Congressional Progressive Caucus Discusses Fracking

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Mr. POCAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and we are here today to talk about the issue of fracturing, also known as fracking, and the need to have more regulation on fracking to protect our environment, our groundwater, our air, and the families who live around the over half-million wells that are across the country, and also talk a little bit about global warming.

The Progressive Caucus has been at the forefront of talking about issues that are important to our environment. We have so much to do to stop the effects of global warming that are happening. Climate change is real. It is one of the greatest threats that we have to our country and to our planet. There are increasing CO

2 levels in our atmosphere, and if we continue to leave that unchecked, they carry very dire consequences for the future of the planet.

Rising sea levels, unpredictable and dangerous weather patterns, and drought are all examples of the consequences of failing to take action to address this threat. For generations, those who have come before us have held the ideal that they should leave their descendants with a better life. This is an integral part of our American story.

I joined the Safe Climate Caucus because I believe in leaving a safer environment for future generations of Americans. Stewardship of our environment, of the air we breathe and the water we drink, is essential to this commitment.

That is why I am here today to voice my support for commonsense legislation that will end unnecessary exemptions that protect the oil and gas industry from basic regulations and instead extend protections for our families and communities in all areas that effect global warming. But specifically tonight, we want to talk a little bit about fracturing.

I would like to first yield to a colleague, the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore), a great poet. I think we are going to be entertained and informed through that entertainment.

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Mr. POCAN. I thank Representative Moore for that. Your poetry is always much appreciated not only on this floor, but also in our State of Wisconsin. Thank you for sharing today.

Before I get to fracking, I want to talk about one part of global warming that recently got a little attention back home but serves as a debate when we talk on the floor of Congress. When I spoke before on the floor of Congress about the need to address global warming, one of the things I said, and this is about 6 weeks ago, was that in Wisconsin, ice fishermen are already noticing fewer days they can be out on our ice-covered lakes.

Now, the conservative right in Wisconsin, they decided to have a field day. There was a shock jock in Milwaukee who decided to play up on this. He said, can you imagine in Wisconsin, where this winter we had days that were minus 22 degrees, real temperature, minus 40 and 50 degrees with wind chill, how can we possibly be talking about fewer days of ice coverage. Based on that cold experience, clearly there is no global warming. Now I know that is not a scientist's statement, that is a shock jock, but they went with it and let it roll.

Here is the reality. We are a planet that is warming. And that statement, despite the polar vortex that we experienced in Wisconsin and other parts of the country that gave us some really cold weather, that is exactly what we are talking about, these intense swings in the weather that can produce that.

What was so interesting was when the conservative movement went so hard to say clearly there is no global warming--they are all climate change deniers that were out doing this attack--they decided to approach a group called PolitiFact. Now PolitiFact often takes things that politicians say and decides where the truth is. Sometimes it is in a TV commercial, sometimes it is in a speech. Specifically, they were asked to address that statement that I made, which was, ice fishermen are already noticing fewer days they can be out on our ice-covered lakes.

Here is what they said. First of all, they rated that statement as true, and here is why. They said it is not just about this winter; it is about what has happened over all in winters in Wisconsin. There is a site called climatewisconsin.org that is done by a number of professors and other professionals in the field in Wisconsin. They have been tracking ice coverage on the lakes in Madison, Lake Mendota, and Lake Monona, going back 150 years. And you know what they found?

Overall, the average number of days of ice cover on the Madison lakes has decreased by around 29 to 35 days over the past 150 years.

Not my words; these are scientists with knowledge, people who work specifically in the field who are measuring our lakes. So when people talk about climate change and they want to deny the facts, the science, that over 95 percent of scientists who work in this field clearly have said we have a climate that is changing because we have global warming because of human activity, well, this is just one example where a simple 1-minute speech on the floor talking about climate change became a shock jock's material for weeks to talk about why doesn't Congressman Pocan come home and see the weather.

Well, I get home every chance I can. Every single weekend, I am home in Wisconsin. When we are not here, I am in Wisconsin. Trust me, I would prefer to spend my time in the district talking to the people of the district that I represent. I get back there.

Yes, we had cold days. But to determine everything based on a few cold days, that is not science, that is just rhetoric. And that is exactly what PolitiFact found. That their charges were rhetoric, and we are seeing a serious climate change. And when you actually test 150 years of ice coverage in the State of Wisconsin, we now have 29 to 35 fewer days because of global warming.

So before we start talking about fracturing, I wanted to put that out there because it is all a part of why we are talking about this subject today.

At this point, I would yield to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison), the cochair of the Progressive Caucus.

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Mr. POCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Ellison. I share your concern. I came to Congress as a new Member, thinking that we are going to get some important work done for the country.

I remember, in history class, I believe it was the Congress of 1948 that got so little done that they were dubbed the do-nothing Congress--well, because they did nothing, right? So they get the label. That do-nothing Congress passed 350 bills. That is it.

Our Congress last year passed 62 bills.

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Mr. POCAN. Whether it be the fact that we have discharge petitions now on rasing the minimum wage, so that people can be lifted out of poverty who are working hard every single day, playing by the rules, and just trying to get by; by extending unemployment benefits to the millions of people in the country who have lost those extended benefits--including a gentleman from Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, who was my guest right here in this Chamber for the State of the Union.

He was my guest. He had lost his benefits at the end of December. He was a steamfitter, worked hard all of his life, played by the rules, and because of not extending the emergency benefits, they are in dire financial straits.

His wife wrote me an email. This is how we found out about them. Their daughter wanted to bring a friend over for dinner, and they said: I don't know if we can afford another plate at the table.

They have their home up for sale because they don't want to be foreclosed on. This is the reality of Congress not acting.

Today, we now have a discharge petition on immigration reform, something that will effect millions and millions of people across this country. This Congress is not acting.

What we are going to talk about in just a little bit are 5 bills that effect fracking--fracturing--to make sure that everyone can have cleaner air, cleaner water and that people can actually know what toxins are going in the ground when so many people live so close to these wells across the country.

There is more of an agenda that the Progressive Caucus is working on and that we are trying to put out there. Again, I think, gentlemen, we would be remiss if we didn't talk about, just very briefly, the Progressive Caucus' budget, the better-off budget, to make sure people are better actually investing in infrastructure, to actually invest in research and development, to actually invest in education, and to get people back to work now.

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Mr. POCAN. Thank you, Mr. Ellison, for all your leadership and your cochairing the Progressive Caucus.

One other thing that is in that budget, in addition to growing us out of the economic problems we have had in this country that we have slowly been rebounding out of, we also take away the subsidies to oil and gas companies, which save this country money that we can invest in creating jobs, but also deals directly with the issue at hand, which is the issue of fracking.

What is fracking? It is hydraulic fracturing, or it is called fracking. Is a process of drilling by injecting a fluid, which is a chemical water-sand mix, into the ground, at a very high pressure, in order to fracture shale rocks to release natural gas inside. That is the basic concept behind fracking. There are about a half a million active natural gas wells in the United States right now.

Here is what is involved in the process that I think people don't really realize: Every single gas well requires an average of 400 tanker trucks to carry water and supplies to the site. It takes 1 to 8 million gallons of water to complete each fracturing job.

To run all the active wells in the U.S., that would be 72 trillion--trillion with a t-r--trillion gallons of water and 360 billion gallons of chemicals that are used in this process. The water is brought in, it is mixed with sand in a chemical mix to create a fracturing fluid.

Now, one of the things I think that people don't realize is we don't know what is in that fracturing fluid because the companies say that it is proprietary. If they gave up that information, it is a secret sauce that they put together that allows them to do this; and if they disclose that, somehow, a competitor could find out what it is.

The problem is that also means you and I don't know what those toxic chemicals are. We have an idea, in some cases, what is used, but the exact mix, you don't know in any specific well.

So you have 40,000 gallons of chemicals used per fracturing, with up to 600 chemicals in any fracking fluid, which has known carcinogens and toxins. This fracking fluid has been pressure injected into the ground through a drilled pipeline about 10,000 feet deep.

The mixture reaches the end of the well, where the high pressure causes the nearby shale rock to crack, creating fissures where the natural gas can flow into the wells. Only about 30 or 50 percent of the fracturing fluid is ever recovered. The rest of the toxic mix is left in the ground, and it is not biodegradable.

Also, during this process, methane gas and toxic chemicals leach out of the system and contaminate our nearby groundwater. Methane concentrations are 17 times higher in drinking water wells near fracturing sites than normal wells.

You may remember--I believe Time magazine had it, and I have seen it on TV--where people in Pennsylvania, in some cases, near wells, have turned on their drinking water and a match and lit the drinking water on fire from what has been released into the groundwater from fracking wells.

This contaminated well water is then used for drinking water, like I explained, in these nearby communities, and there have been over a thousand documented cases of water contamination next to areas of gas drilling, as well as cases of sensory, respiratory, and neurological damage due to ingested contaminated water.

In the end, the hydraulic fracking produces about 300,000 barrels of natural gas a day, but the price is numerous environmental, safety, and health hazards that we have to deal with.

I yield time to Mr. Ellison.

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Mr. POCAN. Thank you, Mr. Ellison.

It is not just members of the Progressive Caucus, Democrats, or concerned citizens who live near these wells who are talking about this. There actually was a recent investigation that was done by The Weather Channel, the Center for Public Integrity, and InsideClimate News that found numerous violations on current sites.

At one, they found, for example, that the State of Texas, that they know ``almost nothing'' about the pollution that one of these shale drilling wells causes. They said that thousands of Texas oil and gas facilities are allowed to self-audit their emissions, meaning they don't have to report them to the State. They go on to talk about pollution complaints. They also said in another study in the U.K. and Pennsylvania that they looked at multiple data sets of wells in Pennsylvania to determine the rate of well failures, and they found that one-third of a data set of 3,500 wells were reported for environmental violations between 2008 and 2011.

So, while we have special exemptions in clean water and in clean air laws for this process, we are finding severe violations by groups like The Weather Channel--hardly someone who is biased--who actually look at these facilities. Then when you actually look at the list of chemicals, at some of the known 600 chemicals that go into these mixes, and when you look at the actual effects--the colors--that are on here, you have got chemicals that lead to skin, eye, and sensory organ problems, problems with respiratory, in gastrointestinal, in the brain and nervous systems, the immune systems, with the kidney, cardiovascular and blood, with carcinogens, mutagens, developmental, reproductive, and endocrine disrupters. These are the types of effects that can happen from the chemicals that we are not even allowed to know that are happening.

I think one of the most telling parts of this is that 15.3 million people in this country live within a mile of one of these wells that have been drilled since the year 2000. That is more than the entire State of Michigan. These are people who live near a well who don't have the public information that they need to know for their families' safety.

Members of this caucus, the Progressive Caucus, have worked on five bills that have been kind of called the ``frac pack,'' which address specific concerns that we have on the regulation of this. We are not saying that you are going to stop this completely, but we should know what we are doing, not proceed until you know what you are doing and make sure we provide the clean air, the clean water and the notification requirements so that we actually know what we are doing before we proceed. I would like to go over those bills if I could. I would like to just give you a little idea of some of the bills that are out there.

One bill by Representative Diana DeGette, from the State of Colorado, is called the FRAC Act. That bill would close the so-called ``Halliburton loophole.'' That loophole protects the special sauce recipe of chemicals that they use for this fracturing process. It also protects the companies that drill for natural gas from disclosing those chemicals involved in the fracking operations, which would normally be required by our clean water laws that we have at the Federal level. It has three major provisions:

One, it repeals the exemptions granted to oil, gas, and geothermal fracking operations under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Let's make sure our water is safe as the Safe Drinking Water Act says;

Second, it would make sure that all fracking operations would be required to disclose to the State as well as the public the fracking chemical cocktail intended for use prior to the commencement of any operations--not after your water is set on fire, not after your cows are sick, not after your family has problems, but prior to the use of those chemicals;

Finally, if a medical emergency should arise, any fracking operation would be required to disclose the exact chemical formula of any compounds utilized.

It is a pretty basic set of ideas that would make sure that you have at least information to know.

There are four other bills.

Another bill that is part of the frac pack is the BREATHE Act, introduced by Representative Cartwright from Pennsylvania and Representative Polis from Colorado. It would close the loopholes of the Clean Air Act that currently exempt the oil and gas industry from essential protections from toxic air pollution, as those studies have been proven from the wells they tested in Pennsylvania. The bill would also require that toxic emissions of multiple related smelt sources be aggregated to determine total emissions, just like other industries have to, so they are not exempted in other ways, and it makes sure, with all fracking operations that release pollutants, including benzene, that we have protections in these areas.

Another bill is the CLEANER Act, which has been introduced, again, by Representative Cartwright from Pennsylvania and Representative Jared Huffman from California. This bill would specifically protect the environment and the public health by closing a loophole in the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which currently prevents adequate, consistent regulation of harmful waste associated with oil and natural gas production and, particularly, with fracking, and it has a few other compounds specifically related to that.

The next bill is the FRESHER Act, introduced, again, by Representative Cartwright from Pennsylvania. This would close the loophole in the Clean Water Act, and it would require oil and gas producers to obtain the standard permits necessary for activities that increase storm water runoff and risk water pollution. Treat them like everybody else so that we know what is going on in the process. It also makes oil and gas companies play by the exact same rules that apply to other industries, and it conducts a basic study to further make sure that we understand what they are using.

The final bill that is part of the frac pack is a bill called the SHARED Act, introduced by Jan Schakowsky from the State of Illinois. This bill would provide further protection for public health by requiring water testing before fracking begins, and it would help document any drinking water contamination within a mile's radius of a site operation.

Now, none of these are crazy ideas, saying we are absolutely closing down every operation because we don't like it. It is saying let's make sure they follow the law like any other industry would follow the law when it comes to our clean water and our clean air and that we know what toxic compounds are being put into the groundwater since we know so much of it is left there, especially when you live nearby, like 15.3 million Americans do. Those are simple bills that we have put out there that we are hoping this body will take up, because it is important that we provide those safeguards for the people across the country.

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Mr. POCAN. Again, thank you, Representative Ellison, for all of the work you do with the Progressive Caucus.

This was a Special Order hour tonight to talk about why we need to have safer practices around hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in this country. For the 15.3 million people who live within a mile of the wells, for everyone who has to eventually suffer the effects of the environment and the health pollutants that are put out by this, there are bills that are introduced in this body that can make sure that we regulate this better, that can make sure they are not exempt from clean air and clean water protections, and that disclose the toxins that are used so that we can make sure that this process is safer, healthier, and better for everyone.

Mr. Speaker, I would just like to add as a reminder to everyone, which is also important, that March 31 is the deadline for signing up for the Affordable Care Act. There are extensions. If you have tried to do it and if you can't get it done, there is a little bit of an extension at this time, but you need to do it by March 31. I think we have got some of my colleagues who are going to be talking about that in just a little bit, but I would like to encourage everyone to take advantage of that while they have time in the remaining week.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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