Official On Key EPA Fracking Advisory Board Has Suspect Degree

An official on the Environmental Protection Agency’s hydraulic fracturing scientific advisory board got a doctorate degree from an unaccredited, shuttered online correspondence school that congressional auditors targeted a decade ago in an investigation into diploma mills.

The advisory board member is listed as Dr. Connie Schreppel in EPA records, which highlight her doctorate from Kennedy Western Universityand a master’s from Greenwich University.

Both schools are unaccredited or unapproved in several states, including Texas, where it’s a misdemeanor crime to cite a degree from either school in seeking a job or a promotion.

EPA officials declined to comment on Ms. Schreppel’s educational credentials and questions about her qualifications for the post. But the scientific panel’s deliberations have drawn intense interest from industry and environmental groups. In 2011, The New York Times reported that “Dr. Schreppel” was one of two New Yorkers serving on the EPA’s “board of independent scientists” studying the relationship between hydraulic fracturing — the drilling technique that has revolutionized American energy production — and drinking-water resources.

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