Joshua Pribanic: Government Agencies Suppress Public Complaints Linking Water Contamination with Fracking

Award-winning Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (1949-2018)

Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest.

Robert had been a regular guest on our Between The Lines and Counterpoint radio shows -- and many other progressive outlets across the U.S. over four decades.

His penetrating analysis of U.S. foreign policy and international conflicts will be sorely missed, and not easily replaced. His son Nat Parry writes a tribute to his father: Robert Parry’s Legacy and the Future of Consortiumnews.

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The Resistance Starts Now!

Between The Lines' coverage and resource compilation of the Resistance Movement

"The man who predicted Trump presidential win now says Trump impeachment could happen," AM Joy with Joy Reid, MSNBC, Jan. 21, 2018
"Sketchy Kazakh money finds its way into Trump dealings," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Red flags seen in many Trump real estate deals," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers," BuzzFeed, Jan. 12, 2018
"The Scandals of Donald Trump: Presidential Edition," The Atlantic, May 15, 2017
"Here's what we know so far about Team Trump's ties to Russian interests," Washington Post's ongoing compilation
"What Comey Was Investigating, Explained," The Moscow Project, Center for American Progress

"Donald Trump's Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Mobsters Detailed In Explosive New Documentary from the Netherlands," Dutch TV documentary, Alternet.org, May 12, 2017
Ongoing compilation of Trump's creeping authoritarianism," MotherJones.com
Full resource list ...

SPECIAL REPORT: "The Resistance - Women's March 2018 - Hartford, Connecticut" Jan. 20, 2018

Selected speeches from the Women's March in Hartford, Connecticut 2018, recorded and produced by Scott Harris

SPECIAL REPORT: "No Fracking Waste in CT!" Jan. 14, 2018

Jen Siskind Jennifer Siskind, local coordinator for Food and Water Watch, describes the campaign to stop fracking waste in Connecticut, which so far has led to fracking waste bans in 34 towns around the state. Interviewed by Richard Hill on Mic Check, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT

SPECIAL REPORT: "Resistance Round Table: The Unraveling Continues..." Jan. 13, 2018

Lindsay Kanaly The panel discusses Trump's long history of racism and the Republican voter suppression juggernaut confronting Democrats leading up to the 2018 elections. Special guest: Lindsay Kanaly, a lead organizer of the Women's Marches planned for Jan. 20, 2018. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill on Resistance Roundtable, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT.

SPECIAL REPORT: "Capitalism to the ash heap?" Richard Wolff, Jan. 2, 2018

Richard Wolff, Economics professor Richard Wolff declares U.S. capitalism to be beyond repair and suggests the need for a radical alternative. Interviewed by Richard Hill

SPECIAL REPORT: Maryn McKenna, author of "Big Chicken", Dec. 7, 2017

Maryn McKenna, investigative journalist and author of Big Chicken, talks about the widespread use and dangers of antibiotics in commercial poultry, beef and fruit production. Interview by Bill Duesing, Richard Hill and Guy Beardsly on WPKN's Organic Farm Stand.

SPECIAL REPORT: Nina Turner's address, Working Families Party Awards Banquet, Dec. 14, 2017

Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, talks about the fight ahead for progressives as she receives the Working Families Organization Award for Exceptional Leadership Towards Advancing Progress. The event was held in Meriden, CT. Produced by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017

Working Families Party of CT talks strategy and issues for 2018.
Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party of Connecticut, discusses the state's electoral landscape and lays out the issues and strategies that could lead to progressive victories in 2018. Interviewed by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017

Disturbing developments in the Trump/Republican Agenda
Focus on the tax bill, destruction of our public lands, North Korea and Trump's private CIA. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill. Special guest: Jo Macallero of Rise and Resist.

SPECIAL REPORT: On Tyranny - one year later, Nov. 28, 2017

Professor Timothy Snyder, author of the highly acclaimed resistance manual On Tyranny, discusses his book and offers a fresh assessment of the state of our beleaguered republic. Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale, is introduced by Stanley Heller, administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, a Connecticut-based organization that sponsored this event at the United Church Parish House in New Haven on Nov. 28. A brief interview with Snyder conducted by WPKN radio producer, Richard Hill, follows his talk.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017

Lynne Ide, director of program and policy with the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, talks about the current state of health care coverage in Connecticut. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017

Focus on the Republican tax plan, the just-released autopsy on the Democratic Party, and Internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Youtube. Including an interview with Hilary Grant, a lead organizer with Action Together Connecticut, who discusses the local results of the recent election, with hosts Richard Hill, Scott Harris and Ruth Baumgartner WPKN producers

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Two leaders from Redneck Revolt, an anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement, talk about their work organizing with white working class people in Suffolk County, New York. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, describes the extent of -- and motives underlying -- the vast US network of military bases around the globe. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resisting U.S. JeJu Island military base in South Korea, Oct. 24, 2017

Joyakol, South Korean peace activist and singer, discusses the crisis on the Korean peninsula and focuses on the resistance to the U.S. huge military base being constructed on Jeju Island. The event was sponsored by the Greater New Haven Peace Council and this audio was recorded by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.
Joyakol discusses Americans' biggest misconceptions about the conflict between North and South Korea and the U.S., Interview by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.

SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven

John Allen, founding director of the New Haven Pride Center, Connecticut, talks about his new LGBTQ television show, Out in New Haven, which presents a range of political and cultural issues to the community. Interviewed by Richard Hill on WPKN's Rainy Day Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018.

2017 Gandhi Peace Awards

Promoting Enduring Peace presented its Gandhi Peace Award jointly to renowned consumer advocate Ralph Nader and BDS founder Omar Barghouti on April 23, 2017.

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THANK YOU TO EVERYONE...

who helped make our 25th anniversary with Jeremy Scahill a success!

For those who missed the event, or were there and really wanted to fully absorb its import, here it is in video

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 1 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 2 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

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Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

"How Do We Build A Mass Movement to Reverse Runaway Inequality?" with Les Leopold, author of "Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice,"May 22, 2016, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 860 11th Ave. (Between 58th and 59th), New York City. Between The Lines' Scott Harris and Richard Hill moderated this workshop. Listen to the audio/slideshows and more from this workshop.

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JEREMY SCAHILL: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker "Dirty Wars"

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Probe Sought Into Government Suppression of Link Between Water Contamination and Fracking

Posted July 6, 2016

Interview with Joshua Pribanic, executive editor of the Public Herald, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

$fracking$

For the past decade, Pennsylvania has been “ground zero” for fracking, the industrial fossil fuel extraction process that requires a million gallons of water, sand and hundreds of unknown chemicals for each gas well that is drilled. Families living near such wells have been complaining that fracking has contaminated their drinking water, but in most cases they haven't been able to prove it.

A series of investigations – by ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity, Harvard University, and others – all revealed problems with Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection's lack of enforcement and follow-through on suspected cases of water contamination linked to fracking. Last fall, Public Herald, a non-profit investigative news organization based in Pittsburgh, released a report that found nine different ways the state has kept complaints out of the public record.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Joshua Pribanic, executive editor of the Public Herald, who explains that after a court case was won by another news outlet, he and his partner were able for the first time to get access to 2,300 complaint investigations. The Herald is now calling for a federal investigation of both the Pennsylvania DEP and the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which in 2015 issued a report stating that there was no evidence of a serious problem with the state's drinking water due to fracking. However, the report did not cite any of the thousands of complaints in making its determination. Here, Pribanic discusses this investigation. [Rush transcript]

JOSHUA PRIBANIC: Initially, what tipped us off in the records was not actually something we were able to find at the department. We had a source who had contacted us about contaminated water. We went out and looked at their case that the department handled and we were able to get the records from the source, because they were delivered to them by the DEP and when we looked through them, we started to see really serious problems with the DEP’s decision making. For instance, this particular person ended up having a clean pre-drill test – they had a very clean baseline, no contaminants in their water supply. And after the post-drill, after the drilling happened – I think it was in 2010 or whatnot – they had spikes in arsenic, they had spikes in methane, they ended up having introduction of radon into their water, so it’s a possible contamination of uranium 226 or 228, and there was some illegal activity that happened from the company, which the company illegally buried a waste pit on the site, and the department just created a new permit for them so they didn’t have to hold the company accountable and issue any fines or violations.

So we had a lot of red flags with this particular case, and when we went to go look at the record for this person in the DEP’s office, not a single part related to the water contamination was inside of the record at the department. So that was extremely disturbing for us, No. 1 that we did not see those records. No. 2, they ended up ruling that with this particular person, that the operator was not responsible for the contamination of their water supply. And that ruling was not based on any kind of scientific decision. That ruling was based on something called the Section 3218 of Chapter 58 of Pennsylvania’s Oil and Gas Act. And that states that the company is presumed responsible when the complaint comes in if the complaint comes in within six months of the drilling being started. However, what that does not mean is that the department automatically can rule a case to be non-impact if a person makes a complaint after six months, and that’s exactly what they told this person – “Oh, we’re sorry, you made your complaint after six months, so we cannot hold the company liable for contamination to your water supply. Case closed.”

So it’s a clear misinterpretation of the Pennsylvania law by the Department of Environmental Protection for one reason or another, and as we started to dig through these cases, that particular pattern, that they had misinterpreted this law and made that decision and dismissed pre-drill tests, happened again and again and again and again, so it wasn’t just this isolated case.

BETWEEN THE LINES: The previous governor, Republican Tom Corbett, was extremely pro-fracking. Joshua Pribanic, have you seen any change in the oversight of fracking since Democrat Tom Wolf came in, whom I'm sure appointed his own head of DEP?

JOSHUA PRIBANIC: Since Wolf took office in 2015, we’ve scanned and reported on scanned records of water contamination complaints during his time in office and we’ve also reported on large plumes of contamination that have happened during his time in office. And to be quite honest with you, we were hopeful that when Wolf took office we’d be able to sit down with the department or sit down with Wolf, explain what we had seen during the Corbett administration and expect some kind of task force to address the issues and get this dealt with, so people could be vindicated, get cases reopened, get new decisions, new determinations made by the state for these cases, and the secretary, John Quigley, who was the secretary of DEP who recently resigned, refused to meet with us to discuss the issue on two different occasions. In fact, our experience with this administration at this point, is it is not only just the same as it was for the Corbett administration, but getting much worse, because they have not reined in, they have not created any accountability for the egregious actions that have been perpetuated by the DEP at this point in their decision making. I can say that we are up to nearly 15 different patterns that we’ve discovered of how DEP covers up cases, and three of those patterns came from the time Gov. Tom Wolf has been in office.

BETWEEN THE LINES: What would like to see happen next as a result of your investigation?

JOSHUA PRIBANIC: We have called for a federal criminal investigation of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. EPA due to the findings that we discovered in our September 2015 complaint report, where we released nine ways the department covered up water contamination related to drinking water complaints from fracking. And I think that, really, the only path forward here is to begin a congressional hearing, to bring in the inspectors at the department, to bring in the supervisors, to bring in the administrative staff of the DEP and also to bring those same people in from the EPA who handled complaint cases in Pennsylvania and who were responsible for the national study that was released.

For more information, visit publicherald.org.