The public can access the information by selecting the blue links to the right of the "District Services" link for their area. Get started by selecting the link for your district below:
District 3-0 covers Bradford, Tioga, Sullivan, Lycoming, Columbia, Montour, Union, Snyder and Northumberland counties.
District 4-0 covers Lackawanna, Luzerne, Pike, Susquehanna, Wayne and Wyoming counties.
DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!
LOCATION OF J.T. PLACE RESIDENCE, SITE OF CONTAMINATED WELL ON SPRING LAKE ROAD
J.T. PLACE RESIDENCE, WITH 2 NEW "WATER BUFFALOS"
NEW ELECTRIC SERVICE FOR WATER BUFFALOS
Chemist and environmental activist Wilma Subra collects a water sample in Gueydan, Louisiana
New Iberia, Louisiana (CNN) -- Chemist Wilma Subra was working at her desk by a picture window one cool June evening in 2006 when the passenger in a passing car fired a single shot in her direction. The bullet lodged in a brick a few feet from where she was sitting.
Not your typical day at the office for a chemist, but Subra is not a typical chemist.
"I think they were just trying to scare me and get me to back off," says Subra, a soft-spoken grandmother who has made it her life's mission to help communities fight against chemical threats from industry.
Subra didn't quit. She moved her desk away from the window and went back to work. The gunman was never caught.
"I can't close up and not be out there," she says matter-of-factly.
"Out there" means traveling to communities across the country worried about pollution.
Mossville, Louisiana: 'Like an experiment'
"Communities need so much help, and you educate and empower them, and then they take on the fight and the issue. They just need that little bit of information to make them aware."
Subra received a MacArthur genius grant for her work in 1999. Her almost genteel manner belies the persistence and quiet intensity she brings to her work.
Subra, 66, president of Subra Company, began as a consultant, testing in communities for government and industry. But she didn't like not being able to tell the locals what she'd found.
"So in 1981, I said, 'OK, it's time for me to start doing this on behalf of the communities," Subra says.
Working from small offices in rural New Iberia, Louisiana, Subra has about 30 active cases at any time. Some of them last for years.
Surrounded by files and stacks of papers, Subra, also gets calls and e-mails with urgent questions from communities in the United States and around the world. Subra says she sometimes gets an emotional call from someone who works in industry.
"It's someone in their family who is now sick. And they'll start off by saying I'm so and so and I've never agreed with you and I've been on the other side, but my wife or my child is sick and I want to know what are the potential things they could have been exposed to that caused the illness," she says. "And suddenly we can have a dialogue about what they're exposed to ... They have a complete change of attitude because they thought they would never be touched by it, and now someone in their family is being touched by it. It's amazing."
In the weeks since the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank off the coast of Louisiana, Subra has been working long hours investigating the potential environmental and human health impacts of the oil spill in the Gulf.
Her work in the past year has ranged from natural gas drilling in Dish, Texas, to groundwater contamination from oil and gas drilling in Pavilion, Wyoming. She has provided technical assistance to communities near the polluted Hunters Point Shipyard in San Francisco, California, and evaluated the potential environmental impacts of importing Italian nuclear waste through the port of New Orleans, Louisiana.
Her biggest victory, Subra says, came in a fight against an oil waste incinerator in Amelia, Louisiana, that began using hazardous waste and toxic wood treatment waste as fuel. "There were all kinds of illnesses in the community," says Subra, who is from nearby Morgan City, Louisiana. Among those who got sick: grandchildren of longtime friends who developed a type of brain tumor called a neuroblastoma. After 12 years, a federal judge ordered the facility closed. Subra testified at the trial.
Much of her time has been spent in Mossville, a 200-year-old African American community in southwest Louisiana surrounded by 14 chemical plants.
"All the people there are being exposed to a very large quantity of very toxic chemicals," Subra says.
Subra says there are thousands of communities in the United States facing environmental threats.
"Next to industrial facilities, next to paper mills, next to refineries, next to chemical plants, next to landfills, next to hazardous waste sites," she says.
Asked if she's a modern-day Erin Brockovich, the environmental crusader who became the subject of an Academy Award-winning movie, Wilma Subra laughs.
"I've been doing this since way before Erin was doing it."
DON'T MISS IT!
The Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act – climate change legislation at long last introduced in the U.S. Senate Wednesday – calls on oil and gas service companies like Halliburton to divulge chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing of natural gas wells.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the high-pressure process of injecting water, sand and undisclosed chemicals deep into natural gas wells to crack open tight geologic formations and free up more gas. Oil and gas companies argue the chemicals are proprietary formulas kept secret to give them an edge over their competition.
Critics say the process can and has led to groundwater contamination and that government officials and the public at large have a right to know the contents of frack fluids. Industry officials counter the process has been used for decades with no known instances of contamination.
Recognition of the fracking debate in the Senate climate change bill is significant because it has yet to take up Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette’s FRAC (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals) Act, introduced nearly a year ago in the House.
Kerry-Lieberman calls on oil and gas service companies to “disclose all chemical constituents used in a hydraulic fracturing operation to the public on the Internet in order to provide adequate information for the public and state and local authorities.”
State officials who regulate natural gas drilling in Colorado have said the FRAC Act, which would remove a 2005 exemption for fracking under the Safe Drinking Water Act, would impose another layer of federal regulations that simply can’t be accommodated by the understaffed Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
Counties and towns in gas-rich areas around the state are split on whether to support the FRAC Act, as is Colorado’s congressional delegation. U.S. Rep. John Salazar, a blue-dog Democrat representing the mostly rural and energy-rich Western Slope, opposes the bill despite a survey indicating the majority of his constituents favor the legislation.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which issued a highly criticized report on fracking during the Bush administration, has undertaken a new study of the process, but calls for the FRAC Act have continued.
Last month, Exxon Mobil, the nation’s largest energy producer which in December jumped into natural gas by acquiring XTO Energy for nearly $30 billion, told shareholders it wants fracking chemicals disclosed to ease the fears of landowners. Exxon joins several other smaller energy companies that called for full disclosure last fall.
Under its one-year-old oil and gas drilling regulations, Colorado requires oil and gas companies to keep an inventory of chemicals on site and to make it available to emergency services personnel in the event of a spill. The Senate bill takes that one step further.
But some environmental groups are concerned that merely requiring companies to disclose the chemicals on a website will not carry the same regulatory authority as removing the Safe Drinking Water Act exemption.
DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!
STEVE MOCAR
The head of a state environmental regulatory bureau said the public can help protect Pennsylvania waterways from pollution related to natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale by contacting legislators and a review board in support of tough new proposed regulations.
Scott R. Perry, director of the state Department of Environmental Protection’s Bureau of Oil and Gas Management, said last week that the oil and gas industry is “dead-set against these regulations on total dissolved solids in flowback fracking water. We’re going to have a huge fight with the Independent Regulatory Review Commission,” he said.
The hydraulic fracturing process (fracking) used to release natural gas from the shale, requires injecting about 5 million gallons of water into the ground per well. About 12 percent of that water, which contains trace chemicals and high concentrations of dissolved solids such as salt, flows back and must be disposed.
DEP Secretary John Hanger said in a press release that the new rules will ensure that the total dissolved solids, or TDS, in drilling wastewater do not pollute drinking water supplies, damage industrial equipment or endanger delicate aquatic life.
“Drilling wastewater contains TDS levels that are thousands of times more harmful to aquatic life than discharges from other industries. Without imposing limits on this pollution, treatment costs for this wastewater are passed along to downstream industries and municipal ratepayers,” Hanger said. “All other industries in Pennsylvania are responsible for the waste they generate, and the drilling industry should be no exception.”
Putting TDS in perspective:
In a phone interview, Hanger said the TDS concentration in discharges from landfills is about 2,000 miligrams-per-liter (mg/l). In coal mine discharges, it’s about 20,000 to 30,000 mg/l. In Marcellus Shale drilling discharges, it’s about 300,000 mg/l.
Under the new regulations, wastewater discharges from new and expanded facilities must meet a concentration threshold of 2,000 mg/l and discharges from drilling operations cannot exceed 500 mg/l.
The state Environmental Quality Board on Monday approved the regulations. Next, the rules will go to the Environmental Resources and Energy committees in the state House and Senate, as well as to the Independent Regulatory Review Commission for a 30-day review period.
The new rule was “thoroughly vetted and scrutinized” and amended in response to industry concerns, Hanger said.
Still, when speaking last week with members of the public at Lake-Lehman High School after a presentation on DEP’s role in regulating natural gas drilling, Perry said he could foresee “legislative action to intervene in trying to disapprove these regulations. Part of the regulatory process allows the House and Senate to pass resolutions disapproving the law.”
The industry likely would oppose the regulations because outfitting treatment facilities with equipment capable of lowering the concentrations of TDS would be expensive, as would be alternative disposal methods.
Perry said the public needs to step up in support of the regulations to protect the environment.
“Legislators and the Independent Regulatory Review Commission need to hear from more people than just industry representatives,” he said.
DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!
DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!
By John Lippert
Shale-gas producers told Pennsylvania regulators most of them are already complying with new regulations for protecting aquifers that aren’t scheduled to be adopted until October.
Thirty-five shale-gas producers, members of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, also agreed today to work with the state to develop better tests, record-keeping and drilling procedures to prevent methane gas from contaminating water wells.
“We want a world-class regulatory environment and a world- class industry environment in Pennsylvania, since we have a huge opportunity in front of us,” Ray Walker, chairman of the coalition and a senior vice president at Fort Worth, Texas-based Range Resources Corp., said today in an interview.
The state Environmental Protect Department called energy companies to Harrisburg today to make sure they understand proposed rules for cementing metal casings around their wells. The meeting came after the state last month ordered Houston- based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. to cap three wells with defective casings in the northeastern corner of Pennsylvania.
“Cabot is an example of what can go wrong,” John Hanger, the state’s environmental secretary, said in an interview before today’s meeting. “Their drilling led to gas migrating from the drill sites to people’s water.”
Pennsylvania is home to much of the Marcellus Shale, a formation that may hold 262 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas, making it the largest known deposit of the heating and power-plant fuel, according to a U.S. Energy Department estimate. Today’s meeting was intended in part to instruct companies accustomed to drilling in southern states like Texas on how Pennsylvania’s geology differs, Hanger said.
‘Zero-Impact Drilling’
“There’s no such thing as zero-impact drilling,” Hanger said. “We’re in the business of maximizing the benefits, which are considerable, and minimizing the costs.”
Cabot drilled 50 Pennsylvania wells in the Marcellus Shale last year and planned 81 wells this year, according to a March 22 investor presentation by the Houston-based company. The wells without proper casings, located in Dimock Township, caused gas to migrate into groundwater, Hanger said.
Drill bits descending toward gas-bearing shale are surrounded with three concentric rings of metal casings that are cemented in place to protect surrounding aquifers.
Under the new Pennsylvania rules, companies will have to use thicker pipes and stronger cement as they drill wells thousands of feet below ground, said Tom Rathbun, a spokesman for the Environmental Protection Department. Gas producers also will be required to rapidly notify state and local authorities when gas migration occurs, he said.
Cabot Order
The state also ordered Cabot to stop drilling in Dimock Township for a year, provide equipment for removing methane from groundwater at 14 homes near its wells and pay a $240,000 fine.
Cabot has made “significant” progress in complying with the state order, Chief Executive Officer Dan Dinges said in an April 27 statement. The company said it accepted the order without agreeing that it caused the gas migration.
“Cabot is committed to working with Secretary Hanger to ensure we have the best regulations for Pennsylvania,” company spokesman George Stark said after today’s meeting.
Water contamination at Dimock has drawn the attention of environmental groups opposed to drilling and the use of hydraulic fracturing to extract gas from shale formations. Drillers inject a mixture of water, sand and chemicals at high pressure to bust open shale and unlock gas deposits.
The new Pennsylvania rules will require companies to disclose the chemicals they use during fracturing, said Kathryn Klaber, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition.
Bubbling Water
Victoria Switzer, 63, a retired schoolteacher who lives within 1,300 feet of three Cabot wells in Dimock, said she had so much methane in her well that her water bubbled like Alka- Seltzer. Methane blew an eight-inch concrete slab off the top of neighbor Norma Fiorentino’s well on Dec. 31, 2008, she said.
Along with Fiorentino and other neighbors, Switzer is suing Cabot for negligence.
“We were unwilling participants in a grievously-gone-wrong experiment in rapid industrialization of a pristine natural area,” Switzer said.
“What we’ve done here is put up the drilling rigs before we had the regulations in place. It’s ridiculous.”
DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!
DEP Secretary John Hanger addressed the group. “They needed to hear from me that these rules are going to be enforced strongly,” said Hanger. “The companies have a key role here. They need to have a culture here in Pennsylvania that accepts the importance of rules and respects government oversight. Companies that have a culture of contempt or seeking shortcuts are going to have a lot of problems with me.
“It’s a world-class gas resource,” said Hanger, “and we need a world-class regulatory system to match it.”
DIMOCK, Pa. - A worker at a natural gas drilling site in northeastern Pennsylvania has died after being hit on the head by a pipe.
The Luzerne County coroner's office identified the victim as 41-year-old Gregory Walker.
Walker was working at a Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. drilling rig in Dimock Township, Susquehanna County when he was hurt Monday morning. He was taken to a hospital in Montrose and then flown by helicopter to Geisinger Wyoming Valley Hospital in Wilkes-Barre, where he died Monday afternoon.
The coroner's office ruled the death as accidental.
Cabot spokesman George Stark says Walker worked for a subcontractor.
DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!
When Laurie and Brian Kaszuba of Dickson City received a $16,000 offer from a pipeline company to run a natural gas pipeline through their Great Bend property, they didn't see it as a windfall.
Having a natural gas line three feet below the surface with a right-of-way on the surface, would have made it more difficult to build their retirement home or subdivide the land. So they turned it down.
If pipeline companies eyeing the Marcellus Shale region have their way, property owners won't likely have that option.
Laser Marcellus Gathering LLC, of Houston, has applied to the Public Utility Commission to be declared a utility in Pennsylvania, a designation that would give the company the power to condemn any property it needs and to use eminent domain to obtain easements for pipelines.
The company is planning to build a 30-mile pipeline, costing about $37 million, to connect gas wells in western Susquehanna County and New York with the interstate Millennium pipeline that runs across New York state's southern tier.
The outcome of the request before the Public Utility Commission could change the way easements are negotiated. With the Marcellus gas rush well underway and millions of Pennsylvania acres leased by gas exploration companies, pipeline easements are the new wave of legalese to arrive in mailboxes throughout the Marcellus region. Susquehanna County, a hot-spot for shale gas, is destined host an underground web of pipes from every wellhead.
Unlike natural gas exploration companies, so-called "midstream" companies that gather gas have the option of becoming utilities. Several midstream companies have filed motions supporting Laser's bid.
While being treated as a utility exposes pipeline companies to a new layer of regulation, it also gives them a valuable tool that tilts negotiations with property owners in their direction, said Stephen W. Saunders, a Scranton environmental attorney.
"The company would be able to say 'negotiate with us or we'll just take your property through condemnation,'" Saunders said. "There's no requirement for a utility to negotiate at all. Eminent domain is a nice tool for a company to have in its back pocket."
Still many utilities negotiate in good faith with property owners to acquire the property outright or obtain easements. If negotiations fail, the utility may condemn the land and the matter goes to a Board of View, a quasi-judicial panel of real estate experts who determine the fair market value of the property. Chip Berthelot, president Laser Midstream, Laser Marcellus' parent company, said eminent domain is not the "overriding factor" in the company's pursuit of utility status. "We don't like to use condemnation and we do everything in our power to avoid that sort of confrontation with property owners," he said. The utility designation, he said, would require his company serve any customer, rather than being tied to one.
Meanwhile, property owners are groping their way through another type of agreement related to the acquisition of easement rights.
At most well development sites in other states, there also is right-of-way leasing, said David Messersmith, part of Penn State Cooperative Extension Marcellus Shale Team, which is providing information to the public about the industry.
Messersmith expressed a concern about that type of arrangement. "People aren't up to speed on the terms and the language of these things," Messersmith said.
A company may calculate their offer based on linear foot, by rod (16.5 feet), or by square footage, making it difficult for property owners to compare offers or determine a true market value. Rights-of-way could be anywhere from 8-to-30-feet off center. They limit land owners' activity on a significant swath of property for a lifetime or more, Messersmith said.
Some companies are blanketing the area with lease offers hoping to trade or sell rights-of-way in the future.
Laser is further along in its plans. While young, the company has an experienced management team and operates more than 80 gathering systems in Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. "We are exited about participating in the development of the Marcellus region," Berthelot said.
The Kaszubas challenged the Laser Marcellus' request before the PUC, but withdrew their objection when the pipeline path was rerouted around their property. They leased their mineral rights and they want to see the Marcellus region developed. But they don't trust the condemnation process.
"Under eminent domain, it doesn't matter what the property owner says or feels," he said. "People shouldn't be forced to have something on their property they don't want - at any price."
The company was also ordered to plug three gas wells it was operating in the town, which sits atop the Marcellus Shale formation, and was banned from drilling in the area. One water well in Dimock exploded last year, and DEP inspectors witnessed gas bubbling up at the base of eight other wells in March. Despite the ruling, Cabot has plans to drill 100 new wells in Dimock this year.
Independent newsroom ProPublica has reported on 50 similar cases across Pennsylvania, including reports of fish kills, water and air pollution, fires, out-of-control flaring, human illnesses and animal deaths.
The concern over the safety of hydraulic fracturing has prompted calls for a moratorium on drilling in Pennsylvania. In the process, often referred to as fracking, 2 to 9 millions of gallons of water, mixed with sand and up to 250 chemicals, are pushed into underground shale layers to release natural gas.
In January the Pennsylvania state Legislature opened up 32,000 additional acres of state forest land to be leased for drilling. As a result, 692,000 acres of the 2.1 million acres of state forest land are now open for gas wells. During a recent push to expand the practice into the Delaware River basin, the Philadelphia City Council was pressured to pass a resolution on March 25 calling for an environmental impact statement before any new permits are issued.
Fracking has been in use for a number of years throughout the U.S., particularly in the Southwest. Five natural gas sites border the town of Dish, Texas, in a quarter-mile complex. In nearby Fort Worth, Texas, 1,400 wells have been drilled in urban areas, many near schools and residential centers.
Speaking at a meeting at Temple University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering on April 16, Dish Mayor Calvin Tillman described how carcinogenic air pollution from natural gas drilling has damaged the quality of life in his town of 180 residents. The town sits atop the Barnett Shale, a geological formation similar to the Marcellus Shale.
Using his own money, Tillman has been traveling to Pennsylvania and New York to warn about the dangers of the gas boom. In his small town, trees are dying on a 30-acre farm that adjoins a labyrinth of small underground pipelines used to transport fuel from the fracking wells to outside markets. Horses have also fallen ill. Residents report problems with frequent nausea, severe headaches, breathing difficulties, chronic eye irritation, allergies, throat irritations and even brain disorders.
When Texas state inspectors, who are usually linked to the drilling companies, reported they could not find any problem with the wells, Dish town officials hired an environmental firm to collect one-day air samples near the compressors. Their study found high levels of 15 chemicals, including benzene, a known carcinogen. As a result the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality conducted air studies at 94 sites in the region. They found two sites with very high levels of benzene and 19 others with levels that raised concern.
In April, blood and urine testing of 28 adult Dish residents revealed that half the residents had slightly elevated levels of benzene and other contaminants. Four residents tested positive for benzene, including Tillman. Tillman noted that no testing was done on children, pregnant women or the elderly — groups likely to be most susceptible to the contaminants. Tillman’s water also tested positive for traces of styrene, ethyl benzene and xylene.
Growing concern over the danger of fracking has led to a push for legislation in Pennsylvania that would require drillers to disclose chemical ingredients in hydraulic fracturing fluids. Other proposed legislation calls for a moratorium on drilling until environmental impact studies can be performed. Both bills have yet to be passed and face mounting opposition from the natural gas industry.
Nationally, the oil and gas industry won exemption from major provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act and other federal environmental laws with the passage of the 2005 Energy Bill. The bill’s “Halliburton loophole” protected the company from having to reveal the composition of their fracturing fluid, despite the fact that the list of hazardous substances compiled by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund — the program established to address abandoned hazardous waste sites — includes toxic profiles on benzene, styrene, toluene and other agents known to be in the mix. Efforts are also underway to challenge this legislation.
The EPA announced it will spend $4.4 million to start a study on the impact of fracturing in October, but Dr. Michel Boufadel, director of the Environmental Hydrology and Hydraulics Laboratory at Temple University College of Engineering, expressed concerns that the EPA’s study does not go far enough.
Speaking at the April 16 meeting, Boufadel noted that very few scientific studies on fracking have been conducted by researchers not connected to the drilling industry. He also pointed out that most studies assume that any leak of water contaminated by fracturing fluids would spread horizontally from a holding tank and be detected by ground level monitors.
Boufadel explained that the 250 chemicals contained in the fracturing fluid create “gooey, high density water” — a gel that suspends the sand particles needed to work into cracks in the shale layers. The result is “radioactive water six times more saline than sea water and containing known carcinogens.”
“If you don’t account for this heavy density you would expect water to move outward, but the reality is that it moves down,” Boufadel stressed. “If you only use existing traditional models of monitoring wells at ground level, you won’t detect contamination until it’s too late.”
Marshview Road, Sept. '09
North Street, aka Marshview Rd. Today
Trucks Travelling Once Paved Marshview Road
Marshview Road, Weight Limit
10 Tons? Um... I don't think so...
According to the following picture, from this week's Wyalusing Rocket, coming or going on Marshview Road, this truck likely contains 20 tons of fracking sand... 10 tons over the limit.
"It takes only about 10 minutes to transfer 20 tons of sand from a railcar to an awaiting tractor trailer at the new transload terminal in Wyalusing..."
What about these?
?
?
Trucks at well pad...Drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania's easternmost counties has been put on hold for months, if not longer.
On Wednesday, the Delaware River Basin Commission voted unanimously to draft new regulations to govern natural gas projects and not to issue any permits until the new rules are in effect.
The decision means that even as activity escalates throughout the state - nearly 900 Marcellus permits have been issued this year - no production drilling can be done in the Delaware watershed.
Adopting new rules could take six months to a year, commission executive director Carol R. Collier said Thursday. ...
"I know there are many that want the gas-well drilling to move along quickly because of the economics and the issue of national security and providing clean fuel," Collier said. "But I really think we have to do it correctly and smartly. There's just too much at stake in the Delaware River basin."
Environmental groups cheered the decision, saying it was the "pause button" they have long sought statewide as the tally of explosions, spills, and pollution incidents mounts. So far this year, the state Department of Environmental Protection has initiated 116 enforcement actions against drillers. ...
The commission is an interstate agency, formed by a federal compact, that has legal authority over water quality and quantity in the basin. The governors of the four basin states - Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Delaware - plus a federal appointee are commissioners, but they often send representatives.
The New Jersey representative at Wednesday's meeting, Fred Sickels of the state DEP water-supply division, said that with all the activity, "the cumulative impacts could be significant if there aren't appropriate safeguards."
Pennsylvania's northeastern counties - where the shale region and the Delaware watershed overlap - have been deemed a high-stakes area.
The pressure to drill there could be even more intense than elsewhere. Geological maps indicate that corner of Pennsylvania is a sweet spot with huge quantities of natural gas.
More than 6,000 leases have been signed in Wayne County alone, said Brian W. Smith, chairman of the Wayne County supervisors.
No drilling other than test wells, which are still allowed, has been done in the watershed.
But environmental concerns are high. The Delaware River from Hancock, N.Y., south to Trenton is so clean that it is under stricter, "special protection waters" regulations. Also, the federal government has designated portions of the river wild and scenic areas worthy of enhanced protection.
And downstream - where the river's quality is the sum of everything that has occurred upstream - are Philadelphia's water intakes.
Proponents say natural gas drilling is adding millions of dollars to local economies and has environmental benefits because the fuel burns cleaner than coal.
Critics say the drilling process is fraught with hazards and the regulatory baseline is inadequate.
In March, Philadelphia City Council unanimously passed a resolution asking the commission not to approve any applications in the Marcellus Shale until a full environmental impact assessment is done. ...
During a public-input period, the commission received more than 2,000 comments.
"We're looking at things that have happened to the west of us and what needs to be put in place to prevent that," Collier said. "We're learning a lot, and we want to do it right."
HOORAY FOR SENSIBLE PRIORITIES! Hopefully the DRBC's actions will serve as a bellwether for the rest of the state! Clearly the same perspectives were lacking when the DCNR chose to allow drilling under the Susquehanna River... for a "whopping" (just joking) $6.15 million! -Splashdown
DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!
So said John Quigley, Secretary of Conservation and Natural Resources for Pennsylvania at a Marcellus Shale Policy Conference sponsored over the past two days by Duquesne University and the Pennsylvania Environmental Council.
Said John Hanger, Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection: “Let me be clear: Self regulation doesn't work. That's not contestable. We've made mistakes before. We have to get this right or the costs will overwhelm the benefits.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer described the officials’ comments as “part of a coordinated effort by Gov. Rendell's administration to build public support for the legislature to impose greater oversight on the [gas] industry.”
Sounds like the “what didn’t go wrong?” experience in Dimock and other horror stories from Pennsylvania – where drilling in the Marcellus Shale has been proceeding apace – are starting to sink in with the state’s regulators.
Regulators in other gas drilling states should sit up sharply and take notice – particularly in New York, where there is still an opportunity to figure out whether it is possible, and if so how, to rigorously regulate gas production to properly protect human health and the environment.
As the horrifying experience in the Gulf of Mexico demonstrates, we cannot be too careful when it comes to domestic fossil fuel development. The costs when things go awry can be both devastating and lasting.
DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!
Pennsylvania has devised a new way to make money from the Marcellus Shale natural gas boom: leasing the mineral rights beneath the Susquehanna River.
The state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources signed a $6.15 million agreement Monday with Chesapeake Energy Corp., giving the company the right to drill the shale under a seven-mile stretch of the Susquehanna in Bradford County.
Under the lease, which applies to 1,500 acres of river between Towanda and the Wyoming County line, Chesapeake Energy is permitted to access the shale with wells drilled on either side of the river. No well bores will penetrate the river itself.
Horizontal-drilling technology makes drilling for gas beneath the waterway feasible. With wells that reach laterally for thousands of feet, operators can capture gas under a large area from a remote surface location.
The state Department of Environmental Protection says that under-river gas exploration poses no more risk than any of the 1,400 other wells drilled into the Marcellus formation, which is a mile below the surface. Shale wells are hydraulically fractured, a controversial technique in which the rock is shattered with injections of high-pressure fluid to release the fossil fuel.
... The $6.15 million raised by the Susquehanna River lease will help keep open 24 state parks that had been threatened with closure because of the budget crisis, said Christina Novak, DCNR spokeswoman.The state will receive an initial bonus payment of $4,000 an acre, comparable to the amount it received from its recent auctions of state forest. The lease provides for royalty payments of 20 percent of the gas produced - better than previous state forest leases.
Chesapeake Energy approached DCNR last year about drilling under the Susquehanna after it locked up leases on both sides of the river. By law, the state owns the mineral rights beneath navigable waterways.
The agreement may open the door for more leasing of river lands. DCNR estimates the state owns the mineral rights beneath at least 25,000 riverine acres in the Marcellus, which lies under two-thirds of the state.
Natural gas leasing is rapidly becoming a major moneymaker for the state.
About 692,000 acres of state forests are leased, most of them undeveloped. Those leases generated so much opposition that House Democrats this week passed legislation calling for a halt to additional forest leases.
The state Game Commission has 890,000 acres in the Marcellus Shale, though how much of the land is leased is unclear, according to a study published in January by the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee.
The state Department of Transportation also manages thousands of acres, though PennDot does not own the mineral rights on most of its land, spokesman Rich Kirkpatrick said.
PennDot's inability to control mineral extraction under its roads was underscored when miners excavated coal beneath two interstate highways in Southwestern Pennsylvania. The road surface crumbled when the mines subsided.
DCNR's Susquehanna River lease may conjure memories of the 1959 Knox Mine disaster, when the Susquehanna broke through a coal mine that was dug just below the river bottom. A dozen miners died in the flood.
Geologists say subsidence is not an issue with gas exploration. The well bores are only a few inches in diameter.
Matt Sheppard, a Chesapeake spokesman, said that his company had extensive experience drilling in densely populated Fort Worth, Texas, and that wells beneath the Susquehanna posed no unusual challenges.
"We have a demonstrated track record of successfully producing natural gas from beneath lakes, rivers, streams, homes, skyscrapers, and even below the runway and terminal of an international airport," he said.
DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!
A recent article reported that the Pennsylvania Secretary of Environmental Protection has stated that "water discharges from Marcellus shale drilling operations have already harmed aquatic life in the state...." Because of this, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission is seeking the help of anglers to identify and survey 45,000 unmanaged Pennsylvania streams in search of native trout. These streams have to be identified in order to be protected from industrial development.
Pennsylvania is not the only place where fish are being harmed or are at risk from oil and gas production. ...
According to Trout Unlimited, the ecological effects of gas and oil development are extensive: "If not done responsibly, this development can contaminate ground and surface water supplies, reduce water quantity and degrade fish habitat."
Back in Pennsylvania, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has found that natural gas production activities can impair important trout fisheries. The Corps has stated that these activities pose a "genuine and extreme threat to regional water quality."
Many win-win solutions exist that can protect our wildest lands and streams--our most vital wildlife habitat. Our federal and state agencies should preserve the most vulnerable areas while requiring the highest possible protection where drilling does occur.
LINK to complete post on Amy Mall's blog.
DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!
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