As expected, a bill was introduced last week to Congress that would regulate hydraulic fracking.

On Tuesday, June 9, Reps. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) and Jared Polis (D-Colo.) introduced the Fracking Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act, or FRAC ACT, in the House while Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn.) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) introduced a companion bill to the Senate.

The legislation would repeal the oil and gas energy industry’s exemption from the Clean Water Act.

Called the ‘Halliburton Loophole’ by environmental advocates, the exemption was sanctioned by a 2005 energy bill.

Since then the oversight of fracking – whereby a mixture of water, sand and chemicals is injected into a well bore under high pressure to loosen gas and oil bearing material – has been the sole responsibility of state and local governments.

Fracking is used in 90 percent of oil and gas wells in this country and it is fundamental to the development of Sublette County’s gas production.

“The legislation introduced in Congress today is based on the notion that hydraulic fracturing is unsafe, unregulated and that it benefits from a special exemption to federal law,” said Lee Fuller of Energy in Depth, a advocacy group for independent petroleum producers. “Not a single one of these premises is true.”

Fuller’s organization claims the FRAC ACT could “result in thousands of lost jobs, billions in foregone taxpayer revenue and massive amounts of American energy left in the ground.”

But according to Rep. DeGette’s spokesperson Kristofer Eisenla, those are scare tactics.

“Our bill simply requires the oil and gas industry to comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act,” he said. “Just as every other industry must.”

Not only would the FRAC ACT give the EPA regulatory control over the process of fracking, it would require energy companies to divulge the contents of their fracking fluids. That, FRAC ACT proponents say, will make it easier to detect aquifer and drinking-well contamination, and it will provide medical workers with lists of a work site’s chemicals in an emergency.

But energy companies say the chemical components to their fracking fluids are trade secrets that have been derived from years of expensive development.

Those chemicals, although typically a small percentage of fracking fluids, have been known to include diesel fuel, benzene and other industrial solvents.

Environmental advocates point out that fracking treatments use up to 500,000 gallons of fluids, and while carcinogenic chemicals compose a relatively small percentage, the overall volume of fluids creates a substantial threat to human health.

But the energy industry refers to a 2004 EPA study that concluded fracking was not a threat to drinking water wells.

Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) agrees, saying the process is tightly regulated at the state level.

“This legislation is a classic example of Washington politicians searching for a problem to address their solution,” she said. “It is time we put science above emotion on this issue.”

As of Friday, the Senate bill (S.1215) was referred to the Committee on Environment and Public Works, and the House bill (H.R. 2766) was referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, of which Rep. DeGette is a member.