Among the many dubious provisions in the 2005 energy bill was one dubbed the Halliburton loophole, which was inserted at the behest of — you guessed it — then-Vice President Dick Cheney, a former chief executive of Halliburton.
It stripped the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to regulate a drilling process called hydraulic fracturing. Invented by Halliburton in the 1940s, it involves injecting a mixture of water, sand and chemicals, some of them toxic, into underground rock formations to blast them open and release natural gas.
Hydraulic fracturing has been implicated in a growing number of water pollution cases across the country. It has become especially controversial in New York, where regulators are eager to clear the way for drilling in the New York City watershed, potentially imperiling the city’s water supply.
TVNL Comment: Come on Cheney/Bush supporters, tell us how they kept us safe! These guys did everything they can to murder you, slowly, and take all of your "stuff!" If there is a Hell it was made for people like Dick Cheney!
Quick-moving brush fires burned through a large swath of land on New York’s Long Island on...
