Groups to Obama: Use ‘any legal means’ to halt fracking

A coalition of environmental groups is pressing President Obama to use every tool at his disposal to halt the controversial natural-gas extraction method known as “hydraulic fracturing.”

The groups’ goal is far beyond the administration’s current posture, which supports expanded gas development while studying hydraulic fracturing through separate Energy Department and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) efforts.

But the green groups’ letter to Obama Monday nonetheless signals that activists will continue to publicly pressure the White House on the matter.

“On behalf of Americans who live in every U.S. state and territory, we urge that you employ any legal means to put a halt to hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’), a highly controversial and dangerous method of ‘natural’ gas exploration, until and unless the environmental and health impacts of this process are well understood and the public is adequately protected,” states the Monday letter from the Center for Biological Diversity, Public Citizen, Greenpeace and other national and regional groups.

The letter says current EPA and Energy Department efforts are inadequate to address the practice, which green groups say will lead to widespread drinking-water contamination.

The natural-gas industry calls allegations of contamination inaccurate and says drillers are using necessary safeguards when employing the practice, which involves high-pressure injections of chemicals, water and sand to break apart rock formations and enable trapped gas to flow.

The letter comes several days after a separate environmental group coalition formally petitioned EPA to force new testing of fracking chemicals and other steps under the Toxic Substances Control Act.

Click here to read the new letter to the White House.

Update: The pro-fracking industry group Energy in Depth has posted a detailed rebuttal to the letter, alleging that facts are "painfully absent" from the green groups' claims.

This post was updated at 1:41 p.m.