April 25, 2013 | By Barbara Vergetis Lundin

Research by the Harvard Environmental Law Program's Policy Initiative reveals serious deficiencies in the disclosure practices of FracFocus, a widely-used website that allows companies to voluntarily disclose the hydraulic fracturing chemicals they use in the process of natural gas drilling known as "fracking."

Currently, 18 states require some amount of fracturing chemicals disclosure. Of those, 11 allow companies to report chemical use on FracFocus. The research found several issues with FracFocus as a regulatory compliance tool, including:

• A lack of transparency about when disclosures are filed, allowing for late disclosures without penalties
• A lack of state-specific disclosure forms, leaving it to companies to determine how to account for individual state reporting requirements
• No review of disclosures by FracFocus and rare pass-through of disclosure filings to states (a review found that 29 percent of the chemical identification numbers (CAS) reported at Texas wells in July 2012 did not exist)
• An overly broad trade secret regime giving companies sole discretion to determine when to assert trade secrets

"In many instances, states have written tough disclosure requirements, backed by robust public information laws," said Kate Konschnik, policy director of the Harvard Environmental Law Program. "However, when those same states direct companies to report to FracFocus, they give up a lot of oversight authority. Meanwhile, the public's ability to seek additional information or challenge trade secret claims is lost when an agency is not in possession of the disclosures."

FracFocus was created two years ago this April in response to public concerns about the chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing process. Industry worked with the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission and the Groundwater Protection Council to create the voluntary registry. However, FracFocus is not a regulatory body, nor does it verify the information submitted by producers and suppliers.

"The reliance by states on FracFocus to provide regulatory accountability is simply misplaced," said Konschnik. "Until significant changes are made, FracFocus remains little more than a repository for disclosure forms and lacks the necessary technical capacity and regulatory mandate to effectively provide the sort of oversight demanded by most states."

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