westmcg@gmail.com
* For articles and updates or to just vent, visit us
on facebook;
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* 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-
To read former Updates please
visit our blogspot listed above.
WMCG Thank Yous
Contributors To Our Updates
Thank you to contributors to our Updates:
Debbie Borowiec, Lou Pochet, Ron Gulla, the Pollocks, Marian Szmyd, Bob Donnan,
Elizabeth Donahue, and Bob Schmetzer.
Latrobe
Farm Market, Computer Training, Merton Society
Thank you to Mike Atherton and Cynthia
Walter, Dorothy Pochet and Jan Milburn for working our TDS testing table at
Latrobe Farm Market.
To Carol Cutler for a lovely job on
creating the flyer, Mike Atherton for publicity, and Jan and Jack Milburn for
posting flyers around the Latrobe area.
Thank you to Jim Rosenberg for computer
training on understanding DEP search sites and permitting.
Thank you to Lou and Dorothy Pochet for
representing our group at the Thomas Merton meeting.
Thank
You --Recent Donations
Thank you to April Jackman, the Shelton family, and
Marc Levine for their generous donations that support our work to protect the
health and environment of local communities.
A
little Help Please --Take Action!!
Yough River Comments Needed Now-Due August
27
Tenaska Plant Seeks to Be Sited
in South Huntingdon, Westmoreland County
We have learned that comments on water are separate
from air comments. They are handled by two separate DEP offices. The Mountain
Watershed has created a sample letter on water that you can copy and send
in. So please, if you have already
signed the air petition, email or send in water comments. jan
From Mountain Watershed:
Tenaska
is seeking to construct a gas-fired power plant in Westmoreland County that
will discharge toxins directly into the Youghiogheny River, and that will use 5
million gallons of water per day from the Yough. Comments on their NPDES permit are due on Wednesday,
August 27, 2014. Your action is needed!
Sample Letter:
Elizabeth Farley
Clean Water Program, PA DEP
400 Waterfront Drive,
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
elfarley@pa.gov
Subject: Water Pollution
Discharge (NPDES) Permit # PA0254771
For more information on this
proposal or its potential impact please contact Nick.
Ms. Farley,
I am concerned about the environmental impacts from
Tenaska’s proposed gas-fired plant on the Youghiogheny River. Each year the
plant will release thousands of tons of harmful air pollutants. I am also
concerned about the impacts this plant will have on water quality. Tenaska
Energy plans to withdraw 5 million gallons of water per day from the
Youghiogheny River. They also plan to discharge 2.5 million gallons of
wastewater per day from the power plant into the Youghiogheny River, a major
source of drinking water and recreational activities. Listed below are some of
my specific concerns
A plain language summary of this proposal and its
impact should be provided.
The published DEP permit
announcement listed important pollutants such as chromium, zinc, oil, and
grease, but the numbers set forth are confusing and preclude many citizens from
making an informed comment.
The high value of receiving streams warrants open
public discourse on the permit.
The designated uses of the
watershed were stated by the DEP as “drinking water” and “recreation,” uses
with high economic and social impacts.
Combined impacts of adding
Tenaska pollutants must be analyzed and presented for public comment.
The receiving streams still receive many other
pollutants. I am concerned about overburdening the already impacted
streams. Also, these pollutants
accumulate over time, which calls into question the long term negative
influence this plant will have.
A site specific study is needed.
The receiving streams are beginning to regain aquatic
life as a result of positive stewardship efforts by the community. The DEP is not likely to know the extent of
newly arrived fish and other important organisms.
Constitutional rights must be protected.
Actions of the Department must comply with Article I,
Section 27 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, which restricts the Department
from issuing permits that allow “degradation, diminution, or depletion of our
public natural resources.” Robinson
Twp., Washington Cnty. V. Com., 83 A.3d 901, 957 (Pa. 2013). As a trustee of our natural resources, the
Department must (among other obligations) consider and account for, prior to
acting, how its action will impact the right of present and future
Pennsylvanians to enjoy public trust resources. Without further study and public
participation, the DEP will not be giving adequate consideration to my
constitutional rights.
Please hold a hearing to allow for increased public
input and the opportunity to express our opinions and concerns about the
Tenaska gas -fired power plant. There
are serious issues with the permit that need to be addressed before any
decision should be made on this matter.
Regards,
YOUR SIGNATURE
And 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.
Some people have had problems
with the link. Here is the Mt Watershed
link
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.
***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.
***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
*Join the People’s Climate March in New York
City, Sept. 21. ACTION:
Register now for a seat on one of the Pittsburgh buses. http://alleghenysc.org/?p=19091
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
Send Statement/Comment To
Restrict Carbon From Existing Power plants
Everyone Should Submit a Written Statement
From Sierra Club: It is too late to register to speak,
but you can send a statement to the EPA. 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:
Q: Can I submit written comments at the hearing site
A: We recommend
that you submit your written comments to the docket. The docket number for this
rule is: Docket No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2013-0602 (for the Clean Power Plan for Existing
Sources) and information on how to
submit written comments is listed below. The public comment period will be open
for 120 days from the time the rule is published in the Federal Register. We
will be taking comments that are submitted the day of the hearing and will
ensure that those get submitted to the docket.
In addition to the public hearing in Pittsburgh,
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:
Impact on
Pennsylvania
According to the EPA, coal is
currently the largest energy source for power generation in Pennsylvania (Coal
– 39.0 pct, Nuclear – 33.6 pct, Natural Gas – 24.0 pct and Clean Energy – 3.4
pct). In 2012,
Pennsylvania’s power sector CO2 emissions were approximately 106 million metric
tons from sources covered by the proposed rule. Based on the amount of energy
produced by fossil-fuel fired plants and certain low or zero emitting plants,
Pennsylvania’s 2012 emission rate was 1,540 pounds/megawatt hours (lb/MWh).
The EPA is asking Pennsylvania to develop a plan
to lower its carbon pollution to meet the proposed emission rate goal of 1,052
lb/MWh in 2030. The EPA is giving states considerable flexibility in how they
achieve their reductions, including energy efficiency, clean energy programs,
etc. It will be interesting to see what Gov. Corbett’s administration plans
before the deadline of June 2016, but the Governor’s quick criticism and the failure
to support programs such as the Sunshine Solar Program do not suggest
enthusiastic compliance. Nor does Pennsylvania’s decision in 2005 to serve as
an observer rather than active member of the northeast Regional Greenhouse Gas
Initiative cap-and-trade system reflect well on our state.
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.
Shift from Coal
to Natural Gas
As early as 2010 utilities
were shifting away from coal to natural gas for electricity generation, partly
in anticipation of eventual climate regulation but also because of lower
operating costs with gas. That shift has accelerated with the greater
production of fracked gas, with natural gas predicted to overtake coal as the
preferred fuel by 2035. Although overall burning natural gas is cleaner than
burning coal, it is by no means a ‘clean’ fuel, and that concerns
environmentalists.
Given the reliance on natural
gas to achieve the reduction in emissions, environmentalists will be calling
for a number of actions, such as calling for removal of exemptions to the Clean
Water Act, Clean Air Act, and other laws that the drillers currently enjoy. But
that requires unlikely Congressional action. What the Executive branch can do
is properly understand and strictly regulate air and water pollution associated
with all aspects fracking.
And From Public
Citizen
See the top 10 FAQs on the
carbon pollution reduction plan.
***For Health Care Professionals—Tell PA Dept of Health to
Stop Ignoring Fracking Health complaints
***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
***Clean Air Council--- Take the survey. Health Impact
Assessment of the proposed Shell ethane cracker plant.
Health
Impact Assessment: Ethane Cracker
Royal Dutch Shell has proposed a
new natural gas and chemical processing station in Monaca, PA, outside
Pittsburgh. The proposed site is currently held by Horsehead Corporation which
owns the inactive zinc smelting facility. The proposed facility, known as a “cracker”,
will separate natural gas and chemical feedstocks into different compounds used
primarily in the manufacturing of plastics.
Increased hydraulic fracturing and natural gas collection has led to
increased ethane available for “cracking”.
The
ethane cracker is one of a number of large projects that Shell is considering.
Although, Shell has already secured feedstock agreements with multiple
companies, and has bought other land near the site of the proposed “cracker”.
Shell signed an additional option agreement with Horsehead, will pay for the
demolition of the existing buildings, and be allowed to take more time before
making a final decision. Considering these factors, and the fact that Shell
recently scrapped plans for a similar cracker in the Gulf Coast that was
competing for Shell’s capital resources, the likelihood of this project coming
to fruition appears relatively high. Even if this particular project does not
come to fruition, most industry experts agree that a cracker will be built in
the region eventually.
In partnership with community residents,
industry professionals, and academics, Clean Air Council is conducting a Health
Impact Assessment of the environmental, social, public health, and economic
impacts of such a facility.
Please
take our anonymous public survey about the proposed cracker: www.surveymonkey.com/s/WZC3WX5
***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
Frack Links
***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 1600 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 has
checked the site did 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=IWKye3OA90kSunoco 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.”
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.
***
Beaver
Run Reservoir-Photo By Bob Donnan
Another Spill At Beaver Reservoir
Violation Code 78.56(1) - Pit
and tanks not constructed with sufficient capacity to contain pollutional
substances.
Violation
ID 702606
Permit
API 129-28811
Unconventional Y
County Westmoreland
Municipality Washington Twp
Inspection
Type Incident- Response to
Accident or Event
Inspection
Date 2014-08-11
Comments Inspection the result of a spill
reported by the Operator on 8/10/2014 at 21:45. The Operator reported a unknown
amount of flow back water spilled into containment, however the containment was
compromised, which resulted in a spill to the ground. At the time of inspection
the department observed a frac tank inside containment, The Operator pulled back
the containment in the area of concern. The
Operator excavated to remove approximately two 50 gallon drums of impacted
material. The excavated area was
already backfilled at the time of the inspection. No waterways appear to be
impacted at this time. The Department suggests the Operator take samples of the
contents of the frac tank located onsite, the impacted soil before and after
excavation and a background sample to ensure the affected material has been
removed.
***Fracked Gas
Well Impacts Water Wells In Donegal
Posted
by Nick Kennedy on Jul 9, 2014 in Indian Creek, MCSP, Posts
“A recent Post-Gazette article
highlights the plight of several families affected by a leaking impoundment at
the Kalp well site located in Donegal Township, Westmoreland County. MWA has been assisting by making sure
affected individuals know their rights under the law and ensuring that the
Department of Environmental Protection (“DEP”) has been adequately addressing
the contamination. It is important that
this story has finally come to light because the DEP and WPX, the operator of
the site in question, have not properly addressed the contamination.
For the Kalp site, WPX received its first violation on September 18,
2012 when a DEP inspector found holes in the impoundment. As a result of that leak, three families have
filed complaints with the DEP regarding their well water. In its investigation of the complaints, DEP has exceeded legal time requirements
for investigations, delayed in ordering WPX to replace impacted water, and
failed to account for existing water data in the case of the Geary family. As noted in the article, DEP determined that there was no conclusive link between the
leaking impoundment and the changes to the Gearys’ water. That
conclusion is unacceptable because the contaminants that show up in increased
levels in Gearys’ water match those found in the impoundment and the water of
their neighbors.
For its part, WPX has been issued
two more violations—one on July 10, 2013 and one on June 17, 2014. Those violations concern WPX’s failure to
replace the water of two families despite a conclusive finding of contamination
by the DEP.
If the delays in fully addressing the Kalp situation are actually the
result of an ongoing investigation, as DEP spokesperson John Poister claims,
then the DEP should not have issued another drilling permit to WPX, as it did
on January 27, 2014, until such an investigation is concluded. Furthermore, how can WPX with “three strikes”
against it at the
Kalp site alone be able to
continue with operations when it has shown a pattern for not addressing its
impacts? DEP needs to invest the time
necessary to fully investigate the extent of the contamination from the Kalp
site, and halt the operations of WPX while it does so and until WPX takes the
safety of Pennsylvanians seriously.
For
more information or if you have been affected please contact me.
http://www.mtwatershed.com/2014/07/09/shale-gas-well-impacts-local-private-water-supplies/
***New Sewickley
Supervisors Approve Gas Compressor Station
“The New Sewickley Township
supervisors have approved a Marcellus Shale gas compressor station near the
Kretschmann Family Organic Farm, one of the region’s oldest and most successful
Community Supported Agriculture operations.
Don Kretschmann and his wife,
Becky, who started the 80-acre organic farm 35 years ago, opposed the siting of
the Cardinal Midstream compressor station in the agricultural area because of
the risks from air emissions and spills to their farm and its produce and its
impact on the rural and largely agricultural community.
The supervisors voted, 4-0,
Thursday evening to approve the Cardinal Midstream application for conditional
use of the agriculturally zoned land for the four-unit Pike Compressor Station,
25 miles north of Pittsburgh in Beaver County.
Mr. Kretschmann said the supervisors’ decision can be
appealed within 30 days to the Beaver County Common Pleas Court, and that the
family is “strongly considering” doing so.
“Our farm is transitioning to the
next generation, and we don’t want to have this big cloud hanging over us,” he
said. “We know it could be a long slog with an uncertain outcome, but the gas
industry has had its way everywhere, and somewhere, sometime, somebody has got
to stand up.”
Mr. Kretschmann said the family
would probably meet this weekend to decide about the appeal.
“I feel the decision was very
well thought out and followed the letter of the law. The ordinance and
everything was handled very well,” said Duane Rape, the supervisors board
chairman, who abstained from the deliberations and the vote because of
potential conflict-of-interest concerns.
Mr. Rape and 677 other landowners in the township have
leased the shale gas under their property. Those leases, which PennEnergy
Resources LLC holds, comprise 15,517 acres, or 71 percent of the township.
Casey Nikoloric, a Cardinal
spokeswoman, said the Dallas-based company is “reviewing those conditions in
detail to ensure that we are rigorous about meeting them.”
She
said the compressor station could be operating by May if it receives needed
state Department of Environmental Protection permits.
It will initially house four 1,340-horsepower compressors
that would operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week and emit 78 tons of
nitrogen oxides, 24 tons of volatile organic compounds and 98 tons of carbon
dioxide each year.
Cardinal has said it plans to eventually double the
number of compressors at the site to eight.
Nitrogen oxides and volatile
organic compounds are building blocks of ground-level ozone, the principal
component of smog, which can cause a variety of breathing and lung problems and
interfere with plant growth and development.
The permit decision capped a
tumultuous, emotional process that included township zoning commission
recommendations limiting the compressor’s footprint and nine and a half hours
of public hearings that hundreds of people attended.
Prior to the vote, a 13 page
“Findings of Fact” document was read, laying out 25 conditions for development
of the 46-acre site in the middle of the rural community.
In an email after the vote, Mr. Kretschmann said
siting of the “heavy industrial use in a ... top agricultural district is what
rips at our hearts.”
In the weeks before the vote, Mr. Kretschmann said the
compressor station threatened the future organic certification of his business,
which now supplies weekly boxes of vegetables, herbs and fruit to more than
1,000 customers in Allegheny, Beaver and Butler counties.
More than 200 of those customers
sent letters to the supervisors asking them to deny the permit.
James Marino, one of the
Kretschmann’s customers, said in an email the supervisor’s action puts all
1,000 “farming partners” subscribed to the CSA at risk.
“It boggles my mind that the
township doesn’t see the risk,” Mr. Marino wrote.
“Forget the letter of the law. If
this family farm is lost, was it worth the amount of gas pumped out of there?”
http://powersource.post-gazette.com/powersource/companies-powersource/2014/08/15/New-Sewickley-supervisors-Marcellus-Shale-gas-compressor/stories/201408150161
*** 6 Frack Wells Within
3,000 Feet Of Schools
“MIDDLESEX,
PENNSYLVANIA — If you stand beside Bob and Kim Geyer’s farm on Denny Road at
3:30 p.m. on a Wednesday, it is mostly quiet, except for the faint sounds of
the local high school’s flag team band practicing in the distance.
That’s because the
farm, where as many as six unconventional gas wells are waiting to be placed by
Rex Energy, sits just half a mile from the Mars School District, a campus of
3,200 children. If Rex Energy’s permits for the wells are approved by the
PA DEP, residents say the school buildings could be within the radius of a
possible explosion.
At a township public meeting
Wednesday night, Rex Energy came one step closer to having those permits
approved. Middlesex supervisors Michael Spreng, Donald P. Marshall, and James
Evans voted unanimously to approve
changes to the town’s zoning laws that would legally open up residential and
agricultural lands for drilling, despite the protests of concerned parents and
residents.
In essence, the ordinance
opens up most of the township to drilling.
That zoning law change has wider
implications for the town in the long run, but at the moment, it has everything
to do with the schools.
“In
essence, the ordinance opens up most of the township to drilling,” said John
Neuhror, communications director at Keystone Progress, who also lives in a
development adjacent to the well site. “But it’s pretty clear to an objective
observer that the ordinance was written to make it very clear that the Geyer
farm’s wells are allowed in the township.”
The issue of the proposed Geyer
wells has caused a palpable divide in the community between those who are
worried about how fracking in the immediate proximity of their children could
impact their health and welfare, and landowners who believe it is their right
to do what they want with their property.
Sitting about 2,000 feet from the
proposed well site on her back patio, with her five-year-old daughter on her
lap, Jennifer Chomicki explained: “It’s twelve years of her life that she’ll be
in that [school district] … we just don’t know enough about what it could do.”
Aside from the risk of an
accident, the possible health impacts of living near a well are a large concern
to Chomicki and those in the Mars Parent Group, which is mobilizing to oppose
the Geyer wells. They cite the
recently-observed link between proximity to natural gas wells and prevalence of
congenital heart defects and neural tube defects, in addition to increased air
pollution from gas leaks and truck traffic and the possibility of well water
contamination.
“I’m a nurse and I have a lot of
concern about what it means for the health of the girls,” Chomicki, who also
has a three-year-old daughter, said. “Being this close, and reading the
findings about what is linked — there’s not enough information out there yet.
But there’s enough out there to be concerning, and I just don’t want it
anywhere near my home.”
I’m
a nurse and I have a lot of concern about what it means for the health of the
girls.
At
the public meeting, though, residents were not uniformly in opposition to the
proposed wells. Multiple people spoke out in favor of unmitigated fracking,
saying the parents were making a big deal out of a small thing.
“You’re scared of drilling rigs?
Well let me tell you, I’ve been on thousands of them,” one resident said. “It’s
not as bad as you think.”
Kim Geyer, whose property would
house the Rex Energy wells, confirmed to ThinkProgress that the ordinance was
important for the project, but mostly spoke about the need for Pennsylvania to
get all of its energy from within the state.
“We need energy independence in
the United States,” she said. “For that to happen, people have to allow
unconventional drilling.”
Asked if she had anything to say
to opponents concerned about the health and safety of the children in the Mars
school district, Geyer — who up until 2011 served as president of the Mars
school board — said no.
“The drilling industry is
well-regulated,” she said.
The issue also extends to the
supervisors themselves. Though they said nothing during the meeting except
their “yes” votes to the ordinance at the end, all three men were chatting amicably with the pro-drilling group before
meeting took place. Town supervisors Evans and Spreng both own gas leases,
Evans owning one with Rex itself.
In what initially appeared to be
a positive move for the parent community, town solicitor Mike Hnath officially deemed those leases a conflict of interest, and
ordered that both Evans and Spreng abstain from voting.
However, in a truly Monty Python-like twist, Hnath
then said that because a majority could not be reached with just the remaining
supervisor, Evans and Spreng were allowed to vote. All three supervisors
declined ThinkProgress’ request for comment following the meeting.
Conflict of interest or not, the
Middlesex township supervisor’s decision to approve the zoning ordinance
effectively puts the permits in the state DEP hands. That’s a controversial
notion among residents, as some believe the DEP under current Gov. Tom Corbett
(R) has done a dismal job protecting residents from harmful impacts of
fracking.
“The DEP is not going to protect us,” said Kathleen
Wagner, whose Derry Road home would be 300 feet from the well site.
Indeed, a recent report from the
state DEPs auditor found that the agency had failed to adequately protect
Pennsylvania’s drinking water supply from drilling. It also said the DEP
routinely waited too long to inform the public about the results of
investigations during the height of the fracking expansion.
A DEP representative did not immediately
return ThinkProgress’ request for comment on what the next steps would be for
the Geyer well site. A look at recent campaign contributions, however, shows
Rex Energy has close ties to the current administration. Lance
T. Shaner, former Rex Energy CEO and current Chairman of the company, is
currently the ninth largest donor to
Corbett’s re-election campaign. Shaner also contributed $155,550 to
Corbett’s gubernatorial campaign in 2010.
It’s not just Corbett, either —
Shaner’s reach spans the entire Republican Party. The Republican Party of Pennsylvania’s headquarters is actually called
The Shaner Republican Center, named after the Rex CEO for his large
contributions.
“As we head towards November and
are just months away from securing major Republican wins for our candidates Pat
Toomey, Tom Corbett and countless other Republicans up and down the ballot, I
am honored that The Shaner Republican Center will serve as the foundations to
those critical victories,” he said in 2010.
At the time of Shaner’s first
$100,000 donation in 2010, the company had budgeted $66 million to drill
natural-gas wells over 60,000 acres in four counties, according to the state
Department of Environmental Protection. In Middlesex, Rex Energy already has
8,300 acres of land leased for drilling.
The company had even tried to get
the school to participate in the drilling process, offering the school board $1
million if they agreed to lease their underground land for horizontal drilling.
But in March, the Mars Area School board rejected the lease offer.
Rex Energy said in a statement
that it was disappointed by the vote, and that it respected the board’s
decision. But company representative Michael Endler said it plans to continue
their drilling plans near the school regardless.
“If they choose not to
participate, that’s unfortunate,” he said. “But we will be moving forward with
the project without them.” http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/08/14/3470363/middlesex-pennsylvania-fracking-schools/
***Radiation Alarm
Triggered At Yukon Facility
Supervisor Finds levels Higher than MAX Env. Co.
“State officials are
investigating a load of hazardous waste that set off radiation monitoring
detector alarms last week at MAX Environmental Technologies Inc.'s hazardous
waste treatment and storage facility in Yukon.
DEP inspectors received
“inconsistent readings” from the industrial waste pile last week and planned to
return to remeasure the material, said John Poister, a spokesman at the
department's Pittsburgh office. Environmental regulators have taken samples of
the waste and will test those, Poister said.
“We're determining what needs to
be done,” Poister said.
The company said it is working
with the state to determine the source of the radioactive material, but it believes the waste that triggered the
radiation detector alarms is a sludge from the treatment of wastewater from oil
and gas drilling operations.
MAX Environmental, based in Upper
St. Clair, maintains that there is no threat to human health or the environment
from the material, which is at the company's Impoundment No. 6.
“We have the material isolated and covered so that it
is not disturbed,” Susan Z. Forney, a company spokeswoman, wrote in an email response
to questions.
The
amount of waste that triggered the radiation detector alarms is less than a
roll-off box and contained in a 6-foot by 6-foot area, MAX Environmental said.
South Huntingdon Supervisor Mel
Cornell, who serves as the township inspector, said he was concerned that dust
from MAX Environmental, which has blown from the waste pile onto neighboring
homes on Spring Street, could contain traces of radioactive material that will
affect the health of local residents.
Cornell said meter readings from
the waste pile measured from 240 micro Roentgens to 260 micro Roentgens in
varying spots when he conducted a routine inspection of the hazardous waste
treatment facility on Aug. 12. Cornell said
the meter he used, which was purchased by the township, found radiation levels
much higher than those found when MAX Environmental's employees measured the
same waste.
“It was bad enough for me to
alert the rest of the township,” Cornell said.
Poister said he was not
certain whether the readings the DEP inspectors received were higher than MAX
Environmental's permitted level of 140 micro Roentgens, plus a background
reading of 10 micro Roentgens.
MAX Environmental said its
employees, the state inspectors and township officials found varying
measurement readings from less than 140 micro Roentgens to about 250 micro
Roentgens.
Until the investigation is done
and any necessary corrective actions are completed, MAX Environmental said it
will not accept any waste containing naturally occurring radiation levels above
background levels — that is, any waste that would trigger the entrance portal
alarm, Forney said.
That naturally occurring
radioactive material refers to rocks, minerals and soil that contain small
amounts of radium, thorium or uranium. When those soils or rocks are exposed,
processed or concentrated, they are considered “technologically enhanced,” she
said.
MAX Environmental is trying to
determine which firm sent the waste to MAX by reviewing its waste tracking and
shipment paperwork, Forney said.
The investigation takes place at
a time when MAX Environmental plans to seek a 10-year renewal of its hazardous
waste management permit from the state. Its permit expires in February 2015.”
Read
more:
http://triblive.com/news/westmoreland/6616018-74/waste-max-environmental#ixzz3AsWTcgPL
***Grant Twp Sued For Banning Frack Wastewater
"Natural
gas producer Pennsylvania General Energy Co. LLC has sued a western
Pennsylvania municipality in federal court, alleging that a local ordinance
banning the disposal of fracking wastewater violates the U.S. Constitution.
The company said in a complaint filed Friday that Grant Township, located in Indiana County, has stepped on its
constitutional rights with the June ordinance, which declares that corporations can not dispose of oil and gas waste
within the municipality."
It
also says that the ordinance violates the Equal Protection Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment by treating corporations differently that it does
individuals. And it claims that the ordinance violates the First, Fifth and
Fourteenth Amendments by limiting the company's ability to redress the
infringement of its rights.
PGE
additionally says that the ordinance is preempted by the state's Oil and Gas
Act, which it says gives DEP the exclusive authority to regulate oil and gas
development.
The
company seeks to have the ordinance declared unenforceable and
unconstitutional.”
***Companies Fracking
into Drinking Water Aquifers- Stanford Research Study
Fracking Sometimes Done At 700-750 Feet
“Energy
companies are fracking for oil and gas at far shallower depths than widely
believed, sometimes through underground sources of drinking water, according to
research released Tuesday by Stanford University scientists.
Though researchers cautioned
their study of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, employed at two Wyoming
geological formations showed no direct evidence of water-supply contamination,
their work is certain to roil the public health debate over the risks of the controversial
oil and gas production process.
Fracking fluids contain a host of
chemicals, including known carcinogens and neurotoxins. Fears about possible water contamination and
air pollution have fed resistance in communities around the country, threatening
to slow the oil and gas boom made possible by fracking.
Fracking into underground drinking water sources is
not prohibited by the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which exempted the practice from
key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act. But the industry has long held
that it does not hydraulically fracture into underground sources of drinking
water because oil and gas deposits sit far deeper than aquifers.
The study, however, found that
energy companies used acid stimulation, a production method, and hydraulic
fracturing in the Wind River and Fort Union geological formations that make up
the Pavillion gas field and that contain
both natural gas and sources of drinking water.
“Thousands of gallons of diesel
fuel and millions of gallons of fluids containing numerous inorganic and
organic additives were injected directly into these two formations during
hundreds of stimulation events,” concluded Dominic DiGiulio and Robert Jackson of
Stanford’s School of Earth Sciences in a presentation Tuesday at the American
Chemical Society conference in San Francisco.
Scientists cautioned that their research,
which is ongoing and has yet to be peer-reviewed, “does not say that drinking
water has been contaminated by hydraulic fracturing.” Rather, they point out that there is no way
of knowing the effects of fracking into groundwater resources because
regulators have not assessed the scope and impact of the activity.
“The extent and consequences of these activities are
poorly documented, hindering assessments of potential resource damage and human
exposure,” DiGiulio wrote.
Underground sources of
drinking water, or USDWs, are a category of aquifers under the Safe Drinking
Water Act that could provide water for human consumption.
“If the water isn’t being used
now, it doesn’t mean it can’t be used in the future,” said DiGiulio, a Stanford
research associate who recently retired from the Environmental Protection
Agency. “That was the intent of identifying underground sources of drinking
water: to safeguard them.”
The EPA documented in 2004 that
fracking into drinking water sources had occurred when companies extracted
natural gas from coal seams. But industry officials have long denied that the
current oil and gas boom has resulted in fracking into drinking water sources
because the hydrocarbon deposits are located in deeper geological formations.
“Thankfully, the formations where
hydraulic fracturing actually is occurring…are isolated from USDWs by multiple
layers and often billions of tons of impenetrable rock,” said Steve Everley, a
spokesman for the industry group Energy in Depth.
Industry
officials had not seen the Stanford research.
Digiulio and Jackson plotted the depths of fracked
wells, as well as domestic drinking water wells in the Pavillion area. They found that
companies used acid stimulation and hydraulic fracturing at depths of the
deepest water wells near the Pavillion gas field, at 700 to 750 feet, far
shallower than fracking was previously thought to occur in the area.
“It's true that fracking often occurs
miles below the surface,” said Jackson,
professor of environment and energy at Stanford. “People don't realize, though,
that it's sometimes happening less than a thousand feet underground in sources
of drinking water.”
Companies say that fracking has never
contaminated drinking water. The EPA launched three investigations over the
last six years into possible drinking water contamination by oil and gas
activity in Dimock, Pa.; Parker County,
Texas; and Pavillion, Wyo. After initially finding evidence of contamination at
the three sites, the EPA shelved the investigations amid allegations by
environmentalists and local residents that the regulator succumbed to political
pressure.
Jackson said the Stanford study’s
findings underscore the need for better monitoring of fracking at shallower
depths. “You can't test the consequences of an activity if you don't know how
common it is,” he said. “We think that any fracking within a thousand feet of
the surface should be more clearly documented and face greater scrutiny.”
The Stanford study focuses on
Pavillion, in part because of DiGiulio’s familiarity with the area when he
served as an EPA researcher in the latter stages of the Pavillion water study.
Industry and the state of Wyoming questioned the EPA’s methodology after its
2011 draft report found the presence of chemicals associated with gas
production in residents’ well water. In June 2013, the EPA turned over the
study to Wyoming regulators, whose work is being funded by EnCana, the company
accused of polluting the water in Pavillion.
The
EPA study looked at whether chemicals migrated upward from fracked geological
zones into people’s well water. The
Stanford research does not explore the possibility of migration, focusing
instead on the injection of fracking chemicals directly into geological
formations that contain groundwater.
EPA does not keep track of whether underground
sources of drinking water have been hydraulically fractured as part of oil and
gas development, said Alisha Johnson, a spokeswoman. “EPA does not maintain a
database of all the wells being hydraulically fractured across the country,”
she said in an email.
In their presentation, DiGiulio
and Jackson noted that the EPA considers the Wind River formation and the Fort
Union stratum below it to be underground sources of drinking water. The conventional image of tight geological
formations where fracking occurs is that they are monolithic stretches of rock.
But the scientists say the geology of the two formations is mostly sandstone of
varying permeability and water.
“People think these formations are impermeable, and so they wonder, ‘Why
are you worrying about water?’” DiGiulio said. “But it is an extremely
heterogeneous environment, with areas of low and high permeability mixed
together and with many lenses conducting water.”
***PUC Wants To
Control Zoning Of Fracking
“Pennsylvania’s PUC has appealed a recent Commonwealth Court decision,
which stripped the agency of its authority to review local zoning ordinances
regarding Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling. The state’s drilling law,
enacted in 2012, gave the PUC authority to decide whether or not a
municipality’s zoning ordinances complied with the state constitution and the
new rules regarding natural gas drilling.
Act 13, the comprehensive
legislation that amended the state’s oil and gas law, had implemented statewide
zoning rules that the municipalities had to follow. It also allowed those who
disagreed with the ordinances to bypass local zoning hearing boards, and appeal
directly to the PUC or the Commonwealth Court. Several municipalities sued the
state over this controversial law, and the case eventually made its way up to
the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The high court ruled in December that these
restrictions on local zoning for natural gas development were unconstitutional.
But the Supreme Court sent some
decisions in the case back down to the Commonwealth Court to decide. Among
these included whether or not the Public Utility Commission’s authority
superseded local zoning boards when it came to challenging a municipality’s
zoning decision.
Last month, the Commonwealth Court ruled that given
the Supreme Court’s ruling, it made no sense to have challenges to local zoning
ordinances bypass the current process, and go directly to either the PUC or the
Commonwealth Court. The July decision effectively removed the PUC from the new
role created for the agency by Act 13.
But the law had also given the
PUC and the Commonwealth Court power to withhold a municipality’s share of the
Marcellus Shale impact fee if a local ordinance was found to be in violation of
the law.
Part
of the appeal seems focused on this issue. A spokesperson for the PUC says the
agency continues to administer the law regarding impact fees.
“We are questioning the Commonwealth Courts order that
prevents us from doing any sort of review of ordinances,” wrote PUC spokeswoman Denise McCracken in an
email. The PUC also says it has authority over other aspects of Act 13 that the
Supreme Court did not rule unconstitutional and the Municipalities Planning
Code.
Jordan
Yeager, who represents the local municipalities in the case, says he’s not
surprised by the Commonwealth’s appeal.
“This is an effort by the General
Assembly and the Corbett Administration to carve out special rules for the gas
industry that no other industry has,” said Yeager. “The PUC doesn’t have a role
in reviewing zoning ordinances in any other context. This is just special
treatment for the gas industry.”
Yeager says the Public Utility
Commission has played no historical role in the state’s local zoning. Yeager
says he is considering a cross-appeal of other aspects of the Commonwealth
Court’s July ruling.
***PA Health Dept.
Changes Policies for Frack Related Health
Complaints
BY
KATIE COLANERI
The Pennsylvania Department of
Health announced it has updated its policies for handling complaints related to
Marcellus Shale drilling.
All those who file a complaint
with the department’s Bureau of Epidemiology will now receive a letter
acknowledging their concerns and outlining the agency’s findings.
The changes follow a recent investigation by
StateImpact Pennsylvania in which two former employees said they were told not
to speak with their colleagues or the public about drilling-related health
concerns.
A working group convened by
Secretary Michael Wolf in the wake of these allegations
found that some people who complained did not receive a formal response from
the department.
“What
we found was, there wasn’t a standard procedure,” said spokeswoman Holli
Senior. “Everything was on
a case-by-case basis.”
The department also updated its
website to explain the procedure for filing an environmental health complaint.
The explanation includes guidance for when to contact the Department of Health
or the Department of Environmental Protection.
Senior
said high-level officials with both agencies will meet twice a month to discuss
all environmental health concerns and have shared contacts to increase their
collaborative efforts.
“I believe by implementing these
straightforward changes, Pennsylvanians will be better informed about what the
department does and how we can be of assistance,” Wolf said in a statement.
While the department is billing
the changes as improvements, some
environmental groups and public health advocates say the state needs to address
the agency’s past practices.
In a letter to legislators this
week, the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy
Environments, Physicians for
Social Responsibility and PennEnvironment are calling for an investigation by
the state’s Auditor General into allegations employees were discouraged from
returning calls from people who complained about drilling. Last month, the
Auditor General’s office faulted the DEP’s for mishandling public complaints
about water contamination and natural gas development.
“This practice could have limited
the [Health] Department’s professional staff from accurately monitoring and responding
to health problems related to our state’s unconventional gas industry,” the
letter says.
The groups are also asking the department to make
public all drilling-related health complaints.
Senior said the secretary’s
working group has discussed it, but the department’s legal team has concluded
it cannot release the information to the public. The department says it has
logged 57 complaints since 2011. According to Senior, they fall into three
categories: water quality, air contamination and “physical symptoms.”
“Our working group is going to
continue and we understand that there’s always room for improvement,” she said.
“We’ll certainly be considering a lot of different options moving forward.”
Correction: The most recent
figure for the number of drilling-related health complaints on file with the
Department of Health is 57, not 51. High-level officials will meet twice a
month, not twice a week to discuss environmental health issues.
http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2014/08/18/pa-health-department-updates-policies-for-drilling-related-complaints/
***Say No to Sunoco-Pump
Station Video
“
<3ccoalition@gmail.com>
Subject:
Sunoco's Ohio Pump located
We must remain focused on the end
goal of keeping our community safe from the relentless incursion by pipeline
companies that want to force their pipes through Chester County. Keep up the
good work and keep spreading the message to "Say NO to Sunoco!"
During
the past few months many questions have gone unanswered by Sunoco. One question
in particular was the location of their supposed pumping station in Ohio. They
stated this many times during their few meetings here in West Chester. But they
would never answer where it was located. We were able to obtain its location,
as well as speak with the residents in the area about what happened to them.
The story is very similar to ours except that we were able to catch them at the
very beginning and raise important questions about this project. Without the
quick thinking of some local residents what happened in Ohio would have
happened here.
The location of the facility is Medina, Ohio. Some of you may have
already seen the video we put on YouTube, but for those that have not seen it
yet we are including a link. The site and sound of what Sunoco wants to put at
the Rt. 202 and Boot Rd. site is completely unacceptable in a densely populated
area. This does not belong within 100 yards of somebody's deck. Please share
this video with everyone you know to show them that this is truly a serious
matter for not only West Goshen, but for every community from here to
Pittsburgh.
Flare
Video Link
The
Team at 3cCoalition.org”
***Well Fire In
Mercer County
JEFFERSON
TOWNSHIP, Pa. (WYTV) – Fire crews worked for several hours Friday night to
contain a fire at a gas well in Mercer County.
One witness said smoke from the
fire could be seen for miles. Mercer County officials said two half-tankers
caught fire containing about 200 barrels of oil.
Pew
Road and Golf Road were shut down at crews battled the fire.
Online reports from the DEP name
the well as the Jefferson McGhee site, owned by Hilcorp Energy.
Initial drilling and operating
permits were issued in 2013. Violations at the well site were noted as early as
March 2014
http://wytv.com/2014/08/16/explosions-and-heavy-smoke-at-mercer-co-gas-well-fire/
***Gas
Co. Takes Control Of Public Land
By Marie Cusick
“After
a few minutes of taking photos of the drill rig from the public road, a man
appears and asks for our names. We tell him who we are and what we’re doing.
The man won’t identify himself but says he’s
copying down Deering’s license plate. I was told you have to have permission to
photograph,” he says.
“From whom?” Deering asks.
“I was just told,” the man says. “I’m just
asking you if you have permission.
He
leaves, and a few minutes later another security guard arrives. We ask him if
it’s OK to take photos from the road. He doesn’t answer. He uses his phone to
take photos of us and walks away.
The
security firm, Gas Well Security, didn’t respond to several requests to comment
for this story. PGE declined an interview request but sent a statement saying
its focus is on the safety of workers and visitors:
“Any effort by contracted personnel to
engage people near our operations is focused on these goals of safety and
security and not intended to impede use of public lands.”
As Deering took us along the public roads
near his home over the next several hours, two security guards continually
trailed us. None of them mentioned safety or security concerns.
Other residents have similar
stories. Attorney Mark Givler lives at the bottom of the mountain, along the
Pine Creek. He’s an avid hiker and says
the gas industry has changed his way of life. When the drilling boom first
began, guards blocked him from getting to some of his favorite scenic vistas in
the Tiadaghton State Forest.
“When I
first tried to get to the scenic views back in 2007, I was arrested in my
progress by these security people,” says Givler. “They absolutely denied me
access to these public vistas.”
Angered by his experience, Givler wrote
letters to then-Governor Ed Rendell and other state officials including the
Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which manages public forests.
The
agency responded saying it has neither the personnel, training, nor budget
manage security. Dan Devlin heads the department’s Bureau of Forestry and says
things have gotten better.
“I would
be the first to admit that very early on, we had a lot of overaggressive
security folks that were making things more difficult than they should have
been.”
Devlin says
the state still leaves security up to gas companies and safety is important,
but complaints about public access have dwindled in recent years.
It’s
true that things have changed.
Hikers, like Cindy Bower, can go to those vistas
again.
She
parks her car a quarter-mile away—the road is closed to traffic now—although
industry vehicles are allowed. The path
takes her past construction equipment and a fenced-off impoundment pond.
Bower
looks out over the Pine Creek Valley. These scenic vistas were temporarily
closed to the public due to gas development.
In
the past, she could drive up to the views with her family. They can’t join her
anymore.
“None
of my immediate family can walk here,” she says. “For various reasons of
mobility having to do with replacement joints, arthritis, and age.”
Bower
is a member of the Lycoming County Planning Commission and has watched the gas
industry grow in the state forest system.
“Sometimes when you come down a road like
this, you’ll get stopped by a vehicle with a person that says, ‘Well what are
you doing here?’ I shouldn’t have to be asked what I’m doing on public land.”
Bower
is also a board member of the Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation—the
group suing Governor Corbett to prevent further gas leasing on public land.
A
ruling is expected this winter.
Meanwhile, with more development planned near his home, Bob Deering and
his wife are thinking of moving.
“She
wants [to get] out of here period,” he says of his wife. “Because she deals
with the traffic every day. She just doesn’t feel safe anymore.”
***Commissioner
Courtney Permitted to Be Banker, Stockbroker and Insurance Agent to County Municipalities
Commissioner may do business
with municipal governments
Westmoreland County Commissioner Tyler Courtney can
serve as an investment banker, stockbroker and insurance agent to municipalities
in the county,
according to a state ethics commission opinion issued this month.
Courtney,
a first-term Republican, said on Wednesday that he sought the finding to ensure
that his current and future private business dealings were within bounds of
state law.
“I don’t want to cross any lines,” Courtney
said.
When
Courtney took office in 2012, he continued to operate RTC Financial Services, a
financial planning business he formed in 2000. The company offers financial
advice and planning, and sells stocks and insurance, according to its website.
He also owns Natural Resource Placement, a
business that advises natural gas drillers. Courtney said that company has not
operated since he assumed office.
Courtney,
who earns more than $75,000 a year as a commissioner, declined to reveal how
many clients his private business has but said none is a municipality. He said
he does work for the business on nights and weekends.
“I
don’t think taxpayers should be concerned at all. I put in a lot of time at the
courthouse,” Courtney said.
The commissioners and other elected county
officials have no minimum work hour requirements for their day jobs. Courtney
has attended most public meetings that have been held since he was elected.
Courtney disclosed his outside business
dealings on a statement of financial interest on file at the courthouse.
Commissioners Charles Anderson and Ted Kopas disclosed no second jobs on their
filings.
The
ethics commission concluded that Courtney can market his services to
municipalities within Westmoreland County, provided he abstains from any votes
involving their financial dealings with the county and doesn’t personally
benefit from any deals his clients have with the county.
Barry
Kauffman, executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, an advocacy group
that promotes government accountability, said there appear to be no
improprieties with Courtney’s moonlighting.
“As
long as he keeps a red line between official business and his outside duties, I
think that’s OK,” Kauffman said.
Rich Cholodofsky is a staff writer for Trib
Total Media. He can be reached at 724-830-6293 orrcholodofsky@tribweb.com .
***Auditor General
De Pasquale Faults DEP
“State
Auditor General Eugene DePasquale-D released his year-and-a-half-long audit of
the DEP on July 22. Auditor General
Eugene DePasquale found a few issues with the state DEP’s oil and gas programs that went beyond poor record-keeping.
The
first issue DePasquale found in his year-and-a-half-long audit, released July
22, was that DEP did not routinely issue administrative orders after it
determined a well operator’s activities had damaged a water supply.
Auditors
reviewed 15 cases when DEP found
operators had damaged a water supply and DEP issued an order to restore or
replace it just once. In these cases, operators made agreements with affected
residents.
“The problem that we had was threefold,”
DePasquale said. “One is the law, we believe, is very clear; an administrative
order is required. Two, if there’s a bad driller, you want to have a paper
trail so if they do it a couple of times, you can hold them fully responsible. Third, is that yes,
that landowner may know, and they’re negotiating with the well owner ... but what about anything that may have
impacted downstream, impacting neighbors?”
But in those 15 cases, DEP had not yet determined
whether it was oil and gas production that had damaged the water supply,
Secretary Christopher Abruzzo said.
“In all of those instances, the operators had already contacted
the landowner and arrived at an agreement before we even made a determination,”
he said.
Groundwater quality varies across Pennsylvania. Sometimes, DEP
takes months to determine the cause of contamination or flow reduction, particularly
if the case involves isotopic testing to determine the source of methane in a
well.
“When
issuing an order is unnecessary because compliance has already taken place,
that is an unnecessary case of bureaucracy,” Abruzzo said.
Abruzzo
thinks DEP should mark each incident in some way, but a more appropriate method
might be a notice of violation instead of an order. He said he has left this up
to Deputy Secretary Scott Perry, who heads the Office of Oil and Gas
Management.
“It’s important for us to keep a
record of founded water well contamination incidents,” he said. “It does create
some perspective.”
DePasquale
also took issue with the agency’s well inspection policy, drafted long before
the shale gas boom.
“The
inspection policy still has not been revised — that’s a 25-year-old policy,” he
said. Abruzzo said the outdated policy does not reflect the agency’s current
practice, in which operators must notify DEP of all critical stage of well
development — drilling, cementing casing strings, conducting pressure tests of
production casing, hydraulic fracturing, and plugging or abandoning a well. DEP
inspectors use this information to track a well’s progress and plan
inspections.
“Scott
Perry has recognized that our outdated policy should be updated,” he said.
“Like any policies, they should reflect current practice.”
bgibbons@timesshamrock.com, @bgibbonsTT
***Center for Sustainable Shale Development Receives More Criticism For Bias
A
nonprofit watchdog group has released a new report criticizing the Center
for Sustainable Shale Development for continuing to maintain what it
perceives as questionable links to the oil and gas industry, but the center
said the criticism is unfair.
A report by the Public Accountability Initiative, said in the year since it last
issued a study on the Center for Sustainable Shale Development, the
Downtown-based organization “appears to have doubled down on its energy
industry ties” because of connections it has to energy concerns through one of
its philanthropic funders, staff members and a board member.
While
credibility may be CSSD’s aim, the direction the group has taken in the past
year does little to diminish the group’s appearance as an oil and gas front,”
the Buffalo, N.Y.-based nonprofit said in the
new report.
The
Center for Sustainable Shale Development was launched in March 2013 as an
effort between energy companies and environmental groups to find best practices
for tapping the energy resources of the Marcellus Shale region.
One
of the environmental groups that helped to found the center, PennFuture, is no longer a “strategic partner” with the
organization, according to the PAI report.
Responding
to the report, Susan LeGros, executive director of the Center for Sustainable
Shale Development, said the center “is about collaboration so we work with
groups and individuals with different viewpoints on the shale gas topics.”
In
its June 2013 report, the Public Accountability Initiative blasted the Center
for Sustainable Shale Development and the Heinz Endowments, one of the center’s
original partners and funders, for not disclosing that Robert Vagt, former
president of the endowments, sat on the board of directors and owned stock in
Kinder Morgan, a Texas-based natural gas pipeline company.
The
2013 report set off a heated controversy that resulted in two endowments staff
members being let go, Mr. Vagt’s departure from the charity earlier this year,
and an effort by the endowments to distance itself from the center.
In
its newest report, which can be viewed below or by clicking here, PAI said a new Center for Sustainable Shale
Development sponsor, the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, was “founded
with oil money” and “maintains extensive ties to the oil and gas industry”
through the Benedum family and some foundation board members who work in the
energy industry in West Virginia.
The
Downtown-based foundation was founded in 1944 by the late oil magnate Michael
Benedum, a West Virginia native. The foundation joined the Center for
Sustainable Shale Development in January as a “funder” and provided a grant of
$25,000 to the organization, said Ms. LeGros.
Foundation
officials could not be reached for comment.
PAI
criticized the Center for Sustainable Shale Development for hiring Ms.
LeGros in January because she was formerly an attorney with the energy practice
at Philadelphia law firm Stevens & Lee.
In
its report, PAI said the center
downplayed Ms. LeGros’ industry ties “while stressing her environmental bona
fides.”
Ms.
LeGros’ career also includes work for the Environmental Protection Agency.
Also
coming under scrutiny in the Public Accountability Initiative report were board
member Jared Cohon, past president of Carnegie Mellon University; and Timothy
O’Brien, whose public relations company works for the Center for Sustainable
Shale Development.
PAI
criticized Mr. Cohon’s past chairmanship of the Science Advisory Board of the Center
for Indoor Air Research. That organization was founded by major tobacco
companies to address public concerns about the health effects of secondhand
smoke. The nonprofit cited studies that concluded the tobacco industry
financed projects through the center “to enhance its credibility, to provide
good publicity, and to divert attention from [secondhand smoke] as an indoor
air pollutant.”
As a board member at the Center
for Sustainable Shale Development, PAI said, “Cohon seems to serve a similar
function” and, along with “the remainder of the purportedly
independent CSSD are enhancing the credibility of and providing good publicity
for the fracking industry while diverting attention from its ill effects on the
environment and public health.”
Mr.
O’Brien, who owns O’Brien Communications, was criticized by the nonprofit
because his business website in the past noted that he has provided
communications consulting for companies engaged in developing the Marcellus
Shale.
“My
only comment is that [energy] is one of the many industries I have served,”
said Mr. O’Brien. “CSSD is my primary focus in this area. I don’t work with any
energy companies right now.”
In
response to the new report, the Heinz Endowments said it provided $95,000 to
help launch the Center for Sustainable Shale Development, but that “we are no
longer a funder of the group.”
It
continued: “We disagree with the position suggested by the organization’s name that
fracking can be made environmentally ‘sustainable’ and, given the pace of shale
development, we do not believe that the goals of protecting environmental and
public health are best served at this point by standards that are voluntary and
unenforceable.”
***Shale Drilling Cannot be Done Responsibly-
Letter to the Editor by Steve
Cleghorn
(Steve is a farmer from Reynoldsville, PA, jan)
“August 17, 2014 12:00 AM
Regarding
the Post-Gazette’s Aug. 10 editorial “Sloppy Screed: A Report Faults a Group
Seeking Better Shale Practices” about criticism of the Center for Sustainable
Shale Development by the Public Accountability Initiative: Keep in mind that
the Heinz Endowments and PennFuture distanced themselves from being part of
CSSD. Yet even that should not be the real focus of your attentions.
The
editorial, at its heart, is just an “inside baseball” controversy. For now
shale gas drilling, as it is currently designed and conducted, cannot be done
responsibly. It is causing too much harm with air and water contamination,
sicknesses among humans and animals and destruction of communities. Its
long-term consequences are essentially unknown. Significant vectors of fact
(e.g., well casings that cannot hold up in perpetuity but must do so to protect
aquifers, methane pollution that cannot be controlled and hastens climate
change) point in the direction of widespread environmental damage in the future
after the gas has been extracted and profits taken.
The
editors should ask CSSD two basic questions instead of worrying about a
nonprofit’s report that the PG sees as not constructive: 1) Could it happen
that irreparable harm is done to Pennsylvania groundwater aquifers by drilling
fluids and/or shale gases that find their way to aquifers via deteriorated
well casings or as a result of fracking, and 2) has the gas industry proved
that such irreparable environmental harm cannot happen? If the answers to these
questions are “Maybe” and “No,” then the drilling cannot be considered
responsible in any way and must be stopped.”
J. STEPHEN CLEGHORN
Reynoldsville, Pa.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/letters/2014/08/17/Shale-drilling-cannot-be-done-responsibly-Center-for-Sustainable-Shale-Development-Public-Accountability-Initiative/stories/201408170095#ixzz3AsYt3CrI
***PA Fines Gas Driller For Losing Control Of Well
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — State environmental
regulators have fined a gas drilling company for allowing natural gas to escape
a well in northeastern Pennsylvania.
The DEP said Tuesday it fined
Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. more than $76,000 for losing control of a well at its
Huston pad in Brooklyn Township, Susquehanna County.
Regulators
say the well released natural gas for about 27 hours before it was brought
under control on Jan. 6.
DEP
says a Cabot subcontractor who was replacing equipment at the wellhead didn't follow
procedures for working on equipment in cold weather, leading to a damaged valve
that released the gas.
The DEP says the gas dissipated and there was no
significant environmental impact.”
http://powersource.post-gazette.com/business/2014/08/06/Watchdog-group-faults-center-for-links-to-oil-and-gas-industry/stories/201408060163
***Wake-up Call on fracking
By Helen Slottje
“In
an age when the voices and concerns of average Americans often go unheard in
our political system, two small towns in upstate New York recently won an
underdog victory against the oil and gas industry that should serve as a
wake-up call to government officials across the nation.
Dryden
and Middlefield – passed municipal bans on fracking, despite threats of
lawsuits from the oil and gas industry. Industry made good on those threats,
but lost in two trial courts, and on appeal to the New York State Court of Appeals. The state’s highest court held that municipalities have the right to use
their long-standing zoning laws to ban oil and gas operations, including
fracking.
Unfortunately, fracking has spread throughout much
of the nation with little if any honest consideration of the consequences. From
the White House to Congress to most state governments, the oil and gas industry
has successfully lobbied public officials to cave to their demands and have
hired the same public relations consultants as the tobacco industry did to
mire the facts about the harms of this violent drilling process.
Now
independent science is beginning to catch up to this new practice and it’s all
bad news. A rapidly expanding body of hundreds of recent scientific and medical
studies shows that the impacts of fracking are significant, and with millions
of Americans living within a mile of fracking sites, the potential exposure is
alarming.
For
example, based on three years of monitoring, a Colorado School of Public Health
study
found air pollutants near fracking sites at levels sufficient to raise risks of
cancer, neurological deficits and respiratory problems. Among the chemicals was
the carcinogen benzene, which separate air monitoring has found at dangerous
levels at fracking sites in states including Colorado, Pennsylvania, Utah,
Texas and West Virginia.
Many
studies have linked drilling and fracking activities with water contamination.
When you consider the hundreds of chemicals used in fracking operations, as
well as naturally occurring radioactive materials and heavy metal in the shale,
that’s disturbing. It’s even worse in
light of recent research indicating that rates of cement failures in well
casings – the only barrier between groundwater and disastrous contamination –
are actually getting worse, according to a study in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences by a Cornell University research team.
Researchers analyzed more than 75,000 official state of Pennsylvania
inspections of more than 41,000 oil and gas wells drilled since 2000 and
determined that over 40 % of shale fracking wells drilled after 2009 would
leak into the groundwater or atmosphere, higher rates than for older,
conventional wells.
As science has begun to catch up,
air pollution and water contamination are just two of many harms from fracking. Others include earthquakes, high levels
of radiation, noise and light pollution, significant contributions to climate
change, threats to agriculture, increased crime rates and a range of health
impacts.
In
spite of all this, the oil and gas industry’s influence is so politically
significant that Obama, Congress and most state governments remain undaunted in
supporting fracking. This undue influence is not new. FDR complained about it
in the 1940’s: “The trouble with this country is that you can’t win an election
without the oil bloc, and you can’t govern with it.”
What’s
next for New York? A statewide ban that can help lead our country in the right
direction - away from fracking – because air pollution, water contamination,
and the health and other problems caused by fracking do not conform to
municipal boundaries.
In
New York, it’s heartening that most elected officials have not abandoned science
and caution by yielding to the oil and gas industry’s propaganda and political
influence. Governor Andrew Cuomo has kept our state’s moratorium in place and
has firmly and rightly said he wants to let the science decide. Recently, the
New York State Assembly overwhelmingly passed a three-year moratorium based on
the call from hundreds of health professionals and medical organizations given
emerging trends in the data showing harm and the need for more study.
Now
it’s imperative that officials in Washington, D.C. and in other states–
including Congress and Obama – wake up from the oil and gas
industry-induced trance and provide true leadership on this issue. That means
following the science, not the money. The health of communities across the nation
and future generations is at stake. And that’s something worth fighting for.”
Slottje, Esq. is the 2014 North America recipient
of The Goldman
Environmental Prize for her legal work on behalf of New York
communities enacting local fracking bans. She lives in Ithaca, N.Y. with her
husband David.
***Michigan
Takes Radioactive Frack Waste
Radioactive fracking sludge
“The waste, known as
technologically enhanced, naturally occurring radioactive materials, or TENORM,
is a waste byproduct of oil and gas drilling that accumulate the radiation that
occurs normally in nature.
Where does it come from?
The radioactivity, usually from the metal radium, accumulates from
drill cuttings, the soil, rock fragments, and pulverized material removed from
a borehole that may include fluid from a drilling process. It also can be
present in flowback water, the brine or other fluid injected into shale
formations during fracking that makes its way back to the surface.
How
radioactive is it?
Usually only slightly
more radioactive than the levels that occur in nature — though a shipment of
tons of radioactive drilling sludge from Pennsylvania last week reached levels
of 260 microrems per hour, according to Range Resources, the oil and gas developer
disposing of it. The EPA says continued, long-term exposure over a period of
months to up to 100 microrems of radiation can lead to serious health effects.
Is there an environmental concern?
Michigan’s Wayne Disposal landfill near Belleville is designed and licensed to
take the TENORM material, but some residents and environmentalists say they are
concerned over the long-term potential for leaks into waterways or groundwater.
Other states such as Ohio and West Virginia have recently tightened their
regulations on disposing of TENORM — and have even recommended using the Wayne
Disposal landfill.
Sources: U.S. EPA, Michigan DEQ, Wayne Disposal website
As
other states ban landfills from accepting low-level radioactive waste, up to 36
tons of the sludge already rejected by two other states was slated to arrive in
Michigan late last week.
Wayne
Disposal landfill is one of the few landfills in the eastern and Midwestern
U.S. licensed to accept the radioactive waste, which has been collected by a
Pennsylvania hydraulic fracking operation.
As
regulations tighten in other states, companies are turning to Michigan as the radioactive
sludge’s dumping ground.
Though
the radiation is considered low-level and the landfill licensed by the state to
handle it, nearby residents and environmentalists still worry over its
potential to leak into rivers, lakes or groundwater over long periods of time.
Anne
Woiwode, Michigan director of the nonprofit environmental group the Sierra
Club, is concerned that water is at
risk. “We’ve got other states deciding
they don’t want it, which is why it’s coming here,” she said.
Woiwode said
she’s concerned about elevated radiation leaking into the Great Lakes, other
waterways or groundwater.
“The
question isn’t just what kind of waste is coming, but why is waste coming here
at all?”
The
radioactivity, usually from the metal radium, accumulates from drill cuttings,
the soil, rock fragments, and pulverized material removed from a borehole that
may include fluid from a drilling process. It also can be present in flowback
water, which is the brine or other fluid injected into shale formations during
fracking that makes its way back to the surface.
The
radioactivity levels of the waste are typically low, often not much higher than
naturally occurring, ambient radiation in the environment. But because the levels
are elevated, special regulations for disposal of the material are in place.
Pennsylvania and West Virginia — two other
states experiencing a fracking boom — require radiation detectors at local
landfills in large part to avoid improper disposal of radioactive drilling
wastes.
Range Resources accumulated the material
from its drilling operations in Washington County, Pa. It was rejected from a landfill in western Pennsylvania
earlier this year after heightened radiation was detected. The company then
began taking the material to a landfill in West Virginia, but that
state’s DEP halted the practice in May, as it sought more information and
instituted new rules tightening the state’s management of radioactive drilling
wastes.
“This is basically a load of sludge that
came from storage tanks that were cleaned out and had
accumulated over time,” said John Poister, spokesman for the DEP. “It comes
from the water used in hydraulic fracturing, and when it’s stored, the solids tend to sink to the bottom and become a sludge.”
That also
causes the natural radioactivity to accumulate, Poister said.
“It’s higher
in radioactive readings than can be accepted in landfills in Pennsylvania,” he
said.
Matt
Pitzarella, a spokesman for Range Resources, said the radioactivity levels in
the sludge measured “between 40 and 260 microrems per hour” and were not
detectable a few feet from the source. The sludge came in two containers
capable of hauling 36 tons of material in total, though the boxes were not
full, he said.
According
the U.S. EPA, continued, long-term exposure over a period of months to up to
100 microrems of radiation can lead to health effects including changes in
blood chemistry, nausea, fatigue, vomiting, hair loss, diarrhea and bleeding.
There
is no firm basis for setting a ‘safe’ level of exposure above background”
radiation, the EPA’s website states.
“Why
can’t they dump it in their own states?” she said. “Why here?” http://www.freep.com/article/20140819/NEWS06/308190016/fracking-radioactive-waste-michigan
***At Least 10% Of Frack Fluid Is Toxic
BY ANDREW BREINER
“At least 10 percent of the contents of fracking fluid injected into the
earth is toxic. For another third we have no idea. And that’s only from the
list of chemicals the fracking industry provided voluntarily. That’s according to an analysis by William
Stringfellow of Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, reported in Chemistry World.
The
contents and makeup of that fluid have been a subject of controversy, largely
because drilling companies are able to keep what’s in it a secret, and because
the fluid has been known to leak and spill on a regular basis.
Stringfellow mostly used FracFocus’ voluntary registry of 250 fracking
chemicals provided by the industry to check against existing toxicology
information. He found that about 10 percent of the chemicals are known to be
hazardous “in terms of mammalian or aquatic toxicology,” Stringfellow said at
the a meeting of the American Chemical Society. But for almost a third of those 250 chemicals, there’s no publicly
available information on their toxicity to humans or other life. And that’s not
even counting the chemicals that the industry can simply choose to keep a
secret.
FracFocus
was in the news last week when drilling
companies came under scrutiny for injecting diesel fuel into the earth to frack
oil and gas, something for which they are supposed to have a permit. When
that came to light, many companies simply went back and removed past mentions
of injecting diesel.
Pressure
is growing for companies to stop concealing the chemical mixtures they use for
fracking. The companies Baker Hughes and Schlumberger chose to disclose their
entire fracking formulas, and other companies may follow suit. “Industry knows
what its problem compounds are, and they’re trying to replace those,”
Stringfellow said. And until then, they’re likely to keep their formulas a
secret.
A
1986 law passed by Congress set up the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory program, a publicly-viewable database of
toxic chemicals released by various industries. It’s up to the EPA to decide who has to report to the
database, and it hasn’t chosen to
include the oil and gas industry in the TRI program. Environmental groups
have been pushing for the EPA to add the industry since 2012, as oil and gas
extraction continues to grow, and increased fracking exposes more Americans to
hazardous chemicals.”
Donations
We are very appreciative of donations, both
large and small, to our group.
With
your help, we have handed out thousands of flyers on the health and
environmental effects of fracking, sponsored numerous public meetings, and
provided information to citizens and officials countywide. If you would like to
support our efforts:
Checks to our group should be
made out to the Thomas Merton
Center/Westmoreland Marcellus Citizens’ Group. And in the Reminder line please
write- Westmoreland Marcellus Citizens’ Group. The reason for this is that
we are one project of 12 at Thomas Merton. You can send your check to:
Westmoreland Marcellus Citizens’ Group, PO Box 1040, Latrobe, PA, 15650.
Or
you can give the check or cash to Lou Pochet or Jan Milburn.
To make a contribution to our group using a credit card, go to www.thomasmertoncenter.org. Look for the contribute button, then scroll
down the list of organizations to direct money to. We are listed as the
Westmoreland Marcellus Citizens’ Group.
Please be sure to write Westmoreland Marcellus Citizens’ Group
on the bottom of your check so that WMCG receives the funding, since we are
just one project of many of the Thomas Merton Center. You can also give your
donation to Lou Pochet or Jan Milburn.
Westmoreland Marcellus Citizen’s Group—Mission Statement
WMCG is a project
of the Thomas Merton Society
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 and Thomas Merton Liason-Lou Pochet
Secretary-Ron Nordstrom
Facebook Coordinator-Elizabeth Nordstrom
Blogsite –April Jackman
Science Advisor-Dr. Cynthia Walter
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news updates, please email jan at westmcg@gmail.com
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