I came across a 2011 proposal by the EPA which has left me somewhat confused.   Click the image below to download and read the actual document published by our Environmental Protection Agency, “Plan to Study the Potential Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing on Drinking Water Resources.”

For the record, hydraulic fracturing was pioneered by the Halliburton corporation in 1940.  There are over one million (1,000,000) such wells in the United States with more on the way.

The word “SCIENCE” on the background of the report’s cover is intended to connote scientific method and oversight: that process of systematic thought and labor which put men on the moon and successfully brought them back again.  How exactly is the scientific method to be invoked seventy years after this industrial process began?  It seems a little late to “plan” a study of “potential impacts.”