fracking
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Two Pennsylvania towns seek public funding for water systems amid claims that gas industry contaminated wells
“Disaster emergency” declarations will allow towns to apply for state and federal help.
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Trump says America’s oil industry is cleaner than other countries’. New data shows massive emissions from Texas wells.
Texas regulators rejected just 53 out of more than 12,000 applications from oil companies looking to burn off natural gas in the study period.
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Credit: Alexandru Nika/Big Stock Photo
Fracking lawsuit in West Virginia alleges toxic exposure sickened children
Families in Wetzel County, W.Va., have sued the gas producer EQT, claiming emissions from nearby fracking operations and a compressor station caused serious health problems for their children.
In short:
- The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania, alleges EQT released volatile organic compounds, including benzene, into the air in Knob Fork.
- Plaintiffs say their children suffered symptoms such as dizziness, nerve pain, and muscle fatigue, prompting them to move away from their homes.
- They seek damages and the creation of a medical monitoring trust, and note the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is investigating EQT’s operations in the state.
Why this matters:
Fracking operations can release a mix of airborne chemicals linked to acute symptoms like headaches and long-term risks such as cancer. In rural communities near drilling and compressor sites, these emissions can drift into homes, schools, and playgrounds, affecting children whose developing bodies are especially vulnerable to toxic exposure. Studies have found that volatile organic compounds, including benzene, can persist in the environment and accumulate in the body, raising public health concerns far beyond the drilling sites.
Learn more: Fracking operations leave West Virginia families in distress
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Activists vow to fight potential rollback of Delaware River fracking ban
Fears that the Trump administration may move to lift the Delaware River Basin’s fracking ban have prompted environmental groups to launch a public pledge to defend the watershed from drilling.
In short:
- The Delaware River Basin Commission banned fracking in 2021, citing risks to drinking water for about 15 million people; activists say new federal and congressional actions threaten that protection.
- A Republican lawmaker from Pennsylvania introduced legislation calling for a federal review of the commission, while the Army Corps of Engineers recently ended federal funding for its climate and equity programs.
- The gas industry argues the ban violates landowners’ rights and ignores decades of regulated shale development, but studies show the region’s drinking water and forests are far more valuable than its gas reserves.
Key quote:
“The value, not just economic but civic and ecological, is many times more than the small amount of gas that’s up there.”
— Jerry Kauffman, director of the University of Delaware’s Water Resources Center
Why this matters:
The Delaware River Basin supplies drinking water to major cities including Philadelphia and Trenton, making it one of the East Coast’s most vital watersheds. Fracking brings high-volume water use, toxic chemical mixtures, and wastewater disposal challenges that have been linked to groundwater and air contamination in other shale regions. Even small leaks can spread across interconnected aquifers and rivers, threatening fish, farms, and downstream communities. Beyond local pollution, expanded gas drilling adds methane to the atmosphere, a potent greenhouse gas that accelerates climate change. The basin’s forests and wetlands also buffer floods and filter pollutants, meaning any degradation could ripple through public health, ecosystems and regional economies for generations.
Related: New fossil-fueled AI boom planned in Pennsylvania raises climate concerns
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Texas court rules oil companies own fracking wastewater, not landowners
A recent Texas Supreme Court ruling gives oil companies full ownership of produced water from drilling operations, a move that may shape future control over wastewater re-use and mineral extraction.
In short:
- The Texas Supreme Court ruled that oil companies holding mineral leases, not landowners, own the chemically contaminated wastewater known as produced water, which comes from oil and gas drilling.
- The case arose after a landowning family leased rights to one company for oil drilling and to another for the wastewater; the court decided produced water is part of the mineral estate and considered waste, not water.
- With new interest in extracting lithium and other minerals from produced water, the ruling clarifies ownership but leaves unresolved who controls valuable non-hydrocarbon elements.
Key quote:
“[P]roduced water is not water. While produced water contains molecules of water, both from injected fluid and subsurface formations, the solution itself is waste — a horse of an entirely different color.”
— Texas Supreme Court
Why this matters:
Fracking generates billions of gallons of toxic wastewater laced with salts, metals and radioactive material. Disposing of it has long been a problem, linked in Texas and elsewhere to groundwater contamination and earthquakes from deep-well injection. But now that companies are eyeing produced water as a resource — for irrigating crops or extracting critical minerals like lithium — questions of ownership carry financial and environmental weight. Who profits from this toxic byproduct may shape how it's managed and whether it's handled safely. The court’s ruling makes clear that mineral rights holders control this waste, but it also opens a Pandora’s box over the environmental oversight and long-term public health implications of reusing or repurposing it.
Related EHN coverage: "No evidence" that fracking can be done without threatening human health: Report
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Colorado kids with leukemia are more than twice as likely to live near dense oil and gas development
A recent study suggests that living near a higher density of oil and gas wells increases childhood cancer risk.
A recent study found that Colorado children who’d been diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia were more than twice as likely to live near dense oil and gas development, including both conventional and fracking wells, than healthy children throughout the state.
Oil and gas wells emit chemicals that have been linked to increased risk for this type of leukemia — the most common form of childhood cancer — including benzene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, among others.
Previous research in Colorado and Pennsylvania, which are among the top 10 energy-producing states in the country, have also linked living near oil and gas wells with higher risk for childhood leukemia, but this is the first to assess whether the density of wells and the volume of oil and gas being produced leads to greater risk.
The new study, published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, looked at medical records for more than 3,000 children born in Colorado between 1992 and 2019. The researchers found that children who were diagnosed with leukemia between the ages of two and nine were more than twice as likely to live within five kilometers — about three miles — of dense oil and gas development compared to healthy children. The study also found that Children who’d been diagnosed with leukemia during this time period were between 1.4 and 2.64 times more likely to live within 13 kilometers (about eight miles) of dense oil and gas development.
“Considering the density of oil and gas development is really important,” Lisa McKenzie, lead author of the study and associate professor of environmental and occupational health at the Colorado School of Public Health, told EHN. “If you were in the unusual situation of having just one oil and gas well within a kilometer of your home, that might not have increased your child’s risk for leukemia. However, we found that if you had lots and lots of wells within 13 kilometers [about eight miles] of your home, that did increase the risk for childhood leukemia.”
The study included 451 children with leukemia and 2,706 healthy children, and considered the density of oil and gas development near their homes starting at the time their mothers conceived them through the time of their diagnosis (or a similar time frame for healthy children). The researchers assessed the density of oil and gas production by looking at the number of wells present, how close they were to a child’s home, the number of new wells being drilled, and how much oil and gas was being produced at various times within three, five, and 13 kilometers of their homes.
“Children living near the densest areas of oil and gas development had the highest risk increase,” McKenzie said, “but we also found that children with leukemia were much more likely to be living within three or five kilometers of any oil and gas wells than children without leukemia.”
The researchers controlled for other childhood cancer risk factors including other sources of pollution around the home, UV exposure, distance to the nearest highway, the mothers’ ages, and the child’s biological sex and birth weight.
“This study has numerous strengths,” Cassandra Clark, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota's Division of Pediatric Epidemiology and Clinical Research, told EHN. Clark, who was not involved in the study but co-authored a 2022 paper on childhood cancer risk and fracking in Pennsylvania that made similar findings, said this study’s strengths include using a larger sample size than previous research, controlling for other childhood cancer risks, and focusing on the age range where childhood leukemia incidence is highest.
“We have now seen three high-quality case-control studies documenting increased pediatric leukemia risk associated with proximity to oil and gas development, and the effects observed are relatively consistent across studies,” Clark said, adding that there’s now enough research on this for policymakers to “develop health-protective policies for oil and gas development.”
In 2020, Colorado legislators increased the state’s setback distances — the minimum distance between new fracking wells and homes, schools, hospitals, and businesses — from 500 feet from homes and 1,000 feet for high-occupancy buildings like schools, to 2,000 feet (a little more than half a kilometer) from all schools and homes. Those distances are among the most health-protective in the country.
In Pennsylvania, for example, the setback distance is 500 feet (about 0.15 kilometers) for any occupied building, but this can be waived by property owners, and some facilities operate within 300 feet of residential buildings. Public health experts have warned that these distances are not great enough to protect public health, but efforts to expand setback distances in the state have repeatedly been shot down by Pennsylvania lawmakers.
“Our research suggests that just increasing setback distances isn’t enough,” McKenzie said. “Current setback laws only consider where one new well is going. I would really encourage policymakers to consider the cumulative impacts of everything going on around homes or in areas where new oil and gas development is going to protect vulnerable populations like young children.”
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New Mexico wrestles with risks and costs of reusing fracking wastewater
New Mexico lawmakers are weighing whether to treat and reuse toxic fracking wastewater as the state faces worsening drought, but environmental groups warn that current technology can't guarantee public safety.
In short:
- In 2024, a fracking wastewater geyser erupted in Toyah, Texas, highlighting the dangers of orphaned wells and the growing challenge of managing "produced water" across the Permian Basin.
- New Mexico has considered treating this wastewater for off-field uses like data center cooling, but environmental groups argue the chemical mix is too complex and poorly regulated to ensure safe reuse.
- A 2025 proposal to fund produced water treatment was scaled back and ultimately blocked, amid protests, cost concerns, and unresolved questions about long-term health risks.
Key quote:
“It should be the industry’s responsibility to clean up that produced water.”
— Rachel Conn, deputy director of water conservation organization Amigos Bravos
Why this matters:
Fracking wastewater poses serious environmental and health risks, especially in arid states like New Mexico where water scarcity makes unconventional reuse proposals more tempting. This wastewater often contains radioactive substances, heavy metals, and trade-secret chemicals that evade regulation. Even advanced treatment can’t fully remove all contaminants, and some may not be detectable with current tests. If reused water enters the environment or groundwater, it could affect ecosystems and public health in ways we don’t yet understand. As fossil fuel production continues and drought intensifies, pressure to repurpose produced water grows — but so do the dangers of rushing into policies that might trade one crisis for another.
Related: Fractured: Harmful chemicals and unknowns haunt Pennsylvanians surrounded by fracking
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