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DENR Refuses Federal Water Quality Grants

The hydraulic fracturing (fracking) water cycle.
Environmental Protection Agency

North Carolina environmental officials have said "no" to a federal grant to check water quality in areas where fracking may occur.  The state Department of Environment and Natural Resources says the money from the EPA would only pay for salaries of people brought in to do testing. 

Division of Water Resources director Tom Reeder says DENR doesn't need them.

"We have other people in the environmental sciences section..whose full-time job it is to go out every day and do measurements like this and try to come up with what's causing the problem," Reeder says.

Environmental groups say money to ensure water safety should not be refused.  Dustin Chicurel-Bayerd is a spokesman for the North Carolina chapter of the Sierra Club.

"It's just good science to do baseline testing up front...and this is exactly the time that our state would benefit from the science and research that these grants are intended to support," says Chicurel-Bayerd.

But DENR says the baseline testing will be done by its people once they know when and where fracking will take place.  A second grant to monitor changes to coastal wetlands was also turned down.

Gurnal Scott joined North Carolina Public Radio in March 2012 after several stops in radio and television. After graduating from the College of Charleston in his South Carolina hometown, he began his career in radio there. He started as a sports reporter at News/Talk Radio WTMA and won five Sportscaster of the Year awards. In 1997, Gurnal moved on to television as general assignment reporter and weekend anchor for WCSC-TV in Charleston. He anchored the market's top-rated weekend newscasts until leaving Charleston for Memphis, TN in 2002. Gurnal worked at WPTY-TV for two years before returning to his roots in radio. He joined the staff of Memphis' NewsRadio 600 WREC in 2004 eventually rising to News Director. In 2006, Raleigh news radio station WPTF came calling and he became the station's chief correspondent. Gurnal’s reporting has been honored by the South Carolina Broadcasters Association, the North Carolina Associated Press, and the Radio Television Digital News Association of the Carolinas.
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