The public has never cared so much abt the environment, Unfortunately, the EPA no
Longer does. A person doesn't have to look too far to see how much the system has degraded. You can go all the way back to April of 2010, when the BP Corexit was approved by the EPA, who decided a test of a mere seven days was sufficient to say the product was safe, or to May of 2011, when the EPA responded to the Fukishma holocaust of radioactivity by stopping its operation of air monitoring here on the West Coast.
Or here is a more current event and example - wherein the EPA decided to do a hatchet job on its own research regarding the contamination of water from the natural gas/shale oil activities in TX:
Tiny URL:
http://tinyurl.com/a2dfx56
Or regular:
http://news.yahoo.com/epa-changed-course-oil-company-protested-082012084.html;_ylt=AmveX8E14CsKyLcN.JfNSLQS.MwF;_ylu=X3oDMTQ2bTdpNTV2BG1pdANUb3BTdG9yeSBTY2llbmNlU0YgRW5lcmd5U1NGBHBrZwM2Yjg2NzM2OC00NWE2LTM1OWMtOTI5MC0wZTE4ZGU2YWVkYWUEcG9zAzEEc2VjA3RvcF9zdG9yeQR2ZXIDNWY2NjY5OTAtNWZiNi0xMWUyLWJlZmUtMzE1ZDMwNTQ3ZGFk;_ylg=X3oDMTFzMnBqYnA4BGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdANzY2llbmNlfGVuZXJneQRwdANzZWN0aW9ucw--;_ylv=3
WEATHERFORD, Texas (AP) — When a man in a Fort Worth suburb reported his family's drinking water had begun bubbling like champagne, the federal government sounded an alarm: An oil company may have tainted their wells while drilling for natural gas. At first, the Environmental Protection Agency believed the situation was so serious that it issued a rare emergency order in late 2010 that said at least two homeowners were in immediate danger from a well saturated with flammable methane. More than a year later, the agency rescinded its mandate and refused to explain why.
Now a confidential report obtained by The Associated Press and interviews with company representatives show that the EPA had scientific evidence against the driller, Range Resources, but changed course after the company threatened not to cooperate with a national study into a common form of drilling called hydraulic fracturing. Regulators set aside an analysis that concluded the drilling could have been to blame for the contamination.