Image via Flickr, courtesy of Mike Lewis

There's a new battle afoot in the land of water, and it's quite a fracking fight. "Fracking" is the industry term for hydraulic facturing, a method used to extract natural gas that is "locked" within rocks deep underground. Millions of gallons of water are shot in a highly pressurized stream, about 300 times stronger than your garden hose out back, and creates tiny cracks in the rocks, releasing the gas, and increasing production drastically.

However, water warriors are decrying this method, stating that the risk of polluting underground aquifiers and damaging local wells runs quite high. They want federal regulators to step in, but industry professionals point out that this is a decision for the states. So why is there no federal regulation? NPR explains:

Generally, the Environmental Protection Agency regulates anything that could affect underground drinking water supplies. But in 2005, the industry successfully lobbied for the exemption for fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act. That leaves regulation up to the states, which don't have the kind of resources the EPA does.

Read about the whole fracking thing here and here.