by the way...

Dallas Business Journal
Fri., January 15, 2010

Independent oil and natural gas company Exco Resources Inc. said Friday that news reports suggesting the company has been issued a cease and desist order on drilling activities in a certain part of the Marcellus Shale are not accurate.

The Dallas-based company said a local township supervisor did send a letter to Exco raising some concerns about the zoning designation of an area where Exco had drilled a vertical well, but the company has the necessary permissions to drill in the area and operations continue.

... the letter was sent after two local citizens sent a letter raising concerns about the zoning. Exco issued a statement Friday ensuring that drilling in the Marcellus shale continues without interruption.

Exco added that the company has all the permits required for drilling and has scheduled meetings to discuss some of the zoning concerns of the residents.

LINK.

Greenfield Twp. says gas driller violated zoning ordinance and must stop

by laura legere (staff writer)
the times-tribune.com
January 8, 2010

GREENFIELD TWP. - The host municipality of the first and only Marcellus Shale natural gas well drilled in Lackawanna County has told the gas exploration company that it violated the township's zoning ordinance and must stop all drilling operations on the site.

Greenfield Twp. issued the violation notice on Tuesday to Exco Resources (PA) Inc., formerly Exco-North Coast Energy Resources, after receiving a complaint from a township resident in December.

The well site is located on a parcel adjacent to the Skyline Golf Course on Route 247 in an area zoned commercial recreation. Township supervisor Joseph Slebodnik said gas drilling is not an allowable use in that zone. Gas drilling is a conditional use in Greenfield's rural agricultural zones, which make up about 80 percent of the township, and industrial districts, he said.

Some township zoning maps mistakenly label the plot where the Skyline well was drilled as rural agricultural, he said, which might have caused some confusion.

"Evidently they didn't check into it far enough," he said.

Efforts to reach the president of Exco's Pennsylvania operations Friday evening were unsuccessful.

Exco received a well permit from the state Department of Environmental Protection in August and drilled the well in late September and October.

Township zoning officer Paul Fortuner said the township did not act earlier on the zoning violation because it did not know it could have a say on gas development within its borders.

The state law that governs gas drilling, the Oil and Gas Act, explicitly pre-empts local municipalities from regulating anything already outlined in the law, including how far wells must be from structures and water sources.

But the state Supreme Court found for the first time in February that local municipalities can regulate where gas wells are located through zoning ordinances.

"Originally we weren't a part of the loop at all. We had no way of restricting it at all," Mr. Fortuner said. "Now they gave us that little bit."

Exco has 30 days to appeal the violation notice to the township's zoning hearing board.

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!

Pennsylvania towns often find themselves powerless against gas company practices

By Rona Kobell
Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay
Bay Journal
December 2009

There's a reason they call these the Endless Mountains.

Undulating hills of yellow and crimson rise gracefully before disappearing into a blanket of gauze-like fog. For miles, no other cars share the two-lane roads that snake through this tranquil pocket of northeast Pennsylvania.

People visit here for the hiking and the bicycling and the skiing and the leaf peeping; they stay for the quiet.

But natural gas drilling is quickly transforming these rural hamlets into industrial zones. Towns and counties that are sitting atop the gas-rich Marcellus Shale know that the gas companies are coming, and they are trying to prepare. But because of industry practices and current regulations, they may be powerless to control their destinies.

Gas companies play their cards close to their vests. They do not announce they may drill 40 wells; they drill one first and see how it produces. Usually, they approach a private landowner, who does not need permission from his or her municipality to lease. That's how Dimock, a rural hamlet in northeast Pennsylvania, went from one well in 2006 to more than 60 by the end of 2009. That's why visitors who meander down its barely one-lane roads will see the classic tableau of red barn, silver silo and lazing cows - but behind it is often a gas well lit up like a space shuttle.

"There's only so much that they can plan, because when these gas companies decide to come in, it happens rather quickly," said Jerry S. Walls, who was director of the Lycoming County Planning Commission for 37 years.

Many Pennsylvania towns have no zoning ordinances, complicating matters. But even those that do will not necessarily be able to enforce them on drillers. Under the Pennsylvania Gas Act of 1984, state regulations trump local ordinances.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection regulates gas drilling. It approves most permits and relies on the industry to self-report problems, while conducting spot checks for compliance.

"We've got no oversight at the federal level, none at the local level, and the state is in a shambles," said Jim Weaver, the lone planner in Tioga County, a prime location for drilling. "For all intents and purposes, the state legislature has handed the gas industry the Marcellus play to do with whatever they please."

Weaver called the situation "short-sighted and less than strategic" and said he hoped some planning would occur at the state level.

This year, two court cases in Western Pennsylvania clarified the powers of local authorities over drilling. In Oakmont, the state Supreme Court ruled that gas companies could not drill a well where zoning laws forbade it. But in Salem, the court ruled the local laws had no say over where gas companies put infrastructure, such as pipelines, which come under the DEP's permitting process.

Bradford County Planning Director Ray Stolinas has been following the cases, trying to figure out how to apply them in his county. Recently, the county decided not to review plans to build a compressor station on the advice of their attorney.

"The message of these court cases is that you can regulate, to some extent, where, but you can't regulate how," Stolinas said. "I do feel unprepared. We're learning every day as we go along."

While Stolinas worries about stormwater and big trucks on the county's gravel roads, town officials are enjoying the boon. In Towanda, Bradford's county seat, restaurants are full and new businesses are opening.

"I think it's going to be a good thing for the town," said Towanda Mayor Richard Snell.

Sixty miles south, many gas companies have set up offices in Williamsport, breathing life into once-vacant downtown buildings. The renovated Holiday Inn offers world-class food with prices to match: a room, if one is even available, costs at least $145.

"It's like a convention that really hasn't left yet," said Jason Fink, vice president of economic development for the Williamsport/Lycoming County Chamber of Commerce.

Some residents say money is already changing the character of these towns. Linda Nealon, a Wyoming County preschool teacher, does not plan to lease her land. But, with landowners in her county commanding nearly $6,000 an acre and 20 percent royalties, she says, she's in the minority. And because she's aired concerns in public about drilling, she feels hostility from neighbors.

"I always felt very connected to my community. Now I feel very disconnected," she said. "It breaks my heart."

But residents and municipalities in the Marcellus Shale region don't have to throw up their hands, according to Walls, the professional planner. The gas companies will be in the state for a long time, and there is room to negotiate. He suggests local officials meet early with the companies and point out ecologically important areas and other places inappropriate for drilling. He also says local officials should update their land ordinances, talk to officials where drilling is already in full swing for advice, and get zoning if they don't already have it.

Lynn Senick, a Montrose activist who has organized an online forum to discuss drilling risks, is hoping the government can somehow slow down the process.

"It's such a travesty to take these pristine areas and ruin them," she said, "because once you start, you're never going to get them back."

NOTE: This comment posted elsewhere by Damascus Citizens for Sustainability:

In February of this year the PA Supreme Court has ruled in the two consolidated Pennsylvania state court appeals (Huntley v. Borough council of Oakmont and Range et al. vs. Salem Township) that local laws can’t conflict with the state regulations for oil and gas drilling, and so local regulations that govern the same features – defined in the opinion as “pertain[ing] to technical aspects of well functions and matters ancillary thereto (such as registration, bonding, and well site restoration)” – as the state Oil and Gas Act are preempted. However, importantly, the Court also ruled that local officials CAN use zoning to determine where drilling can happen within a municipality, as local zoning “serves different purposes from those enumerated in the Oil and Gas Act”.

Continue reading "Marcellus Shale: Pipe Dreams in Pennsylvania?"

and see the oil and gas timeline "Drilling for Resources" also in the December Bay Journal.

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!

Blossburg council votes to change zoning for ‘fracking’ water plant

What's wrong with this picture?

By CHERYL R. CLARKE
SUNGAZETTE.COM
SEPT. 15, 2009
(EDITORIAL COMMENTS By SPLASHDOWN! in red)

BLOSSBURG - Borough council voted 4-1 with one abstention to change the zoning classification on a 10-acre parcel of land on the site adjacent to and behind the Kwik Fill gas station from commercial to heavy industrial so a fracking water treatment facility can possibly be constructed there.

According to Taylor, the plant would remove "suspended solids" from the water used by the natural gas industry to "fracture" the Marcellus Shale natural gas "fairway" currently being developed in Tioga County.

The plant would then sell the water back to the gas companies for re-use.

...

Before taking the vote, council heard from several people at the meeting Monday night, many of whom voiced their opposition to the change, fearful of noise and disruption from increased truck traffic.

There also were unanswered questions about the chemicals used by the natural gas industry in its drilling operations for the natural gas trapped in the Marcellus Shale play.

(Now how come that is??? Is it because they're unanswerable, cause the industry is refusing to provide this information... and for instance, protecting it, even when 'the chemicals' raise serious health and safety issues, such as when they apparently killed 17 peacefully grazing cows in a Louisiana field? Read the latest about it HERE.)

Borough resident Jeri Deming asked council how much research it had done in the month since it tabled a decision on the change at its August meeting.

"The problem isn't with the water plant, it's with the drilling," she pointed out.

[Council president] Ogden told her and others that if they were concerned about the chemicals used in the drilling process they need to address the Department of Environmental Protection.

"Beyond making the zoning change we have no control over anything," he said.

Isn't this a bit like saying "Beyond making all traffic lights permanently green lights, we have no contol over anything (i.e., any accidents) that might happen." ???

As for the noise and dirt from increased truck traffic coming off Route 15, Ogden said that it would come whether a plant was constructed in the borough or not.

Here's comes a classic argument that ignores all other possibilities:

"If they don't build here they will build somewhere else, possibly Morris Run or Arnot, and they will have to use the same exit," Ogden said. "They are drilling all over the place. It's progress and it is inevitable," he said.

Richard "Rusty" Taylor, of Linden, vice president of Hydro-Recovery LP, a newly formed subsidiary of RNS Services, Blossburg, is working with the Williamson Land Co. to get the $6 million facility constructed. He said the zoning change was merely "the first step" of many approvals that would be needed before ground is ever broken for the plant.

One such permit needed is a "consumptive use" water permit from the Susquehanna River Basin Commission to use water from Johnson Creek, Taylor said.

The water is already being used by Ward Foundry for cooling before it is then discharged back into the creek, "slightly warmer than when it was taken out," Taylor said.

"Our intention is to intercept that water and use it for this purpose," he said, but no water from the operation will ever be discharged back into the creek, he added.

"This will be a zero-liquid discharge. We are not going to discharge into the stream. We treat it, dilute what remains and sell it back," he said.

Fact is, these millions and millions of gallons of water are too toxic to discharge anywhere. They're 'gone gallons'! GONE.

If the SRBC decides the creek cannot sustain that kind of usage, then the permit will not be issued, he said, and "may be an issue that prevents this facility from operating."

Taylor said the affirmative decision will allow the "process to continue."

Taylor recommended residents visit the Web site www.pamarcellus.com for more information about the drilling process and the chemicals used.

To read this article in its entirety, CLICK HERE.

www.pamarcellus.com is an industry website that presents a rosy picture of the industry and its activities. From the introductory propaganda:

"You'll find information on the Marcellus Shale formation, how we extract the natural gas and protect the environment, why we value the communities where we do business, and the opportunities that the Commonwealth and its residents can realize in the coming years and decades through natural gas exploration and production.

You'll also learn about the important issues being addressed by our Marcellus Shale Committee and the positive impacts natural gas drilling is already having on families, businesses and communities in many parts of Pennsylvania."

Heh. Almost any of the posts on this blog will give a clear idea of how the industry values the communities they invade, and the positive impacts families and communities are experiencing.

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!