Safe Hydration is an American Right in Energy Development Act of 2025
Key claim: HR6116 would require hydraulic fracturing operations to test for and publicly report contamination of underground drinking water sources as a condition of state primacy under underground injection control programs.
Abstract
(HR6116 · 119th Congress) Safe Hydration is an American Right in Energy Development Act of 2025 This bill requires hydraulic fracturing operations to test for and report on underground sources of drinking water that are contaminated by such operations. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a process to extract underground resources such as oil or gas from a geologic formation by injecting water, a propping agent (e.g., sand), and chemical additives into a well under enough pressure to fracture the geological formation. Specifically, this bill modifies requirements governing state underground injection control programs. In order to obtain primary enforcement responsibility for such programs, states must prohibit the underground injection of fluids or propping agents pursuant to hydraulic fracturing operations related to oil, gas, or geothermal production activities unless the hydraulic fracturing operations agree to test for and report on contamination of drinking water. Hydraulic fracturing operations are exempted from those testing and reporting requirements if there is no accessible underground source of drinking water within a radius of one mile of the site where the operations occur. The Environmental Protection Agency must establish and maintain a publicly accessible and searchable database of the testing results. Latest action (2025-11-18): Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Why this matters
HR6116 takes a narrower approach than the FRAC Act — rather than repealing the SDWA hydraulic fracturing exemption, it leverages state UIC primacy as a lever to require testing and public reporting of drinking water contamination from fracking operations. Practical effects would include new monitoring costs for operators, expanded public data on aquifer impacts, and potential loss of primacy for states that decline to implement, though the bill remains at introduction with no enacted effect.