AP reporter leaves key facts out of story on EPA & Texas well water

By Alex Mills

Alex Mills

Reporting for a newspaper carries a lot of responsibilities.  Those responsibilities and ethics are taught in “J” School, that’s short for journalism, in many universities throughout Texas and the U.S.  Some of those responsibilities include such things as objectivity, getting all sides of the story without prejudice, and being factually correct.

One year ago, Jan. 20, 2013, Associated Press reporter Ramit Plushnick-Masti wrote a story that contained many inaccuracies regarding water well contamination in Parker County that ran in many newspapers.  One year later, Jan. 18, 2014 the same reporter wrote virtually the same story with the same twist and it was again picked up in the Sunday editions of many newspapers.

The story revolves around two natural gas wells that were drilled in Parker County, Texas by Range Resources. A landowner, Steven Lipsky, claimed his water wells were contaminated by Range’s natural gas drilling operation nearby. Lipsky and environmental consultant Alisa Rich videotaped water on fire as it spouted from a hose near his home. The Dallas EPA office saw the video, assumed the water was in fact tainted with methane from Range’s wells, and with no other evidence issued an emergency order against Range Resources on Dec. 10, 2010 to cease operations and fix the issue.

Earlier in 2010, the Railroad Commission had begun its own investigation into Lipsky’s claims.  The RRC held a hearing on the case in January 2011 during which witnesses testified under oath about the circumstances. Lipsky, Rich and the EPA elected not to participate in this hearing.

The RRC found that EPA’s testing procedures were inadequate.  Experts testified the gas  found in Mr. Lipsky’s water well had “fingerprints” that identified it coming from the shallow Strawn formation and not the Barnett Shale. Fingerprinting is a common scientific process which measures nitrogen and carbon dioxide concentrations to determine from where a particular gas originated.

The Strawn formation is roughly 200 feet below the contaminated water well in contrast to the wells drilled by Range Resources, which is about 5,000 feet deep. “Gas from the Strawn has a higher nitrogen concentration and lower carbon dioxide concentration than Barnett Shale gas,” according to the findings of the RRC.

Ramit Plushnick-Masti, the AP reporter who wrote the original and second version of the story, never mentioned the sworn testimony from the RRC hearing.  He never even mentioned that the RRC conducted a hearing, much less the findings.

A hearing was held in a district court in Texas a short time later, and the judge found that the environmental consultant and a water well owner Steven Lipsky, conspired to create a “deceptive video: of fire coming out of a hose connected to a water well in a conspiracy to defame Range.”

“The Court references with concern the actions of Mr. Steven Lipsky, under advice and direction of Ms. Alisa Rich, to intentionally attach a garden hose to a gas vent – not a water line – and then light and burn the gas from the end nozzle of the hose,” Judge Trey Loftin, 43^rd District Court in Parker County, wrote.

“This demonstration was not done for scientific study but to provide local and national news media a deceptive video, calculate to alarm the public into believing the water was burning.

“There is further evidence that Rich knew the Regional EPA Administration and provided or assisted in providing additional misleading information (including the garden hose video) to alarm the EPA.  Moreover, the emails in question which refer to this deceptive garden hose demonstration as a ‘strategy’ appear to support that a ‘meeting of the minds’ took place and that a reasonable trier of fact could believe, together with other evidence, that the elements of a conspiracy to defame Range existed between the Lipskys and Ms. Rich.”

Plushnick-Masti never mentioned the court case, which is all on-the-record and all testimony under oath.

A short time later, the administrator of EPA’s region 6, which covers Texas, resigned under pressure, and became an employee of the Sierra Club, a radical environmental group.  Plushnick-Masti also conveniently left this fact out of the story.

Why would a reporter leave out such important facts that are made under oath and have a direct bearing on the story?

Plushnick-Masti seems to have forgotten that stuff about objectivity and being factually correct not once but twice.  It cast doubt upon the principles of objectivity among journalists in today’s news media.

Alex Mills is President of the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers.  The opinions expressed are solely of the author.