Louis Meeks' well water contains methane gas, hydrocarbons, lead and copper, according to the EPA's test results. When he drilled a new water well, it also showed contaminants. The drilling company Encana is supplying Meeks with drinking water.Abrahm Lustgarten / ProPublicaThis story was written by ProPublica reporter Abrahm Lustgarten.

Federal environment officials investigating drinking water contamination near the ranching town of Pavillion, Wyo., have found that at least three water wells contain a chemical used in the natural gas drilling process of hydraulic fracturing. Scientists also found traces of other contaminants, including oil, gas or metals, in 11 of 39 wells tested there since March.

The study, which is being conducted under the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund program, is the first time the EPA has undertaken its own water analysis in response to complaints of contamination in drilling areas, and it could be pivotal in the national debate over the role of natural gas in America's energy policy.

Abundant gas reserves are being aggressively developed in 31 states, including New York and Pennsylvania. Congress is mulling a bill that aims to protect those water resources from hydraulic fracturing, the process in which fluids and sand are injected under high pressure to break up rock and release gas. But the industry says environmental regulation is unnecessary because it is impossible for fracturing fluids to reach underground water supplies and no such case has ever been proven.

Scientists in Wyoming will continue testing this fall to determine the level of chemicals in the water and exactly where they came from. If they find that the contamination did result from drilling, the placid plains arching up to the Wind River Range would become the first site where fracturing fluids have been scientifically linked to groundwater contamination.

In interviews with ProPublica and at a public meeting this month in Pavillion's community hall officials spoke cautiously about their preliminary findings. They were careful to say they're investigating a broad array of sources for the contamination, including agricultural activity. They said the contaminant causing the most concern -- a compound called 2-butoxyethanol, known as 2-BE  -- can be found in some common household cleaners, not just in fracturing fluids.

But those same EPA officials also said they had found no pesticides -- a signature of agricultural contamination -- and no indication that any industry or activity besides drilling could be to blame. Other than farming, there is no industry in the immediate area.

In Pavillion, a town of about 160 people in the heart of the Wind River Indian Reservation, the gas wells are crowded close together in an ecologically vivid area packed with large wetlands and home to 10 threatened or endangered species. Beneath the ground, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, the earth is a complex system of folded crusts containing at least 30 water-bearing aquifer layers.

EPA officials told residents that some of the substances found in their water may have been poured down a sink drain. But according to EPA investigation documents, most of the water wells were flushed three times before they were tested in order to rid them of anything that wasn't flowing through the aquifer itself. That means the contaminants found in Pavillion would have had to work their way from a sink not only into the well but deep into the aquifer at significant concentrations in order to be detected. An independent drinking water expert with decades of experience in central Wyoming, Doyle Ward, dismissed such an explanations as "less than a one in a million" chance.

Some of the EPA's most cautious scientists are beginning to agree.

"It starts to finger point stronger and stronger to the source being somehow related to the gas development, including, but not necessarily conclusively, hydraulic fracturing itself," said Nathan Wiser, an EPA scientist and hydraulic fracturing expert who oversees enforcement for the underground injection control program under the Safe Drinking Water Act in the Rocky Mountain region. The investigation "could certainly have a focusing effect on a lot of folks in the Pavillion area as a nexus between hydraulic fracturing and water contamination."

Tanks hold natural gas condensate and mark the spot of producing gas wells in the Pavillion field, in Fremont County, Wyo., in the heart of the Wind River Indian Reservation. The Environmental Protection Agency has found chemicals that are used in gas drilling in water wells near this site.Abrahm Lustgarten / ProPublicaThe Superfund investigation follows a series of complaints by residents in the Pavillion area, some stemming back 15 years, that their water wells turned sour and reeked of fuel vapors shortly after drilling took place nearby. Several of those residents shared their stories with ProPublica, while other information was found through court and local records. Several years ago a one resident's animals went blind and died after drinking from a well. In two current cases, a resident's well water shows small pooling oil slicks on the surface, and a woman is coping with a mysterious nervous system disorder: Her family blames arsenic and metals found in her water. In two of those cases the Canadian drilling company Encana, which bought most of the area's wells after they were drilled and assumed liability for them, is either supplying fresh drinking water to the residents or has purchased the land. In the third case a drilling company bought by Encana, Tom Brown Inc, had previously reached an out-of-court settlement to provide water filtering.

Though the drilling companies have repeatedly compensated residents with the worst cases of contamination, they have not acknowledged any fault in causing the pollution. An Encana spokesman, Doug Hock, told ProPublica the company wants "to better understand the science and the source of the compounds" found in the water near Pavillion before he would speculate on whether the company was responsible. 

Precise details about the nature and cause of the contamination, as well as the extent of the plume running in the aquifer beneath this region 150 miles east of Jackson Hole, have been difficult for scientists to collect. That's in part because the identity of the chemicals used by the gas industry for drilling and fracturing are protected as trade secrets, and because the EPA, based on an exemption passed under the 2005 Energy Policy Act, does not have authority to investigate the fracturing process under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Using the Superfund program gave the agency extra authority to investigate the Pavillion reports, including the right to subpoena the secret information if it needs to. It also unlocked funding to pay for the research.

EPA officials have repeatedly said that disclosure of the fluids used in fracking -- something that would be required if the bill being debated in Congress were passed -- would enable them to investigate contamination incidents faster, more conclusively and for less money. The current study, which is expected to end next spring, has already cost $130,000.

About 65 people, many in jeans, boots and 10-gallon hats, filled Pavillion's community hall on Aug. 11 to hear the EPA's findings. They were told that a range of contaminants, including arsenic, copper, vanadium and methane gas were found in the water. Many of these substances are found in various fluids used at drilling sites.

Of particular concern were compounds called adamantanes, a natural hydrocarbon found in gas that can be used to fingerprint its origin, and 2-BE, listed as a common fracturing fluid in the EPA's 2004 research report on hydraulic fracturing. That compound, which EPA scientists in Wyoming said they identified with 97 percent certainty, was suspected by some environmental groups in a 2004 drilling-related contamination case in Colorado, also involving Encana. 

EPA investigators explained that because they had no idea what to test for, they were relegated to an exhaustive process of scanning water samples for spikes in unidentified compounds and then running those compounds like fingerprints through a criminal database for matches against a vast library of unregulated and understudied substances. That is how they found the adamantanes and 2-BE.

An Encana representative told the crowd the company was as concerned as they were about the contamination and pledged to help the EPA in its investigation.

Some people seemed confounded by what they were hearing.

"How in god's name can the oil industry dump sh*t in our drinking water and not tell us what it is?" shouted Alan Hofer, who lives near the center of the sites being investigated by the EPA.

"If they'd tell us what they were using then you could go out and test for things and it would make it a lot easier right?" asked Jim Van Dorn, who represents Wyoming Rural Water, a non-profit that advises utilities and private well owners on water management.

"Exactly," said Luke Chavez, the EPA's chief Superfund investigator on the project. "That's our idea too."

Now that the EPA has found a chemical used in fracturing fluids in Pavillion's drinking water, Chavez said the next step in the research is to ask Encana for a list of the chemicals it uses and then do more sampling using that list. (An Encana spokesman told ProPublica the company will supply any information that the EPA requires.) The EPA is also working with area health departments, a toxicologist and a representative from the Centers for Disease Control's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry to assess health risks, he said. 

Depending on what they find, the investigation in Wyoming could have broad implications. Before hydraulic fracturing was exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act in 2005, the EPA assessed the process and concluded it did not pose a threat to drinking water. That study, however, did not involve field research or water testing and has been criticized as incomplete. This spring, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson called some of the contamination reports "startling" and told members of Congress that it is time to take another look. The Pavillion investigation, according to Chavez, is just that.

"If there is a problem, maybe we don't have the tools, or the laws, to deal with it," Chavez said. "That's one of the things that could come out of this process."

Reprint courtesy ProPublica.org.

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The Bush administration on Monday cleared the way for tens of thousands of acres in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming to be used for oil-shale development, publishing final rules governing how federal land will be leased for extraction of the expensive, pollute-y, only recently un-banned fuel source. Companies tapping into oil shale will have to pay far less in royalties than the going rate for conventional gas and oil. Still, commercial oil-shale leasing is at least five to 10 years off.

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A federal judge has ruled that wolves should be returned to the endangered-species list for now, derailing plans for wolf hunts in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. The 2,000 or so gray wolves that inhabit the three states were removed from the endangered list in March; environmentalists sued to get them back on, saying populations were not yet stable. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, over 100 gray wolves have been killed by hunters in the days since they were delisted, a rate of almost a wolf a day. The federal judge will eventually decide if the relisting should be permanent. Meanwhile, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may appeal.

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The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, a coalition of hunting, fishing, and conservation groups, is suing the U.S. Interior Department over the impacts of gas drilling on wildlife in southwestern Wyoming. Some 1,000 natural-gas wells puncture the landscape of the state's Pinedale Anticline gas fields, with over 4,000 more wells likely to be drilled in the next 60 years. TRCP's lawsuit accuses Interior of authorizing drilling in the area despite its own findings that the activity would mess with wildlife. The group is seeking to stop new permits from being issued for the Pinedale field until the agency acts to restore declining populations of mule deer and sage grouse. "The government points to the Pinedale Anticline project as a model of responsible development," said TRCP's George Cooper. "But when we actually look at this fractured landscape and the shrinking wildlife populations, we see the effects of a model that is seriously flawed."

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Saying that their concerns about trigger-happy hunters have been validated, 12 conservation and animal-rights groups have sued to get the gray wolf re-listed as an endangered species. The 1,500 wolves that roam through Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho were delisted on Mar. 28 and can now be shot at will; a total of 37 have been killed in the last month. Conservation groups filed suit Monday, saying that the wolf population should be 2,000 at a minimum to protect genetic diversity. But federal biologists have a goal of maintaining a minimum population of only 300 wolves, and predict that even with willy-nilly killing, the population will stabilize well above that goal in the next few years.

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The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership has sued the U.S. Department of the Interior over the authorization of thousands of new oil and gas wells, roads, and miles of pipeline in a wildlife-rich area of Wyoming. News that an organization has sued the federal government over environmental travesties is, well, not really news -- unless it's TRCP, a non-litigious group with a largely Republican membership. The move is indicative that even the Bush administration's usual allies are fed up with a one-track-mind approach to energy development. Case in point: The Bureau of Land Management stated that development in the Wyoming area would "have adverse impact to suitable habitat for many wildlife species" and turn hunting grounds into "an industrial setting" -- but recommended the DOI go ahead anyway.

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On a summer weekend in the high country, I talked my grandmother into taking a drive into the Wyoming Range, where she'd worked with my grandfather as a hunting guide more than 20 years earlier. We wanted to have a look at a certain 44,600 acres of forest that had been leased by companies in search of natural gas.

Can the Wyoming Range be protected
from drilling?

Photo: JessLeePhotos.com

Heavily timbered with pine, fir, and aspen, the range lies to the west of Pinedale, my hometown. The leased land fell across the Beaver Creeks, where Grandma had grown up on a tiny homesteaded ranch. The leases meant that all the country she and I were familiar with would be open to the potentially devastating development of rigs and roads and pipelines and wells. The development would take place a few short miles from where my grandmother's family had settled, where she'd broken horses as a young woman, and where my family still held a single acre of land.

"The only time I saw a lynx that was alive in the wild was on this creek," Grandma said as we drove along a dirt road. We were on Dry Beaver Creek, a tiny, winding stream that runs out of the mountains and disappears underground, leaving nothing but a bed of stones lined with stubbly willows and dry grass. The lynx, my grandmother said, had surprised her when he sprang out of a line of timber on the north side of the creek, less than a hundred yards from where she sat quietly in a pickup, waiting for a group of hunters to return. The animal had padded across the clearing and the creek and sat at the edge of the trees on the other side of the road, licking his paws and cleaning his face "just like a cat," Grandma said.

Aside from lynx, these mountains were home to elk, deer, moose, bears, wolves, and all manner of birds. But we'd been talking about the Canada lynx because -- along with some air-quality issues -- it was a factor behind a motion made by a coalition of concerned citizens to halt the leases, at least temporarily. The leases had been granted on national forest land, based on a forest report more than a decade old -- and in that time, the cat had become endangered. My grandmother's story about the lynx hadn't come from any hope that the forest could be saved, though. It was more a lament.

Later in the day, as we continued our drive, she told me that the biggest problem for residents of Sublette County as it faced massive development was a divergence of interests. "When you've got all these little groups pushing their own little things," she said, "you're just about wasting your time."

When we took that drive into the mountains, Sublette County was already undergoing a huge gas boom. In the high plains between the Wyoming Range and the Wind River Mountains, 30,000 acres were under frantic exploration. Pinedale was under intense pressure from an influx of rowdy workers and skyrocketing land prices. There was a dearth of help for local businesses; any able-bodied person with an ounce of sense would take the higher paying jobs in the gas field.

The scars of the Jonah Field.

Photo: Peter Aengst / The Wilderness
Society / Light Hawk

The year before, I'd come home and taken such a job in one of the largest of several gas fields in Sublette County, the Jonah. I had seen firsthand the damage such development brought with it. Once you turned off the highway, the Jonah Field became a cross-hatched mess of hard-packed roads, well locations, and greasy, groaning drilling rigs. There were so many roads to so many well sites that every roustabout in my company carried a map in the glovebox, and even then we sometimes got lost. The whole landscape was a scarred fiasco, and it was hard to see how it would ever go back to the way it once was.

At that time in my life, I had great sympathy for the people of Sublette County. I'd arrived in my own personal state of economic hardship, and I'd given in to the temptation of gas money. I found solace in the same excuses I heard from the people around me, that America's "thirst for oil" was driving an energy demand that needed to be met from home. That environmentalists were protecting their solitude -- and sometimes their glamorous homes -- at the expense of jobs. And besides, nobody really ever went into that part of the country, so what was the harm?

But now that it looked like the Wyoming Range -- and the Bridger-Teton National Forest on the range's northeastern flank -- might undergo some of the same industrial-strength lashing, the harm was becoming more apparent to more people.

That harm, of course, is that once you let big money in, it's hard to slow down. A type of surrender ensues. People like my grandmother, and others in town, had succumbed to it. They'd become numb to warnings from different parties who wanted to stop the development -- were wary and weary of them, in fact.

Even as I drove with Grandma through the Wyoming Range, I could see she loved the place, and her lynx story was a way of telling me so. But her lack of faith in people's ability to change things wasn't encouraging. It echoed the shoulder-shrugging indifference I'd grown used to in my time back home. The surrender of national forest to developers, though, looked like it might offer a wake-up call.

Public land in Wyoming, like much of the West, is managed at two different levels. The Bureau of Land Management, under the Department of the Interior, manages a lot of the sagebrushed steppe between the mountains, and the Forest Service, under the Department of Agriculture, oversees the national forests -- at least on the surface. Put another way, the BLM got "the land that nobody wanted," Steven Hall, a spokesperson for the bureau, told me.

In Sublette County, that meant most of the land currently under development was fully operated by the BLM. The Jonah alone, Hall said, was going to provide 8 trillion cubic feet of gas over 76 years, enough to heat 12 million homes for a full year. The Jonah would spur $30.5 billion in economic activity, he said, and would provide decades of work in development, production, and reclamation. Royalties would be around $6.1 billion, half of them going to the state. In other words, the gas under Sublette County was a massive resource for the nation and for locals, and it was the BLM's job to maximize its capture.

"That's our mission," Hall said.

Now the BLM was looking for more. The Bridger-Teton land -- at least where private companies suspected they might find natural gas -- also fell under the aegis of the bureau, once it was approved for leasing by the Forest Service.

The Forest Service was aggressively following a "multiple use" mandate, one that called for the agency to find segments of land where gas might be exploited. At first, the Forest Service had come up with 156,000 acres of land in the Wyoming Range, but following a public outcry had reduced that to 44,600. The land was leased in four deals with private companies through the BLM.

A catalyst in the form of a Canada lynx.

Photo: BLM

The leasing of the forest land had awakened groups heretofore unbothered by developments on the prairie. In June, a coalition formed that included locals, outfitters looking to protect their livelihoods, and groups such as Trout Unlimited, the National Outdoor Leadership School, and the Wyoming Outdoor Council. Together, they petitioned the Interior Board of Land Appeals -- an oversight committee for BLM leases -- for a stay on the leases, pending further review of factors such as the new status of the lynx and an increasingly hazy sky over the county -- a result of other gas-field development unforeseeable in the past.

"The days of crystal blue skies are gone forever," Gary Amerine, an outfitter, told me one night over cheeseburgers and Pepsi at a local restaurant in Pinedale. But, he said, it wasn't too late to save the Wyoming Range, and the impacts of the Jonah Field might even help the cause. The plan was first to get a stay on the leases, and then petition to have the Wyoming Range protected by Congress from any kind of development in the future.

In September, a promising sign emerged. The IBLA granted a stay on a large parcel of land, bringing a temporary halt to the development of nearly 20,000 of the 44,600 acres.

The decision was a good sign that stays on the leases for the rest of the land would also be granted, Lisa McGee, an environmental lawyer for the Wyoming Outdoor Council, wrote me after the decision. "In other words ... these stays will set a precedent for the remaining Wyoming Range lease sales -- effectively halting new leasing in the Wyoming Range for the time being."

I'd met McGee in Lander, Wyo., another small mountain town, at her office, in the only building on the street sporting solar panels. Before the IBLA decision, she'd told me in a derisive tone that the 44,600 acres -- vast to many -- had originally been considered a compromise. "We know that oil and gas contribute to our economy in this state, and it's important," she'd said. "But we do draw the line at some of these special places."

The stays on the leasing, while gratifying, were a small victory. After all, the Wyoming Range isn't protected now any more than it was prior to the decision, because a review of the land might still find it suitable for gas development. I could still hear Grandma's despairing voice. "Waste of time," it said.

But to McGee, the decisions were not only legally promising, they also said something about cooperation. "This decision says a lot about the power of citizens to stand up and demand that federal land managers follow the law," she wrote. "It's also encouraging to see people from different walks of life -- hunters, anglers, oil and gas field workers, outfitters, ranchers, and conservationists -- working together with a common goal: to keep oil and gas development out of the places where we recreate and spend time with our families."

Sublette County is home to about 6,000 people, most of whom are benefiting in one way or another from the gas boom. But money comes with a price. Violent crime is up, as is the use of drugs, Mary Lankford, Sublette County clerk, told me. The county sheriff's department and the state highway patrol had an uphill battle keeping wages competitive with the gas money, and the town's streets were constantly troubled with traffic, especially in the summertime, when tourists co-mingle with workers.

A lot of people were willing to deal with those growing pains, because so much money was coming in. On my morning jogs, for example, I'd pass a construction site for a $16 million "aquatic center," one that would replace the old swimming pool where I'd learned to swim. Before the old pool, kids in sleepy little Pinedale, kids like my mother, had to learn to swim in Fremont Lake, where the waters, fed from glacial runoff, were freezing in all but the hottest summers.

A drilling rig towers over the Pinedale Mesa.

Photo: Jeff Vanuga

Pinedale was anything but sleepy when I returned. It was inundated, and seemed to be foundering. I never got the sense while I was there that anyone was at the helm. Development was king, and people were overwhelmed.

During my stay, local primary elections transpired, and the Republican winners for county commissioner, one of the weightiest jobs in politics as local as these, were both men whose pro-drilling views were documented in a pre-election special section of one of the local papers, the Pinedale Roundup. Presumably, their views were those of the majority.

Asked whether he was an environmentalist and supported drilling on the forest, one of the two, Bill Cramer, told Roundup readers: "I care deeply about the environment. This is one reason I moved here. But I am also a realist. Oil and gas are where we find them. We cannot expect producers to provide us the energy if they cannot drill."

To me, the real question was in the development of the Bridger-Teton. Why, I wondered, was this necessary when so much development was already under way on the prairie? And what kind of pressure was coming to bear on Forest Service administrators, people who presumably got into their jobs because they wanted to be stewards of the forest? Had the Wyoming Range become part of some larger deal-brokering? Had some forests been protected while others hadn't?

"We can't just say, 'Sorry, not here,'" Teresa Trulock, a natural-resources specialist for the Forest Service, told me. "That's a three-year-old's argument."

"You have to have a reason" not to turn land over to the BLM for leasing, she said. The Forest Service, as a federal agency, had requirements to review any land that private companies chose to explore for resources, she said. "Basically," she said, "we have policies that are driven by law."

The BLM asks for the land, and the Forest Service grants it. They are two agencies under different federal departments, making it easy for each side to put some responsibility on the other when the public starts looking for redress, each of them citing a "multiple use" strategy that seems to some a little lopsided.

"Multiple use doesn't have to be every single acre on the forest," McGee said when I met her at her office. "You don't want to recreate in a place that looks like the Jonah Field."

When I asked Trulock, who has lived in Pinedale for five years, how she felt personally about the new swath of land being leased, she said it would be outside her professional parameters to discuss. When I asked her if there was any resistance to the leasing inside the Forest Service, she said she wasn't aware of any.

Meanwhile, the Forest Service recently began creating a new forestry plan -- an expensive, time-consuming process that won't be completed for two or three years, Trulock said. This plan, presumably, would recognize the endangered status of the lynx, and other changes since the last plan was drafted. But just because a new plan is under way doesn't mean development stops. "You can't come to a screeching halt," Trulock said.

I understand that. And I also understand that development in the Jonah, while it is an eyesore, is helping a lot of people. Pinedale is never going to be as it was when I was a kid. It is going to grow. The skies won't stay clear forever. My concern, though, is that the Wyoming Range is going to start to look like the Jonah: cut up, trampled down, a thoroughfare for gas-field traffic -- not a sanctuary for red-tailed hawks and secretive lynx.

I asked Trulock if there was a chance that the 44,600 acres on the forest would look like the Jonah. She told me she hadn't actually seen the Jonah, exactly, "except from the highway."

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Wolf population thriving in Rocky Mountain states

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For the past six years, the Bureau of Land Management has been slacking on its commitment to assess and limit the impact of natural-gas drilling on wilderness in western Wyoming, says, um, the Bureau of Land Management. A leaked internal assessment for the BLM's Pinedale, Wyo., field office declares that there is often "no evaluation, analysis, or compiling" of data concerning environmental harm to the area. Had it been doing its job, the BLM might have noticed that drilling activity has upped area nitrous oxide levels and reduced deer and sage grouse populations. According to a former Pinedale BLM employee, agency staffers have been spending their time and energy on drilling requests; under pressure from the White House, the BLM is issuing drilling permits faster than the energy industry can keep up. Says conservationist James D. Range, "While the leaked report shines light on the agency's failure in one specific place, we fear that it is emblematic of its handling of energy leasing and development throughout the West."

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Dear Umbra,

I liked your column about homemade cleaning products. I have a question, though: What's up with baking soda? It's frequently bandied about as an eco-friendly cleaner, but I have no idea what it is, where it comes from, or how it's made.

Amanda
Charlottesville, Va.

Dearest Amanda,

Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate, a naturally occurring crystalline compound. I can be unusually precise about where it comes from: Green River, Wyo.

Wyoming: what lies beneath?

Photo: USDA.

Turns out Wyoming holds the world's largest reserves of trona, otherwise known as sodium sesquicarbonate -- a key ingredient in your mysterious household staple. An estimated 100 billion tons or more sit right there under the high-steppe desert. Almost all baking soda made in the U.S. comes from there, and a quarter of the world's supply too.

Trona room-and-pillar mining -- picture miners standing in a sort of underground city -- is a mainstay of the Sweetwater County economy, employing more than 2,000 Wyomingites. The ore is removed with boring equipment, then processed into soda ash. The ash -- which can also be used to make glass, bread, and paper -- is dissolved in water and bubbled with carbon dioxide, forming sodium-bicarbonate crystals. The crystals are harvested by little gnomes and packaged for delivery to a grocery store near you.

Here, because I know you are wondering, is the most pressing environmental concern I have found associated with trona mining: the wastewater is very salty, and when it is piped away to a holding pond, it can make the birds that visit said pond fall sick, and sometimes drown. I will let you decide for yourself whether this scourge is worth fretting about.

Now, as for the cleanser bandying, we can chalk that up to the magic of crystal alkalinity. Our messes and stinks often have an acidic component: there are fatty acids in grease and dirt, and unpleasant smells like sour milk have acidic sources. Chemically basic baking soda neutralizes these acids, which is why the smell goes away. It's also a crystal, so it scrubs, but is soft and dissolves in water, so it doesn't scratch. It's amply present in our environment and our bodies to begin with, and appears to be nontoxic (although it should be kept away from the little ones). We use it for leavening and eat it. It is basically yummier dirt.

Baking powder, by contrast, combines baking soda (a base) and cream of tartar (an acid), which react together when moistened and produce carbon-dioxide bubbles. It's not so effective for cleaning, since it doesn't cancel out acid and doesn't scrub well. But it sure comes in handy when we whip up our famous Grist biscuits.

Bakily,
Umbra

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