westmcg@gmail.com
* For articles and updates or to just vent, visit us on facebook;
https://www.facebook.com/groups/MarcellusWestmorelandCountyPA/
* To view past updates, reports, general
information, permanent documents, and meeting
information http://westmorelandmarcellus.blogspot.com/
* Our email address: westmcg@gmail.com
* To contact your state
legislator:
For the email address, click on the envelope
under the photo
* For information on PA state gas legislation
and local control: http://pajustpowers.org/aboutthebills.html-
WMCG Thank You
Contributors To Our Updates
Thank you to contributors to our Updates:
Debbie Borowiec, Lou Pochet, Ron Gulla, the Pollocks, Marian Szmyd, Bob Donnan,
April Jackman, Kacey Comini, Elizabeth Donahue, and Bob Schmetzer.
Thank you
To Stephanie Novak from Mt. Watershed Assoc., Carol
Cutler, and the Milburns for tabling and offering TDS water testing at the
Latrobe Farm Market. We had the opportunity to again talk to many interested
people about fracking.
To Jack Milburn, Lou Pochet, and Dr. Cynthia Walter
for their efforts in working on the application for our grant from the Mt Watershed
Assoc.
A
little Help Please --Take Action!!
Tenaska Air Petitions—Please sign if you have not done so:
Please
share the attached petition with residents of Westmoreland and all bordering
counties. We ask each of you to help us
by sharing the petition with your email lists and any group with which you are
affiliated. As stated in the petition, Westmoreland County cannot meet air
standards for several criteria. Many areas of Westmoreland County are already
listed as EPA non-attainment areas for ozone and particulate matter 2.5, so the
county does not have the capacity to handle additional emissions that will contribute
to the burden of ozone in the area as well as health impacts. According to the American Lung Association,
every county in the Pittsburgh region except for Westmoreland County had fewer
bad air days for ozone and daily particle pollution compared with the previous
report. Westmoreland County was the only
county to score a failing grade for particulate matter.
The Tenaska gas plant will add tons of pollution to
already deteriorated air and dispose of wastewater into the Youghiogheny
River. Westmoreland County already has a
higher incidence of disease than other counties in United States. Pollution won’t stop at the South Huntingdon
Township border; it will travel to the surrounding townships and counties.
If you know of church groups or other organizations that will help with
the petition please forward it and ask for their help.
*********************************************************************************
Calendar
*** WMCG Group
Meeting We meet
the second Tuesday of every month at 7:30 PM in Greensburg. Email Jan for directions. All are very welcome to attend.
***The Great March for Climate Action –Event
in Butler
WHAT'S NEXT FOR PITTSBURGH-AREA CLIMATE ACTIVISTS?
How about
this? Can you help make it happen?
The Great
March for Climate Action
Coming to Monroeville October 16 On March 1, 2014,
hundreds of everyday Americans set out from Los Angeles, CA, on a 3,000-mile
walk to Washington, D.C., with a goal of inspiring others from all walks of
life to take action on the climate crisis. The march has delivered to thousands
of Americans the message that urgent action is needed on climate change. Dozens
of newspaper and television reports have resulted. Thousands have marched for at
least a day, with a core group of 25-35 persons walking the entire distance.
Thousands of one-on-one conversations between Americans concerned about our
future have taken place. Songs around the campfire and sermons in church
sanctuaries and coalition-building gatherings have reverberated across the
country.
The march will enter Pennsylvania on October 10, with
stops in Bessemer on Oct 10 at Maggie Henry's farm, Darlington (Oct 11) [with
an excursion that day to Butler, PA for a Global Frackdown rally], Freedom (Oct
12), Ben Avon (Oct 13), Pittsburgh, (Oct 14-15), Monroeville (Oct 16), South
Greensburg (Oct 17), Ligonier (Oct 18) and five other stops in PA before
exiting to Maryland on October 25th.
.
The marchers want nothing more than to be helpful in adding their voices and
bodies to the fights we have on our hands.
If you are interested in helping this march
amplify its impact as it comes through Pennsylvania, then let me know and I
will try to connect you with events along the Pennsylvania rout.
CONTACT: Stephen Cleghorn, Paradise Gardens
and Farm
jstephencleghorn@yahoo.com
or 814-932-6761
*******
Butler is Hosting Having An event for the
Climate March-Oct 11
Save the Date:
Western PA’s Global Frackdown is set for
Saturday Oct 11 at Diamond Park in Butler, 2-5 PM.
Here is link to the website http://www.globalfrackdown.org/ Be there to welcome the Great March for Climate Action
on the Pennsylvania leg of its journey from LA to DC.
Here is link to Bill Moyers’ interview of one
of the marchers: http://billmoyers.com/episode/climate-change-next-generation/
Be
there for the launch of Pennsylvanians Against Fracking.
Bring your signs. Bring your banner. And BE THERE!
(More details to
come. Contact carolcutler3@msn.com if
you want to carpool to attend this event)
***Conference-Shale
and Public Health Features Dr Paulson, Dr McKenzie,
Dr Panettieri- Oct. 26/27
The League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania's
Straight Scoop on Shale initiative will hold a conference "Shale and Public Health: Days of Discovery" on Sunday
afternoon October 26 and Monday October 27 at the Pitt University Club.
Featured
speakers on Monday October 27 include Dr. Jerome Paulson, Director of the
Mid-Atlantic Center for Children's Health and the Environment (MACCHE), and Dr.
Lisa McKenzie of the Colorado School of Public Health.
On Sunday afternoon October 26,
Dr. Reynold Panettieri of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of
Medicine will present new research on the health impacts of shale gas
development.
The
conference is open to the public and free (with a small charge for lunch on
October 27), but pre-registration is required.
Or call 1-800-61-SHALE (800-617-4253)
***Boston Art Show
Utilizes Local Voices-- July 11, 2014 through
January 5, 2015
Open to the public, Boston Museum
of Science
Several of us spoke to artist Anne Neeley about water
contamination from fracking. Excerpts of what we said about our concerns
regarding fracking will play in a loop along with music in the background as
people view Anne’s murals of water. The show is not exclusively about the
effect of fracking on water and includes other sources of pollution. (see sites
below).
Some of us were fortunate to see photos of Anne’s
murals. They are beautiful and very thought provoking. Jan
ANNE NEELY WATER STORIES
PROJECT: A CONVERSATION IN PAINT AND SOUND
July
2014 – January 2015, Museum of Science, Boston
“Water Stories: A
Conversation in Painting and Sound” is at the Museum of Science, Boston through
January 2015. In recent years I have conveyed ideas about water and the
phenomena of water through nature, the news, memory and imagination. These
paintings explore the beauty and foreboding of water, related to central
themes, mostly manmade and thru climate change affecting this country. Sound
artist Halsey Burgund has created a 35 minute audio composition that
accompanies the paintings, comprised of five sections grouped by thematic
content: The Future, Stories, Bad Things, Science and Cherish. The voices are
edited and combined with water sounds and musical elements and play in a
continuous loop throughout the gallery. By placing this work in this Museum of
Science there is an extraordinary opportunity to clarify and illuminate issues
around water through visceral connections that paintings often elicit from
viewers while raising public awareness. My
hope is that this exhibition will spawn a new sense of ownership about not only
the issues facing us about water but how we use water on a daily basis.”
"Together, Anne and I
plan to explore big ideas about what’s happening with water in this country. In
the 2014, the Museum will exhibit Anne’s work and host a series of related
programs. At the Museum, we find that mixing art with our more typical
educational approaches works well. The art opens people to ideas, emotion,
scale, and import, in ways that more explicit techniques may not. It broadens
the audience, welcomes people who learn differently, and adds dimensions of
experience that are otherwise unavailable."
—
David G. Rabkin, PhD, Director for Current Science and Technology, Museum of
Science, Boston, MA
Visit
these sites for images and more information:
http://www.anneneely.com/pages/mos.html
TAKE ACTION !!
***Letters to the editor are important and one of the best ways to share
information with the public. ***
***See Tenaska Petition at the top of the Updates
***- Pittsburgh’s Air At Stake- Please
Comment-Time is Almost Up For Submitting Comments
Send Statement/Comment To Restrict Carbon
From Existing Power plants
Everyone Should Submit a Written Statement
We need to send a strong message to the EPA and Big Coal that there’s
overwhelming public support for national climate action –NOW! Big Coal and their
climate-denying allies are already trying to weaken the EPA’s historic climate
protection efforts.
Comments on the Clean Power Plan Proposed Rule must be received by
October 16, 2014. You do not have to write a long statement. Any
statement of support for Carbon reduction is helpful and there’s lots of data, just google climate
change—flooding, storms, effects on health, plant and animal adaptation, etc.
Send Your Comments To:
A: Comments on the EPA’s new
rule covering the carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants may be submitted via Email to:
A-and-R-Docket@epa.gov
With docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2013-0602 in
the subject line of the message.
Be sure to reference Docket ID:
EPA-HQ-OAR-2013-0602
For information about the
carbon reduction plan:
Opposition to the New EPA
Rules
The
Obama Administration clearly anticipates strong opposition to the new rules,
and the fight will take place on several grounds. Despite strong public support
for the EPA’s proposed rules, the climate change deniers were quick to claim the
rules were unnecessary. The national Chamber of Commerce said the costs were
exorbitant, but Nobelist Paul Krugman dismisses their argument. But it is the
legal challenges that will perhaps slow-down the implementation of the EPA’s
rules, a delay we cannot afford.
And From Public Citizen
See
the top 10 FAQs on the carbon pollution reduction plan.
*** Tell EPA: Our Ocean's Not a Dump for Fracking
From:
"Center for Biological Diversity"
<bioactivist@biologicaldiversity.org>
The agency charged with
protecting our environment is failing to do its job, and we need your help to
right this wrong. Off California's coast
the EPA has been letting oil companies dump up to 9 billion gallons of toxic
fracking wastewater directly into the ocean every year.
Many of the nearly 250 chemicals
used in fracking wells are toxic to people and to wildlife like whales,
dolphins and sea otters. Some chemicals are known carcinogens; others cause
immune and nervous-system damage. Still others hover in the shadowy category
called "unknown" -- oil companies say their contents are trade
secrets, and the EPA blindly agrees to assume they're harmless.
We can't let this dumping continue.
If you wouldn't drink well water tainted by fracking fluids, surely no animal
should have to live in such water.
Act
now to tell the EPA to do its job and bring an immediate ban to the discharge
of toxic fracking chemicals off the coasts of Southern California and the Gulf
of Mexico. Click here to take action and get more information.
If
you can't open the link, go to
http://action.biologicaldiversity.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=16356.
***For Health Care
Professionals—Tell PA Dept of Health to Stop Ignoring Fracking Health Complaints
***Saving Pittsburgh Parks-
Needed: Registered voters in
Allegheny County Who Will Help
Please
read the message below and call me today to talk about this more:
Protect Our Parks submitted 5000 signatures to
County Council on May 6, calling for a no vote on drilling under Deer
Lakes. Unfortunately, council voted
anyway to go ahead with County Executive Fitzgerald's proposal to drill under
Deer Lakes Park.
Although we lost that battle, we have a new
campaign to protect the other 8 county parks.
And we need your help!!
This is basically a citizen’s initiative to
require Council to vote on an ordinance -- not a resolution, but an ORDINANCE
--which WE write. We've written an ordinance, to put a hold on activity in the
other parks --which we believe will be attractive to some of the council
members who voted yes last time. We need
signatures on a petition from 500 (really 750) registered voters in Allegheny
County.
Council will be required to hear public
testimony and vote within 60 days.
For this campaign to be successful we need
registered voters ( i.e. YOU) to circulate this ordinance/petition between
October 17 and Nov. 4. And we need
signatures from all over the county.
This petition is similar to the ones for
elected officials -- if you've ever seen those. The signers must be registered
votes in Allegheny County. And you must
get your petitions notarized.
Please give me a call today if you will
participate. October 17 is coming up soon.
Thanks,
Joni Rabinowitz
412-241-8359
***Petition- Help the Children of Mars School District
Below is a petition that a group of parents in the
Mars Area School District are working very hard to get signatures. Please take a moment to look at the petition
and sign it. It only takes 5
minutes. We are fighting to keep our children,
teachers, and community safe here and across the state of Pennsylvania.
Please share this with your spouses, friends, family,
and any organizations that would support this cause. We need 100,00 signatures immediately, as the
group plans to take the petition to Harrisburg within a week. Your support is
greatly appreciated!
Best Regards, Amy Nassif
***Sign On To Letter To Gov. Corbett-- Urge Him to Implement
De Pasquale’s Recommendations
For DEP
“I know you are as concerned as I am about
the recent news out of Harrisburg regarding the protection of our drinking
water from the dangers of natural gas drilling. Then join me to take action
now.
It started with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental
Protection’s (DEP) acknowledgment that there have been 209 known cases of water
contamination from oil and gas operations since 2007.
http://powersource.post-gazette.com/powersource/policy-powersource/2014/07/22/DEP-Oil-and-gas-endeavors-have-damaged-water-supply-209-times-since-07/stories/201407220069
If that wasn’t enough, Auditor
General Eugene DePasquale also released his much anticipated audit
http://www.auditorgen.state.pa.us/reports/performance/special/speDEP072114.pdf
of DEP’s ability to protect water quality in the
wake of escalated Marcellus Shale drilling. The report shows how the explosive
growth of shale development caught the DEP flat footed, how the agency is
underfunded, and slow to respond to monitoring and accountability activities.
Some of the more alarming findings where:
DEP would rather seek voluntary compliance and encouraging industry to
work out a solution with impacted homeowners instead of issuing violations for
cases where industry impacted a water supply.
There is no system in place for frequent inspections of drilling pads,
especially during critical drilling operations much less during the lifetime of
the well.
DEP relies on a voluntary
system of reporting where and how fracking waste is disposed, instead of using a system,
where regulators can see how waste is handled from well site to disposal.
DEP’s system to track complaints
related to oil and gas development is “woefully inadequate.”
In addition to his findings,
Auditor General DePasquale made 29 recommendations, 18 of which require no
additional funding, for how DEP can address these issues and improve
operations. Email Governor Corbett today and urge him to have DEP implement all 29 of
the Auditor General’s recommendations.
These types of events shake the
confidence Pennsylvanians like you have in our government’s ability to protect
our drinking water. However, they also serve as a call to action. DEP owes it
to you to do everything it can to protect water supplies and public
health, Contact Governor Corbett TODAY
and tell him to have DEP take steps to improve the protection of our drinking
water from natural gas drilling.
Best, Steve Hvozdovich - Campaign Coordinator
Pennsylvania
Office, Clean Water Action http://org.salsalabs.com/o/2155/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=16207
***Toxic Tuesdays –Tell DEP’s Abruzzo--Do not approve paving pads
and access roads with radioactive drill cuttings
“The next 4 Tuesdays, starting 8/26, are
Toxic Tuesdays. They're the days we're going to call PA DEP Secretary Abruzzo
to tell him that his agency should NEVER have approved Range Resources' permit
to experiment with using drill cuttings as a paving material for well pads and
access roads! We're going to tell him to reverse their decision.
The DEP gave Range Resources
permission to experiment with using radioactive drill cutting to pave well pads
and access roads. We have 30 days to appeal.
Call
Sec Abruzzo to reverse the decision 717- 787- 2814”
From:
Karen Feridan
***TRI (Toxic Release Inventory)
Action Alert-Close the Loophole:
“We need your help!! Please send an email to the US EPA urging
them to "Close the TRI Loophole that the oil and gas industry currently
enjoys".
We all deserve to know exactly
what these operations are releasing into our air, water and onto our land. Our goal is to guarantee the public’s right
to know.
Please
let the US EPA know how important TRI reporting will be to you and your
community:
Mr.
Gilbert Mears
Docket #: EPA-HQ-TRI-2013-0281 (must be included on all
correspondence)
Mears.gilbert@epa.gov
Some facts on Toxics Release
Inventory (TRI) – what it is and why it’s important:
What
is the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI)?
Industrial
facilities report annually the amount and method (land, air, water, landfills)
of each toxic
chemical
they release or dispose of to the national Toxics Release Inventory.
Where
can I find the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI)?
Once
the industrial facilities submit their annual release data, the Environmental
Protection Agency
makes
it available to the public through the TRI’s free, searchable online database.
Why
is this important?
The
TRI provides communities and the public information needed to challenge permits
or siting
decisions,
provides regulators with necessary data to set proper controls, and encourages
industrial
facilities
to reduce their toxic releases.
Why
does it matter for oil and natural gas?
The
oil and gas extraction industry is one of the largest sources of toxic releases
in the United
States.
Yet, because of loopholes created by historical regulation and successful
lobbying efforts,
this
industry remains exempt from reporting to the TRI—even though they are second
in toxic air
emissions
behind power plants.
What
is being done?
In
2012, the Environmental Integrity Project filed a petition on behalf of sixteen
local, regional, and
national
environmental groups, asking EPA to close this loophole and require the oil and
gas
industries
to report to the TRI. Although EPA has been carefully considering whether to
act on the
petition,
significant political and industrial pressure opposing such action exists.
What
is the end goal?
Our
goal is to guarantee the public’s right to know. TRI data will arm citizens
with powerful data,
provide
incentives for oil and gas operators to reduce toxic releases, and will provide
a data-driven
foundation
for responsible regulation.
What
can you do?
You
can help by immediately letting EPA know how important TRI reporting will be to
you and your
community.
Send written or email comments to:
Gilbert Mears
Toxics Release Inventory
Program Division, Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW,
Washington, DC 20460
mears.gilbert@epa.gov
Docket #: EPA-HQ-TRI-2013-0281 (please be sure to
include in all your correspondence)
From: Lisa Graves Marcucci
Environmental
Integrity Project
PA
Coordinator, Community Outreach
lgmarcucci@environmentalintegrity.org
412-653-4328
(Direct)
412-897-0569
(Cell)
Frack Links
**Democracy
Now! Naomi Klein discusses fossil fuels
She criticizes Nature
Conservancy for drilling on “preserved” land.
***Link to
Shalefield Stories-Personal stories of those affected by
fracking http://www.friendsoftheharmed.com/
***To sign up for Skytruth notifications of activity and violations
for your area:
*** List of the Harmed--There are now
over 1400 residents of Pennsylvania who have placed their names on the list of
the harmed when they became sick after fracking began in their area. http://pennsylvaniaallianceforcleanwaterandair.wordpress.com/the-list/
*** To See Water Test Results of the Beaver
Run Reservoir
IUP students test for TDS, pH, metals- arsenic, chromium, and strontium.
A group member who checks the
site still does not see testing for other frack chemicals including the BTEX
group or cesium for example. Here is a link to the IUP site:
***Video of a
Flare at a Pumping Station
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWKye3OA90k Sunoco Pipeline/Sunoco Logistics flare at a high pressure pumping
facility along the 3500 block of Watkins Road in Medina, Ohio. This video was
from an approximate distance of 900 feet. The gas was being flared from ground
level without a tower of any kind. They have since moved the flare to between
the buildings. This video link below will show you just how loud and powerful
the flaring of this product can be.
Local residents say, “It sounds like a jet engine running.”
***Video of
Pipeline Incidents since 1986
Frack News
All articles are excerpted
and condensed. Please use links for the full article. Special Thanks to Bob Donnan for many of
the photos.
*** Grant Awarded WMCG was
very pleased to be awarded a $2,000 grant from the Mt Watershed Association
which will allow us to further our efforts to educate the public about the
harmful effects of fracking and to provide TDS and radioactivity screening for
interested homeowners.
***Why We Must Fight
Gas-fired Power Plants-(Coming to
Westmoreland County-Tenaska-A Permanent Source of Pollution, Jan)
(SO PLEASE SIGN AND SHARE THE TENASKA PETITION AT
THE TOP OF THE UPDATES, Jan)
“Obama administration’s “Clean
Power Plan” moving us away from coal in order to mitigate climate change. The story won’t be told that this plan will
do more harm than good, mainly by ignoring methane and enabling a huge move
from coal to gas-fired power plants.
The plan also does more harm than
good by not regulating CO2 from trash incineration (2.5 times as bad as coal
for the climate) and biomass incineration (50% worse), thus encouraging a
large-scale conversion to burning everything from trash to trees. Other EPA
deregulation efforts allowing waste burning to escape regulation by calling
waste a “fuel” are also clearing the way for this toxic, climate-cooking
disaster.
A leading researcher for a major fracking corporation
recently confided in me that this move from coal to gas will spell disaster for
climate change, confirming that if only about 3% of the gas escapes, it’s as
bad as burning coal. Actual leakage rates are far higher (4-9% just at the fracking fields
and more in pipelines and distribution systems), but it was most interesting to
hear this person admit that the industry will never get below that level of
leakage to become less harmful than coal.
We now know that methane is 86 to
105 times as potent as CO2 over a 20-year time-frame -- we’re in real trouble
if we keep using the outdated “20 times over 100 years” figure EPA maintains,
and permit this new generation of gas-burning to be built.
Why
is it strategic to focus on the power plants?
Read on…
1)
Gas burned for electricity is the largest source of gas demand since 2007. From
1997 to 2013, it more than doubled and is poised to keep growing.
2) Stopping power plants is
more winnable than fighting fracking, liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports,
pipelines or compressor stations. Stopping
fracking one community at a time isn't a winning strategy when the industry has
thousands of communities targeted, and rural neighbors pit against
neighboring landowners desperate for lease money. State and regional bans and
moratoria have been effective so far, but LNG terminals, pipelines and
compressor stations have federal preemption aspects that make them hard to
fight through local or state government.
Fighting proposed LNG export
terminals also has the "weak link" problem. Ten years ago, when we were fighting LNG
import terminals, there were 40 proposals throughout the U.S., but the industry
and government officials admitted they only needed six – two each on the east,
west and gulf coasts. Now that they're planning export terminals, there are
nearly 30 proposals, and the same dynamic is at play, where the industry has
stated in their conferences that they only need two on each coast, after which
they'll toss out the rest of their proposals and "let environmentalists
take the credit." Cynical as that is, it's not a strategy we can defeat if
we're trying to attack gas demand, since it's unlikely we can beat enough to
prevent the planned export volumes -- especially due to federal preemption and
the clustering of most proposals on the oil- and gas-dominated Gulf Coast,
where it's far harder to stop them.
Each gas-fired power plant
blocked is a certain amount of gas burning and fracking prevented, while we can
stop over 20 LNG terminals without putting a dent in planned export volumes.
While work against the LNG export terminals is commendable, it should not be
prioritized over stopping the rush to build hundreds of gas-burning power
plants.
3) Attacking proposals can only be done in a
certain time window, or we're doomed to roughly 30 years of power plant operation
and gas demand. Although coal power plants are dirtier to live near, all of
the funding and resources being put into closing coal plants while ignoring (or
endorsing) new gas power plants, is misguided. Existing power plants can be
tackled at any time, but proposals have to be fought when they're proposed, or
it's too late. Also, coal production has peaked in the U.S., prices are going
up, and gas is undercutting coal. It's effectively illegal to build new coal
power plants and the industry is already moving quickly to shut and replace
coal. The question is: will we allow a switch from coal to gas, or
force a change to conservation, efficiency, wind and solar?
So, if there are plans for
gas-burning power plants in your area, whether it’s a new plant, an expansion
or conversion of an existing plant, or reopening of a closed plant, please be
in touch so we can plug you in with others who are fighting these. There is
strength in numbers!”
***Consol Energy
Might Be Fined For Spill - But Maybe Not
The Spill Might
Have Occurred At Beaver Run Reservoir- But Maybe
Not (Because DEP Isn’t sure)
Consol Might Test
Soil- But Maybe Not- (Because DEP only recommended it)
“Consol Energy may be fined for
an accidental, small spill of flowback water from a Marcellus gas well in Washington Township in August, a
spokesman with the DEP said Tuesday.
The spill happened on the evening
of Aug. 10 when workers were draining a storage tank, spokesman John Poister
said.
An unknown amount of water, which
came back up from the well, leaked from the tank into a containment area.
The containment area is intended
to catch spills, but there was a hole in
its liner and some water seeped into the soil.
The affected soil, filling about
two 50-gallon drums, was removed and replaced with clean soil, Poister said. He
said the cleanup work was completed before inspectors visited the site the
following day.
Poister could not say exactly where the
well site was located, or its proximity to the Beaver Run Reservoir.
No waterways were affected by the
spill, he said.
Poister said DEP estimates less
than 10 gallons of water leaked through the containment into the soil. The
storage tank can hold 500 barrels of frack water.
“This was not a large spill. It
was cleaned up very promptly,” Poister said. “They responded correctly.”
Consol acknowledged that the
incident happened as the DEP described.
“On Aug. 10, less than 10 gallons
of rainwater and produced fluid escaped from a hole in a containment liner at a
well site in Westmoreland County,” spokeswoman Kate O'Donovan said in an e-mail. “The appropriate agencies were
immediately notified and the impacted soil was excavated and removed. No
further environmental impacts occurred.”
The agency has suggested Consol test samples of the soil to ensure all
the contamination was removed, Poister said.
Poister said the company violated
DEP regulations related to failure to contain residual waste resulting in a
release to the ground.
DEP officials will determine
whether a civil penalty will be imposed. “
Read
more:
http://triblive.com/neighborhoods/yourallekiskivalley/yourallekiskivalleymore/6846422-74/poister-soil-consol#ixzz3EGnvOGHb
***PA Parents Want
Buffers Zones For Schools
6 Wells planned within ½ mile of Mars
School
http://fsrn.org/2014/09/pennsylvania-parents-call-for-buffers-zones-between-fracking-facilities-and-schools/
“The lights and noise of the
drilling process, the truck traffic, the air pollution and concerns about water
contamination have affected the quality of life of many residents. Some are
drawing the line at their children’s exposure to fracking while at school. A
group called Protect Our Children has
united groups of parents around the state to call for no fracking within a one-mile radius of school campuses.
Penni Lechner is 36-years-old and
has lived her whole life around Summit Township. She says she fought to stay
there and raise her four kids away from the city, but she’s living now in an
industrial zone. Her three teenage boys attended Summit Township School, which now has a well pad 900 feet from the
school and 500 feet from the playground.
Sitting on a bench on the grounds
of Summit Township School, she describes what happened over the past couple of
years when XTO, a subsidiary of
Exxon, set up shop nearby.
“They put the
drilling rig up, then they put a bigger drilling rig up and that went on for almost
a year, and then they fracked it,” Lechner recalls. “They put a bunch of
chemicals into the ground. And then they flared it off. Last school year the
first two days of school they flared it. They didn’t even wait for the kids to
not be here, they just flared it. There was methane shooting up 250 feet into
the air. There’s an impoundment pond back there, and that holds chemical water.
There’s no fence there; the kids can just walk right up there if they want to.”
The proximity of the fracking
operation to the town’s school confirmed Lechner’s decision to continue to home
school her 8-year-old daughter – who had leukemia as a toddler – because she
worries about how exposure could affect her daughter’s compromised immune
system. Lechner says she and her family have experienced many health problems
since fracking came to town, namely nosebleeds, headaches and rashes.
Parent activists Crystal Yost and
Penni Lechner want at least a one-mile buffer zone between fracking facilities
and schools
Crystal Yost twin 11-year-old daughters are sixth graders
in the Mars School District. After the local school board rejected a proposal
by Rex Energy to lease the school
grounds for sub-surface drilling, the company announced its plans to put six wells within a half-mile of the
school.
“We are worried about health effects on the children
from air emissions, the air pollution, the VOCs,” says Yost, who along with
other parents has organized against that plan as well, and so far the state
Department of Environmental Protection has not issued drilling permits. “We are worried about an accident,
specifically if there were to be an explosion, in some other cases in PA
specifically, they have a one to two mile radius of evacuation. So if this well
pad exploded within a half mile of the school, theoretically the entire school
district would be in an evacuation zone, and we just felt it’s not using common
sense to put your school district in an evacuation zone.”
Yost
says after researching the matter, the
Mars Parent Group thinks a two-mile buffer is a better plan.
A new peer-reviewed study conducted by a
researcher at Yale University shows that people living within about half a mile
of a working well reported upper respiratory or skin problems more than twice
as often as those living more than two miles away. David Brown is a
toxicologist who works with the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health
Project, which has identified many residents with health problems.
“They were seeing effects in
30-40 percent of the people who were reporting, and there were a dozen or more
different health effects,” Brown says of another study from Earth Works that
showed similar results to the Yale study. “They ranged from rashes to
difficulty breathing to heart problems to confusion; a lot of cognitive
effects; headaches, and an intense sense of fatigue. There were differences
between those people who were within 1,500 feet of a facility and those that
were outside 1,500 feet of a facility. You shouldn’t interpret that beyond
1,500 feet there weren’t effects, because there were effects even there. We
would expect you’d have to be out a minimum of a mile, and maybe two miles.
Neither study concluded
definitively that the health impacts resulted from fracking, and researchers
called for further investigation. Supporters of the buffer for schools note
that although their campaign calls for no drilling infrastructure within a
mile, it will be hard to put the genie back in the bottle where it already
exists, but they are adamant about keeping future gas industry development away
from their kids.”
Parents Resist Rex
Energy's Plan To Drill Near Mars Area School
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/99756-rex-energys-bid-to-drill-near-pennsylvania-school-facing-resistance
“Rex Energy Inc. is planning to
begin site development near a large school campus students where more than
3,200 students in grades K-12 attend school. The company has been met with
staunch opposition from a group of parents concerned about the health and safety
of students. The Mars Area school directors refused to lease the land
to Rex, prompting a group of parents to band together to research fracking
and they later asked township officials
in nearby Adams and Middlesex to establish a ban on drilling within two miles
of the school, which was rejected.
Last Friday, Rex received a permit from the DEP to drill five horizontal Marcellus
wells in Middlesex at the site in question, which Rex spokesman Patrick
Creighton said is about two-thirds of a mile from the school campus.
The Mars Parent Group, though, isn't buying what Rex
has to say about responsible development. They've enlisted attorney Jordan
Yeager to work on their behalf and have continued to raise money to fight Rex's
plan and despite
the DEP's permit, the group has vowed to continue fighting, with members
recently telling local news media that they are organizing to determine their
next move.
In an undated letter recently
posted to the group's website, and addressed to Rex General Counsel Jennifer McDonough, parents highlighted concerns that ranged from air pollution and
increased truck traffic, to inadequate air monitoring and children's enhanced
susceptibility to environmental hazards.
Before ever bringing
unconventional natural gas extraction close to where people go to school, play,
work and live, there should have been studies showing there are no harmful
effects to people's health," the letter continued. "The onus of proof
lies on those who profit from the activity."
In a letter to the group, the DEP
said it had no legal right to deny Rex's permit for the site. Regulations
provide for a 500-foot setback from schools. Creighton said Rex operates two
other pads, with three wells each, near two other schools in Butler County that
are currently in production.
In response to local concerns,
Rex plans to construct sound abatement walls, use green-completion techniques,
and it has agreed not to flare gas at the site, he added.
In a recent decision in northeast Pennsylvania
a common pleas court judge threw out a conditional-use permit issued to an
operator by a municipality there (see Shale Daily, Sept. 4). In his decision
the judge cited the Act 13 ruling and local concerns said to have been
overlooked.
Middlesex officials recently modified the township's zoning laws to
accommodate drilling in residential-agricultural zones, in a move similar to
factors in the northeast Pennsylvania case. Creighton said access roads and
pad development at the site near the school would take between four and six weeks
to complete.”
***Organic Farmer
Appeals Gas Compressor Station- Incompatible
Use
NEW
SEWICKLEY TWP. – “The owners of an organic farm have appealed the township
supervisors’ decision last month to allow a natural gas compressor station in
an agricultural district near their property.
They’re
just noncompatible with one another,” said attorney Brendan O’Donnell with the
Canonsburg law firm Smith Butz, which Kretschmann Family Organic Farm owners
Don and Rebecca Kretschmann have retained.
O’Donnell that the township
failed to consider the impact of the compressor station on the Kretschmanns’
property and business as well as their neighbors.
“The
board’s decision runs counter to well-established zoning law,” he said.
Citing the Act 13 decision
several times, O’Donnell said supervisors did not take into account the impact
of the compressor station on the air, land and water as set down in the Act 13
decision.
New Sewickley solicitor Philip
Lope did not return a call seeking comment.
The Kretschmanns also filed a challenge with the
township zoning hearing board over its zoning ordinance and an oil-and-gas
amendment.
They have requested a hearing before the zoning hearing board, O’Donnell said.
To meet township demands for the
conditional-use permit, PennEnergy agreed to reduce noise levels, construct the
main building so that it resembles a barn, upgrade Teets Road and plant trees.
Those allowances, though, did
little to soothe Don Kretschmann’s concerns that the compressor station’s mere
existence in the agricultural zone near his farm would decimate the organic
business he and his wife have run at 257 Zeigler Road since 1978.
“The Kretschmanns’ customers rely
on the farm’s status as a certified organic farm and the integrity of the food
being produced there,” the appeal states.
Kretschmann said his customers
have encouraged them to fight the decision, as have his two daughters who could
take over the farm. “The next generation thinks it’s important,” he said.
http://www.timesonline.com/news/local_news/organic-farmers-appeal-approval-of-gas-compressor-station/article_0f478779-f82f-5328-9633-5ef491d80619.html
***WPX Appeals DEP
Order
Will Not Take Responsibility For
Polluting Donegal Water
“WPX Energy Appalachia LLC will appeal a DEP order that found the
company responsible for polluting the underground water well of a Donegal
Township family and ordered the company to provide an alternative water source.
“In
an Aug. 19 ruling, the DEP said that “WPX is responsible for the pollution of
the water supply” at Ken and Mildred Geary's home along Route 711, and failure
to provide an alternate source constitutes “a public nuisance and unlawful
conduct.”
The Gearys, who are using a large
outdoor water tank provided by the company, are the third family to receive a
report from the state that their well water was contaminated by a leak in WPX's
impoundment, or surface-level water holding pond, on the Kalp well pad at its
natural gas drilling site. The impoundment has been closed.
DEP ruled the impoundment
contaminated the water of Joseph and Sonja Latin, who live next door to the
Gearys, and of Ralph and Sonya Brown, who live on Montana Lane, a private drive
off Williams Road.
WPX had previously appealed a
similar order from the DEP concerning the Latins' water.”
Read
more:
http://triblive.com/news/westmoreland/6827394-74/company-wpx-state#ixzz3Dv86i6CA
***Hearing
Continues in Haney vs. Range Resources Case
Health Problems
Near Yeager Well Pad
“Range Resources again argued in Washington
County Court that it released a list of all chemicals used in fracking
operations at an Amwell Township well site. The hearing, held before President
Judge Debbie O’Dell Seneca, was a continuation of a two-year-old lawsuit involving three families who allege they suffered
health problems from living near the Yeager well pad.
Several Range attorneys argued
the plaintiffs – Stacey Haney and her two children; Beth and John Voyles and
their daughter; and Loren and Grace Kiskadden – know enough information about
the products and additives Range used in fracking to conduct tests of their
water supply. Range’s counsel said the
“chemical families” were released for all proprietary products that were not
named by manufacturers, and thus the
families could determine whether or not chemicals in their water match those
found in Range’s products.
Range
attorneys reaffirmed the position that no operations at that site led to any
adverse effects on human health.
John and Kendra Smith, husband-and-wife counsel
representing the families, said chemicals were detected in their clients’ water
supplies that could potentially match the products Range used, but they can’t
know for sure unless a full list is disclosed.
O’Dell Seneca said if Range is
correct about disclosing the chemicals, all parties have “wasted a lot of time
and resources” through countless hearings. The judge ruled in June, along with
an Environmental Hearing Board judge, that Range was responsible for providing
a full list of products and chemicals used at that site.
Range since appealed that decision to the Superior Court of
Pennsylvania, and it is awaiting a court date. John Smith questioned why Range
needed to file an appeal if the company contends it released all chemicals.
Range’s attorneys also demanded
to know whether a third party was footing the Smiths’ attorney bills. Range’s
counsel, citing case law, said that information should be made available to
Range for its pretrial discovery, and also claimed the “integrity of the jury”
could be jeopardized if a member of the hypothetical party backing the Smiths
were to sit on the panel, unbeknownst to them.
O’Dell Seneca said it was an “offensive” question, but entertained Range’s
explanation. John Smith said he and his wife felt underprivileged residents in
Washington County deserve representation, and he called Range’s questions
“baseless” and “defamatory.”
O’Dell Seneca granted John and
Kendra Smith the ability to move forward with their depositions and submit
additional testimony. John Smith said this will take at least six months, which
would push back the tentative trial date in January.”
http://www.observer-reporter.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20140918/NEWS01/140919423#.VCS5RSi_D4g
***EQT
Pitches North Versailles
“EQT personnel tried to make a case for drilling in
North Versailles Township to a skeptical audience at the township's community
center and a golf course owner's efforts
to round up support for drilling in a neighboring community brought out angry
residents from North Braddock and parts of North Versailles.
Grand View Golf Club owner Bob Beam wants to drill
on his property in North Braddock and is hoping to collect mineral rights from
other property owners. Beam didn't attend, but some of his opponents did. “He claims he has (owners of) 800 some
acres signed, which is not true,” said Nina Vecchio, a North Braddock
businesswoman who was president of borough council.
She said her landlord and others “turned him back”
when he came for signers.
Her group,
North Braddock Residents For Our Future, was called for help by Crestas Terrace
residents in North Versailles.
“We believe
the favorable geology exists in North Versailles,” EQT landman William Balog
told a gathering of approximately 40. “We are in the very early stages of our planning
for the area.”
“They sound
like a good, reputable company,” said township Commissioner Sam Juliano, who
along with Commissioners George Thompson and Frank Bivins met with EQT a month
ago. “I'm a little disappointed with the lack of a turnout.”
“My goal was that people would see the other side,”
township resident Valerie Rodman said as she passed out literature from the PennEnvironment Research & Policy
Center. It cited DEP data in claiming,
“there have been more than 4,400 environmental violations by the gas drilling
industry,” including 90 by EQT in 2012 and 2013.
The center quoted an AP report published in Trib
Total Media papers on Aug. 28 that cited “243 cases in which companies prospecting for oil or gas were found by
state regulators to have contaminated
private drinking water wells. Those cases were found after a thorough
review of paper files stored among its regional offices, DEP posted online.
The focus is on the northwestern part of the
township, though EQT has had discussions with East Allegheny School District
officials about a location near Logan Middle School in the township's
southeastern corner.
“You don't want something up there that adversely
affects them,” said Paradine, a former East Allegheny school director.”
***And
You Wonder Why You Can’t Find Violations On DEP’s Computer System
DEP’s
Online Violation Data Inaccurate
“Six years into the Marcellus Shale natural gas
boom, the state DEP’s online data on Pennsylvania well sites is a study in
incomplete data and inaccurate information.
The DEP acknowledges that the online Compliance
Report, which was supposed to provide clear and accessible information on
everything from spills to driller performance, is so error-ridden that it is virtually impossible to get an accurate
picture of how drilling is being regulated.
The Post-Gazette analyzed every paper record for
every Marcellus well incident that resulted in fines through June 1, 2014, and
compared those to the information on the online Compliance Report.
It found vast
discrepancies between the field reports of the incidents and the electronic
accounting of them. Among the findings:
• Of the 568
incidents at a Marcellus well that resulted in a fine, only 380 are listed online.
• Of those 380 listed incidents, a comparison with
paper records showed that in 48 cases at
least one violation was obscured because a generic code was used, in 44 cases
an incorrect code was used, and in 102 cases at least one violation was
completely dropped.
• In all, 256
violations were dropped. For example, in a Washington County case, Rice Energy was fined
$85,000 for 10 violations, but the online record showed only one violation.
• Of the 188 fines not found online, 172 were for
less serious administrative violations of filing late well records (149) and
failing to obtain a state permit (23). Sixteen were for spills, sediment-laden
water running off a site, or other potentially serious incidents that could
directly impact the environment.
Scott Perry, a DEP deputy secretary in charge of the
oil and gas management office, said the problems are evidence of a fact that
the state concedes: “We recognize we’re not transparent enough. We have to do
better.”
The Post-Gazette analysis provides detail on issues
discussed in a scathing state auditor general review of the Department of
Environmental Protection’s oversight, issued July 22. The audit described the
agency’s shortcomings, including lack of enforcement and data problems.
Post-Gazette found that the core problem with the violation discrepancies is that the system
for entering data electronically doesn’t include all of the state violation
codes, so inspectors can’t accurately transfer data from paper records to the
online system. The result has been that sometimes inspectors don’t enter
violations, sometimes they enter under a code that is not an accurate
reflection of the violation, and sometimes they enter a generic code that
doesn’t give a specific idea of what the violation was.
The data problems can obscure specific cases.
For example, only two of four violations issued in one of the worst incidents in the
Marcellus era — a March 2010 fire and spill at an Atlas Resources well site in
Washington County that resulted
in an $80,000 fine — appear in the DEP database, making it look like a less
serious event.
The incident occurred after more than a year of
complaints from the landowner and neighbors about the well site in Hopewell.
A drill pit filled with thousands of gallons of
hydraulic fracturing flowback fluid, mixed with condensate gas, ignited when a
nearby generator backfired, creating a massive fireball that burned the drill
pit and a holding tank. The fire also resulted in a fluid spill when it burned
the pit’s plastic liner.
State
officials issued the fine based on four violations issued the day of the
incident:
failure to maintain 2 feet of “freeboard,” or space between the top of the
fluid in the pit and the sides of the pit where it might overflow; failure to
properly implement the Preparedness, Prevention and Contingency Plan; and two
separate violations for improper disposal of fluids.
Only the
failure to maintain required freeboard and failure to implement the PPC plan
were listed online; the two most important violations — for improper disposal
of fluids — were not. The state inspector noted in the comments section found in the
Compliance Report, “78.57a and 78.54 not in efacts.” Those were codes for the
two citations for improper disposal of fluids.
Similarly,
only two out of four violations are listed for a Somerset County spill that
resulted in Chief Oil & Gas being fined $180,000 — one of the largest fines
in the state’s history. The two most significant violations were the two that
were not entered online.
That incident began on June 10, 2010, when a state
inspector found an oily substance on a corner of a well pad on a family dairy
farm in the Laurel Hill Creek special protection watershed.
It took Chief five months, with repeated prodding by
the state, to properly clean up the site.
The paper inspection report shows that the inspector
initially cited Chief for failure to maintain 2 feet of freeboard in a drill
pit; discharge and improper disposal of industrial fluids; failure to dispose
of residual waste properly; and failure to properly report a release.
The only violations listed online are the freeboard
violation – which could be issued in a non-spill case where the pit was merely
too full – and a version of the violation for failure to report a release. The
Post-Gazette analyzed incidents that led to fines, but since there are
thousands of violations that do not lead to fines, the high percentage of
unrecorded violations — more than a quarter of fined incidents had violations
dropped — translates into a vast number of unrecorded violations in the DEP
data. Even if the percentage of unrecorded violations among all those the state
has levied is lower, the data issue means there is no way to accurately assess
the regulation of the industry.
In addition,
at least 600 more violations in the incidents analyzed are obscured because
inspectors used generic codes when they entered the data, instead of a specific
violation.
And hundreds of additional violations are altered by
the time they are entered online, sometimes to the point that the incident they
describe is dramatically different from what actually happened according to the
paper files.
All three problems are because inspectors have never
had all of the state violation codes to choose from in the eFACTS “dropdown
box” when they enter violations online.
Inspectors frequently have to choose one of three
“work-arounds” to enter the violations: drop it altogether, use a generic code,
or enter a different violation code as similar as possible to the one that was
intended.
The result of that system was that DEP staff
developed sometimes widely divergent, regional methods to handle the same
dilemma.
In the DEP’s Northcentral and Northeast districts,
the work-around when the appropriate code is not available is to use generic
codes. Those districts use the generic code so often it is the
second-most-cited violation against drillers statewide among online violations.
In the Southwest, the work-around is to drop the
violation. Three-quarters of the dropped violations in the Post-Gazette
analysis were in the Southwest.
In the Rice Energy case in Washington County, for
example, paper records show 10 violations: one for not having an erosion and
sedimentation plan on site; another for not obtaining permits; a third for
failure to prevent runoff; a fourth for failure to notify the state of a
pollution event; and six more for erosion and sedimentation controls.
But online, this incident has only one violation —
for the failures with the erosion and sedimentation controls — and there is no
explanation why the other violations were dropped.
Another regional difference was brought to light two
years ago when drillers complained about disparities in how inspectors in the
two busiest drilling areas — the Southwest region and the Northcentral and
Northeast regions — handled erosion and sediment violations on well pads. A
driller in the Northcentral region might receive the same violation in
connection with every well that had been drilled on the pad, while a driller in
the Southwest region would receive only one violation no matter how many wells
had been drilled.
The state has tried to stop that disparity by
issuing just one violation, no matter how many wells were drilled, Mr. Ryder
said.”
(There is much more information in this article.
Please see:
http://powersource.post-gazette.com/powersource/policy-powersource/2014/09/21/Shale-gas-extraction-issues-go-beyond-fracking/stories/201409210068)
“Pennsylvania doctors, nurses, and health policy
experts are calling for a statewide investigation into claims that the state
Department of Health has a policy of telling its employees never to talk to
residents who complain of negative health effects from fracking, according to
letter sent to state Gov. Tom Corbett and other elected officials on Tuesday.
The letter — spearheaded by the groups Physicians for Social Responsibility,
Alliance of Nurses for Health Environments, and PennEnvironment Research &
Policy Center, and signed by more than 400 individual health professionals —
says doctors and nurses statewide are “very concerned” about a story published
in NPR’s StateImpact Pennsylvania this June. In that story, two retired
employees of the health department said they were instructed not to return
phone calls from citizens who said they may be experiencing sickness from
fracking and other natural gas development.
The letter calls for an independent investigation
into the claims, and reform of the health department’s response procedures.
“When it comes to fracking, the DOH has done little to prevent exposure
or lead policy development,” Dr. Julie Becker, board member of Physicians for
Social Responsibility, said in a statement. “The PA DOH does not provide
accurate data to address the health needs of fracking communities, thereby
hindering research, and permitting poor decisions to be made based on
inaccurate information.”
According to the groups’ letter, the DOH has not
done enough since StateImpact’s revelations that the agency may be mishandling
citizen complaints. In response, the agency originally said it would improve
its policies for handling environmental health complaints, and updated its
website to provide a better explanation on how to file them.
In addition,
the groups are asking the DOH to make public all past and future health
complaints that citizens make to the agency through a public health registry. “This will allow local
officials, medical providers, researchers, public health experts, and others to
determine how oil and gas operations are impacting people’s health in
Pennsylvania, including both residents and industry workers,” the letter reads.
As StateImpact noted, past health-related inquiries
are maintained by the health department’s Bureau of Epidemiology, but have not
been made public because they contain private health-related information.
Both the state DEP and the DOH have said through
spokespeople that they continuously followed the rules when responding to
health complaints. But if the allegations are true, damage may already have
been done. Pennsylvania has had more than 6,000 wells fracked within the last
six years, and zero state studies on
their health impacts. It’s been increasingly hard to prove that families
can be sickened by drilling — in Colorado, legislators tried to commission a
study on the health effects, but fossil fuel advocates ensured its demise. Doctors want more data on the health
effects of fracking, but the interests of the drillers usually win out.
Meanwhile, natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania has
skyrocketed under Gov. Tom Corbett. He has expanded gas drilling in
Pennsylvania’s state parks and forests, and in 2012 implemented a controversial
state oil and gas law, known as Act 13, which severely restricts the ability of
local governments to have control over drilling in their area. Multiple
portions of the law have since been ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme
Court.
Since the story broke in StateImpact that the state
Department of Health may be ignoring health complaints, the issue has received
more attention — not only about whether the misconduct occurred, but also
whether it’s criminal. Earlier this month, officials from the Pennsylvania
state Attorney General’s office said it they would begin contacting and
interviewing residents who say they reached out to state health officials about
symptoms with no response. The interviews are not indicative of a formal
criminal probe, however.”
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/08/20/3473769/pennsylvania-health-professionals-fracking-health/
***Google
Chairman Says Climate Change Deniers Are Lying
“Google Executive Chairman
Eric Schmidt today said it was a “mistake”
to support the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group that
has said human-created climate change could be “beneficial” and opposes
environmental regulations. Schmidt said groups trying to cast doubt on climate
change science are "just literally lying."
Google’s membership in ALEC has been criticized
because of the group’s stance on climate change and its opposition to network
neutrality rules and municipal broadband. Earlier this month, Google refused to
comment after 50 advocacy groups called on the company to end its affiliation
with ALEC.
That changed today when Schmidt appeared on The
Diane Rehm Show and was asked by a listener whether Google is still supporting
ALEC. The listener described ALEC as “lobbyists in DC that are funding climate
change deniers.”
***What's PA
Hiding About Fracking Contamination?
By
Karen Feridun
“DEPs recent revelation of at
least 243 confirmed cases of water contamination from fracking may just be the tip
of the iceberg.
Buried deep within the DEP's
website is the long-awaited list of letters of determination telling property
owners that their water wells have been contaminated as a result of fracking.
The agency recently announced the
list's addition to their site, six years after the drilling boom began in
Pennsylvania and more than a decade after the first unconventional well was
drilled in the state. That's where, for the first time, the agency is admitting that 243 private water sources have been
contaminated by fracking.
This comes after years of denying any contamination at
all from fracking
The
list is just the first stab at transparency in some time for an agency still
reeling from a scathing review by the Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene
DePasquale. His July report concluded that the DEP was "woefully"
unprepared to monitor and regulate shale oil and gas development.
And this new attempt at transparency comes only after
a Scranton Times-Tribune reporter got a court order to review letters to
residents informing them whether or not oil and gas drilling was responsible
for contaminated water wells.
The
reporter revealed in her investigation into water well contamination that at
least 161 positive letters of determination had been issued, not 25 as the
Department had previously claimed.
A link to an incomplete list of
water contamination cases buried several pages in on a website that is
presented in no particular order in a format that can't be searched says
something about the sorry state of affairs at the DEP. It is clear that the DEP only bothered to
compile this list following the auditor general's report put the agency in the
spotlight.
But critical questions remain about the
comprehensiveness of the list. Nearly 1,000 letters were turned over to the
Times-Tribune reporter last year, with many claiming that results were
inconclusive so other families' water contamination could actually be related
to oil and gas drilling.
Despite
recent attempts at partial transparency, it seems the Department of
Environmental Protection remains unprepared to monitor and regulate fracking,
and Pennsylvania families have and will continue pay the price.”
Karen
Feridun is the founder of Berks Gas Truth.
http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2014/09/whats_pa_hiding_on_fracking_co.html
***Methane
Contamination Is Methane Contamination By Any Name
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/09/20/1331135/-Fracking-cannot-fail-but-only-be-failed#
We've known for a while that fracking wells have
serious integrity issues. A couple of
years ago Anthony Ingraffea reported on extensive well failures in
Pennsylvania's Marcellus shale. In June Ingraffea and a team of researches
at Cornell followed up with a study estimating 40% of Marcellus wells will fail
over time. Newer wells appear to show higher leakage rates than older ones, so
structural integrity is an increasing risk.
Since there is no financial or regulatory incentive to build them well,
they are getting less and not more reliable.
The team also noted that the oil and gas industry was not exactly
forthcoming on this topic:
Due to the lack of publicly available structural
integrity monitoring records for onshore wells from industry, more recent
studies have used data from state well inspection records to estimate the
proportion of unconventional wells drilled that develop cement and/or casing
structural integrity issues.
This is terrible, but at this point it is not
news. So it was a little surprising
Monday to see a new study about the structural integrity of fracking wells
getting lots of play. Not that I'm
complaining - better late than never - but it just seems like something to be
treated as further confirmation of what we already knew, not some startling new
discovery.
Some reports really missed the mark,
and for this reason: an industry-friendly framing of the scope of fracking.
Silica sand mining in Minnesota is fracking. Its transport
to sites is fracking. The drilling of the well is fracking, the extraction from the well is fracking, the transport of the gas is fracking, and the storage of the toxic byproducts - until the
last molecule goes inert - is fracking. Calling just the
extraction of natural gas fracking is misleading at best and deceptive at worst,
because that thing could not exist without all those other things. For anyone who cares about the entire impact
of the process, it is absurd to characterize one part as the entirety.
Yet that is just what Matt McGrath of the BBC did,
in an article headlined "Weak wells not fracking caused US gas leaks into
water." His article largely gives a
pass to the industry, at one point flatly stating: "In none of the
investigated wells was there a direct link to fracking." As though those with contaminated water will
be relieved the reason was shoddy practices by the industry and not something
intrinsic to drilling. Ben Geman's piece
similarly leads with that framing: "They found that problems with gas-well
construction, not fracking itself, is letting gases escape and reach drinking-water
wells in some cases."
Geman does a good job including caveats, and towards
the end argues against exactly the framing he uses at the top: "the issues
of water quality and fracking can't be considered in isolation regardless of
what's allowing contaminants to escape."
But it's damned frustrating to see what most people will take away - the
headline and the start of the article - make the opposite point.”
***Industry Deceives
With Their Definition Of Fracking
“Ask oil and gas industry
advocates, environmentalists and regulators about the biggest issues facing
shale gas development, and none are likely to cite the possibility of fracking
fluids traveling up thousands of feet of rock into groundwater aquifers as
their top concern.
There’s surface spills, transportation accidents,
leaks in holding tanks and impoundments — all of these have much more potential
to pollute groundwater.
Yet
blaming — or exonerating — fracking for this method of groundwater pollution
seems to lead reports of new shale studies, even if those studies say little
about actual fracking.
“Faulty well integrity, not hydraulic fracturing deep
underground, is the primary cause of drinking water contamination from gas extraction in
parts of Pennsylvania and Texas, according to a new study by researchers from
five universities,” began a press release last week from Duke University,
former home of Rob Jackson, one of the scientists involved in the study.
The study, one of several for Mr.
Jackson dealing with groundwater contamination from shale development, used
noble gases and more traditional gas fingerprinting techniques to trace the
origin and pathways of methane traveling into groundwater.
It
suggested that leaks in either the steel
pipes that carry gas to the surface or in the cement that envelopes those pipes
allowed methane to escape into shallower depths, causing changes to well water
supplies in Pennsylvania and Texas.
The study did not examine whether
the pressure exerted on the well’s layers during hydraulic fracturing
contributed to or caused the casing to become compromised.
Many in the oil and gas industry
are irked when people use “fracking” synonymously with professionals, the
difference between fracking or well integrity causing contamination matters. It
points to a different set of solutions,” said the researcher, now at Stanford,
whose new study was at once heralded as further proof of fracking’s benevolence
by the industry-run website Energy-in-Depth and refuted for other reasons.
“For people whose water has been contaminated, though,
they don't care what step caused it. All they know is that they're afraid to
use their water,” he said.
And
those in the business shouldn't just shrug that off because affected citizens
use imprecise language, he said.
“I think industry has a tin ear
sometimes with ‘fracking never causes contamination.’ The entire process is enabled by fracking and horizontal drilling.
Peoples’ water has been contaminated. They should acknowledge it and work to
keep it from happening elsewhere,” Mr. Jackson said.
The focus on fracking can
distract from other, perhaps more relevant, concerns with shale gas extraction,
such as waste disposal, surface spills, radioactivity and emissions, experts
say.
Air emissions take top rank among EDF’s concerns for
shale gas extraction, said Scott Anderson, senior policy director of the
organization’s climate and energy program.
Then there are well integrity
issues, waste management, community impacts and enforcement to be concerned
with.
“The
environmental footprint of the industry goes far beyond the question of
whether, how and how often frack chemicals get loose,” he said.
But laypeople get annoyed when they are told fracking has
never been proven to contaminate anything, arguing hydraulic fracturing doesn't
occur in a vacuum but is inextricably linked to every other part of the gas
extraction process.”
Anya
Litvak:
alitvak@post-gahttp://powersource.post-gazette.com/powersource/policy-powersource/2014/09/18/State-legislators-debate-energy-measures/stories/201409170194
***Rockefellers
Divesting From Fossil Fuels
"The Rockefeller family is
divesting some of its massive fortune from fossil fuels, the New York Times
reported. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the family's charitable arm, will
announce the landmark move in a video conference on Monday along with 49 other
foundations. According to USA Today, the 50 groups will divest from 200 major
oil and gas companies. The Rockefellers are especially noteworthy given their
family history. Patriarchs John D. Rockefeller and William Rockefeller amassed
their fortunes while working in their oil industry. The Rockefeller brothers
were co-founders of the Standard Oil Company, the world's largest oil refiner
at the time.
The Rockefellers were also celebrated for their
philanthropic work. The Rockefeller
Brothers Fund has been a major supporter of environmental advocacy. Last year,
the charity gave over $6 million in grants to sustainable development projects.
The fossil fuel divestment movement has gained many other high-profile
supporters in recent months, including actor Mark Ruffalo. "It's a
snowballing movement," Stephen Heintz, president of the Rockefeller
Brothers Fund. According to the Washington Post, the Rockefellers plan to first
divest from coal and tar-sands mining."
***Frack Chemical Secrets Kept During
Emergency
From Natural Resources Defense Council
“In
June there was a raging fire and more than 30 explosions at a Halliburton frack
site in Ohio. Two families lived within 600 feet of the well pad. Fortunately
no one was injured. But toxic chemicals
including benzene, acetone, and toluene spilled into a tributary of the Ohio
River which provides public drinking water for resident downstream. Some 70,000
fish were killed by the spill, and thousands of people were left to agonize over
the safety of their tap water and the potential health effects. I’m sure you
can imagine their distress.
So image this: the US EPA and the Ohio EPA had to wait
five long days before they were given a full list of the chemicals used at the
site by Halliburton. The company was not required to provide that list to the
EPA. Lets face it. Something is terribly, fatally wrong when our health and
safety take a back seat to the interests of corporate polluters.
What’s
worse, fracking related disasters are occurring around the country with
frightening regularity: fires explosions, spills –even earthquakes triggered by
the underground injections of frack waste.
More
than 15 million Americans now live within one mile of a fracking site. And in
the absence of tough regulations, facking companies have run wild.”
***Penn State Proposes
Industrial Waste Be Used As Proppants For Fracking
“UNIVERSITY
PARK, Pa. -- Industrial and domestic waste materials are viable alternative
sources of raw materials for proppants -- particles used to open rock fractures
-- for use in fracking, according to Penn State material scientists John
Hellmann and Barry Scheetz.
In the American Ceramic Society
Bulletin, the researchers describe approaches for using ceramic proppants from waste
including mixed glass cullet, mine tailings and even drill-cuttings from shale gas wells themselves.
“Silica
sand is relatively inexpensive, available and has a long track record of use as
a proppant," said Hellmann. "However, sand particles are quite angular
and tend to pack. It also typically exhibits lower crush strengths and results
in lower permeabilities relative to synthetic proppants, like the ones we are
researching. Spherical particles, characteristic of the synthetic proppants,
flow better, require less water and chemical additives for placement, and
maintain higher permeability for longer periods of time than angular sand
particles.”
According to Industrial Minerals,
a market leading resource for minerals intelligence, each year more than 30 million
tons of proppants are used in fracking. “
***Mark West
Facility -Again
Mark West Fined $150,000
for Flaring.
“Flaring at MarkWest’s gas processing plant in
Chartiers Township that sent flames and
thick plumes of smoke into the air from an unpermitted fractionator on multiple
occasions last year will cost the company more than $150,000 in fines.
DEP reached two separate consent agreements with
MarkWest earlier this year because of the smoky flaring and for accusations by
regulators that the company did not have approval to run the system.
The flaring incidents at the
facility near Houston began with one event in November 2012 but became a bigger
issue in July and August 2013, when nearby residents reported thick smoke
pouring from a fractionator stack after workers installed a new de-ethanizer.
The DEP said it received another complaint that October and on two occasions
this January.
The
consent agreement reached April 7 for the flaring found the black smoke
registered more than 60 percent opacity Aug. 22, 2013, and Jan. 6 and 14.
“What makes it complicated for us is that we have to
personally witness the smoke, but we encouraged people to send us pictures so
we know where it’s coming from,” DEP spokesman John Poister said. (Really? Send
in pictures? How about on site air monitors. Jan)
MarkWest spokesman Robert McHale
previously said the incidents were caused by a safety system that redirected
natural gas liquid to be burned off in the flare, and that it performed as
designed.
As part of the consent agreement,
MarkWest was required to modify the “thermosyphon reboiler piping” to reduce
the chance of smoke releases that came from a vapor lock in the system. The
company also installed a specially designed “flare tip” to minimize any smoke coming
from the burn-off of butane.
If there is another flaring
event, the company must have a certified worker begin taking opacity readings
within 15 minutes and continue to do so for its duration. Workers also must
notify DEP within one hour and provide readings to environmental regulators.
The other agreement reached Aug.
4 is in response to the DEP’s assertion that MarkWest constructed and began
operating the system in 2011 without first obtaining regulatory approval. The
company submitted its application to the DEP by a Sept. 15 deadline, and
environmental regulators are now reviewing that document, which Poister said
could take “a few months” to be approved.
MarkWest was fined $80,000 for
that violation.
“In 2011, MarkWest installed a
new process control device intended to enhance the operational safety of the
plant and the surrounding community,” McHale said by email Monday night. “In implementing this improvement, MarkWest inadvertently
omitted the newly configured flare from the permitting process.”
McHale said the consent order was
meant to “correct that oversight.”
Poister
said the system fractionator will not be put back into production until after
DEP approves the application.
The plant was the site of a
lightning strike in May that forced the evacuation of nearby homes for several
hours. The two consent agreements between the DEP and MarkWest do not involve
that situation.”
http://observer-reporter.com/article/20140922/NEWS01/140929807#.VCIWwCi_D4i
***Frack Companies
in Texas Using More Recycled Wastewater
“With a drought depleting water
supplies across prime drilling areas in Texas, pressure on oil /gas companies
has been ramping up. It seems the industry is slowly turning toward recycling
its own wastewater, along with highly salty and undrinkable brackish water.
Estimates
are that in places like the Eagle Ford and Permian Basin, 10 percent to 20
percent of the water being used now comes from recycling. And that number is
expected to at least double over the next decade, said Marcus Gay, a water
analyst at research firm IHS who has since left the company.
Through an elaborate process that
involves electrodes, chemical treatments and simple gravity, impurities are
removed and what was once wastewater is piped into a holding pond the size of
six football fields. Jimmy Davis Jr., who runs the oil and gas operations at
Fasken, said it might be more expensive than buying fresh water, but not by
much. And the Fasken family, which bought the land in 1913, is worried about
how much water is left.
For now, though, wastewater
recycling simply doesn’t make economic sense for a lot of companies.
The infrastructure costs, in
terms of pipelines and treatment equipment, are considerable. And they multiply
exponentially when wells must be hooked in across other property, requiring
negotiations over right of way. That essentially limits recycling to large
companies that can afford to lease large blocks of land or own it already.
Mintz, spokesman for Apache, said that the
decision to recycle in Barnhart was based on economics but that it does not yet
make sense at most of the company’s operations in Texas.
“You can’t do this everywhere,”
he said. “Water availability is a very local issue. There are places in the
Permian, fresh water is readily available. But in the Barnhart area, fresh
water is scarce, so if we could get it, it would be more expensive.” http://www.dallasnews.com/business/energy/20140809-fracking-companies-begin-slow-shift-to-recycling-wastewater.ece
***
East Pipeline Drilling Mud Spill in Local Creek
“Last
Thursday, Precision Pipeline of Waynesburg, Pa was drilling under the Little
Mingo Creek on behalf of Sunoco Logistics when the drill bit hit something
solid that stopped the bit and led to drilling mud, often called bentonite, to
leak into the Little Mingo Creek causing a gray “sludge” to travel down the
creek in Nottingham and Union townships (Washington County), PA. Bentonite is used to lubricate drill bits and
carry drill cuttings out of the ground. While labeled non toxic by the industry,
bentonite in the water can suffocate fish and cause problems for wildlife that
happen to drink it…”
***My
Job? Overseeing 4,050 wells...Piece a Cake
And Comment
by Group Member
"Currently,
DEP’s oil and gas management section has funding for 202 employees; about 83 of them have some kind of field
inspection responsibilities, Mr. Perry said. They are either oil and gas
inspectors, water quality specialists, solid waste inspectors, environmental
trainees, or supervisors for all these categories. Oil and Gas Management had
45 employees in 2008 at the beginning of the Marcellus era."
"In 2008, there were 1,262 inspections of 377 active,
unconventional, well sites, in addition to 10,058 inspections of 7,143
conventional, shallow wells in Pennsylvania. By 2013, those figures had grown
to 12,391 inspections of 5,559 active,
unconventional wells — nearly 15 times the number of wells in 2008 — and
11,713 inspections of 7,808 conventional, shallow wells. Inspectors also have
to try to monitor the 330,000 other oil and gas wells — some active, many
abandoned and dry — that have been drilled around the state over the last
century and a half."
Comment By
Group Member
So, 83 inspectors for 5,559 fracking
wells (plus another 330,000 "other" ones) across this fracking state...we'll
just skip the shallow ones and never mind the random spills into streams.
Lessee
now, calculator time: 5, 559 + 330,000 = 335,559. Divide the number of wells by
the 83 neutral people in charge of monitoring them (why would we trust the inspectors
paid by the companies...fox guarding the henhouse). Answer: ...each DEP inspector has upwards of 4,050
wells to monitor.
What could go wrong that wouldn't see the light of
day?
Read
farther into the PG article to see how the industry is further neutralizing the
DEP by luring its most experienced inspectors away to work for the fracking
companies, leaving the DEP inspections to lesser-trained, over-worked ones to
protect us on their paltry government wages... .
Again, what could go wrong? Biphenyls, or PCBs, a suspected
cancer-causing agent.
***Abandoned Gas Wells
Leak Methane-Laurie Barr, Methane
Tracker
And fracked Wells Are More Complex to Plug
‘I haven’t met a well that hasn’t
leaked some amount,’ Laurie Barr says.
Laurie
Barr spent a recent Saturday like she spends a lot of her weekends: trodding
through the thorny and damp woodlands of rural north-western Pennsylvania,
juggling a point-and-shoot camera, a GPS navigator, a cell phone, and, most
importantly for the mission at hand, a methane detector.
“I
found one!” Barr yelled from deep in the woods to her two friends – fellow
abandoned oil and gas well enthusiasts who were decidedly more hesitant to walk
off the pre-cut path.
“Here’s the spot they killed the
last abandoned well hunter,” Barr joked from somewhere deep in the woods. Then
Barr did something she’s done hundreds of times in the last three years – she
leaned over a foot-wide hole in the ground and waved around the gas detector
until it began beeping. First the beeps were slow, then rapid.
“I haven’t met a well that hasn’t leaked some amount,” she said, taking
a picture of the hole, marking the location on her GPS device, and walking back
towards the path. “Some are high emitters, some are low emitters, but they all
leak.”
The problem for a well hunter like Barr, and
for the state of Pennsylvania, is that there are about 200,000 of them. The
fragments of infrastructure from decades of unregulated industry might be – a
pipe in the woods, a few bubbles under a lake.
No one knows exactly how many abandoned oil and gas
wells litter Pennsylvania or the US. The state’s DEP estimates the number is
close to 200,000.
. For decades, many of the wells
have leaked methane into the air, soil and water. The old wells are posing an
increasing threat. The more companies
drill in the state’s Marcellus Shale, the more likely it becomes that the old
wells will act as a pathways for newly-released gas to make its way into the
earth, streams, and even people’s homes, with potentially deadly results.
The state has launched a renewed
effort into finding the wells, but no one, including state regulators, thinks
they’ll be able to find most of the wells across the state anytime soon. And
even if they did, regulators acknowledge it would cost untold sums and many
decades to plug the wells with concrete to ensure the methane stays in the
ground.
Barr, who lives a few towns south
of Bradford, has been hunting for oil and gas wells for three years. Until 2011
she was mainly a photographer and illustrator, and an anti-fracking activist in
her spare time.
But that year, a series of fires and explosions in northwestern
Pennsylvania, including a house explosion in Bradford, were linked to abandoned
wells. The explosion at 10 Helen Lane completely destroyed Tom Federspiel’s
house. Luckily, Federspiel had decided to shovel snow that morning, and was
outside when his house ignited. After an extensive investigation state
regulators found that methane had
migrated through an abandoned well and up through Federspiel’s basement.
Three wells were ordered plugged by the state.
Barr realized that while
thousands of activists fought against the fracking boom, hardly anyone was
paying attention to the threat posed by the oil and gas industry’s past.
“There was a pipe in my yard but I thought it was just
a pipe. Then I saw there were pipes sticking out of our neighborhood
everywhere,” she said. “I realized I actually lived on an abandoned oil and gas
field, and I didn’t even know what abandoned wells were.”
Now Barr spends nearly all of her time as the
sole operator of Save Our Streams PA. Often from early in the morning until
late at night, and nearly every weekend she’s either finding, mapping,
photographing or talking about abandoned wells.
That involves driving around in
her beat-up Jeep to libraries and local municipal offices and checking out maps
so old they look like antiques. And sometimes it involves long treks into the
woods or canoe trips in towns like Bradford.
Barr lowered a camera into the
Allegheny Reservoir to photograph methane bubbles from an abandoned well.
Rotating between paddle, camera, and gas meter, Barr made her way toward the
middle of the reservoir. After about 20 minutes, she and her friends spotted
it: a steady stream of small bubbles coming to the surface that would disappear
anytime the water rippled. The bubbles are one of the only remaining signs that
there was once an entire industry beneath their feet.
Some wells are easier to spot
than others: often a small section of rusty pipe might be sticking out of the
ground. But many wells are nothing more than holes in the ground, their casings
removed by scavengers, oil companies, or dutiful citizens during the US’s drive
to collect metal for the war effort during World War II.
Wells were often drilled in
specific patterns and often spaced only a few hundred feet away from each
other, so once Barr finds a few, it’s easier for her to find more.
In seemingly pristine places like
the Allegheny forest the wells are so densely packed together and so prone to
leaking that the EPA determined in the 1980s that the forest was essentially
experiencing a slow-motion environmental disaster. The EPA spent millions to
help plug some of the wells, but not without opposition from the industry and
the local residents who support it. One EPA inspector even claimed he was shot
at while walking through the forest.
Like every effort to locate and
plug abandoned wells, the EPA’s short-lived program only addressed a tiny
fraction of the problem.
Not knowing where the vast
majority of the wells are obviously makes determining their cumulative effects
difficult. Studies are scarce. But
according to several experts, the wells could account for about 10% of the
state’s total methane emissions. Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse
gas, several dozen more times more effective at trapping heat than carbon
dioxide.
“If emissions from abandoned wells are indeed
a tenth of the methane emissions, that’s a real, substantive problem for global
warming,” said Rob Jackson, a professor of earth system science at Stanford
University. “We could be setting ourselves up for a situation that lasts
centuries.”
Given their limited budget, the
state and NETL researchers say they’re focusing their efforts mostly on public
land where new gas wells are likely to be drilled.
Once the NETL maps those wells,
the idea is that either the state or fracking companies can plug them before
new drilling begins. That way the state can at least help prevent new gas
migration.
But activists like Barr say the
state’s limited plugging won’t be enough.
Since 2007, Pennsylvania has
issued nearly 45,000 new well permits. About a third of those are for
“unconventional” wells. That means they’re often thousands of feet deep and hydraulically fracked, a process which
requires myriad chemicals and leaves holes significantly more complicated to
plug than traditional wells.
The
problem, according to experts, is that hiring plugging companies and buying
enough concrete to fill many thousands of feet will almost always costs more
than the price of the state’s bonds, especially for unconventional wells. That
may give companies disincentive to plug their wells, and the state with the
bill.
“It’s
definitely not $10,000. Even $50,000 is a very optimistic number,” said Austin
Mitchell, a postdoctoral fellow in the engineering department at Carnegie
Mellon University who co-authored a study on the economics of abandoned wells.
“Usually you want either the carrot or the stick to be big enough, but that
doesn’t seem to be the case in Pennsylvania.”
“We
could be leaving our future generations with the same problem we’re left with,
only bigger,” Barr said. “We’re shoveling sand against the tide, and not doing
anything to stem the tide.” http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/18/pennsylvania-abandoned-fracking-wells-methane-leaks-hidden
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