The decision to return almost $600,000 worth of grant money intended for water studies back to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is bewildering and could directly impact the wetlands and streams of North Carolina should fracking occur.
The EPA awarded the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources two grants totaling almost $600,000 in June. One of the grants specifically allocated $222,595 to test the water from wetlands and streams where hydraulic fracturing will probably take place.
By giving the money back, the DENR has ostensibly decided that these tests are not in the best interest of the state’s wetlands — a notion that must be considered carefully and with a shrewd eye.
Tom Reeder, the director of the Division of Water Resources, has said that the money was returned because the funded studies would have been completed too far in advance of the drilling to be useful. He also said that the scope of the studies would have covered too wide of an area.
Neither of these reasons seems to hold water. The grant was awarded to the state, and the state has the ability to modify the parameters on the study as it sees fit, in order to ensure its effectiveness.
Neither reason provides enough of a basis to explain sending hundreds of thousands of dollars back to the federal government. This move is all the more questionable since the DENR has seen its funding cut significantly since McCrory has been in office.
Reeder has said that the study will still get done.
But without this injection of funds, the study could suffer, lessening our understanding of the impacts fracking will have on the environment.
Fracking has not been in practice long enough to deserve a pass on using studies funded by the EPA.
