A 2013 federal water study was edited to play down the negative effects of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” following a flurry of email exchanges between the authors and New York state officials, according to a report published this week by local political news website Capital New York . The study, conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), had examined naturally occurring methane in water wells across the gas-rich Southern Tier, a group of counties located on New York’s border with Pennsylvania. New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who commissioned the study in 2011, has long maintained that he would only approve fracking if science shows that it can be done safely. But someenvironmental experts are accusing the Cuomo administration of meddling with the study in order to blunt the impact of a number of politically inconvenient findings — a move that would enable him to move forward with controversial energy policies. Seth […]