Westmoreland
Marcellus Citizens’ Group Updates May 23, 201
To view photos, please sign up for newsletter (address at bottom)
* To view permanent documents, past updates,
reports, general information and meeting information
http://westmorelandmarcellus.blogspot.com/
*
To discuss candidates: http://www.facebook.com/groups/VoteProEarth/
* To contact your state
legislator:
For email
address, click on the envelope under the photo
* For information on the state gas legislation
and local control: http://pajustpowers.org/aboutthebills.html-
Calendar of Events
***County Commissioners Meeting- 2nd and 4th Thursday of
the month at the county courthouse at 10:00
***Gasland Part II Coming
to Pittsburgh June 20, 7:00-Organized by Marcellus Protest (WMCG is a supporter)
As part
of a national ‘preview’ tour, Gasland Part II will be shown free to the public
at the Soldiers and Sailors Hall in Oakland. Doors open at 6 pm with live music and the screening begins at 7 pm.
Director Josh Fox will be present.
***Grassroots Summit for Fracking Activists-
June 21-22 registration is now only $10 with support from
our generous funders. We are quickly approaching cut-off for registration. To
maintain the desired atmosphere for the Summit, we’re capping registrations at
45 people.
Mt
Watershed See: http://mtwatershed.com/summit.html
TAKE ACTION!!
***TELL YOUR SENATOR TO OPPOSE SB 739 That Subsidizes the Gas
Industry
SB 739
represents a lose - lose proposition for the environment. It takes money away
from already limited energy efficiency funding while it subsidizes a natural
gas industry that is already very profitable.
The gas
industry is trying to expand the markets for natural gas, while having
taxpayers fund the construction of gas delivery infrastructure. If they are
successful, not only will they be able to sell more gas, but the price of gas
will increase, due to increased demand. The natural gas industry doesn't need
additional subsidies paid for by the public.
FRACK LINKS
***Video by Geomicrobiologist
Yuri Gorby
15 Minutes
Excellent short video to pass on. Includes Raina Rippel,
Carol Moten, Randy Moyer, Rep. Jesse White, Ron Gulla, the Headleys. Families and workers discuss health problems.
***To sign up for notifications
of activity and violations for your area:
***To view companies with the most violations
***List of the Harmed--There are now
over 1200 names of residents of Pennsylvania who became sick after fracking
began in their area and have placed their name on the list of the harmed. http://pennsylvaniaallianceforcleanwaterandair.wordpress.com/the-list/
*** Gas Drilling Records in Pennsylvania-Video
Squirrel Hill Panel - May 9, 2013 (1:11:05)
Penn State Gas Advocate Terry Engelder,
environmental activist Robert Donnan, AP reporter Kevin Begos, Penn Future
president George Jugovic and media law attorney Gail Sproul.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gas-rush-stories?c=activity
Large
screen version:
***Health Problems Forum-Video
Mac Sawyer former gas field truck driver, Joe Giovannini mason and resident
of Cannonsburg, Robert McCaslin who worked as master driller. Larysa Dyrszka, MD, Board certified
pediatrician, former director of pediatrics at Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck,
NJ, attendee at the first US Health Impact Assessment Conference in Washington
DC., and affiliate member of Physicians Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy
and Lauren Williams, Esq, PA attorney
specializing in environmental and public law who focuses on land use issues
including those that relate to gas drilling. Lauren William’s discussion of the
gag order on doctors is a good explanation of the problems surrounding the Act
13 order.
You must click on each speaker in turn to hear all the presentations
Frack News
1. How Many Cases of Water Contamination
in PA?
In a
letter from former DEP Secretary Krancer to Nadia Steinzor of Earthworks dated
April 2013, Krancer said: "DEP, has, however determined Marcellus
shale drilling has impacted the water
supplies of 25 separate water supply
complaintants since 2009."
But the Times Tribune Says:
“State
environmental regulators determined that oil and gas development damaged the water supplies for at least 161
Pennsylvania homes, farms, churches and businesses between 2008 and the
fall of 2012, according to a cache of nearly 1,000 letters and enforcement
orders written by DEP officials and obtained by The Sunday Times.”
(See following article)
Important Review of DEP Drilling Records –Damaged Water Supplies
and Poor Record Keeping
Excerpt
from the article BY LAURA LEGERE (STAFF WRITER)
Published:
May 19, 2013http://m.thetimes-tribune.com/news/sunday-times-review-of-dep-drilling-records-reveals-water-damage-murky-testing-methods-1.1491547
“State environmental regulators determined
that oil and gas development damaged the water supplies for at least 161
Pennsylvania homes, farms, churches and businesses between 2008 and the fall of
2012, according to nearly 1,000 letters and enforcement orders written by
DEP officials and obtained by The Sunday Times.
The
determination letters are sent to water supply owners who ask state inspectors
to investigate whether drilling activities have negatively affected their
wells.
Inspectors
declared the vast majority of complaints - 77 percent of 969 records -
unfounded, lacking enough evidence.
One in
six investigations across the roughly five-year period - 17 percent of the
records - found that oil and gas activity disrupted water supplies either
temporarily or seriously enough to require companies to replace the spoiled
source.
The
letters confirming contamination or water loss from drilling provide what is
likely the best official count of the industry's impact on individual water
supplies in Pennsylvania because the state does not track the disruptions.
The
Sunday Times requested the records in late 2011, and received access to them late
last year after a state appeals court ruled that the DEP had to release the documents regardless of whether it was hard for
the agency to find them in its files.
While
the records compiled by the newspaper offer a more complete tally of the number
of affected properties than was previously available, the count is not exhaustive:
* DEP tracks oil and
gas-related disruptions to water supplies based on broad incidents; each incident might affect one or many
water supplies, making comparisons between the totals difficult. A case of
gas migrating into Dimock Twp.
drinking water, for example, is
considered one incident by DEP even though the state determined it affected 18
water wells used by 19 families. DEP spokesman Kevin Sunday said the agency
compiles "some information" on the number of affected water wells and
springs, but DEP's statistics on
impacted water supplies differ from the numbers documented in the letters and
orders released to The Sunday Times. Between 2010 and 2012, DEP counted 103
impacted water supplies - six more than were documented for those years in the
records released to the newspaper.
* DEP repeatedly argued in court filings
during the open records case that it does not count how many determination
letters it issues, track where they are kept in its files or maintain its
records in a way that would allow a comprehensive search for the letters, so
there is no way to assess the completeness of the released documents.
*Before a 2011 regulatory update, solutions worked out privately between
homeowners and drillers were not required to be reported to the department.
The Sunday Times requested the notices of potential water contamination that
now have to be passed on to DEP by drilling companies, but the request was
denied by DEP and the state's Office of Open Records because the documents are
considered part of protected investigations.
* The conclusions described in the determination
letters are seldom absolute because substances that are considered signals of
drilling contamination are also signs of other man-made or natural influences.
The state’s tally suggests the rate of
drilling-related contamination incidents increased with the start of the
Marcellus boom: Drilling damaged water
supplies at a rate of more than 16 cases per year during the past five years.
For the 20 years prior to 2008, the
incidence rate was fewer than three
cases per year.
The
department's water testing and reporting protocols have come under scrutiny in
recent months as environmental activists and homeowners whose drilling-related complaints were dismissed have
come to doubt the determinations'
accuracy and value.
DEP
recently changed its policy for issuing water contamination notices to require
administrators in Harrisburg to approve them before they are sent out from the
regional field offices that conduct the investigations. The state's laboratory technical director, deposed when a resident
appealed the DEP's conclusion that drilling activities had not polluted his
water supply, acknowledged that DEP reviews and reports back to homeowners only
those contaminants it considers indicative of drilling-related contamination,
not all of the contaminants that might surface in its water tests - a
common practice for tailoring laboratory analysis but one that spurred critics
to question the thoroughness and transparency of DEP's investigations.
In
January, state Auditor General Eugene A. DePasquale announced his office is
conducting a performance audit of the DEP's water testing program to
"determine the adequacy and effectiveness of DEP's monitoring of water
quality as potentially impacted by shale gas development activities"
between 2009 and 2012.
Determination letters released by the state
reveal a widespread suspicion among water supply owners - farmers and summer
residents, school board members and mini-mart operators, churches and a Wyoming
County municipal water authority - that when their water seems soured, gas
drilling operations might be to blame.
According to the state's records, they are
sometimes right and for a myriad of reasons.
More than half of the records of
contaminated water supplies confirmed by the state involved gas, loosened by
drilling, seeping into drinking water aquifers. Faulty natural gas wells
channeled methane into the water supplies for 90 properties, the letters
show. Three of those cases were tied to old wells, one of which caused an
explosion at a home after gas entered through a floor drain and accumulated in
a basement.
Drilling-related
road construction contaminated water at two homes, while construction for a
large water-storage pond called an impoundment contaminated another. Pipeline
construction twice polluted water supplies with sediment. Stray cement or rock
waste displaced by drilling, called cuttings, contaminated seven water
supplies.
The state has never implicated the underground gas extraction process
known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking,
in a contamination incident, but inspectors noted that brine contamination
suggesting "an infiltration of frac water into the shallow ground
water," damaged six fresh-water springs used for drinking water in
northwestern Pennsylvania. (This
seemingly contradictory statement was explained to me as an example of the DEP
using the misleading semantics of the industry. DEP is using the term fracking
to refer to one very specific part of the process, not the entire process the
term is commonly used to describe . Jan)
Some of the problems were short-lived:
DEP letters describe 20 of the confirmed contamination incidents as temporary.
A 2011 Penn State
study found that about 40% of water wells it tested prior to gas well drilling
failed at least one federal drinking water standard, usually for coliform,
turbidity or manganese. Pennsylvania is one of only a few states that does not
have private water well construction standards.
Indicators of drilling-related
contamination might be due to past pollution or natural systems changing with
weather or seasons, so the contaminants DEP cites as evidence of a drilling
impact in one letter can be cited as evidence of background water conditions in
another.
Manganese, iron and a measure of
the salts and minerals dissolved in the water known as total dissolved solids
(TDS) are among the elevated parameters most frequently noted by DEP inspectors
in water wells they determined were not influenced by drilling, but in at least
30 cases where the DEP determined that increases in manganese, iron or TDS were
primary or sole indicators of a contamination problem caused by oil/gas
drilling. .
Letters sent to nine McKean County homeowners during an
involved investigation of drilling-related contamination captured the
difficulty of drawing conclusions based on substances
that can indicate both normal
conditions and harm: "An
elevated level of these compounds is not uncommon in this region and can occur
naturally," the investigator in the case wrote, "but it is also
recognized that they can become elevated as a result of drilling oil and gas
wells."
DEP does not rely only on water
test results to determine whether a water supply was affected by drilling, Mr.
Sunday said. "We employ a very complex analysis in these
investigations." Inspectors "consider things like local water well
and gas well integrity, a geochemical evaluation of the water supply, and the
local rock formations and how water flows through them," he said.
In many cases, the failure that
led to contamination is left as opaque as turbid water.
DEP blamed a Marcellus Shale driller in Susquehanna County for water
contamination in 2010 after the salt, barium, strontium and gas concentrations
in the Rush Twp. home's water supply spiked after the company drilled and
fracked a well 600 feet away.
The post-drilling barium levels
reached 47 milligrams per liter - more than 23 times the safe level of the
toxic metal in drinking water - while the TDS, chloride and sodium levels
peaked at more than 10,800, 5,800 and 3,800 milligrams per liter, respectively
- more than 20 times the guidance levels set for aesthetic reasons like taste
and appearance.
The determination letter and the
subsequent order requiring the driller, Stone Energy, to replace the water well
do not describe the mechanism for the pollution--the company was presumed
responsible for the contamination based on the timing of the impact and the
distance from the gas well. The company did not rebut the state's finding.
High
TDS, chlorides, sodium, barium and strontium - all potential signatures of
contamination from Marcellus development wastewaters - "also occur in
brackish or saline groundwater which have been documented at relatively shallow
depths in this part of the state," Mr. Sunday said. Although the
concentrations of those elements surged to levels between 46 and 142 times the
pre-drill concentration measured on the property, the post-drilling samples
were taken from a different, deeper water well and so could have been affected
by the shallow brine.
Critics of natural gas drilling
say the ambiguity left by DEP investigations means the state needs more robust
tools and a stronger will to pursue clues about contamination to its source.
Anthony Ingraffea, Ph.D., an engineering professor at Cornell
University and a vocal critic of the oil and gas industry he once worked for,
said that when DEP says it cannot find a connection between water well
contamination and nearby gas activity it does not mean there is no link.
"If DEP sent me a letter
that said, 'We can find no connection,' my natural question as a scientist
would be, 'How did you look?'" he said.
He was concerned by DEP's practice
of counting cases without counting individually impacted water supplies, which
he said "makes their statistics look better."
"It doesn't help answer the
question, which is how many individual families' private drinking water wells
have been contaminated by oil and gas activities," he said. "No one
knows the answer. Who should know the answer? DEP."
2. Senator Vitali-D Proposes
to Clarify Doctor “Gag Rule”
“Dr. Amy Pare, a
Washington County plastic surgeon, says she worries the requirement for
healthcare providers to sign non-disclosure agreements will harm patient care.
State Rep. Greg Vitali, (D-Delaware County),
says he’ll be introducing a bill to amend Act 13 public health provisions. One
of the most controversial provisions of the state’s new drilling law requires
doctors to sign non-disclosure forms in order to get information on chemical
exposures to treat patients. The language of the law is vague, and has created
confusion and fear among doctors and other health professionals.
Dr. Amy
Pare, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon from Washington County, has spoken
out against the provision.
“As I understand it,” Pare told StateImpact, “it’s legally
binding, so if 20 years from now I hiccup that someone was exposed to zippity
doo dah, I’m legally liable for that.”
Pare
says it could also have larger implications regarding public health data.
Vitali says his bill would allow health
workers to share that “trade secret” information with other health
professionals and regulatory agencies for healthcare purposes.
Vitali
circulated a memo about the proposal to other House members on Wednesday,
seeking co-sponsorship.
http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2013/05/22/lawmaker-proposes-to-clarify-doctor-gag-rule/
(For a good
explanation of the problems and confusion surrounding the gag rule on
physicians imposed by Act 13 see the short video listed under Frack Links (above)
by Larysa Dyrszka, MD,
Board certified pediatrician. Jan)
3. In Kansas and Oklahoma
They Are Spreading Frack Waste on Farmland
“So I just got off
the phone with the top Kansas Class II guy and he said they are now beginning
to permit on a case-by-case basis surface
spreading of drill cuttings, drilling muds and frac sands, and oilfield fluids
directly on farmlands. All they ask is that clay content of soils is
>3-4% depending on clay type. This stuff is actually being spread on
croplands and they are using what Alan said is "Loose and free adaptation
[of Oklahoma Class II/Fracking waste regulations] to the state of Kansas
geology and soils; fined tuned it for the situations we have here in the
state". They have 2300 Active Class IIs but farmers are apparently
tripping over themselves to put this stuff on their fields based on the apparent
success of crops in Oklahoma
Ted Auch, PhD, FracTracker, Ohio Program Coordinator
Cleveland State University, Adjunct Faculty
auch@fractracker.org, W.AUCH@csuohio.edu, lsarpp@gmail.com
4. Obama Admin. Approves
ALEC Bill for Frack Chemical Non- Disclosure on Public Lands
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (under the
Dept of the Interior) revealed it will adopt the American Legislative Exchange
Council (ALEC) model bill written by ExxonMobil
for fracking chemical fluid only partial disclosure on U.S. public lands.
ALEC is
a 98-percent corporate-funded bill mill and "dating service" that
brings predominantly Republican state legislators and corporate lobbyists
together at meetings to craft and vote on "model bills" behind closed
doors. Many of these bills end up snaking their way into statehouses and become
law in what Bill Moyers referred to as "The United States of ALEC."
BLM will
use FracFocus.org's voluntary online chemical disclosure database that only
reveals some ingredients in frack fluid.”
(See next article)
5. FracFocus Is a Front For the Industry
2 of 5 Chemicals Not Listed in 8 Energy States
"Trade-secret
exemptions block information on more than five ingredients for every well in
Texas, undermining the statute’s purpose of informing people about chemicals
that are hauled through their communities and injected thousands of feet
beneath their homes and farms."
"Energy companies failed to list more than
two out of every five fracked wells in eight U.S. states from April 11, 2011,
when FracFocus began operating, through the end of last year," wrote
Bloomberg. "The gaps reveal
shortcomings in the voluntary approach to transparency on the site, which has received funding from oil and gas
trade groups and $1.5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy."
This moved
U.S. Rep. Diane DeGette, author of the
FRAC Act - which would mandate
actual fracking chemical disclosure,
although it's never garnered more than a handful of co-sponsors - to say
FracFocus offers nothing more than the mirage of transparency.
"FracFocus is just a fig leaf for the industry to be
able to say they’re doing something in terms of disclosure," she said. "Fig
leaf" is a generous way of putting it. After all, FracFocus is merely a PR front for the oil and gas industry.”
http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/05/20/obama-admin-approves-alec-model-bill-fracking-chemical-fluid-disclosure-public-lands
6. Obama Admin.
"Huddled" with Industry
Sierra Club Decries Obama Policy
“EnergyWire's Mike Soraghan
revealed that the Obama Admin.
"huddled" with Big Oil before releasing BLM's final rules, watering
them down to suit the industry's taste.
Heather
Zichal, deputy assistant to the
president for energy and climate change, "met more than 20 times in 2012
with industry groups and company executives lobbying on the proposed
rule," according to Soraghan's review of White House visitor records.
"Among them were the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the
Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), along with BP America
Inc., Devon Energy Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp."
"The
rule really reflects who has had the most access and who is being listened
to," Fran Hunt of the Sierra Club's "Beyond Gas" campaign told
EnergyWire. "They've been following the road signs put up by
industry."
Michael Brune, Executive Director of the Sierra Club,
echoed these concerns.
"After reviewing the draft
rules, we believe the administration is putting the American public’s health
and well-being at risk, while continuing to give polluters a free ride,"
Brune stated of BLM's new fracking rules. “This proposal does not require drillers to
disclose all chemicals being used for fracking and continues to allow
trade-secret exemptions for the oil and gas industry."
http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/05/20/obama-admin-approves-alec-model-bill-fracking-chemical-fluid-disclosure-public-lands
7. DOE
Approves 2nd Gas LNG Export Terminal
The Department of Energy (DOE) announced a
conditional approval of the second-ever LNG (liquefied natural gas) export
terminal.
LNG is
the super-chilled final product of gas obtained via "fracking." Fracked gas is shipped from the multitude of
domestic shale basins in pipelines to various coastal LNG terminals, and then
sent on LNG tankers to the global market.
The name of the terminal: Freeport LNG.
Freeport
LNG is 50-percent owned by ConocoPhillips and located in Freeport, Texas. The
export facility is the second one approved by the Obama DOE, with the first one
- the Sabine Pass terminal, owned by Cheniere and located in Sabine Pass,
Louisiana - approved in May 2011.
DOE gave
its rubber stamp of approval to Freeport LNG to export up to 1.4 billion cubic
feet of LNG per day from its terminal.
Moniz's
DOE is Dept. of LNG Exports
The
announcement comes in the aftermath of an April DeSmogBlog investigation
revealing that recently confirmed Energy Department Secretary Ernest Moniz - a
former member of the Board of Directors of ICF International - has a binder
full of conflicts-of-interest in any decision the DOE makes to export the U.S.
shale gas bounty.
As we explained in that investigation, a Feb. 2013
"study" published by the American Petroleum Institute (API) and
conducted on its behalf by ICF International concluded exporting shale gas was
on the economically sound up-and-up.
ICF is a consulting firm that teams up with oil and gas
industry corporations and was one of three firms that did the Supplemental
Environmental Impact Statement on behalf of the U.S. State Department for the
northern half of TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline. The SEIS was published in
March 2013.
http://desmogblog.com/2013/05/18/obama-doe-approves-second-fracked-gas-export-terminal
8. Utica
Gas Going to Japan
Last week the
Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP), which runs through the Marcellus/Utica region,
signed a 20-year agreement
with Mitsubishi Corporation of Japan to ship natural gas to the Gulf Coast
(Louisiana) where it will be liquefied, turned into LNG, and exported to Japan.
This is the second such agreement to export
Marcellus and Utica Shale gas to Asia. A little over one month ago Dominion
announced a 20-year deal to export 100% of the output from their planned Cove
Point, MD LNG plant. The gas from Cove Point will go to both India and Japan.
Photos: The
price of sand. The sand is then used for fracking.
Westmoreland Marcellus Citizen’s Group—Mission Statement
To raise the public’s general awareness and
understanding of the impacts of Marcellus drilling on the natural environment,
health, and long-term economies of local communities.
Officers:
President-Jan Milburn
Treasurer-Wanda Guthrie
Secretary-Ron Nordstrom
Facebook Coordinator-Elizabeth Nordstrom
Blogsite –April Jackman
Science Subcommittee-Dr. Cynthia Walter
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