With the Federal Communications Commission set to vote Friday on whether to require broadcasters to post political ad data online, the industry has been scrambling to water down the proposed rule.

The data is currently available only on paper at TV stations. We’ve been tracking the flurry of lobbying against the rule by big media companies, including the owners of many of the nation’s largest news outlets. In the latest development, Communications Daily reported earlier this week that the FCC has become more receptive to the industry’s attempts to soften the proposed rule.

The exact contents of the rule may be in flux until the vote on Friday, and we won’t get a look at the text of the rule itself until sometime after the vote. Those who follow the FCC closely say that while we will likely know the broad outlines of the rule on Friday, the exact text is sometimes not completed and released until days or even weeks after a vote.

But because the FCC might water down the rule, it’s a good time to take a look at exactly what the broadcasters’ counterproposal would mean for the public’s access to the political ad data.

The FCC is made up of two Democrats who have spoken broadly in favor of the proposed rule and one Republican who has criticized it. Citing unnamed “agency and industry officials,” Communications Daily reported Monday (subscription required) that the two Democrats appeared to be showing some give on the crucial issue of whether broadcasters would have to put all 2014 or just some 2014 political ad data online.

“[T]hey said the potential for changes appears higher now than it did earlier last week, when [FCC Chairman Julius] Genachowski seemed set against any modifications,” the publication reported.

In a speech at the annual tradeshow of the National Association of Broadcasters in Las Vegas last week, Genachowski appeared to stand firm against the industry’s lobbying. He answered the industry’s arguments one by one and decried its stance “against transparency and against journalism.”

But Mignon Clyburn, the other Democratic commissioner, reportedly struck a “conciliatory note” in her remarks on the political ad files at the NAB show. “I can affirm to you that in terms of this process, this office is still open for engagement,” she said, according to Communications Daily.

Republican Robert McDowell has echoed the industry’s opposition to the proposed rule.

Lobbying disclosures filed with the FCC this week outline a final proposal written by a Washington attorney for a group that includes the National Association of Broadcasters, Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC, Univision and other stations. (Here is the full list.)

The proposal represents a last-ditch bid by the industry to undermine the rule, which is expected to pass in some form. Just a couple of weeks ago, NAB chief Gordon Smith, a former senator, visited the FCC to express the industry’s flat opposition to any online disclosure rule.

Under the industry’s proposal, broadcasters would post to an FCC website the aggregate amount of each purchase of political ads instead of the full itemized information that is currently in the paper files.

Advocates of full online disclosure argue the broadcasters’ proposal is lacking in a few key respects.

The Public Interest Public Airwaves Coalition pointed out in a April 19 letter to the FCC chairman that the broadcasters’ proposal would conceal “more detailed information about how much stations charge for the purchase of political advertising time, as well as whether a station accepted or rejected a request to purchase time, the date and time a political advertising message aired, and the class of time purchased.”

Meredith McGehee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center, told ProPublica that the full, itemized data are important in assessing whether broadcasters are abiding by rules requiring that they offer candidates the cheapest rates and equal opportunity to buy ad time.

“Only by looking at each ad request can you determine whether they are abiding by the statute,” said McGehee, whose organization is a member of the public interest coalition.

Jonathan Blake, the Covington & Burling attorney who authored the broadcasters’ proposal, declined to comment.

Corie Wright, senior policy counsel at Free Press, wrote the public interest coalition’s letter. She told ProPublica that information on the so-called disposition of political ad requests 2014 that is, whether a station rejected a candidate’s request to purchase time 2014 “is extremely important because it enables communities to assess whether broadcasters are using their government-granted monopoly of public spectrum to slant democratic outcomes in favor of one side of an issue over another.”

McGehee, of the Campaign Legal Center, said she won’t be surprised if the FCC bows to the broadcasters’ demands.

“I never underestimate the power of the broadcasters,” she said. “They have a pretty powerful combination. They are big political givers. They are right there in the communities of the members of Congress who are loathe to offend their broadcasters.”

by Justin Elliott ProPublica, April 26, 2012, 12:10 p.m.

Image Courtesy of   Gregory Johnston / Shutterstock.com

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Update (4/26): An earlier version of this story said a proposed amendment by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., had helped gain support for CISPA. Schiff’s amendment, which among other things would further define what’s considered a “cyber threat,” is no longer scheduled for consideration.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, up for debate in the House of Representatives today, has privacy activists, tech companies, security wonks and the Obama administration all jousting about what it means 2013 not only for security but Internet privacy and intellectual property. Backers expect CISPA to pass, unlike SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act that melted down amid controversy earlier this year.

Here’s a rundown on the debate and what CISPA could mean for Internet users.

What exactly is CISPA?

The act, sponsored Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., would make it easier for private corporations and U.S. agencies, including military and intelligence, to share information related to “cyber threats.”

In theory, this would enable the government and companies to keep up-to-date on security risks and protect themselves more efficiently. CISPA would amend the National Security Act of 1947, which currently contains no reference to cyber security.  Companies wouldn’t be required to share any data. They would just be allowed to do so.

Why should I care?

CISPA could enable companies like Facebook and Twitter, as well as Internet service providers, to share your personal information with the National Security Agency and the CIA, as long as that information is deemed to pertain to a cyber threat or to national security.

How does the bill define “cyber threat”?

The bill itself defines it as information “pertaining to a vulnerability of” a system or network 2014 a definition that opponents have criticized as too broad. The bill gained support after sponsors agreed to allow votes on several amendments they said would make concessions to privacy activists; one aims to narrow the definition of “cyber threat.”

When can data be shared?

Rogers said the amended version of the bill would only enable companies and intelligence agencies to share information related to 1) cyber security purposes; 2) investigation and prosecution of cyber security crimes; 3) protection of individuals from death and bodily harm; 4) child pornography; or 5) protection of the national security of the United States.

Why are privacy activists upset about CISPA?

Privacy activists like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation contend CISPA isn’t specific enough about just what constitutes a “cyber threat.” They say it enables Internet companies and service providers to hand over sensitive user information to intelligence agencies without enough oversight from the civilian side of government.

Finally, they say it does not explicitly require Internet companies to remove identifying information about users before sharing. Opponents contend, for instance, that Facebook or Twitter could share user messages with the NSA or FBI without redacting the user’s name or personal details.

CISPA also protects the private sector from liability even if they share private user information, as long as that information is deemed to have been shared for cybersecurity or national security purposes. Even though sharing is voluntary and not required under the law, privacy activists say the legal immunity CISPA provides would make it easy for the government to pressure Internet companies to give up user data.

What kind of information can be shared?

Private companies and government agencies can share any information that pertains to a “cyber threat” or that would endanger national security. That could include user information, emails, and direct messages. Companies would be allowed to share with each other as well as the government.

The government is not allowed to proactively search company-provided information for purposes unrelated to cyber security, but opponents say this would be tough to enforce. The bill does not place any explicit limit on how long that information can be kept. Several proposed amendments would limit the amount and kinds of information that can be shared, but it remains to be seen which 2014 if any 2014 will be adopted.

Is CISPA basically SOPA 2.0?

No, it’s very different.

SOPA was about intellectual property; CISPA is about cyber security, but opponents believe both bills have the potential to trample constitutional rights. The comparisons to SOPA stem from language in an earlier version of CISPA that referenced intellectual property. That wording was removed early on in response to mounting criticism. SOPA would have strengthened copyright laws, barring search engines and other websites from linking to sites that violated intellectual property regulations.

That prompted a First Amendment concern from critics that it would give government the power to block websites wholesale, trampling free speech. CISPA’s liability shield, on the other hand, has sparked a concern based on the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure. Opponents contend the law would make it too easy for private companies and the intelligence community to spy on users in the name of cyber security.

Why are some of the tech companies that protested SOPA, like Facebook and Microsoft, now supporting this bill?

CISPA gives Internet companies the ability to share threat information with intelligence agencies and receive information back from them, an ability they say would enable them to deal with cyber threats more effectively. It does not compel them to protect users’ privacy (though a variety of proposed amendments aim to add more stringent privacy protections). Companies could not be held liable for divulging a user’s identity or data to the government if the information relates to a “cyber threat.”

What’s the Obama administration’s take?

The White House is backing a Senate bill proposed by Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and has threatened to veto CISPA. Officials cite a lack of personal privacy protections. They say CISPA would enable military and intelligence agencies to take on a policing role on the internet, which the administration points out is a civilian sphere.

What is CISPA’s path forward in Congress?

A vote is set for Friday. CISPA has accumulated more than 100 cosponsors and will most likely pass the House. “This isn’t about scrambling to meet 218 votes, we are well past that,” co-sponsor Rogers said during a conference call with reporters. But the Senate is a different story 2014 there, it must compete with the Lieberman cyber security bill and one from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Would CISPA really make us more secure?

It’s unclear.

Some cyber security specialists note that neither CISPA nor other cyber security bills in Congress would compel companies to update software, hire outside specialists or take other measures to preemptively secure themselves against hackers and other threats. CISPA’s backers respond that the bill would forestall a “digital Pearl Harbor,” allowing a freer flow of information for a quicker and more effective response to hackers by both the government and the private sector.

by Megha Rajagopalan ProPublica, April 26, 2012, 1:16 p.m.

The article Is CISPA SOPA 2.0? We Explain the Cybersecurity Bill appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

In front of a British government panel today, Rupert Murdoch denied that he tried to wield political influence or use his media holdings to further the business interests of News Corp.

“I take particular pride in the fact that we’ve never pushed our commercial interests in our newspapers,” Murdoch said at the media ethics inquiry brought on by the phone-hacking scandal at News of the World last year.

He was responding to questions about contacts between News Corp. and government officials in connection with the company’s attempted $12 billion takeover of BSkyB, Britain’s top satellite TV network.

But email messages released Tuesday indicate that News Corp. executives at least considered dispatching top editors of The Wall Street Journal Europe and The Times of London, both News Corp. holdings, to advocate the BSkyB deal.

The newly released emails, totaling 163 pages, were exchanged among News Corp. chief lobbyist Frédéric Michel, company officials and government aides. Several refer to Lord Matthew Oakeshott, a member of Parliament whom News Corp. perceived as key to influencing Vince Cable, the government minister who had the authority in the fall of 2010 to approve the BSkyB deal.

News Corp. execs were worried that Oakeshott wouldn’t be receptive to their overtures. In one email to James Murdoch’s aide, Matthew Anderson, and Rebekah Brooks, chief executive at News International, Michel described Oakeshott as “a difficult character [who] hates lobbying (and doesn’t like our empire either2026).”

So Michel, the lobbyist, suggested that they arrange a meeting between Oakeshott and James Harding, editor in chief of The Times. From the email, dated Oct. 12, 2010

On Oct. 18, Michel wrote that Oakeshott would also be “VERY receptive” to a message from Patience Wheatcroft, then the editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe.

That November, Wheatcroft left The Journal after she was named to the House of Lords as a member of the Conservative party, by Prime Minister David Cameron.

It is not clear whether Harding and Wheatcroft were actually asked to lobby Oakeshott.  A spokeswoman for Harding said that “there was never a meeting between James Harding and Lord Oakeshott,” but did not say whether News Corp. officials had asked Harding to have such a meeting. Wheatcroft did not respond to our requests for comment, nor did Oakeshott.

A News Corp. spokesman declined to comment on any of the emails.

Apart from raising questions about Rupert Murdoch’s claim that there was no use of his media holdings to further his company’s interests, the emails document a more general strategy to turn media coverage of the deal in favor of News Corp. in order to give political cover to the minister, Vince Cable, who could approve the deal.

Cable was removed from the bid approval process after he was recorded by journalists saying he had “declared war” on Murdoch. Cable was replaced by Jeremy Hunt, with whom News Corp. appears to have had more luck 2014 the emails point to close communication between Hunt’s aide and News Corp. about how best to push approval of the BSkyB buyout.

Hunt said Wednesday that he “didn’t know the volume of those communications or the tone” of the interactions between his aide and News Corp. The Guardian also reported Wednesday that in 2009 Hunt was at News Corp. headquarters in New York during the company’s meetings on whether to launch the bid.

News Corp. threw the support of its British newspapers behind Cameron’s Conservative party in the 2010 elections, shortly before the BSkyB bid was announced. Cameron has maintained that he had had no “inappropriate conversations” with Murdoch about the deal.

Competing news organizations and others had opposed the deal because they said it would further concentrate the media power of Murdoch, who controls 40 percent of Britain’s newspaper circulation. The bid was eventually put on hold when news of phone-hacking by Murdoch papers broke last summer and engulfed the company in scandal.

by Cora Currier ProPublica, April 25, 2012, 3:16 p.m.

Image Courtesy of   david_shankbone

The article News Corp. Exec Considered Enlisting Newspaper Editors in Lobbying Effort appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank have let foreclosed homes in black and Latino neighborhoods lapse into disrepair, while bank-owned homes in mainly white neighborhoods are better cared-for, according to housing advocates.

The National Fair Housing Alliance, a non-profit group, brought a formal complaint to the Department of Housing and Urban Development last week alleging that Wells Fargo violated the Fair Housing Act by failing to keep up homes in minority neighborhoods. Today, the group announced they are also filing a second complaint, against U.S. Bank.

Earlier this month, the group released a survey, which was funded in part by HUD, of more than 1,000 unoccupied, foreclosed homes across the country owned by unspecified banks. When a house is foreclosed upon, the bank that takes it over is responsible for maintaining it. The report cites evidence 2014 photos and interviews with neighbors 2014 showing houses becoming dilapidated under banks’ watch.

The complaint against Wells Fargo claims that among more than 200 homes surveyed, those in black and Latino neighborhoods were much more likely to have yards filled with trash, broken doors, damaged windows, and other signs of neglect. Fewer homes in those neighborhoods had “for sale” signs visible. For example, 68 out of 149 homes in black and Latino neighborhoods had damaged roofs, compared to only nine out of 69 properties in white neighborhoods.

The study looked at homes owned by Wells Fargo in Washington D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Dallas, Miami, Atlanta, Oakland, Calif., and Dayton, Ohio.

A spokeswoman for Wells Fargo said in an emailed statement that the bank “conducts all lending-related activities in a fair and consistent manner without regard to race: this includes maintenance and marketing standards for all foreclosed properties for which we are responsible.” She also said that the bank has a dedicated department that maintains and markets foreclosed properties from loans that are within its portfolio. Since the complaint did not identify specific properties, she said, Wells Fargo has not been able to investigate its claims.

U.S. Bank did not immediately respond to our request for comment, and a spokesman for HUD declined to comment on the complaint.

The report also pointed out that there were simply fewer bank-owned foreclosed properties in white neighborhoods than in minority neighborhoods, an indication, it says, of the fact that African-American and Latino communities were disproportionately affected by the subprime mortgage crisis.

Numerous studies have shown that lenders targeted minorities for the riskiest loans, and often charged them more than similarly qualified white borrowers. A report from the Center for Responsible Lending found that black and Latino homeowners were twice as likely to lose their homes to foreclosure than white homeowners.

(The center was started with support from the Sandler Foundation, which is also the major funder of ProPublica.) In the biggest settlement to come out of the government post-bubble investigation of discriminatory lending practices, lender Countrywide (now owned by Bank of America) agreed to pay $335 million to settle a Department of Justice suit.

Nationally, banks or investors own roughly half a million foreclosed homes, and the Federal Reserve estimates this will increase to 1 million this year. Some banks and investors are looking to unload the properties en masse. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who own about half the properties, are piloting a program for bulk sales of their foreclosed properties that requires they be offered as rentals. Other lenders are turning into landlords themselves.

by Cora Currier ProPublica, April 16, 2012, 5:10 p.m.

The article Big Banks Slack on Maintaining Foreclosed Homes in Minority Areas, Complaint Charges appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Some homeowners are getting stuck with relatively high interest rates even after they participate in the government’s program to help them refinance their mortgages. The biggest banks are not lowering rates as much as they could be 2014 and homeowners have few options to go elsewhere.

Analysts say that the big banks are set to make major profits off of the Home Affordable Refinancing Program, also known as HARP, which allows homeowners with loans backed by government-owned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to refinance if they owe more than their home is worth.

The program, launched in 2009, is designed to let struggling borrowers take advantage of lower market interest rates. So far, about 1.1 million people have refinanced under the program, which was expanded last fall to make it more attractive for banks and to let more homeowners participate.

Since then, the government says there has been “tremendous borrower interest” and estimates that another 1 million could qualify over the next two years. But while the expansion may let more people refinance, it may not be at the lowest rate possible because the incentives don’t favor competition, according to a new report by an investment group Amherst Securities.

The report says the big banks are able to make a considerable profit from refinancing their existing customers under HARP, and that there is little incentive for them to go outside their own customer base and seek out more HARP business on mortgages that originated with other lenders.

Few other companies have stepped in to offer HARP refinancing for people who’d like to leave their current lender, partly because it is still risky for them to take on the underwater loans, even with the HARP incentives.

The result is that homeowners in many cases are stuck with what they’ve got, Amherst says, and the big banks can charge them more.

Guy Cecala, who runs the publication Inside Mortgage Finance, said that there is “virtually no competition” for the big banks. “It’s normal business practice for mortgage lenders 2014 when you can, you charge a higher interest rate.”

Here’s how this situation came about.

For Banks, Built-In Incentives

Last fall’s expansion of HARP tries to make it more appealing to mortgage lenders, since the initial response to the program fell short of expectations.

New rules removed the cap on how much a borrower could be underwater and still qualify. It also eased appraisal requirements and 2014 critically for banks 2014 removed some of the liability for bad loans that banks had when selling their mortgages to Fannie and Freddie.

The Amherst report points out that the biggest lenders 2014 JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo 2014 are responsible for more than 60 percent of HARP refinancing applications. The report also says the cost of refinancing an existing customer under HARP is minimal.

The big banks already have plenty of demand in-house. As such, it’s easier and more profitable to stick with the loans they already service than to compete for new business, which could result in lower rates for homeowners.

The report says that the extra steps required under HARP to refinance a loan from another lender make the process onerous and risky. A spokeswoman for the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which is in charge of HARP, disputed the notion that it’s difficult to sign up new borrowers. “The additional information collected is minimal and appropriate, given that these lenders have no experience with or information on these (new) borrowers,” she said.

JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America all confirmed to ProPublica that they have seen an increase in the volume of applications for HARP refinancing since the new rules came into effect. Last month, American Banker reported that banks were scrambling to bolster their mortgage-servicing units to deal with the influx of applications from HARP.

The program is voluntary for banks, and they can place their own restrictions over and above those set by the government.

JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America say they are only doing HARP refinancing for existing customers 2014 not seeking out new business on loans originated by other lenders. Wells Fargo is accepting refinance applications from borrowers at other servicers, but it is putting a cap on the amount that the loan can be underwater.

In January, according to the FHFA, roughly 50,000 people refinanced under the new HARP rules, and HARP’s share of all refinancing increased. Some smaller lenders, especially in states with the worst housing markets, are hoping to jump in and offer lower rates to people looking to leave their current bank, even with the greater risk.

by Cora Currier ProPublica, April 5, 2012, 3:10 p.m.

The article Lack of Competition Stifles Refinance Program for Underwater Homeowners appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Every local broadcast station has a repository of documents about political advertising that you have a legal right to see but can do so only by going to the station and asking to see “the public file.”

These paper files contain detailed data on all political ads that run on the channel, such as when they aired, who bought the time and how much they paid. It’s a transparency gold mine, allowing the public to see how campaigns and outside groups are influencing elections.

But TV executives have been fighting a Federal Communications Commission proposal to make the data accessible online. They say making the files digital would be too burdensome 2014 it “could well take hundreds of hours for a single station,” according to comments filed with the FCC by the National Association of Broadcasters.

Others have taken their case a step further. As reported by Bloomberg Government, Jerald Fritz, senior vice president of Allbritton Communications, said in an another FCC filing that online availability “would ultimately lead to a Soviet-style standardization of the way advertising should be sold as determined by the government.” (NPR’s On the Media did an excellent segment recently on broadcasters’ opposition to the proposal.)

We tend to like the idea of public data being online. Since TV stations won’t put it online themselves, we decided to do it ourselves 2014 and we want your help. Working with students at the Medill journalism school at Northwestern University, we looked at five local stations in the Chicago market.

You can explore the results yourself: Here are detailed breakdowns of when the ads aired, during which programs, and how much each spot cost: Read the documents from the local affiliates of ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and CW.

Big thanks to Medill students David Tonyan, Julie O’Donoghue, Vesko Cholakov, Safiya Merchant and Gideon Resnick, who visited the stations Monday.

We intend to enlist more readers in checking their local stations as the election campaigns slog on. The general election is likely to usher in even greater spending, and such spot checks could keep an eye on how big spenders are influencing the election. If you’d like to join in, please fill out this form.

Campaigns and super PACs are required to report their spending on independent expenditures to the Federal Election Commission within a day or two, but they often just report how much they paid ad-buying firms, which can disguise how much actual ads cost and where they’re airing.

What’s more, the files could be a window into what may be otherwise undisclosed spending by “dark money” nonprofit groups that are playing an increasing role in the elections .

For our experiment, we asked our Chicago volunteers to check on spending by five super PACs that individually support Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama. There were no records of spending in Chicago by four of them, but Restore Our Future, a pro-Romney super PAC, advertised on all five stations. The super PAC paid the five stations about $800,000 in the past month.

As our PAC Track interactive chart shows, Restore Our Future has spent more than twice as much as any other PAC so far 2014 nearly $37 million. Medill student O’Donoghue said getting the files from the ABC station took her about half an hour, most of which was spent wrestling with the copy machine. Tonyan, another graduate student, said he spent 15 minutes at the CW affiliate, plus a 15-minute drive.

Both said the station employees who helped them were friendly and accommodating. We encountered the same when I visited five stations in New York, Missouri and Florida. Typically, a station employee will simply show you the room where the files are kept and let you dig in. Such visits don’t seem to happen often. A log at the New York CBS affiliate showed only six registered visitors since October 2011.

The Campaign Media Analysis Group, a unit of Kantar Media, tracks ads that have hit the airwaves and estimates what they would cost, but the company charges high rates to obtain the information. The Wesleyan Media Project publishes some CMAG data.

Rich Robinson, executive director of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, found that $70 million in advertising had been unreported from 2000-10 in Michigan. He got that number by personally examining public files, at one point driving 14 hours for a 15-minute visit to a station.

He told the FCC: “I can testify to you, unequivocally, that the threshold of effort necessary to report this important public interest story is too high for every news organization in Michigan, except mine.” Which is why we’re asking for your help. You can help expose spending that might otherwise remain hidden in your television market. Sign up here.

by Daniel Victor ProPublica, March 20, 2012, 3:29 p.m.

Image Courtesy of  Frontpage / Shutterstock.com

The article If TV Stations Won’t Post Their Data on Political Ads, We Will appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

March 21: This post has been corrected.

When the Environmental Protection Agency announced last week that tests showed the water is safe to drink in Dimock, Penn., a national hot spot for concerns about fracking, it seemed to vindicate the energy industry’s insistence that drilling had not caused pollution in the area.

But what the agency didn’t say 2013 at least, not publicly 2013 is that the water samples contained dangerous quantities of methane gas, a finding that confirmed some of the agency’s initial concerns and the complaints raised by Dimock residents since 2009.

The test results also showed the group of wells contained dozens of other contaminants, including low levels of chemicals known to cause cancer and heavy metals that exceed the agency’s “trigger level” and could lead to illness if consumed over an extended period of time. The EPA’s assurances suggest that the substances detected do not violate specific drinking water standards, but no such standards exist for some of the contaminants and some experts said the agency should have acknowledged that they were detected at all.

“Any suggestion that water from these wells is safe for domestic use would be preliminary or inappropriate,” said Ron Bishop, a chemist at the State University of New York’s College at Oneonta, who has spoken out about environmental concerns from drilling.

Dimock residents are struggling to reconcile the EPA’s public account with the results they have been given in private.

“I’m sitting here looking at the values I have on my sheet 2013 I’m over the thresholds 2013 and yet they are telling me my water is drinkable,” said Scott Ely, a Dimock resident whose water contains methane at three times the state limit, as well as lithium, a substance that can cause kidney and thyroid disorders. “I’m confused about the whole thing2026 I’m flabbergasted.”

The water in Dimock first became the focus of international attention after residents there alleged in 2009 that natural gas drilling, and fracking, had led to widespread contamination. That April, ProPublica reported that a woman’s drinking water well blew up. Pennsylvania officials eventually determined that underground methane gas leaks had been caused by Cabot Oil and Gas, which was drilling wells nearby. Pennsylvania sanctioned Cabot, and for a short time the company provided drinking water to households in the Dimock area.

This January, the EPA announced it would take over the state’s investigation, testing the water in more than 60 homes and agreeing to provide drinking water to several of families 2013 including the Elys 2013 in the meantime.

Then, last Thursday, the EPA released a brief statement saying that the first 11 samples to come back from the lab “did not show levels of contamination that could present a health concern.” The agency noted that some metals, methane, salt and bacteria had been detected, but at low levels that did not exceed federal thresholds. It said that arsenic exceeding federal water standards was detected in two samples.

But Dimock residents say the agency’s description didn’t jibe with the material in test packets distributed to them, and they voiced concerns about why the EPA had passed judgment before seeing results from nearly 50 homes. Several shared raw data and materials they were given by the EPA with Josh Fox, the director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary “GasLand,” who shared them with ProPublica.

EPA press secretary Betsaida Alcantara said the agency was trying to be forthcoming by giving the tests results to Dimock residents and is now considering whether to release more information to the public about the water samples. “We made a commitment to the residents that we would give them the information as soon as we had it,” she said. “For the sake of transparency we felt it was the right thing to do.”

However preliminary, the data is significant because it is the first EPA research into drilling-related concerned on the east coast, and the agency’s first new information since it concluded that there was likely a link between fracking and water contamination in central Wyoming last December. The EPA is currently in the midst of a national investigation into the effects of fracking on groundwater, but that research is separate.

As the agency has elsewhere, the EPA began the testing in Dimock in search of methane and found it.

Methane is not considered poisonous to drink, and therefore is not a health threat in the same way as other pollutants. But the gas can collect in confined spaces and cause deadly explosions, or smother people if they breathe too much of it. Four of the five residential water results obtained by ProPublica show methane levels exceeding Pennsylvania standards; one as high as seven times the threshold and nearly twice the EPA’s less stringent standard.

The methane detections were accompanied by ethane, another type of natural gas that experts say often signifies the methane came from deeply buried gas deposits similar to those being drilled for energy and not from natural sources near the surface.

Among the other substances detected at low levels in Dimock’s water are a suite of chemicals known to come from some sort of hydrocarbon substance, such as diesel fuel or roofing tar. They include anthracene, fluoranthene, pyrene and benzo(a)pyrene2013 all substances described by a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as cancer-causing even in very small amounts. Chromium, aluminum, lead and other metals were also detected, as were chlorides, salts, bromide and strontium, minerals that can occur naturally but are often associated with natural gas drilling.

It is unclear whether these contaminants have any connection to drilling activities near Dimock. The agency says it plans further testing and research.

Many of the compounds detected have not been evaluated for exposure risk by federal scientists or do not have an exposure limit assigned to them, making it difficult to know whether they present a risk to human health.

Inconsistencies in the EPA’s sampling results also are raising concerns. EPA documents, for example, list two different thresholds for the detection of bromide, a naturally occurring substance sometimes used in drilling fluids, opening up the possibility that bromide may have been detected, but not reported, in some tests.

“The threshold that it is safe, that shouldn’t be changing,” said Susan Riha, director of the New York State Water Resources Institute and a professor of earth sciences at Cornell University. “For some reason 2026 one was twice as sensitive as the other one.”

The EPA did not respond to questions about the detection limits, or any other technical inquiries about the test data.

A spokesman for Cabot declined to comment on the water test results or their significance, saying that he had not yet seen the data.

Correction: This post said EPA tests had detected bromium in some Dimock water wells. It should have said bromide. Also, the post identified Susan Riha as the director of the New York State Water Resources Group. She is the director of the Water Resources Institute at Cornell University.

by Abrahm Lustgarten ProPublica, March 20, 2012, 2:42 p.m.

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BP’s refining subsidiary was released on Monday from criminal probation related to a 2005 explosion in Texas City that killed 15 workers. The company has addressed the most serious safety deficiencies exposed by the accident and satisfied the terms of a felony plea agreement to settle charges that it failed to protect workers from known risks, a U.S. Justice Department spokesman said.

The move closes a controversial chapter for the company, but it leaves an array of worker-safety issues unresolved. BP is still negotiating over more than 400 additional violations brought against its Texas City refinery separately from the criminal case.

Following the explosion, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and BP reached a settlement requiring the company to address safety issues at the refinery. Fixing those problems became one of the Justice Department’s conditions for settling felony charges relating to the explosion and for ending the three-year probation period.

In late 2009, however, after a series of inspections, OSHA determined that BP had not addressed many of its safety lapses and levied 270 additional violations and a $87.4 million fine. It also hit the company with another 439 additional “egregious and willful” safety violations at the refinery that were not a component of the criminal case.

At issue then was whether the company had violated some of the most important terms of its probation even after it was given a second chance. In 2010, BP settled with OSHA, paying the agency $50.6 million and committing to making substantive safety changes by the court-set sunset of its probation period Monday (March 12).

A Justice Department spokesman said BP has met its obligations for probation, including addressing the 270 violations. The remaining 400 or so OSHA violations, however, were not specific to the Texas City agreement.

“These violations were unrelated to the 2005 settlement agreement and did not in the Department’s view rise to criminal conduct,” said Wyn Hornbuckle, an agency spokesman, in a statement to ProPublica. “The Department did not seek any extension or revocation of BP’s criminal probation.” The resolution of those remaining violations will be dealt with administratively, by OSHA, Hornbuckle said, and not by the courts.

As the probation expired, confusion remained about exactly what improvements BP had made at its refineries. According to the 2010 agreement with OSHA, BP pledged to address the risk of catastrophic chemical releases and to install new protective equipment and instrument systems across the sprawling refinery’s 28 units.

It was not clear how much progress the company had made, however, and BP spokesman Daren Beaudo characterized the OSHA issues as Unresolved. “We continue to work with OSHA to resolve these issues,” Beaudo wrote in an email. BP declined to say whether it had made any of the specific improvements listed in its 2010 settlement agreement, or to say how much money it had invested at the Texas City plant to meet the terms of its agreement with OSHA.

A spokeswoman for OSHA said the agency remained in negotiations with the company. In an email exchange, OSHA told ProPublica that the agency could not provide copies of any of the quarterly progress reports that BP had agreed to submit, and that it was “unable” to specify how many of its outstanding violations BP had addressed.

On March 23, 2005, a facility used to distill gasoline and boost its octane content was overfilled by BP workers, spewing a geyser of flammable liquid into the air. The subsequent explosion destroyed an office trailer nearby, killed 15 workers, and sent nearly 200 more to area hospitals.

Like the investigations into BP’s Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, a series of reports analyzing the refinery disaster found that the company had failed to follow basic steps to avert a disaster, had not installed or maintained equipment that would have helped prevent the leak and the explosion, and generally had a poor safety approach.

A 2010 investigation by ProPublica found that in the years before the explosion, BP had been repeatedly warned that its facilities were in need of repair, and the company had declined to replace ailing equipment — including the unit that failed the day of the explosion — in order to cut costs.

Documents obtained by ProPublica showed that an internal BP report shortly before the disaster said that employees at the plant worked with “an exceptional degree of fear.” The report warned that the plant might “kills (sic) someone in the next 12-18 months.” The Texas refinery, which produces about 3 percent of the country’s gasoline, continued to have problems after the explosion. Several more workers died in accidents, and in 2010, the plant was found emitting a huge cloud of unpermitted toxic emissions.

After the toxic release, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), Texas’s chief environmental regulator, charged the company with emissions reporting violations and alleged it had violated the terms of its probation with the federal government. BP settled that case, as well as an another similar emissions violation, with Texas in late 2011. That left the criminal probation period and the outstanding OSHA violations as the final chapters in the Texas City saga.

BP has endeavored to keep the Texas City accident separate from claims and ongoing investigations into its 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. As recently as two weeks ago, the company’s lawyers argued in court that past accidents should have no bearing on a trial to decide liability for the Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 workers.

BP sought to strike portions of testimony about Texas City and other past incidents from its former CEO, Tony Hayward, in depositions that would be admitted to the court. BP announced last year that it would sell its Texas City refinery along with another facility outside Los Angeles. The company said this week it has suitors and expects to complete a sale by year’s end.

by Abrahm Lustgarten ProPublica, March 12, 2012, 6:20 p.m.

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