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Chelsea Clinton Asked When Her Mom Will Take ‘the Right Stand on Fracking’

October 5, 2016

An environmentalist audience member asked Chelsea Clinton during a rally in Dubuque, Iowa on Wednesday when her mom, Hillary Clinton, is going to take "the right stand on fracking."

"The [Iowa] Democratic chair, Andy McGuire, stood up and said that, um, we’re a party that stands–or that we support the right issues," the questioner said. "We’re on the–we support all the issues that really matter. What I want to know is when is your mom going to take the right stand on fracking?"

Clinton laid out her mother’s stance on the issue.

"So, my mother has said that she does not support methane and fracking, which is what the EPA has said that has real evidence as being dangerous for—but, she largely supports, as she always has, is local communities making what it thinks are the right decisions for itself."

Hillary Clinton gave a journalist in Colorado an identical response in August to her daughter’s answer on Wednesday, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported.

"I am not an expert on the Colorado constitution, and what I’m told is that the basis for the Colorado court’s decision was a Colorado constitutional one," Clinton told a local reporter Wednesday. "I have long been in favor of states and cities within states making up their own minds whether or not they want to permit fracking."

Hillary Clinton supports fracking as long as it meets certain standards, which include no local pushback and regulations, PolitiFact reported this year, quoting her comments from a March 6 debate in Flint, Michigan.

"I don’t support it when any locality or any state is against it, No. 1. I don’t support it when the release of methane or contamination of water is present. I don’t support it–No. 3–unless we can require that anybody who fracks has to tell us exactly what chemicals they are using.

So by the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place. And I think that’s the best approach, because right now, there are places where fracking is going on that are not sufficiently regulated."

PolitiFact also said that, even with her regulations, her plan would not amount to a "universal ban" against fracking.

Clinton’s three conditions would uphold existing bans and add new ones to the mix. But they wouldn’t amount to a universal ban.

The first condition leaves local and state bans in place, such as those in Vermont, New York, and a few dozen cities and counties across America.

Her second condition would add dozens of sites that have methane emissions or water contamination.