The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) Underground Injection Control (UIC) program is intended to manage the disposition of wastes into geologic repositories. Hydraulic fracturing is a well stimulation technology that has been used for more than 50 years over a million times. It has been regulated for decades by states and never posed an environmental risk. It is essential to the development of American natural gas and oil. There are no environmental benefits to additional federal regulation.
Elimination of sections 327 and 328 [of the Safe Water Drinking Act] would not make production of oil and natural gas in the United States any safer, but could substantially increase domestic oil and natural gas production costs, thereby decreasing domestic supply.
I am here today to address the proposition that two provisions of the Energy Policy Act of 2005--that being section 327 concerning hydraulic fracturing, and section 328 regarding stormwater--have resulted in harm to drinking water resources in the United States. The evidence would strongly suggest otherwise. These two provisions simply removed unnecessary administrative burdens on the production of oil and natural gas in the United States.