Earlier this week, news came out that in 2010 XTO Energy, Inc., an Exxon Mobil Fracking company, received an unexpected visit from the Environmental Protection Agency and failed the surprise inspection. Very very badly.
It’s only now that the gravity of the results are coming out. The violations the EPA discovered were vast, including illegally dumping 50,000 gallons of extremely toxic waste water resulting from fracking Pennsylvania’s water system. The EPA’s findings were so bad that the end result was criminal charges being filed against XTO.
XTO of course has denied the validity of the charges, and the company maintains that there was no negligent misconduct on the company’s part. XTO has called the alleged ‘illegal dumping’ an unintended ‘spill.’
In fact, XTO asserts that the Attorney General’s allegations against the company are unprecedented and unfair and the company states that the ‘spill’ did not result in any permanent environmental harm. In what seems like flawed logic, the company asserts that these charges will ultimately discourse good environmental practices like recycling.
