If you’ve heard about “fracking” for natural gas and oil in the United States, you’ve probably heard one of two stories:

The first is a story of clean energy and US energy independence. Natural gas burns cleaner than coal and emits less CO2, making it useful in combating climate change. As a result of increased fracking in the past several years, natural gas now represents 30% of US energy supplies. This means that less US energy is coming from coal. Additionally, producing this energy within the US will decrease dependence on foreign oil.

The second story is one of yet another dirty, unregulated industry harming people and the environment. Mismanaged wastewater, along with chemical spills and leaks, are polluting groundwater. Fracking companies do not have to disclose the hazardous, carcinogenic chemicals they are using. And fracking releases large amounts of methane and other air pollutants that negatively impact both human health and climate change.

So which of these stories is right? According to Kate Konschnik, policy director for Harvard’s Environmental Law program, neither represents the whole truth. Konschnik believes natural gas is an important part of the US energy sector, but also recognizes that acquiring it poses real risks that must be managed. It is, Konschnik says, “a place where law needs to play catch-up, where law doesn’t quite know how to be applied.” Despite how contentious the topic of fracking has become, Konschnik believes a middle ground position, best found through well-made and managed laws, is both possible and necessary.

Konschnik has always been interested in the environment, but her interest in the law was solidified during her work with several non-profit organizations. A few years after earning her bachelor’s degree at Tufts University, Konschnik began working for the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners (SLUG). Though not yet a lawyer, she began helping her coworkers with small legal matters, including immigration and sub-standard housing issues. Curious how new federal immigration laws would effect her SLUG coworkers, she then worked for a short time as a paralegal in an immigration law firm, while also volunteering with Communities for a Better Environment, an environmental advocacy organization. Through these experiences, she came to view law, she says, as the most effective way to both, “make positive, concrete changes in people’s lives,” and to “think logically about what was wrong and how it could be fixed, rather than despairing about bad things I had seen or arguing for irrational solutions.”

Konschnik’s pragmatism continues to shape her most recent work on improving fracking regulation. She works to overcome issues of miscommunication and misinformation that often pervade the over-heated debates about fracking and hinder our ability to fix the problem.

The most common dialogue surrounding fracking is between environmental groups, who claim it destroys groundwater, and industry, which claims there has never been a case of groundwater pollution as a direct result of fracking. Konschnik notes that these two contending claims are fueled in part by differing definitions of the term fracking. Industry defines “fracking” only as the process of sending water and chemicals down a well, to break up the deep shale rock that contains gas or oil. Environmentalists and most other concerned parties, however, use the term to encompass water use, storage, chemical mixing, and all other processes related to unconventional drilling.

Clearing up miscommunications alone will not solve the problem. The debate is more complicated, both on a big-picture level and on a smaller scale. Many see natural gas as a “bridge fuel,” both to move the US toward energy independence and to reduce CO2 emissions and combat climate change. But Konschnik warns this makes sense only “if we are right now figuring out how it is a bridge and not just all we think about for the next 50 years.”

This is a seemingly simple concept, but a difficult one to implement within the current system. People building natural gas infrastructure now are counting on it being there for many years and staking their livelihoods on that assumption. Further, Konschnik mentions, to make it truly a “bridge,” requires simultaneous investment in renewable energies on a state and federal level.

While considering these big-picture concerns, however, Konschnik recognizes the importance of tackling the problem one detail at a time. For Konschnik, a major focus is improving the way that companies disclose chemicals used in the fracking process. This was an area where she felt progress to be both necessary–large-scale chemical use had for the most part not been seen previously in traditional oil and gas drilling–and possible–there has been a lot of movement on the issue and 22 states have already put some kind of disclosure requirement in place.

Chemical disclosure is also an issue where Konschnik sees potential for cooperation between industry, regulators, and environmental groups. Fostering such cooperation is crucial in developing regulations that both mitigate risks and that industry will abide by. Konschnik found that there was much agreement among states that they needed to either implement or improve disclosure requirements. “When you get to that level,” Konschnik says, referring to a single issue like disclosure, where there seems to be wide agreement that it can be done more effectively, “it might seem mundane, it’s not as sexy as taking on a whole issue, but that’s where you find collaboration.”

Fracking has been exempt from much federal legislation, including the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). Normally, the SDWA would require companies to disclose chemicals used in a well before drilling. Since fracking was exempted from the law in 2005, many states have attempted to implement their own laws. Konschnik explains that most of these state laws are slightly less useful than SDWA would have been, as they only require disclosure after chemicals have been used. Despite this shortcoming, however, she sees much promise in states’ ability to improve disclosure.

Central to the current problems with state-level programs is the use of FracFocus, a website originally created by industry for voluntary disclosure. This website allows the public to see the chemicals used in a well, how deep it is, and how much water is being used at that individual well.

While this seems like important information, Konschnik recently co-authored a study that found numerous flaws in states’ use of FracFocus. She found inconsistencies in reporting of different chemicals; at one well, chemicals in a certain product would be claimed as a trade secret, while at another well the chemicals were clearly listed. Further, the website does not allow searching across different wells, making it difficult to find such inconsistencies. Finally, and most importantly, use of FracFocus for state disclosure means that the state often does not possess the data for these wells. This makes it impossible for citizens to use public information laws to challenge a company’s trade secret claim.

In light of her findings, Konschnik will soon meet with the creators of the website, along with representatives of oil and gas industry, the Department of Energy, and environmental groups to work on improving FracFocus as a regulatory tool. No matter the outcome of this particular meeting, however, there are many more fracking-related issues to address, and Konschnik’s work is far from over. One thing is certain, though: her ability to work with both sides and find middle ground solutions, both on this issue and others, remains crucial. “I like hearing from both sides that they’re annoyed with something I wrote,” Konschnik says, “because it means I fell somewhere in the middle, which is probably where the truth lies.”