Imperial College London
Portrait Picture

Ms Karen E. Makuch

Faculty of Natural Sciences, Centre for Environmental Policy

Senior Lecturer
 
 
 
//

Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 7317k.e.makuch Website

 
 
//

Location

 

209Weeks BuildingSouth Kensington Campus

//

Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Aczel:2018:10.1525/cse.2017.000638,
author = {Aczel, MR and Makuch, KE},
doi = {10.1525/cse.2017.000638},
journal = {Case Studies in the Environment},
pages = {1--11},
title = {Environmental impact assessments and hydraulic fracturing: lessons from two U.S. States},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/cse.2017.000638},
volume = {2},
year = {2018}
}
Download

RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Although the United States has been stimulating well production with hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”)1 since the 1940s [1], high-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF) combined with horizontal drilling is a relatively recent [2, 3] development with potential to adversely impact human health [4], environment [5], and water resources [6], with uncertainty about impacts and gaps in the data on HVHF compared to conventional drilling techniques [7]. Part of protecting environmental and public health is identifying potential risks before licenses are issued and drilling operations proceed. To this end, two case studies, focusing on the environmental impact assessment (EIA) procedures of California and New York, are analyzed in this paper. Both states have histories of strong environmental protection law and policy [8–10] and legally require an EIA to be conducted before development of HVHF sites [11, 12], an outgrowth of the 1969 federal National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). New York State conducted what appears to be a thorough EIA [13] and concluded that as there were too many gaps in the data on HVHF, fracking could not proceed. California’s EIA, which was less extensive, and did not consider health impacts [14], concluded that HVHF could proceed, relatively unabated. A comparison of these cases illustrates that the processes designed to ensure adequate identification, monitoring, and assessment of environmental impacts are prone to differences [15]—an outcome of the fact that laws governing HVHF in the US are not consistent across, nor controlled at, the federal level [16, 17].
AU  - Aczel,MR
AU  - Makuch,KE
DO  - 10.1525/cse.2017.000638
EP  - 11
PY  - 2018///
SN  - 2473-9510
SP  - 1
TI  - Environmental impact assessments and hydraulic fracturing: lessons from two U.S. States
T2  - Case Studies in the Environment
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/cse.2017.000638
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/62815
VL  - 2
ER  -
Download