti-fracking activists, he is the absolute nightmare," said Karen Feridun, a co-founder of the group Pennsylvanians Against Fracking. A lot of people are depressed. They know we have our work cut out for us."
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