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
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http://westmorelandmarcellus.blogspot.com/
* Our email address: westmcg@gmail.com
* To contact your state
legislator:
For the email address, click on the envelope
under the photo
* For information on PA state gas legislation
and local control: http://pajustpowers.org/aboutthebills.html-
.
WMCG Thank 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.
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!!
Tenaska
Air Petitions—Please sign if you have not done so:
Please share the attached petition with residents of
Westmoreland and all bordering counties. We
ask each of you to help us by sharing the petition with your email lists and
any group with which you are affiliated. As stated in the petition,
Westmoreland County cannot meet air standards for several criteria. Many areas
of Westmoreland County are already listed as EPA non-attainment areas for ozone
and particulate matter 2.5, so the county does not have the capacity to handle
additional emissions that will contribute to the burden of ozone in the area as
well as health impacts. According to the
American Lung Association, every county in the Pittsburgh region except for Westmoreland
County had fewer bad air days for ozone and daily particle pollution compared
with the previous report. Westmoreland County was the only county to score a failing grade for particulate matter.
The Tenaska gas plant will add
tons of pollution to already deteriorated air and dispose of wastewater into
the Youghiogheny River. Westmoreland
County already has a higher incidence of disease than other counties in United
States. Pollution won’t stop at the
South Huntingdon Township border; it will travel to the surrounding townships
and counties.
If you know of church groups or other organizations that will help with
the petition please forward it and ask for their help.
*********************************************************************************
Calendar
*** WMCG Group
Meeting We meet
the second Tuesday of every month at 7:30 PM in Greensburg. Email Jan for directions. All are very welcome to attend.
***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
We need to send a strong message to the EPA and Big
Coal that there’s overwhelming public support for national climate action –NOW!
Big Coal and their climate-denying allies are already trying to weaken the
EPA’s historic climate protection efforts.
Comments on the Clean Power Plan Proposed
Rule must be received by October 16, 2014. You do not
have to write a long statement. Any statement of support for Carbon reduction
is helpful and
there’s lots of data, just google climate change—flooding, storms, effects on
health, plant and animal adaptation, etc.
Send Your Comments To:
A: 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). 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
***Toxic Tuesdays
–Tell DEP’s Abruzzo--Do not approve paving with radioactive drill cuttings
“The next 4 Tuesdays, starting
8/26, are Toxic Tuesdays. They're the days we're going to call PA DEP Secretary
Abruzzo to tell him that his agency should NEVER have approved Range Resources'
permit to experiment with using drill cuttings as a paving material for well
pads and access roads! We're going to tell him to reverse their decision.
The DEP gave Range Resources permission
to experiment with using radioactive drill cutting to pave well pads and access
roads. We have 30 days to appeal.
Call
Sec Abruzzo to reverse the decision 717- 787- 2814”
From:
Karen Feridan
***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
***Food and Water Watch Asks For Your Story About Fracking Health
Complaints Earlier this summer,
StateImpact Pennsylvania reported that the Pennsylvania Department of Health
(DOH) has been willfully ignoring the health concerns and complaints connected
to drilling and hydraulic fracturing operations.
In
response, Food & Water Watch and our coalition partners, including Berks
Gas Truth, initiated a statewide listening project to collect the stories of
impacted Pennsylvanians who have personally contacted DOH to report their
families' health concerns. We have collected nearly a dozen stories from around
Pennsylvania thus far, but we know we are just scratching the surface.
Have you been directly
impacted by hydraulic fracturing? Did you reach out to DOH? Please let us know
by filling out the survey
Tell
us about your experience contacting Department of Health with a
fracking-related health complaint. Please share as many details about your
story as possible: When did you contact Dept. of Health? Why did you contact
Dept. of Health? How did you contact Dept. of Health? Did you contact them
once, or multiple times? Do you have any documentation of your attempts to
contact?
***Clean Air
Council--- Take the survey about 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
***TRI (Toxic Release Inventory)
Action Alert-Close the Loophole:
“We need your help!! Please send an email to the US EPA urging
them to "Close the TRI Loophole that the oil and gas industry currently
enjoys".
We all deserve to know
exactly what these operations are releasing into our air, water and onto our
land. Our goal is to guarantee the
public’s right to know.
Please
let the US EPA know how important TRI reporting will be to you and your
community:
Mr.
Gilbert Mears
Docket #: EPA-HQ-TRI-2013-0281 (must be included on all
correspondence)
Mears.gilbert@epa.gov
Some facts on Toxics Release Inventory (TRI)
– what it is and why it’s important:
What is the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI)?
Industrial facilities report
annually the amount and method (land, air, water, landfills) of each toxic
chemical they release or dispose
of to the national Toxics Release Inventory.
Where
can I find the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI)?
Once the industrial
facilities submit their annual release data, the Environmental Protection
Agency
makes it available to the
public through the TRI’s free, searchable online database.
Why
is this important?
The TRI provides communities
and the public information needed to challenge permits or siting
decisions, provides
regulators with necessary data to set proper controls, and encourages industrial
facilities to reduce their
toxic releases.
Why
does it matter for oil and natural gas?
The oil and gas extraction
industry is one of the largest sources of toxic releases in the United
States. Yet, because of
loopholes created by historical regulation and successful lobbying efforts,
this industry remains exempt
from reporting to the TRI—even though they are second in toxic air
emissions behind power
plants.
What
is being done?
In 2012, the Environmental
Integrity Project filed a petition on behalf of sixteen local, regional, and
national environmental
groups, asking EPA to close this loophole and require the oil and gas
industries to report to the
TRI. Although EPA has been carefully considering whether to act on the
petition, significant
political and industrial pressure opposing such action exists.
What
is the end goal?
Our goal is to guarantee the
public’s right to know. TRI data will arm citizens with powerful data,
provide incentives for oil
and gas operators to reduce toxic releases, and will provide a data-driven
foundation for responsible
regulation.
What
can you do?
You can help by immediately
letting EPA know how important TRI reporting will be to you and your
community.
Send written or email comments to:
Gilbert Mears
Toxics Release Inventory
Program Division, Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW,
Washington, DC 20460
mears.gilbert@epa.gov
Docket #: EPA-HQ-TRI-2013-0281 (please be sure to
include in all your correspondence)
From: Lisa Graves Marcucci
Environmental Integrity
Project
PA Coordinator, Community
Outreach
lgmarcucci@environmentalintegrity.org
412-653-4328 (Direct)
412-897-0569 (Cell)
Frack Links
***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 checks the
site still does not see testing for other frack chemicals including the BTEX
group or cesium for example. Here is a link to the IUP site:
***Video of a
Flare at a Pumping Station
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWKye3OA90k Sunoco Pipeline/Sunoco Logistics flare at a high pressure pumping facility
along the 3500 block of Watkins Road in Medina, Ohio. This video was from an
approximate distance of 900 feet. The gas was being flared from ground level
without a tower of any kind. They have since moved the flare to between the
buildings. This video link below will show you just how loud and powerful the
flaring of this product can be. Local
residents say, “It sounds like a jet engine running.”
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.
***
Violation Donegal
Report
Details
Operator Wpx Energy Appalachia Llc
Violation
Type Environmental Health & Safety
Violation
Date 2014-08-19
Violation Code OGA 3218(A) - Failure to restore or replace a
public or private water supply affected by a well operator.
Violation
ID 703144
Permit
API 129-28611
Unconventional Y
County Westmoreland
Municipality Donegal Twp
Inspection
Type Administrative/File Review
Inspection
Date 2014-08-19
Comments No paper inspection report No paper
inspection report
Violation(s)
ID:
703144 Date: 2014-08-19 Type: Environmental Health & Safety
OGA
3218(A) - Failure to restore or replace a public or private water supply
affected by a well operator.
Enforcement
Action(s)
ID Code
314381 ADORD - Administrative Order
Comments from Group Members:
(Some
of the most informed thoughts on zoning, fracking, and the politics of both, come
from homeowners and parents in our area. If you want to know what is really
going on in these townships, talk to the residents. You won’t get the full
story from supervisors or council. Jan)
On
Penn Township
“While our Penn Township ordinance isn't finalized it
looks like Murrysville and PT are consulting the same firm to come up with
rules/changes. Word has it PT is also
considering "overlay" and they have changed the Agriculture zoning
classification to Rural Resources in the proposed ordinance while on the zoning
map it's called Rural Residential. How
convenient for the drillers....AND we already have two areas for which
sedimentation permits to the DEP have been applied. This is a precursor to MS drilling.”
--“Look to your Comprehensive
Plan and also MPC for a definition of the terminology which, of course, permits
mineral, gas/oil extraction. It's in
both docs and the wording as I interpret, allows for drilling within a
designated area, such as Agriculture, but our munies are using the word to name
an entire zone (in my township's case, Agriculture) allowing drilling
everywhere within that zone. Is the same
engineering firm working on some of these ordinances?”
On Middlesex And Penn Twp.
--It looks like the smarmy middlesex
township manager, who played a major role in "accessory to a farm"
(he completely controlled the supervisors. He ran this twp) is leaving us in
Middlesex and coming to Penn Township in public works.
On
Murrysville:
--In addition, the data
keep mounting that setbacks need to be 1/2 mile to a mile, (if not more) for
safety and health. If that's the case, Murrysville would only have a handful of
parcels, if that, where drilling could safely occur. There really should be no
drilling in Murrysville for the same reason as Peters: it's too built out
already. Sometimes it just seems so blindingly obvious.
--From what I understand,
an overlay district should (must?) be compatible to the use already specified
in the underlying zone. So, it seems
that the overlay should be used for "greater protection", not lessor
(which is what would happen by Murrysville overlaying an Industrial use onto a
Residential - Agricultural zone.
Jim
Morrison's statement that Murrysville's overlay is contiguous, makes no
sense. So what if it is or isn't? And yesterday at the meeting, Joe Evans
pulled up the Murrysville map and showed that it ISN'T contiguous.
Also, I am wondering about the situation in
Peters. As I recall, they may be coming
to the conclusion that even though they do have several small industrial zones,
they may not have the necessary space to safely allow fracking.
Allegheny
County
--Amazing how poorly informed elective bodies are
able to complicate districts… During the course I and our zoning officer
completed (offered by The Pennsylvania Municipal Planning Education Institute)
in my day, I learned that zoning districts should be kept to a minimal number,
and each district should be used to achieve a community purpose under
the Police Powers Safeguards (not capricious or arbitrary, must provide due
process and equal protection!)
On Stahlstown and DEP Correspondence
If
you read some of these letters sent from the DEP to people having contaminated
water, it looks like a daytime soap opera that goes on and on without
resolution. What do the people do in the
meantime when tainted water continues over years with the DEP being the
deciding factor and taking their "good old time" to resolve the
issue? Another thing....I personally
believe it might take longer than 6 months for contamination to show up and yet
that is the allotted time for reporting water problems. (It absolutely can take
longer than 6 months. Jan) Does anyone
know the time period between initial drilling to when fracking actually occurs
or when frackwater might be stored for use?
On Michael Krancer
Here
is a goodie for all of you. Do you
remember the name Michael Krancer? Our
former head of the DEP is now one of the attorneys handling Sunoco's appeal
that they should have the title of "public utility."
My GAWD can it be any more blatant?
***Frack Water Contaminates Well Near Stahlstown
“The
PA DEP has officially determined that drinking water at a third residence is
contaminated by WPX Appalachia LLC’s leaky Marcellus Shale gas drilling
wastewater impoundment near Stahlstown, Westmoreland County.
Whether that gets
any of the three families living along rural Route 711 south of Ligonier any
closer to a permanent replacement water supply is another matter.
The
DEP last week ordered WPX to restore or replace the water supply at the home of
Ken and Mildred Geary, both in their 80s, who first complained that their water
had a foul, chemical smell and taste a year ago. The order came down two years
after the DEP first received a complaint about possible ground water
contamination from the impoundment at
WPX’s Kelp shale gas drilling pad.
The
DEP made the contamination determination based on tests done in June, that
showed the well water contained higher concentrations of chloride, barium,
calcium, magnesium, manganese, strontium and total dissolved solids than it did
prior to November 2011 when WPX drilled the Kelp well.
“In February, I believe the data
was already there to show contamination,” said Nick Kennedy, an attorney with
the Mountain Watershed Association, a local environmental advocacy group that
has worked with the families. “This determination and order should have been
made months ago.”
That’s
when the DEP issued a determination that the water well used by Joseph and
Sonja Latin, who live next door to the Gearys, had been contaminated by WPX and
ordered the company to start the process of permanently replacing their water.
WPX appealed that order to the
state Environmental Hearing Board. It has 30 days to
appeal the Gearys’ order.
The
third family, the Browns, filed a water quality complaint with the DEP in
September 2012 and in July of last year the department ordered the company to
permanently replace their water supply. A
year later, the Browns are still drawing water from a 2,500-gallon plastic
water tank, and have filed a lawsuit against the company and its
subcontractors alleging damages to their property value.
Susan
Oliver, A WPX spokeswoman, said she doesn’t know if the company plans to appeal
the DEP order to replace the Geary’s water, but added that water tests are
continuing and “until that’s done and finalized a determination on replacing
the supplies can’t be made.”
John
Poister, a DEP spokesman, said the process of permanently restoring water
supplies for the families, though delayed by legal appeals and complications,
is moving forward.
“DEP
has determined that WPX’s activity has impacted these water supplies and have
issued a unilateral order to permanently replace the three water supplies,” he
said in a written response to questions. “We realize that this is a serious
issue for these homeowners. If WPX fails to comply with this order it will
result in enforcement actions, which could include an immediate permitting
freeze until the issue is addressed.”
Mr.
Poister said that while WPX has provided the affected families with bottled
water and other temporary water sources, “it’s not a replacement for clean
running water in the home.”
Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983.
DEP Orders Drilling Company To Clean Up Water Supply In Stahlstown
August 27, 2014 5:12 PM
“STAHLSTOWN (KDKA) — The EP has put a drilling
company on notice after drinking water was contaminated by gas drilling
wastewater in Westmoreland County.
For
some of the folks living in Stahlstown, clean water was never a problem; their
wells produced it. But then another kind of well was drilled nearby, and now
they say their water is polluted.
Ken
Geary, 81, says he lives in some beautiful country. His only suggestion is, don’t drink the water.
“It
stinks, stinks real bad, and you can’t drink it,” says Geary.
Geary is one of a handful of
residents who says his water became polluted when WPX Appalachia put a well pad
in nearby.
“I
had good water before they messed around,” he says.
“We know what was in the
impoundment, and we can trace those same contaminants to the families’ water
supplies,” Nick Kennedy, of the Mountain Watershed Association, said
The DEP says water tests show
high levels of chloride, barium, calcium, magnesium, manganese and strontium in
the water supply to Geary and at least two other neighbors.
The DEP has ordered WPX to
reinstate Geary’s water service.
Regarding
that, WPX spokeswoman Susan Oliver said, “The investigation is ongoing and the
process has been thorough. The company is providing water. At no time have the
families been without drinking water.”
“They’re giving them temporary water right
now. So that would be water buffaloes and bottled water to the families. But
that’s not a permanent source,” says Kennedy.
Meanwhile, the DEP issued a statement saying the
company must comply with the order.
“If
WPX fails to comply with this order, it will result in enforcement actions,
which could include an immediate [permit] freeze until the issue is addressed,”
says DEP officials.
Until then, Geary and neighbors have to wait for a
truck to bring in what nature gave them for decades.
“I’ve been living here over 50 years. Had
five kids, we had good water,” he says.
The
gas company has an option. They can appeal the DEP’s order to restore Geary’s
water supply to its original state, but they must do it in the next 30 days.
***DEP Releases Details of
Drinking Water Contamination From
Drilling
“Pennsylvania has for the first
time released details of 243 cases in which fracking companies were
found by the DEP to have contaminated private drinking water wells.
The
Associated Press and other news outlets have filed lawsuits and numerous
open-records requests during the past several years seeking records of
investigations into gas-drilling complaints.
Pennsylvania's
auditor general said in a report last month that DEP's system for handling
complaints “was woefully inadequate” and that
investigators could not even determine whether all complaints were actually
entered into a reporting system.
DEP
didn't immediately issue a statement with the online release, but posted the links on the same day that seven
environmental groups sent a letter urging the agency to heed the auditor
general's 29 recommendations for improvement.
“I
guess this is a step in the right direction,” Thomas Au of the Pennsylvania Sierra Club chapter said of the
public release of documents on drinking well problems. “But this is something
that should have been made public a long time ago.”
The 243 cases, from 2008 to 2014, include
some where a single drilling operation impacted multiple water wells. The
problems listed in the documents include methane gas contamination, spills of
wastewater and other pollutants, and wells that went dry or were otherwise
undrinkable. Some of the problems were temporary, but the names of
landowners were redacted, so it was not clear if the problems were resolved to
their satisfaction. Other complaints are being investigated.
The
documents released on Thursday listed drilling-related water well problems in
22 counties, with most cases in Susquehanna, Tioga, Lycoming, and Bradford
counties in the northeast portion of the state.
Coalition
President Dave Spigelmyer said in a statement that Pennsylvania “has
longstanding water well-related challenges, a function of our region's unique
geology — where stray methane gas is frequently present in and around shallow
aquifers.” He said many of the problems were related to surface spills, not
drilling.”
Read more:
http://triblive.com/news/adminpage/6696428-74/wells-released-gas#ixzz3Bkqv6mXm
Here’s the link to the documents:
***When Will We Say ‘Enough’ to Drillers’
Mistakes?
August 25, 2014 12:00 AM
As
a lifelong resident of Washington County, I was not surprised to read the
article “Fracking Waste Tainted Groundwater
Soil at Three Washington County Sites” (Aug. 6).
Companies are moving into this area and setting up their drilling rigs. So many
homes and local farms have been bought out by these companies to use their land
for drilling, for a pretty penny I might add.
This article explains that there have been
leaks of fracking wastewater at three Range Resources sites that have
contaminated groundwater and soil.
There have been numerous other industrial accidents
resulting in poisoned drinking water and other undesirable accidents from large
gas drilling companies in this area. I wonder how many of these accidents go
unreported.
How
many more of these incidents are we going to let happen in our area before
someone realizes that maybe the oil and gas industry has overstayed its
welcome? It is unacceptable that these companies are now not only affecting the
area we live in but also making sloppy mistakes that could possibly harm
someone.
BRANDY BAKER
Canonsburg
***Pulaski Township And Supervisors Sued over Gas Drilling
We all knew it was just a matter of time until
someone sued for protection of residentially zoned areas. Jan
A
western Pennsylvania couple is suing their township, claiming that supervisors improperly approved natural gas drilling in a
residential area.
The
lawsuit against Pulaski Township was filed by Timothy Chito and Elizabeth
Kesner. The lawsuit says the couple purchased a home in the area in 1996, but
that recent drilling about 1500 feet away is affecting their property and
quality of life. The area is about 60 miles northwest of Pittsburgh.
The lawsuit seeks damages and to have the
township amend its local zoning laws so that drilling is only allowed in
industrial areas.
http://wkbn.com/2014/08/28/w-pa-township-sued-over-gas-drilling/
***Murrysville Drilling Ordinance Discussion Closed To Public
“The
Marcellus shale task force was reconvened earlier this year after council
decided to re-evaluate the municipal drilling ordinance after the state Supreme
Court overruled portions of Act 13, the state drilling regulations.
Those
meetings haven't been opened to the public.
“It's a volatile issue,” chief
administrator Jim Morrison said. “We're very appreciative of our volunteers,
and we have an obligation to let them do their work.”
That doesn't exempt the committee
from following the state Sunshine Act, said Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel
for the Pennsylvania Newsmedia Association, a nonprofit trade group in
Harrisburg.
The
act requires all committee meetings to be open to the public, Melewsky said.
“They are a body created to render advice on a
matter of agency business,” Melewsky said. “There
are no general exceptions that a committee gets to have a private meeting.
They are stepping into the shoes and role of
council.”
Morrison disagrees.
“There's no decision-making
happening. They are just making a recommendation,” Morrison said.
Municipal
Solicitor George Kotjarapoglus said he thinks the court is on Murrysville's
side.
“If
the product being delivered is something that is ripe for ‘immediate action' by
the governing body, then the court may well view matter as agency providing
‘advice for action,' in which case Sunshine will likely be applied,”
Kotjarapoglus wrote in an email.
“At
the other end of the continuum on these ‘advise for action' cases, you have the
Murrysville Task Force. Its review and report back to Council will NOT be a
product that … will be received an acted upon without benefit of deliberations
and a vote in an open meeting. ... there will be ample deliberations in our
open meeting process no matter what the Task Force reports back.”
A
similar issue arose in 2010, when the task force originally was formed. Those
meetings, along with meetings of the municipal comprehensive-plan committee,
were open to the public.
Councilman
Dave Perry serves on the committee and agreed the meetings should be public.
“I
think deliberations associated with ordinances should be a public discussion,”
Perry said.
Resident Alyson Holt questioned
why the meetings are closed during last week's council meeting after a private
conversation with Morrison.
“(Morrison)
emailed me back that the task force meetings were not open to the public and
that public updates on the progress of the committee would be made at council
meetings,” Holt said. “I am disappointed by this answer.”
Melewsky said it's important for
residents to be able to attend committee meetings to learn about topics,
especially controversial ones.
“The committee is doing all of
the legwork. That's where the meat gets discussed,” she said. “If you cut off
public access to committee meetings, there's no real account of why borough
council is making the decision.”
Daveen Rae Kurutz is a staff writer for Trib Total
Media. She can be reached at 412-871-2365, or dkurutz@tribweb.com.
Read more:
http://triblive.com/neighborhoods/yourmurrysville/yourmurrysvillemore/6655237-74/meetings-committee-public#ixzz3BeRVq2B8
***Well Site Permit Cancelled Due To Legal Challenge
Delaware Riverkeeper again fights for protection of water. jan
“The
Delaware Riverkeeper Network and concerned residents in Franklin Township
brought our legal challenge to protect the Lake Arthur watershed and its
communities from the damage that would inevitably result from the proposed
shale gas drilling site and also because we were concerned about the dangerous
precedent this project would set regarding DEP well site approvals.
Unfortunately
once again DEP failed to protect our communities and environment when it failed
to assess the risk of surface and groundwater contamination prior to issuing
its approvals for the XTO project.
In
so doing, DEP violated its public trust obligations under Article I, Section 27
and issued approvals for the XTO well site that violated our constitutionally
protected rights to clean air, pure water, and the preservation of, among other
values, the natural, scenic, and esthetic values of our environment,” said Maya
van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper.
***Kiski Township Approves Drilling
(It appears these
supervisors have not read much from the research and reports published on the
effects of fracking. Do they really think this extensive emphasis on sound
makes much of a difference in the overall environmental, health, and property
value effects of fracking? The real
problems are serious air pollution from all aspects of frack operations, water contamination,
spills and leaks and devaluation of property values. These most serious issues they ignore
completely. Jan)
“Kiski Township has opened its
doors for oil and natural gas exploration.
Township
supervisors on Wednesday enacted an
ordinance that allows, for the first time, drilling and natural gas operations
in the township.
It
was approved 4-0, with Supervisor Michael Bash absent.
According to supervisors Chairman Jack Wilmot, the
ordinance was put in play weeks ago to accommodate gas companies' growing
interest in Kiski Township's farmland and sprawling rural property.
“We've
had several drilling representatives over the past couple months inquiring
about an ordinance,” Wilmot said. “We're confident now that we're going to
begin seeing some offers pretty soon. “That's money that goes to better roads,
police protection, fire services and right on down the line.”
Kiski
Township's 13-page ordinance allows for the “reasonable development of land for
oil and gas drilling while providing adequate health, safety and general
welfare protections of the township's residents.”
Restrictions
on the site, noise level and traffic of the operations in question are chief
among the provisions included in the ordinance to protect township residents.
The
ordinance, for example, relegates all
well sites, compressor stations and processing plants to industrial,
agricultural and agricultural residential zoning districts. Areas zoned
residential, business and suburban residential are off limits.
Drilling
rigs also would be set back a minimum of 1.5 times their height from any
property line. All operation sites are prohibited anywhere within 200 feet of
buildings registered or eligible for the national or Pennsylvania Register of
Historic Places.
To
minimize the disturbance of nearby residents, all production equipment must
emit an ambient noise level no more than 55 weighed decibels beyond 100 feet.
According to the California Department of Transportation, that noise level
falls somewhere between a dishwasher running in the next room and the sounds of
a large business office.
The
township will provide between 5 and 10 decibels of leeway during drilling
activities, hydraulic fracturing — or fracking — operations and for 10-minute intervals
at compressor stations and processing plants during each one-hour period.
Any
noise complaints from residents must be addressed within 24 hours by the energy
company. Following a complaint, company
officials will continuously monitor for 48 hours the noise level from the
nearest property line or 100 feet of the site to ensure it complies with the
ordinance. All findings must be approved by the township.
Whenever
possible, energy companies will be required to access their gas or oil well
sites from a collector street, a low-to-moderate capacity road which connects
traffic from local streets to arterial roads. The companies must also pay road
bonds when deemed necessary and agree to “promptly” clear the roadways of any
mud, debris or dirt as a result of drilling or natural gas operations.
There's
a $500 fine for each day the operation site is not brought into compliance.
The ordinance took effect on Wednesday.
Township supervisors held a public hearing on the
ordinance last month to field residents' input.
“No
one spoke out about it,” Wilmot said. “Everyone seems pleased with the language
to protect their rights and excited to get on board.”
Read more:
http://triblive.com/neighborhoods/yourallekiskivalley/yourallekiskivalleymore/6648422-74/township-drilling-ordinance#ixzz3BWPd0ftr
***Danger Beneath: 'Fracking', Pipes Threaten Rural Residents
BY LISA RIORDAN SEVILLE
“A
construction boom of pipelines carrying explosive oil and gas from “fracking”
fields to market -- pipes that are bigger and more dangerous than their
predecessors -– poses a safety threat in rural areas, where they sometimes run
within feet or yards of homes with little or no safety oversight, an NBC News
investigation has found.
The
rapidly expanding network of pipes, known as
“gathering lines,” carry oil and gas from fracking fields in many parts of the
country to storage facilities and major “transmission lines.” They are
subject to the same risks – corrosion, earthquakes, sabotage and construction
accidents -- as transmission lines. But
unlike those pipelines, about 90 percent of gathering lines do not fall under
federal safety or construction regulations because they run through rural
areas, the Government Accountability Office reported in 2012.
Safety
advocates and regulators have called for new regulations on the pipelines, but
energy industry interests have pushed back. Any changes could be years away, if
they happen at all, according to an analysis from the Congressional Research
The risk didn’t become apparent to
Dave and Cheryl Goble, who live in rural Wyoming County, Pennsylvania, until
long after a pipeline company land man knocked on their door in 2010 and
offered to pay them to run a natural gas pipe across their property.
The
Gobles signed a contract after being shown a plan where the line would run
straight across their property, some distance from the house. But the pipe was ultimately buried in a
trench that curves around their home, within feet of their porch, shaking
their sense of well-being: If it were to fail, they now realize, their home
could be destroyed.
“We’d never do it again, money or no money,” said
Cheryl Goble, 53, who grew up just down the dirt road where she still lives.
“They think they can do anything that they want to. As long as you sign papers,
they don’t care about you afterward. They’re gone.”
The
lack of oversight on rural gathering lines – historically low-pressure steel
lines up to 12 inches around – was long justified by the perception that the
risk of accidents was minimal. But the fracking
boom has led to construction of new gathering lines that are both bigger
and under higher pressure, making them virtually identical to transmission
lines.
More
than 240,000 miles of gathering lines already exist in the U.S., moving oil and
natural gas from wells and nearby storage areas to processing plants and
transmission lines. And pipeline companies are rushing to get lines in the
ground to meet the boom brought by the growth in fracking, Some 414,000 additional miles of
gathering lines could be built by 2035, found a 2011 report by the Interstate
Natural Gas Association of America. The Marcellus shale field, which extends
across Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio, accounts for 40 percent of the
shale gas being produced in the U.S., according to the federal Energy
Information Administration. Much of that
is coming from the more than 7,000 wells drilled in Pennsylvania since 2004.
Infrastructure to move it lags behind, so industry representatives arrive daily
at the doors of rural Pennsylvanians, pipeline contracts in hand.
“There is tremendous growth going on, and
the reality is that it’s really not regulated well,” said Richard Kuprewicz, an
independent engineer who has worked in the oil and gas industry for decades. “A
30-inch gathering rupture -- that can kill a lot of people.”
Federal pipeline safety officials, however, have
called for better oversight of the lines.
“What keeps me up at night? Gathering
lines,” Linda Daugherty, deputy associate administrator for field operations at
the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), the federal
agency that regulates pipelines, said at a 2012 conference. “There are no
safety standards applicable to those lines, and no safety agents or regulators
looking at them.”
Transmission
lines must meet construction and welding standards, and be periodically
inspected, cleaned and tested. Operators also must report all deaths and
injuries and maintain integrity management plans.
Gathering
lines in more populated areas or close to facilities like schools are subject
to many of the same standards, but their country cousins are not. Gathering
lines in “Class 1” areas like the one where the Gobles live -- defined as
having fewer than 10 habitable dwellings per mile within 220 yards of pipe’s center
line -- are subject to none of these rules. While states can pass their own
regulations, most have not.
PHMSA
closed comments on its proposal to collect such data in 2012. There has been no
action on the plan since.
Despite new pipeline rules passed in Pennsylvania in
2012, Class 1 lines remain unregulated, leaving landowners like the Gobles and
their neighbors at risk.” First published August 25th
2014, 4:32 amhttp://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/danger-beneath-fracking-gas-oil-pipes-threaten-rural-residents-n187021
***Carnegie Mellon’s Jared Cohon Advised Tobacco Group Now Puts Spin On Fracking
By Kevin Conner of
the Public Accountability Initiative
“Before Jared Cohon became the president of
Carnegie Mellon, he advised a tobacco industry front group designed to
manipulate public opinion about secondhand smoke.
The
nonprofit watchdog group I direct, the Public Accountability Initiative,
reported this for the first time in a recent report on the Center for
Sustainable Shale Development, which provides environmental certifications for
fracking operations, and which Mr. Cohon chairs.
Our
report suggested that CSSD bore the hallmarks of an industry front group
designed to put an environmentally friendly spin on fracking — similar to the
tobacco group that Mr. Cohon advised. If Mr. Cohon was complicit in an industry
effort to downplay smoking hazards, would he do the same for fracking?
An
Aug. 10 editorial (“Sloppy Screed”) in response to our report failed to
consider this question, offered no criticism of Mr. Cohon and instead
criticized PAI for not mentioning his career at Carnegie Mellon early enough.
It is an absurd charge, like saying that all context must be conveyed in an
article’s lead.
The
editorial ignored ethical questions throughout the piece, deploying overheated
rhetoric and similarly weak “gotchas.” A CSSD funder should not have been
criticized for oil and gas ties because it gives to other causes, it argued —
as if Philip Morris absolved itself of guilt for manipulating tobacco science
by giving to the arts. Its director should not be criticized for having been an
oil and gas attorney because she once worked for the EPA — for four years in
the 1970s, before she began suing the EPA on behalf of polluters.
Nonprofit
Quarterly took issue with the editorial and defended our disclosures, calling
them “tiny counterweights to the deep-pocketed industry’s role in the Center’s
research and advocacy.”
The Post-Gazette has attacked our
work on CSSD before. Last year, the editorial board said PAI
went “to extremes” in our criticism of the conflict of interest of former Heinz
Endowments president Robert Vagt, who both chaired CSSD at the time and sat on
the board of a gas pipeline company. Heinz disagreed: Mr. Vagt resigned and the
foundation withdrew from CSSD. The editorial made no mention of this.
From
tobacco to fracking, industry misinformation efforts rely on a pliant press to
boost their messages. A little common sense and journalistic gumption can stop
them in their tracks. I remain hopeful that the editorial board can find some
and turn a critical eye on the Center for Sustainable Shale Development.”
Kevin Connor is director of the Public
Accountability Initiative (kevin@public-accountability.org).
Read more:
http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/Op-Ed/2014/08/27/Jared-Cohon-s-fracking-role-raises-concern-CSSD/stories/201408270015#ixzz3BcucvTVc
***A Big Fracking Lie-The Exporting of the Gas That Contaminates Our Air and Water
“If you want to know just how bad
an idea it is for America to ship “fracked” natural gas to overseas markets,
travel to Cove Point in southern Maryland.
Right on the Chesapeake Bay, the Obama
administration wants to give fast-track approval to a $3.8 billion facility to
liquefy gas from all across Appalachia. The
new plant, proposed by Virginia-based Dominion Resources, would somehow be
built right between a coveted state park and a stretch of sleepy beach
communities, with a smattering of Little League baseball fields just down the
road. Along the Chesapeake itself, endangered tiger beetles cling to the shore
while Maryland “watermen” hunt crabs and oysters in age-old fashion.
Right here, Dominion wants build
a utility-scale power plant (130 megawatts) just to power the enormous
“liquefaction” process for the fracked gas. The company will then build an industrial-scale compressor, a massive
refrigeration system and an adjacent, surreal six-story-tall “sound wall” to
protect humans and wildlife from the thunderous noise. The facility as a
whole would chill the gas—extracted from fracking wells as far away as New
York—to 260 degrees below zero so it can be poured onto huge tankers (with
Coast Guard escort due to terrorism risks) and then shipped more than 6,000
miles to India and Japan.
Sound
good yet? There’s more: The Cove Point
plant in Maryland is just one of more than 20 such “liquefaction” plants now
proposed—but not yet built—for
coastal areas nationwide. They are intended, as an emerging facet of U.S.
energy policy, to double down on the highly controversial hydraulic fracturing
drilling boom across the country. But like the Keystone XL pipeline for tar
sands oil and the proposed export of dirty-burning coal through new terminals
in the Pacific Northwest, this liquefied gas plan is bad in almost every way.
Simply put, this gas needs to stay in the ground. If it’s dug up and
exported, it will directly harm just about everyone in the U.S. economy while
simultaneously making global warming worse. How much worse? Imagine adding
the equivalent of more than 100 coal plants to U.S. pollution output or putting
78 million more cars on our roads. Yes, supporters say, but this gas would be
replacing a lot of coal use overseas. And they’d be right. The only problem is we’d be replacing that coal with aggregate
“life-cycle” emissions from gas that are almost certainly worse than coal,
creating new net damage for the global atmosphere (more on this later).
Ironically, a recent sea-level
rise report commissioned by Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, reportedly a
presidential hopeful, shows that climate change could soon wipe out the
peninsula of Cove Point itself. The very point of land next to Dominion’s
proposed facility—the whitewashed lighthouse, the country roads and homes and
forests—would all drown if the world continues to combust oil, coal and natural
gas at current rates, according to the Maryland report.
The “inconvenient truths” on
liquefied gas also come—in different forms—from the U.S. Department of Energy,
the U.S. EPA and elsewhere. On the economic side, a study commissioned by the DOE last spring found that exporting U.S.
gas would raise the fuel’s price here at home. It’s basic supply and
demand. More buyers overseas will drive up our domestic price by as much as 27
percent, according to the DOE. And that increase will reduce incomes for
virtually every sector of the U.S. economy, from agriculture to manufacturing
to services to transportation. No wonder manufacturers like Dow and Alcoa are
resisting this emerging U.S. export policy for gas, forming a coalition called
“America’s Energy Advantage” to push back.
The DOE found that only one economic sector wins from gas exports. You
guessed it: the gas industry! This one special interest wins so
big—hundreds of billions in profits—that the DOE now basically argues that it
offsets the pain for everyone else, creating a perverse and tiny net bump in
the nation’s GDP. If you’re a farmer or wage-earner, too bad. Dominion’s
profits at Cove Point are more important than the financial lives of
already-struggling average Americans.
The gas export calculations grow
even more insane when you factor in climate change. The industry bombards the
public with ads saying natural gas is 50 percent cleaner than coal. But the
claim is totally false. Gas is cleaner
only at the point of combustion. If you calculate the greenhouse gas pollution
emitted at every stage of the production process— drilling, piping,
compression—it’s essentially just coal by another name. Indeed, the methane
(the key ingredient in natural gas) that constantly and inevitably leaks from
wells and pipelines is 84 times more powerful at trapping heat in the
atmosphere than CO2 over a 20-year period, according to the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change.”
Bill
McKibben founder of 350.org.
Mike
Tidwell is director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.
***PA
Environmental Organizations Challenge DEP Response
“Environmental and citizen organizations
sent DEP Secretary, Chris Abruzzo a letter challenging the agency’s response to
issues raised in Auditor General Eugene DePasquale’s DEP Performance Audit,
released on July 22nd. The audit identified serious flaws in the DEP’s oil and
gas monitoring and enforcement programs.
A
copy of the letter can be downloaded at http://bit.ly/1qDS7OB. The organizations take issue with DEP’s claim that flaws in the
agency’s programs have been fixed and details critical gaps that put water
quality and health at risk. In addition, the organizations express disappointment with DEP’s rejection of all of the
eight key deficiencies uncovered in the Performance Audit. Although DEP
simultaneously agreed with all or parts of 22 of the 29 related recommendations
from the Auditor General, the agency has yet to provide any evidence of how
they intend to implement the recommendations.
"PADEP has fallen down on the job despite their attempts to
favorably spin the critical analysis laid out so graphically by the Auditor
General's performance audit. The
Auditor General explains how the agency simply isn't effectively serving the
public in its oversight responsibilities of shale gas development and DEP
defensively responded with lots of weak excuses. The people of Pennsylvania and
our clean water and air are paying the price of DEP's failings and until they
make fundamental changes they will continue to contribute to the shale gas
problems communities are experiencing," said Tracy Carluccio, Deputy Director, Delaware Riverkeeper Network.
“We’ve met with DEP, analyzed the response to
the Auditor General, and conducted our own research with one central goal in
mind: to help Pennsylvania’s regulators step up and protect the environment and
health,” said Nadia Steinzor,
Eastern Program Coordinator for Earthworks
and author of the Blackout report. “DEP
should stop refuting strong evidence of problems and start advocating for more
agency resources and stronger industry oversight. Only then will it be able to
fulfill its mandate and serve the public”
“We
wholeheartedly agree with the overall conclusions of the Performance Audit and
the Blackout in the Gas Patch report,” said Steve Hvozdovich, Marcellus Shale
Policy Associate, Clean Water Action. “If these reports validate anything,
it is the message we have been publicly delivering for over a year now that DEP
is underfunded, understaffed, and does not have sufficient policies in place to
meet the continuing demands placed upon it by expanded shale gas development
and to protect the environment and health.”
The organizations believe the
reforms adopted by DEP and outlined in the comment response section of the
Performance Audit are insufficient. Their letter details steps DEP needs to
take in five key areas, including transparency of information; communication
with citizens; tracking of complaints and agency responses; tracking of oil and
gas field waste; and the frequency of well inspections. The organizations hope
these comments will spur DEP to provide clarification and enhance measures to
solve and prevent environmental and health impacts associated with oil and gas
operations, and to be more responsive to the public it serves.
“The DEP’s attempts to shirk all
negative critiques make our calls for greater transparency louder. It is time
for the DEP to own up to its flaws and start a real dialogue with the public. Our organizations will not stop applying
pressure until the DEP institutes essential department-wide reform,” said Nick
Kennedy, Community Advocate, Mountain Watershed Association.
“Unfortunately for Pennsylvania’s
environment and the health of the state’s residents, the AG’s report validated many of the deficiencies
that citizens and experts in the field already knew about the DEP’s oversight
of fracking in the Commonwealth,” stated Kristen Cevoli, Fracking Program Director of PennEnvironment. “For
the health of Pennsylvania’s citizen’s and its environment, it is critical that
the DEP, as well as our elected officials in Harrisburg, embrace the
recommendations laid out by the Auditor General’s office. If not, fracking will leave Pennsylvania with
the same toxic legacy as the coal industry before it, and future generations
will be left footing the bill and doing the cleanup.”
###
Contacts:
Tracy
Carluccio, Delaware Riverkeeper Network, 215-369-1188 ext. 104
Nadia
Steinzor, Earthworks Oil and Gas Accountability Project, 202-887-1872 ext. 109
Steve
Hvozdovich, Clean Water Action, 412-765-3053 x 210
Karen
Feridun, Berks Gas Truth, 610-678-7726
Thomas
Au, Sierra Club Pennsylvania Chapter, 717-234-7445
Nick
Kennedy, Mountain Watershed Association, 724-455-4200
Kristen
Cevoli, PennEnvironment, 215-732-5897 ext. 4
***Maryland Takes A Public Health
Approach On Fracking That PA Did
Not
“Trucks drive down Towanda's main
drag. Truck traffic is one driver of increased air pollution from
unconventional natural gas drilling.
Air pollution is among one of the greatest public health concerns
related to Marcellus Shale drilling, according to a new health impact
assessment released this week by the University of Maryland School of Public
Health and Commissioned by the Maryland Department of Public Health through
an executive order by Gov. Martin O’Malley.. The
report comes at a time when healthcare workers and environmental groups are
calling for an investigation into the PA Department of Health’s handling of
Marcellus Shale-related complaints. And it stands in contrast to how
Pennsylvania has addressed health concerns related to Marcellus Shale.
A health impact assessment starts
with what is called “scoping,” reaching out into the community to find out what
concerns and questions already exist. Then it gathers baseline public health information
on the community. It looks at all the
available epidemiological studies that form the basis of potential health
concerns. In this case, the researchers
then rated these concerns, with air pollution topping the list. Pennsylvania
never did a similar health impact assessment for Marcellus Shale drilling.
It would be impossible to do one now because the drilling boom began almost 10
years ago.
It’s important to note that the
report was limited by the available research. The researchers did not rank
water pollution as a high public health concern simply because they say there’s
not enough data available to draw strong conclusions.
The
DEP is doing a long-term ambient air quality study in Washington County, and
the results are due out at the end of October. But Milton says the available
literature on air quality and natural gas development is pretty clear.
“Air pollution will be a problem,” said Milton. Part
of the Maryland study’s recommendations include a 2,000-foot setback from well
pads and compressor stations to occupied buildings based on air pollution
concerns. Pennsylvania has no such requirements.
The conclusions on air quality
are not a surprise to Joe Minott, who runs the environmental group Clean Air
Council.
“There is no step in the natural gas processing and transportation that
doesn’t release air pollution,” said Minott. Minott is critical of the
Pennsylvania DEP, saying its current study is too little too late.
“The biggest difference is that
the state of Maryland wanted to know what the impact of unconventional gas
drilling would be on the citizens of Maryland,” said Minott.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-26/fracking-link-to-birth-defects-probed-in-early-research.html
***Fracking’s Link
To Birth Defects Probed
“The first research into the effects of oil and gas
development on babies born near wells has found potential health risks.
Government officials, industry advocates and the researchers themselves say
more studies are needed before drawing conclusions.
“It’s
not really well understood how the environment interacts with genetics to
produce these birth defects,” said Lisa McKenzie of the Colorado School of
Public Health, who conducted research published in January in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. “We
really need to do more study to see what the association is, if any, with
natural gas development.”
McKenzie and her colleagues
discovered more congenital heart defects
in babies born to mothers living near gas wells in Colorado. Two studies, which
have not been peer reviewed, showed infants
born near fracking sites in Pennsylvania were more likely to have low birth
weight, a sign of developmental problems. In Utah, local authorities are investigating a spate of stillbirths
after tests found dangerous levels of air pollution from the oil and gas
industry.
In published research, McKenzie and her colleagues found that
babies born to mothers living with more than 125 wells within a mile (1.6 km)
of their homes showed a 30 percent increase in congenital heart defects
compared with those with no wells within 10 miles. The abnormalities, based on
59 available cases in Colorado, ranged in severity and could have resulted from
genes or environmental causes other than fossil-fuel extraction, according to
McKenzie.
Two Pennsylvania studies, however, found
increases in low birth weight near gas drilling. They haven’t been
published in peer-reviewed journals.
Infants
born within 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles)
of fracking sites were about 60 percent more likely to have low birth weight,
according to a review of Pennsylvania birth records from 2004 to 2011 by
researchers from Princeton University, Columbia University and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The study was presented at the annual
meeting of the American Economic Association in January.
The research echoed a December
working paper by Elaine Hill, then an economics graduate student at Cornell
University in Ithaca, New York, which found that babies born to mothers living within 2.5 kilometers of a
gas well during pregnancy had lower average birth weights after drilling than
before. The results were consistent between piped public water and well
water, suggesting the exposure came from air pollution or stress, Hill said in
the paper.
Previous research has shown a
link between air pollution and low birth weight in general, Hill said in the
study.
In Utah’s Uintah Basin, where at
least 17 drillers operate, the air has dangerously high levels of ozone and
other toxins from oil and gas emissions, according to measurements by
researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the first two months of
2012 and 2013.
The rural area’s air pollution
was equivalent to the annual exhaust of 100 million cars and worse than Los
Angeles’s smog in the summer, according to the article. High ozone levels are known to cause breathing problems and early
death, the researchers said.
Concerns surfaced this summer that the pollution might contribute to
infant deaths in Vernal, a city of about 10,000 in the Uintah Basin.
Last
year, a midwife named Donna Young delivered a stillborn baby for the first time
in 19 years. At the funeral, she said she noticed the cemetery had a number of
recent graves with single dates.
Official figures on infant
mortality in 2013 aren’t yet available, according to the state’s Office of
Vital Records and Statistics. So Young
examined obituaries, counting 12 deaths in 2013, up from four a year earlier,
three in 2011 and two in 2010. The rate appears to be six times the national
average, according to Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment.
“Whenever you see a pollution
nightmare, if you look hard enough you’re going to have a public health
nightmare,” said Brian Moench, a Salt Lake City anesthesiologist and president
of the physicians’ group. “There’s enough evidence to suggest that this is a
serious problem.”
To
contact the reporter on this story: Isaac Arnsdorf in New York at
iarnsdorf@bloomberg.net
***Woman Sells
Public Water To Frack Companies
Comment of Group Member: Doesn't this water belong to the citizens of
PA?
How can she be allowed to
sell OUR water?
“Ms. Pawlick’s company, Frac Water Resources, sits on
the bank of the Monongahela River in Allenport, Pa. On any given day it
provides between 50 to 200 trucks with water to be used for fracking shale
wells. Its main customer is Pittsburgh-based EQT Corp.
Last year, more than 1,200
unconventional wells were drilled in Pennsylvania, and that means a lot of
water. The average horizontal shale well requires about five million gallons of
water to frack.
Ms. Pawlick also ended up paying
$40,000 for an equipment upgrade when she discovered that she didn’t have the
right system.
As she spoke, Jim Bumbarger from
Allison Crane and Rigging filled up a bright red vacuum truck from one of the
company’s six frack tanks, which hold up to 21,000 gallons of water. To get the
water to the tanks, the company uses a concrete wet well.
Ms. Pawlick said this site was
ideal for the company’s headquarters. She is able to supply water to companies
with operations in Greene, Washington, Allegheny, Fayette and Westmoreland
counties, and does not have to worry about noise pollution.
“A lot of the other places along
the river, where people do have water takeout points, have neighbors,” she
said. “This is a 24/7 operation. It’s loud, and it’s lit up at night. This was
the perfect spot for a loud trucking operation to go on.”
In addition to Frac Water
Resources, Ms. Pawlick also serves as the executive director of the Middle
Monongahela Industrial Development Association.
Frac Water Resources is currently the only company
that has permission from the DEP to drain water from that particular part of
the Monongahela River. Any company that pulls more than 10,000 gallons of water from a
public water source per day must obtain a permit from the DEP.
Ms. Pawlick worked with KLH Engineers to obtain a
permit and the DEP allows the company to
pull two million gallons of water per day.
There is no charge to pull
untreated water from the state’s streams, creeks and rivers, according to Mr.
Poister.
The DEP considers water
withdrawal requests in conjunction with other requests to the same water source
and requires companies to have a water management plan, DEP spokeswoman, Morgan
Wagner, said in an e-mail. The management plan identifies the body of water
used in fracking and what the expected impacts of the withdrawals will be, Ms.
Wagner said in an e-mail.
There
are certain things Frac Water Resources has to monitor in order to withdraw
water from the river, Ms. Pawlick said.
“We have to know where every
gallon of water goes, what time it leaves, who the driver is, what the trucking
company is, what the size of the truck is, where they took the water, and what
time.”
All of the water gathered for
Frac Water Resources is fresh, Mr. Waller said.
“There's
no dirty water that comes back into this facility,” he said. “It's all clean
water, one way out.”
Frac Water Resources is one among
several business, including Aqua America and Pennsylvania American Water, that
provide water to oil and gas companies.
Bryn Mawr-based Aqua America,
which gets its water from the west branch of the Susquehanna River, has worked
with companies such as Southwestern Energy, Range Resources, Shell Appalachia
and EXCO Resources, Donna Alston, a spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.
Hershey-based Pennsylvania
American Water sold 375 million gallons of water to gas producers in 2013, Gary
Lobaugh, a company spokesman, said in an e-mail. Mr. Lobaugh said his company
does not disclose specific information about customers.
Ms. Pawlick said many oil and gas
companies still get their frack water on their own. However, by working with
her, they can double the capacity of water they can take.
Madasyn
Czebiniak: mczebiniak@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1269. Twitter: @PG_Czebiniak
Correction
(Posted Aug. 19, 2014) An earlier of this version incorrectly identified the
company that acquired Consolidated Natural Gas. In addition, information from
Pennsylvania American Water and Aqua America was attributed to the wrong
company.
***Fracking Threat
Wiped £ 535,000 Off Home's Value
(About $887, 000 in US currency. Jan)
Article from England
“The potentially massive impact
of fracking on house prices was revealed yesterday – with one woman saying the
value of her home has been cut by £535,000.
Dianne Westgarth told how the price of her five-bedroom house had
plummeted by over 70% as a result of a proposed fracking site nearby- just
300 yards from her home.
In 2012, the property – which
comes with two-and-a-half acres of land – was valued at £725,000.
‘The new valuation came in at 190,000 pounds,
she said. ‘Two other estate agents said
they would rather not even comment, because the possibility of fracking meant
they couldn’t actually say if it was worth anything at all.’
‘I’m
directing all my efforts at ensuring the site near my home doesn’t get
permission,’ she added. ‘Currently, my house is worth next to nothing.’
She spoke out as it emerged that
the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) –
which values properties for council tax – had admitted that commercial
activities such as fracking could cause their estimates to be downgraded.
James
Nisbet, who lives near another potential drilling site near Blackpool, said a
would-be purchaser pulled out of buying his £375,000 house after hearing about
the plan.
‘I’ve been a Conservative voter since I was
18,’ he said. ‘I’m now 60 but it’s the last time I will vote Conservative
because they have sold Lancashire down the swanny with no regard for people’s
health and well-being.’
Chris Hebert, of Hampton’s estate agency in nearby Haslemere, said: ‘If
someone’s got something going on 24/7, people will not buy their house.’
The revelations come just weeks
after the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was accused of a fracking ‘cover-up’ after it censored a key
report on the topic no less than 63 times in 13 pages.
The chapter examining the effect
of drilling on house prices had three sections redacted – although it did
acknowledge a study, which found the value of properties near a well in Texas
had fallen by up to 14 per cent.
However both the VOA and the
Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) yesterday insisted there was no
evidence to link fracking with falling house prices.
‘There
is no evidence that house prices have been affected in over half a century of
oil and gas exploration in the UK or evidence that this would be the case with
shale,’ a spokesman for the DECC said.”
Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2733336/Fracking-threat-wiped-535-000-home-s-value-Five-bedroom-home-valued-190-000-drilling-site-proposed-nearby.html#ixzz3BYXHSNyb
***Enviros Will Be
Blamed for Bursting Frack Bubble
Here’s
The Script, in four despicable acts:
Act
1. Fracking boom goes bust as production from shale gas and tight oil wells
stalls out and lurches into decline.
Act
2. Oil and gas industry loudly blames anti-fracking environmentalists and
restrictive regulations.
Act
3. Congress rolls back environmental laws.
Act
4. Loosened regulations do little to boost actual oil and gas production, which
continues to tank, but the industry wins the right to exploit marginal
resources a little more cheaply than would otherwise have been the case.
It’s fairly clear that the fracking bubble will burst soon—almost
certainly within the decade. Our ongoing analysis at Post Carbon Institute
documents the high per-well decline rates (a typical well’s production drops 70
percent during the first year), the high variability of production potential
within geological formations being tapped and the dwindling number of remaining
drilling sites in the few “sweet spots” that offer vaguely profitable drilling
potential. Meanwhile, as the Energy Information Administration (EIA) has
recently documented, the balance sheets
of fracking companies are loaded with debt while surprisingly short on profits
from sales of product—with real profits coming mostly from sales of assets
(drilling leases).
The industry continues to claim
that tight oil and shale gas are “game changers” and that these resources will
last many decades if not centuries. Though the CEOs of companies engaged in
shale gas and tight oil drilling are undoubtedly aware of what’s going on in
their own balance sheets, hype is an essential part of their business
model—which can be summarized as follows:
Step
1. Borrow money and use it to lease thousands of acres for drilling.
Step
2. Borrow more money and drill as many wells as you can, as quickly as you can.
Step
3. Tell everyone within shouting distance that this is just the beginning of a
production boom that will continue for the remainder of our lives and the lives
of our children and that everyone who invests will get rich.
Step
4. Sell drilling leases to other (gullible) companies at a profit, raise funds
through Initial Public Offerings or bond sales, and use the proceeds to hide
financial losses from your drilling and production operations.
In the financial
industry this would be recognized as a variation on the old “pump and dump”
scam, yet
the U.S. government’s own EIA has just quietly confirmed that this is standard
practice in the companies responsible for the “miraculous” U.S. oil and gas
renaissance that other departments of government are relying on for job
creation projections, future tax revenues and (reputed) energy export clout in
the new cold war against Russia.
The bursting of the fracking bubble will
have almost nothing to do with environmentalists, but they have deliberately
and courageously put themselves in harm’s way. Fracking has terrible impacts on water, air,
soil, human health, the welfare of livestock and wildlife and the climate.
Hundreds
of local anti-fracking groups have sprung up across the country in recent
years, often started by ordinary citizens who suddenly found their wells
fouled, their livestock sickened, or their children suffering from headaches
and nosebleeds as a result of nearby fracking operations. Yet it
has often been difficult for environmental scientists to document such impacts,
due to deliberate efforts on the part of industry to impede studies and
publications (for example, requiring non-disclosure agreements where complaints are met with cash
settlements); indeed, industry spokespeople continue to deny
that fracking is responsible for any environmental or human health problems. The industry despises
environmentalists. But the real motivation for The Script is not petulance or
revenge.
No,
this is all business. Environmentalists will merely be handy scapegoats.
Blaming environmentalists for the bursting of the fracking bubble will divert
public attention from the industry’s own bad business practices. But even more
usefully, telling receptive members of Congress that falling oil and gas
production rates are due to anti-fracking, fear-mongering, business-hating
enviros will set the stage for new and powerful calls to roll back local, state
and national regulations. Congress’s likely response: “Poor you! What can we do
to help? How about some further exemptions to the Clean Air and Clean Water
acts? Maybe a preemption of local fracking ordinances with a new
industry-friendly national rule? Would you care for some drilling leases on
millions of acres of federal land as an appetizer, while you’re waiting?
They’re on the house.”
The
industry has a lot to gain by portraying itself as the victim of powerful
environmental interests. But will this gambit actually initiate a
new round of oil and gas production growth? That’s remotely possible, since
there are still billions of tons of low-grade hydrocarbon resources trapped
beneath American soil. But don’t count on it. It takes money to drill, even if it’s other people’s money. As the quality of available resources
declines, the amount of money needed to yield each new increment of energy from
those resources grows. The industry will have to find and persuade a new flock
of investors, which is likely to be difficult once shale gas and tight oil
production is clearly headed south with an accelerating trend. Carrying
loads of debt has been relatively easy due to ultra-low interest rates; if the
Federal Reserve decides to let rates drift back upward, this alone could be a
stake through the industry’s heart.
Here’s
an open plea to EIA officials: Please follow the
evidence and tell public officials and the American people the real story of
what’s happening as the national fracking boom turns to bust. You’re the
authority everyone looks to.”
***Flaring =Wasted Gas and Air
Pollution- Eagle Ford, Texas
“A yearlong
investigation by the San Antonio Express-News shows that gas flares spreading
across the Eagle Ford Shale are burning and wasting billions of cubic feet of
natural gas. The Express-News analyzed
the state's own records and found no other region in Texas is flaring as much
gas as the Eagle Ford Shale. From 2009 to 2012, flares burned enough gas
to supply every household that uses the fossil fuel in the San Antonio area –
for a full year. The raw gas
coming out of flares isn't the clean-burning methane found in your kitchen. Gas
flares released more than 15,000 tons of volatile organic compounds and other
contaminants into the air in 2012, according to state pollution estimates
obtained by the Express-News.
Despite
the state's assurances that flaring is well regulated, the Express-News
discovered that some of the top sources of
flaring in the shale failed to obtain the necessary permits from the Railroad
Commission of Texas, which oversees the oil/ gas industry.
"That amount of gas is
horrible," said Sister Elizabeth Riebschlaeger, a nun with the Sisters of
Charity of the Incarnate Word who lives in South Texas and speaks out for
residents who believe they've been harmed by rising levels of pollution in the
Eagle Ford. "I would use the word disastrous."
Riebschlaeger, who works out of
her Honda Civic as she drives the back roads of the shale, said she's seen flares burning "day and night" and emitting
plumes of black smoke that indicate the flames are burning inefficiently and
releasing air pollutants.
"It's an environmental
tragedy," Riebschlaeger said. "There are lots of people who bought
nice, quiet country places who now find that same quiet environment
destroyed."
"There will, ultimately, be
pipelines built to reduce this flaring," Smitherman told the Express-News.
"We're just in a transition period right now where the price of oil is so
high, everybody's chasing after liquids. And when they find liquids in the
Eagle Ford, they also find gas." The full findings of
this investigation can be read at ExpressNews.com.
http://www.expressnews.com/business/eagleford/item/Up-in-Flames-Day-1-Flares-in-Eagle-Ford-Shale-32626.php
***Grass-Roots
Opposition Threat to Booming Shale Business
(Sorry
for all the hyphens. I could find no way to re-format this article. Jan)
“A fight over fracking is looming
in Texas. Another stand-off is shaping up in Colorado. Yet drillers’
reactions couldn’t be more different.
In Texas, drillers are doing
their noisy, in-your-face fracking as usual. On a small farm about an hour
from the Colorado Rocky Mountains, the oil industry is giving fracking a
makeover, cutting back on rumbling trucks and tamping down on pollution.
Oil companies in Colorado are
responding to a rising tide of resentment, as local communities and
environmental activists vie to impose measures to ban fracking or
restrict drilling.
A series of ballot initiatives and other
grass-roots opposition around the country is seen as threatening the
booming shale industry, even in oil-friendly Texas, where the U.S. energy
renaissance began. If those initiatives “continue to proliferate, then companies
lose access to those resources,” said David Spence, professor of law,
politics and regulation at the University of Texas School of Law, who
researches fracking and drilling rules.
Cities and counties
nationwide have so far passed 430 measures to control or ban fracking, the
controversial technique of cracking subterranean rocks to release oil
and natural gas, according to a running list kept by Food & Water
Watch, a Washington-based environmental advocacy group.
The industry’s newfound
concern and sensitivity in some states represents a shift in tactics, as
companies seek to avoid taking the issue to the voting booth, where
success for activists holds the potential of slowing the U.S. drilling
bonanza.
At an Anadarko Petroleum
drilling site near Dacono, Colo., swarms of trucks and flood lights are
hidden behind a wall of hay bales, which soften the roar of diesel engines.
Giant pits of murky wastewater have
been eliminated using recycling and pipelines. The number of trucks and tanks needed in some locations has plunged
to 50 from 400 in 2011.
Thanks in part to these
measures, a last-minute deal state officials made with environmental
activists helped Colorado avert an anti-fracking vote earlier this month.
No such compromise was reached
about 800 miles away in Denton, Texas, near the birthplace of the U.S.
energy boom. Some residents there say they are exasperated with the
unwillingness of producers to listen to their pleas to avoid late-night
drilling and put wells far away from where children play. They’re aiming to
ban all fracking in a vote this November.
Companies have alienated some voters with an attitude
suggesting “this is just the way that it is in Texas, and if you don’t like
it, that’s just too bad,” said Denton resident Cathy McMullen, who
started pushing for more regulations after wells were drilled by a park
near her home. “As far as the industry goes in Texas, there is no
give-and-take. There is just ‘we give, and they take.‘ “
The latest two fracking battles — one in the heart
of Texas oil country, where support for drilling is generally assumed —
underscore the progress that fracking opponents are making at the local
level after striking out to gain more state or federal control over the
industry.
Fed up residents launched a
campaign to draft a fracking ban in February and gathered enough votes on
a petition to take the question to voters Nov. 4.
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
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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
Science Advisor-Dr. Cynthia Walter
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