Jul 1
2010

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COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA
Dept. of Environmental Protection
Commonwealth News Bureau
Room 308, Main Capitol Building
Harrisburg PA., 17120

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

07/1/2010

CONTACT:
Justin Fleming, Department of Agriculture
717-787-5085
Cattle from Tioga County Farm Quarantined after Coming in Contact with Natural Gas Drilling Wastewater

HARRISBURG — The Department of Agriculture announced today that it has quarantined cattle from a Tioga County farm after a number of cows came into contact with drilling wastewater from a nearby natural gas operation.

Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding said uncertainty over the quantity of wastewater the cattle may have consumed warranted the quarantine in order to protect the public from eating potentially contaminated beef.

“Cattle are drawn to the taste of salty water,” said Redding. “Drilling wastewater has high salinity levels, but it also contains dangerous chemicals and metals.  We took this precaution in order to protect the public from consuming any of this potentially contaminated product should it be marketed for human consumption.”

Redding said 28 head of cattle were included in the quarantine, including 16 cows, four heifers and eight calves. Those cattle were out to pasture in late April and early May when a drilling wastewater holding pond on the farm of Don and Carol Johnson leaked, sending the contaminated water into an adjacent field where it created a pool. The Johnsons had noticed some seepage from the pond for as long as two months prior to the leak.

The holding pond was collecting flowback water from the hydraulic fracturing process on a well being drilled by East Resources Inc.

Grass was killed in a roughly 30- x 40-foot area where the wastewater had pooled. Although no cows were seen drinking the wastewater, tracks were found throughout the pool. The wet area extended about 200-300 feet into the pasture.

The cattle had potential access to the pool for a minimum of three days until the gas company placed a snow fence around the pool to restrict access.

Subsequent tests of the wastewater found that it contained chloride, iron, sulfate, barium, magnesium, manganese, potassium, sodium, strontium and calcium.

Redding said the main element of concern is the heavy metal strontium, which can be toxic to humans, especially in growing children. The metal takes a long time to pass through an animal’s system because it is preferentially deposited in bone and released in the body at varying rates, dependent on age, growth status and other factors. Live animal testing was not possible because tissue sampling is required.

The secretary also added that the quarantine will follow the recommended guidelines from the Food Animal Residue Avoidance and Depletion Program, as follows:
• Adult animals: hold from food chain for 6 months.
• Calves exposed in utero: hold from food chain for 8 months.
• Growing calves: hold from food chain for 2 years.

In response to the leak, the Department of Environmental Protection issued a notice of violation to East Resources Inc. and required further sampling and site remediation. DEP is evaluating the final cleanup report and is continuing its investigation of operations at the drilling site, as well as the circumstances surrounding the leaking holding pond.

_________________End of press release___________________

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See also  http://un-naturalgas.org/weblog/?s=farming which contains:

Is hydrofracture compatible with farming? in which photos document tumors and ulcers on animals living near gas operations

Is hydrofracture compatible with farming? Part 2 in which details about the photos are provided

Is hydrofracture compatible with farming? Part 3 Video, in which Tweeti Blancett explains how gas operations have made her ranching operation nearly impossible

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Apr 19
2010

Shreveport Times (Louisiana) report:

Chesapeake, Schlumberger fined $22,000 each in cows’ deaths

By Vickie Welborn • vwelborn@gannett.com • March 25, 2010

KEITHVILLE – Chesapeake Energy Corp. and its contractor Schlumberger Technology Corp. each must pay $22,000 for violating state law in connection with the deaths almost a year ago of 17 cows at a natural gas well site.

Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality mailed identical letters spelling out the settlement agreement with both companies on Tuesday. Each was informed that it must advertise the agreement and invite public comment.

Both companies deny the material discharged from the natural gas well site killed the cows, deny violations were committed and neither makes an admission of liability, according to the settlement document signed by LDEQ Assistant Secretary Paul D. Miller. Included in each fine is $1,300 in enforcement costs.

In a joint statement from Chesapeake’s Kevin McCotter and Schlumberger’s Stephen T. Harris, both companies acknowledged today entering into a proposed settlement agreement.

. . . . .

Citizens noticed the dying cows April 28 in a pasture owned by Cecil and Tyler Williams on state Highway 169 near the corner of Keatchie-Marshall Road in south Caddo Parish. Witnesses reported hearing them bellowing and seeing them bleeding before they fell over dead.

At the time, Schlumberger, as a contractor of Chesapeake, was performing routine fracturing of the natural gas well. LDEQ determined during its investigation that fluid leaked from the well pad then ran into an adjacent pasture after a rain.

Read full story at:

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/20100325/NEWS01/100325018/Chesapeake-Schlumberger-fined-22-000-each-in-cows-deaths

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Sep 1
2009

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Must-see video:

“If I had done to my grazing permit what oil and gas has done, I would have been pulled off of it.  If I had created the surface disturbance, the erosion, the pollution of the water, the noxious weeds … I would not have a grazing permit.”

- Tweeti Blancett

http://www.sierraclub.org/scp/chronicles/episode4.aspx

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Aug 25
2009

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Dear Mr Cyr,

As a former farmer, I am appalled by these pictures.  Is there any definite evidence that the tumors on these animals was caused by hydrofracking by-products?  Is anyone doing any research on these incidents?  If so, and there are definite links to the hydrofracking compounds, then they should be presented to the DEC immediately!

Where were these pictures taken?  NY?  Pennsylvania?

I would appreciate any further information you can provide on these incidents.  Thank you.

——————–

Hello Carol,
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What the diseased calf and buck had in common was both were grazing on land where gas drilling hydrofracture had taken place. Those who believe it normal for beef and deer to be in such condition might consider that to be an irrelevant coincidence. The photo of the hideously deformed by cancer deer is from Louisiana. The photo of the diseased calf is from Arkansas. The Arkansas rancher who had leased his land for gas drilling reportedly had to dispose of his entire herd; while the herds of his neighbors who didn’t lease weren’t affected.
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For those informed of the types of chemicals that are used in hydrofracture, and the immense scale of use that would be required to actually extract the great amounts global corporations wish to extract of these last remnants of gas so tightly bound up within the material of the rock itself, unconventional gas drilling hydrofracture is clearly incompatible with agricultural use of land. If they get this gas, we will lose our clean water and eventually no longer be able to produce safe food.
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The DEC is well aware of the environmental unsoundness of this form of gas extraction. Unfortunately, due to corporate ownership of government, the DEC’s prime concern is maximizing energy resource extraction… not protecting the environment that all living things depend upon for health and well being.
With government compromised by corporate campaign contribution ownership, agencies created for the protection of the people are no longer performing that function.
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The responsible research is being done by scientists who are independent of corporate/government influence (see TEDX).
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TEDX Research – Chemicals in Natural Gas Operations:
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Recent incidents raise issues on drilling, environment:
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Aug 25
2009

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Consider the effect that toxic chemicals used in Halliburton’s unconventional gas drilling hydrofracture process have on animals just one step down in the food chain:

calfwithulcers

Ulcers in cattle raised near gas drilling operation

buckwithcancer

Aggressive cancer in deer grazing near gas well

If you leased your property to corporations that will use hydrofracture to extract the last remnants of gas trapped too tightly in stone, you have allowed them to site toxic waste production facilities on your property.

Chemicals added to the enormous quantities of fresh water to be taken from our rivers and streams will forever remove that water from the natural water cycle. All the water used in hydrofracture becomes toxic waste, which New York State is allowing the polluters to run through municipal sewage treatment plants that have no ability to remove the chemicals from the water. The corrupt state government is deviously permitting the toxics to run straight on through municipal treatment plants, to then be dumped into our lakes, rivers, and streams.

Unconventional gas drilling also produces tremendous amounts of air pollution: Ozone that destroys crops and trees; and fugitive gases that increase global warming. The net effect of unconventional (low permeability stone deposit) gas drilling is more — not less — pollution.

If Albany’s facilitation of this global corporate invasion and occupation is not stopped, then over the next few decades there will be hundreds of thousands of high volume high pressure hydrfracture drilling operations sited throughout the farming country of the Catskill, Central, and Southern Tier regions of New York State. Each of those drilling sites will several times remove millions of gallons of fresh water and convert it into toxic waste. The cumulative environmental impact over time will be devastating. Our water, ground and air will be polluted. Twenty years from now the only people who might remain living, in the then gas extraction industrial zones that were traditionally farming areas, will be those too poor to move.

Got neighbors?

Got children?

Got a conscience?

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Aug 11
2009

The Shreveport Times reports:

Recent incidents raise issues on drilling, environment
By Alisa Stingley
astingley@gannett.com

Blanche Jefferson lives in Shreveport, but her worries are all south of here.

Her granddaughter and five great-grandchildren live south of Spring Ridge and close to where 17 cows died after ingesting liquid that spilled from a nearby natural gas drilling rig site into a pasture.

“I’m mostly concerned … stuff might get in the water,” said Jefferson, 79, adding that the family depends on well water.

The environmental impact of drilling has her so concerned that she’s rethinking whether she wants to lease mineral rights from property she owns in that area to an energy company in the future.

“Money is nothing if something happened to them,” she says of the children.

. . . . . Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality is reviewing several area incidents:

April: Seventeen cows died in a south Caddo Parish pasture after ingesting a liquid found pooled in the pasture, a spill from a nearby Chesapeake Energy drilling site. No reports on what killed the cows have been made public.

May: Fifteen Naborton families evacuated when a Chesapeake well east of Mansfield began blowing natural gas into the air. The air quality was monitored, and a Chesapeake spokesman said there was no threat to public safety or the environment. According to DEQ files on the case, 50 million standard cubic feet of methane gas — the main component of natural gas — was discharged after a casing valve failed.

DEQ doesn’t require notification of the release of 1 million standard cubic feet but does require notification of more than 2.5 million in a planned release. The Naborton release, however, was unplanned. Otis Randle, manager of the DEQ regional office here, said 50 million is “a lot of gas.” But he said people would not suffer health problems unless they breathed in a concentrated amount.

The main risk to nearby residents is the potential for explosion, and methane causes an adverse impact on the planet’s ozone layer, since methane is a greenhouse gas. The DEQ report on the Naborton well said the release did not have an off-site environmental impact. (un-naturalgas.org note:  guess the atmosphere doesn’t count)

July: A natural gas well blowout occurred in north Sabine Parish, about six miles east of Converse. No residents were evacuated. The well was owned by Chesapeake, whose spokesman said there was no threat to the public or environment, and air quality was being monitored as a precaution. DEQ’s regional office in Shreveport investigated the blowout, finding it “pretty routine,” said Randle. No details on the amount released were available.

There are environmental concerns beyond reported incidents too:

Ground and surface water issues have arisen, particularly in south Caddo and DeSoto parishes, which heavily depend on the fragile Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer. On the last day of June, about 1,000 customers of South DeSoto Water System had no water while workers replaced a pump. Officials wondered publicly if a natural gas drilling operation just 500 feet from their water well was making their equipment work harder to pump.

. . . . .

Many of the Web sites of the major competitors in the Haynesville Shale tout their dedication to preserving the environment.

Chesapeake’s page notes that it is a key contributor to The Nature Conservancy, and “our objective is to leave each site in as good, if not better, condition than when we started drilling.”

The U.S. Department of Interior recognized Devon Energy with a national award for its outstanding environmental and safety performance in the Gulf of Mexico.

And EnCana’s page notes: “We are looking at opportunities to recycle water and this option will become more viable as the play is further developed.”

While the proliferation of drilling in the Haynesville Shale is making environmental issues more visible and prominent, such concerns didn’t just arrive with the shale. Two cases from DEQ files:

In June, a Carthage, Texas, man pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of illegally discharging a pollutant into Louisiana waters after ordering a truck driver to discharge well treatment fluid into a Natchitoches Parish creek in April 2006. The man was sentenced to 24 months probation and agreed to pay a $5,000 criminal fine.

“Unfortunately, economic incentives drive environmental crime,” said Jeffrey T. Nolan, DEQ’s criminal investigations division manager.

In August 2006, DEQ responded to a landowner’s complaint that a well site where Winchester Energy was operating near Frierson had released at least four barrels of saltwater from a fracturing tank. According to DEQ files, the company had not contacted DEQ about the spill, which violates regulations. Also, the landowner said he asked Winchester to clean up the site but it refused. A few days later, DEQ noticed a cleanup in progress at the site, where vegetation had been killed in an area about 20 feet by 100 feet. DEQ in April this year deemed the site OK and did not take any action against Winchester.

For complete article, visit:

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/20090809/NEWS01/908090333/1060

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Jun 28
2009

From The Shreveport Times:

The ‘stuff’ killed the cows, sheriff says

• Prator questions whether drilling company has reported incident.

By Vickie Welborn • vwelborn@gannett.com • June 25, 2009

That’s Caddo Sheriff Steve Prator’s assessment of what contributed to the deaths of 17 cows in late April near a natural gas drilling location south of Spring Ridge.

Until now, none of the state agencies involved in the ongoing inquiry into the incident has stated what caused the cattle to drop dead in Skipper Williams Jr.’s pasture on state Highway 169.

The deaths were reported at some point after a liquid leaked from the well, which was in the completion process, and pooled into a low area accessible to the cows. The substance later was determined to contain elevated chlorides, oil, grease and some organic compounds.

But no state agency took responsibility for testing the animals. Results from a necropsy performed by Williams’ private veterinarian are unavailable.

On Wednesday, Prator gathered representatives of his and Caddo District Attorney Charles Scott’s offices, the Caddo Commission, state police and the state Environmental Quality, Natural Resources and Agriculture and Forestry departments in one room to review all the reports connected to the incident.

“We went over for an hour exactly what everybody’s response was, and everybody’s response and cooperation was really good,” the sheriff said. “We responded to the scene well. When everyone found out about it we all worked together very well.

“We have determined — although no one agency except me will say this — by piecing everything together, there was a spill from the site that ran off of the site and that was ingested by the cows and that’s what caused the cows to die.”

State veterinarian Michael Barrington confirmed the cows’ deaths were neither natural nor caused by disease, a release from Prator’s office states.
. . . . .
Still undetermined is whether the spill was reported and, if so, whether it was reported in a timely manner. “We contend it should have been reported. And the timeliness of it we’re investigating,” Prator said.
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State police, the sheriff’s office and Environmental Quality still are looking into the timeliness of the reporting. Findings of the sheriff’s office and state police will be turned over to Scott for review. Environmental Quality will move its report through its channels.

Environmental Quality was notified via its hotline when Chesapeake Energy learned of the dead cattle. And over the next 72 hours, the company worked with Schlumberger, the sheriff’s office and other agencies involved to investigate the incident, McCotter said.
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“While Chesapeake, Schlumberger and others have conducted water and soil analysis, Chesapeake and Schlumberger have not had access to the cattle owners’ necropsy and toxicology reports and have, therefore, been unable to draw any conclusions as to the cause of the cattle deaths,” McCotter said.
. . . . .
“If at the time it happened proper notification had been made, there are chances cows would still be alive right now,” the sheriff said. “In this case, this was cows. How unfortunate. But what if it was children?”

For complete story, see: http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/20090625/NEWS01/906250326/0/L/The–stuff–killed-the-cows–sheriff-says

For an important post on gas drilling’s effects on livestock and farmers, see also:
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/amall/oil_and_gas_impacts_on_livesto.html

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May 28
2009

From

http://arklatexhomepage.com/content/fulltext/?cid=62992

Update On Dead Cows In Caddo Parish
by Erica Bennett
Thursday, May 7, 2009 @06:16pm CST

“The scene of a cow pasture in south Caddo Parish Wednesday was calm, uneventful and peaceful. But, that was not the case a week ago. A spill from a natural gas well caused at least 20 cows to drop dead.
. . . . .

“C.C. Canady is head over the United Neighbors for Oil and Gas Rights in south Caddo Parish. Canady says other animals have died near this site before, and they’ve had problems with the oil and gas companies for quite some time.

“Tammy Sepulvado’s 3 day old calf died the same day the other cows did. She says she has alot of money invested in her animals, so she can’t afford anymore problems from the nearby drilling site.
. . . . .

“Early tests by the Department of Environmental Quality revealed high levels of chloride in and adjacent to the cow pasture. DEQ representatives tell us Chesapeake Energy or Shlumberger are responsible.

“‘The only thing that we’re really waiting on is something definitive of who it was -  somebody did have a release. After that we will take some kime of enforcement action,’ Otis Randle with the DEQ said.”

“We asked Chesapeake Energy if it was responsible for the spill and a representative sent us this response. ‘All results are preliminary and inconclusive, so it would be innappropriate at this time to speculate on the cause of death and responsible party.’

“The DEQ is expecting their results back sometime Wednesday or Thursday. Once they’re in, they’ll know what exact chemical killed the cows and who is responsible.”

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