Trump proposes scrapping Obama-era fracking rule on water pollution

The Trump administration has proposed scrapping an Obama-era rule that aimed to ensure fracking for oil and gas does not pollute water supplies.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which is part of the Department of Interior, said on Tuesday that it is moving to scrap the 2015 regulation because it duplicates state rules and “imposes burdensome reporting requirements and other unjustified costs” on the oil and gas industry.

The rule requires that fracking operations on public land are properly constructed so that pollutants do not leak into water supplies. Companies are also obliged to publicly disclose the chemicals in fluids used in fracking, which is a drilling process used to release oil and gas deposits within rock formations.

Despite being finalised two years ago, the fracking rule has never come into force due to a series of court challenges from the fossil fuel industry and several states. The BLM had initially defended the rule but following Donald Trump’s entrance to the White House the agency is now proposing to scrap it.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, said the move showed that the Trump administration’s loyalty lies with “industry and polluters”.

“This administration is sacrificing our public lands and neighboring communities to the oil and gas industry,” said Amy Mall, a senior policy analyst at NRDC.

“While these rules still fall far short of what’s needed to reduce impacts from fracking, they would have provided some much-needed steps to better safeguard drinking water supplies, public health, and the environment.”

According to the BLM, the rule would cost the oil and gas industry at least $32m a year and would be unnecessary as companies are already doing what the regulation requires “either to comply with state law or voluntarily”.

Republicans have largely backed the deregulation of fracking. They say it is not the federal government’s job to impose rules upon the industry.

“I applaud Secretary Zinke and his team for their work in returning the department, its sub-agencies and bureaus to their core statutory functions,” said Rob Bishop, a Utah Republican and chairman of the House natural resources committee. “Taking this job-killing federal regulatory overreach off the books is an important step in this process.”

An analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency last year found that fracking wastewater has “impacted the quality of groundwater and surface water resources in some instances” in the US but that there remains uncertainty over the full consequences due to a lack of information.

The fracking regulation was one of several rules explicitly targeted by Trump in an executive order he signed in March.

The administration has moved aggressively to roll back various environmental safeguards such as curbs on the leaking of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, and the dumping of waste from mining operations into streams.