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First Posted: 7/21/2014 A fracking company made federal and state agencies that oversee drinking-water safety wait days before it shared a list of toxic chemicals that spilled from a drilling site into a tributary of the Ohio River.
Although the spill following a fire on June 28 at the Statoil North America well pad in Monroe County stretched 5 miles along the creek and killed more than 70,000 fish and wildlife, state officials said they do not believe drinking water was affected.
But environmental advocacy groups said they wonder how the state can be sure.
A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report obtained by The Dispatch shows that the federal and state EPA officials had to wait five days before they were given a full list of the fracking chemicals the drilling company used at the site.
Halliburton, the company hired by Statoil to frack the horizontal well, provided a partial list up front that included most of the chemicals. Others, which are protected by Ohio&#8217;s trade-secrets law, were omitted.
&#8220;How can communities know that they are being protected when an incident like this happens?&#8221; said Teresa Mills, an environmental activist and Ohio organizer with the Center for Health, Environment and Justice.
&#8220;We need more transparent laws.&#8221;
To pull oil and natural gas from shale, companies drill vertically and then turn sideways into the rock. Then they blast millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals into the shafts to free trapped oil and gas in the process called fracking.
During the process, fluids bubble back up to the surface with the gas.
Once a fracking job is finished, drilling companies have 60 days to disclose what chemicals they used to the Department of Natural Resources, which oversees drilling and fracking operations in Ohio.
Ohio law says that companies have to disclose the contents of proprietary fracking mixes only to firefighters or Natural Resources if there is an emergency, such as fires or spills. In this case, both were given the full list but did not share the details with other agencies.
Halliburton has yet to finish fracking the Monroe County well that caught fire.
Chris Abbruzzese, an Ohio EPA spokesman, said that on the day of the fire and spill, a representative from a group that represents the federal and state EPA offices, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and Monroe County emergency management and fire workers asked Statoil and Halliburton for a list of the chemicals.
&#8220;Once they realized that the proprietary information wasn&#8217;t included, there were additional (requests) made,&#8221; Abbruzzese said.
Natural Resources, which regulates drilling in Ohio, has authority under state law to see the entire list and asked on its own two days after the fire.
Halliburton, the company hired by Statoil to frack the well, gave the list to the single agency.
But Natural Resources did not share that information with either EPA office.
&#8220;Internal communication is something we&#8217;re going to work on,&#8221; said Bethany McCorkle, a Natural Resources spokeswoman.
Kirsten Henriksen, a spokeswoman for Statoil, said the company hired an outside toxicology firm to test both the creek and the Ohio River for toxic chemicals. None were found in the Ohio River, she said.
The Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission, a multi-state agency that tests the river, also found no contaminants.
&#8220;Based on the chemicals that we were aware of, if there had been any other chemicals that would have been there, they all would have showed up (in tests),&#8221; Abbruzzese said.
Kelly Scribner, a toxicologist with the Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health, which was hired by Statoil to perform the tests, said she wasn&#8217;t given a full list of chemicals either.
But, she said, the tests would have shown abnormalities in the water either way.
Fracking chemicals include ethylene glycol, which can damage kidneys; formaldehyde, a known cancer risk; and naphthalene, considered a possible carcinogen.
The water tests showed elevated levels of chlorides, salt and acetone in the creek near the well pad.
By the time federal and state EPA officials were given the full list, those chemicals likely flowed past towns along the Ohio River that draw in drinking water.
That worries some state lawmakers and environmental advocacy groups.
&#8220;We&#8217;ve got 70,000 or so fish that died,&#8221; said Nathan Johnson, an attorney for the Ohio Environmental Council. &#8220;Clearly, something was wrong with the water.&#8221;
The group has been lobbying the Ohio legislature to pass laws that would force companies during emergencies to immediately disclose the full list of chemicals to all state agencies.
Oil and gas industry officials and regulators have pushed back against additional regulations, saying Ohio&#8217;s laws are more than adequate to protect people.
In a speech on Tuesday outside Mansfield, Gov. John Kasich said Ohio has &#8220;very tough regulations&#8221; concerning fracking. &#8220;If the accidents happen, and we&#8217;re not minding the store, or we&#8217;re looking the other way, that would be a disaster for us,&#8221; he said.
Kasich told The Dispatch it would be unacceptable for emergency responders, including federal and Ohio EPA officials, not to know the full list of chemicals that might have spilled into the river.
&#8220;We want people to know what the fracking fluid contains,&#8221; he said.
Other states, including Pennsylvania and Texas, make companies disclose the full list of chemicals within 30 days of wrapping up a fracking operation. In Oklahoma, they must disclose the chemicals to state regulators before a well is drilled.
The Statoil fire started on the morning of June 28 when, according to preliminary reports, a hydraulic line used during the fracking process broke.
The broken line sprayed fracking fluid onto hot equipment, igniting it.
The fire spread to 20 trucks, which went up in flames. No workers were hurt, but one firefighter was treated for smoke inhalation. About 25 people who live near the wells were evacuated.
The fire continued to smolder for six days. As it burned, firefighters doused it with water and foam, washing chemicals from the site into the tributary, which flows for five miles before reaching the Ohio River.
Legislators and environmental groups say the Statoil fire illustrates a gap in the law that allows fracking companies to determine when they release information and to whom.
&#8220;It is a huge problem,&#8221; said Johnson, the Ohio Environmental Council attorney. &#8220;We&#8217;re essentially at the behest of the company with the chemical information.&#8221;
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Dispatch Public Affairs Editor Darrel Rowland contributed to this story.

EPA report shows agency waited 5 days to discover Ohio spill chemical contents