Fed: fracking study won’t be done until 2016

Workers adjust piping during a natural gas hydraulic fracturing operation at an Encana Oil & Gas Inc. drilling site in western Colorado. (Brennan Linsley/AP)

CLEVELAND — A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official tells an Ohio fracking conference that a study of the threat to drinking water from the shale-drilling process won’t be completed until 2016.

That’s the word from Jeanne Briskin, coordinator of hydraulic fracturing research at the EPA’s Office of Research and Development. She spoke Tuesday at a two-day conference on the subject in Cleveland.

The Akron Beacon Journal reports that Briskin said the EPA could release a preliminary report late next year. She described the work as “complex research.”

Congress in 2010 directed the agency to investigate the threat to groundwater and air from the controversial hydraulic-fracturing process in Ohio and other states.

Critics say it is harmful to the environment.

The conference continues Wednesday.

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