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Tags: gas drilling, hydraulic fracturing, Marcellus, natural gas, unconventional play
Report from Seneca Daily Journal, Seneca, South Carolina:
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By Andrew Moore (Contact / Staff Bio)
July 8, 2009
ANDERSON — “United States District Judge G. Ross Anderson Jr. has instructed Schlumberger Technology Corporation attorney John Hanson to formally submit a design plan for removing two dams on Twelve Mile River by the end of August, putting a serious alteration on the company’s own timelines of providing the final design by November.
“A public hearing on Tuesday at the federal courthouse in Anderson highlighted Judge Anderson’s disdain for Schlumberger’s failure to remove the dams along with polychlorinated biphenyl-contaminated sediment more than three years after he instructed the company to do so in a 2006 consent decree.
“For more than two decades, a manufacturing facility on the river pumped hundreds of thousands of pounds of PCBs into the river’s tributaries. The river feeds into Lake Hartwell, the bottom of which is covered by PCB-contaminated sediment from the river’s toxic flow. Removing hundreds of yards of sediment from the river, coupled with eliminating two of the three old dams there, would allow fresh sediment to naturally flow and settle on top of the toxic sediments at the bottom of Hartwell, which has a ban on eating fish caught there.
“Anderson has given Schlumberger until July 2010 to remove the dams, and is also demanding the company turn over all quarterly progress reports on the project to him so that he may in turn immediately release them to the media and general public.
“Anderson said he would assume full control of the project after Schlumberger’s apparent circumventing of his 2006 order.
“’I’m not an engineer,’ he said. ‘But this is what you get into when you stoop to fooling a federal court.’
“Brad Wyche, executive director of conservation group Upstate Forever, told Anderson he also believed the delays in the project were intentional.
“’I think it’s clear what’s been going on,’ Wyche said.
“At the heart of the delays were a series of changes in project managers as well as contractors for the job. Joe Carroll of Restoration Systems, the contractor initially tapped for the project, told Anderson the contract was terminated when he was reluctant to sign an 85-page amendment to an originally 15-page agreement.
“’They may live to regret that,’ Anderson said of Schlumberger’s departure from the plan consistent with his consent decree.
“Lawrence Dyck, a retired Clemson University science professor and Twelve Mile River resident, said he was skeptical about the supposed progress Schlumberger had made.
“’We’re no closer to removing those dams than when you signed those decrees in 2006,’ Dyck said. ‘We’re maybe farther away.’
“Anderson emphasized at the end of the hearing that there was no more time to “fool around” with his order, and that he was taking the reins of the project himself.
“’Frankly, I don’t trust you,’ he said, as he looked toward Schlumberger’s legal team.”
Source:
http://www.upstateforever.org/newsviews_ufnews.html
http://www.upstateforever.org/newsviews_ufnews/UFN_2009/ufn090708SDJ_JudgeTakesReinsInRiverPollutionSaga.pdf
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Tags: Horseheads, hydraulic fracturing, Marcellus, Schlumberger
Horseheads High School, 7pm
401 Fletcher St.
Horseheads, NY 14845
Contributed:
“The time to make a difference is tonight, 7PM at Horseheads High School.
“For the village of Horseheads, as lead agency, to have the ability to allow a huge corporation like Schlumberger to build a giant facility serving a 300-mile gas drilling radius with EXPLOSIVES, RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL AND CONCENTRATED TOXIC CHEMICALS across the street from a school , without requiring a full EIS is appalling. The truck traffic has been estimated in THE HUNDREDS of trucks from the site to and from the facility PER DAY. This three hundred mile radius includes most, if not all of us, but we have absolutely no voice.
“THE VILLAGE OF HORSEHEADS IS NOT REQUIRING AN ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT.
“All for a few hundred “jobs”, most of them dangerous and unpleasant. Is NYS’s economy so bad we are reduced to allowing rapacious businesses to flagrantly abuse the most vulnerable of us all? If natural gas extraction by unconventional means must occur as part of a well-thought out and soberly constructed NYS energy plan, then LET US DO IT METHODICALLY AND CAREFULLY.
“Instead, these companies have used highly financed, stealthy, and forceful techniques to get their way, from their cronies at the top to the landmen sharks who coerced landowner-victims into signing leases they had no context of understanding.
“The world is upside down. We don’t cherish our agricultural areas, our forests, our fresh water supplies in this country or this state anymore. And now, we see that many people are OKAY WITH NOT CHERISHING THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF OUR CHILDREN, EITHER.
“From a Horseheads area resident and friend: “Even if people don’t want to speak, they need to attend in order to help fill the room and to hear what others say. But those who are willing to just make one simple point of their choice (especially about immediate air pollution and health hazards from Diesel exhaust and later water contamination) should be strongly encouraged to do so. Call some friends. Arrange car pools. The press will be there because it’s been announced repeatedly in both papers, and TV should be there, too. This is the only chance to speak publicly on this topic before the joint board workshop on Sept. 15. Then they will probably sometime afterwards in private make their decision of a positive or negative declaration of environmental impact (with subsequent automatic requirement of EIS or not) and the Village Board of Trustees hold its official vote on it at its next regular meeting (Sept 24).”
“So please show up, and show that you care about the runaway railroad train that is the oil and gas drilling industry moving into NYS without appropriate impact studies, oversight and transparency..”
Tags: Horseheads, hydraulic fracturing, Marcellus, Schlumberger
Published: September 9, 2009
BY JAMES LOEWENSTEIN
TOWANDA – Gas drilling activity is resulting in an increase in crime
in the borough, the borough police chief said on Monday.
The issue came up at Monday’s Towanda Borough Council meeting, when
borough council member Bob McLinko asked Police Chief Mitch Osman
whether the “extracurricular activity in the borough, along with
population increase, has resulted in problems.”
By extracurricular activity, McLinko was apparently referring to
drinking at the bars in Towanda.
Osman replied that police calls have gone up as workers in the gas
drilling industry have moved into the county, “especially the severity
of the calls.”
In the past, you could probably predict which nights would be quiet in
town, the police chief said.
“We can’t do that any more,” he said. “It’s definitely busy.”
. . . . .
Osman said…that he could use two additional police officers.
Complete story:
http://www.thedailyreview.com/news/police_chief_gas_drilling_causing_increase_in_crime_locally
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Tags: crime, gas drilling, Marcellus, PA, Pennsylvania, Towanda
This isn’t “misinformation. ”
It’s not “misrepresenting the facts”
about “responsible gas exploration.”
It’s just what’s already actually happening in and to Wetzel County, WestVirginia.
The following post is copied with permission from
http://sootypaws.livejournal.com/15049.html
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Wetzel County
We’ve seen and heard a presentation by Ray Renaud of the Wetzel County Action Group about what’s happening in north Wetzel County in northern West Virginia (just below the panhandle) where there’s a tremendous amount of drilling activity taking place. Right now the wells being drilled are for Marcellus shale but other companies are getting ready to move in including CNX which is an operator specializing in coalbed methane.
This is a very rural area with only a few roads and those are narrow, about 10 feet wide. Because of all the drilling there is a lot of traffic as equipment and materials are hauled to and from sites. Twenty-four hours a day, as many as 47 trucks an hour.
The well sites are huge with pads covering acres and pits just about as large. Multiple horizontal wells are being drilled and fractured on each pad before the operator moves to a new site. Fracturing requires large amounts of water and sand.
The scale of everything and its effect on the community and environment is hard to imagine. A copy of the presentation as a PowerPoint document is available online but it is a large download, almost 50 MB. http://www.sendspace.com/file/hlpich
Ray said we could use some of the photos from the presentation.
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The roads are narrow and wind up and down steep hills. Most of the equipment is much heavier than the roads were designed and built for — cars and light trucks. This is a holding structure for sand used in fracturing a well. There will be a large number of these tanks on the pad. |
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Because of all the traffic there’s a lot of accidents. This truck has rolled over, its cab partially crushed on the guard rail. We wrote a post a while back about |
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Traffic jams can last for hours and hours. These trucks are parked in front of the volunteer fire department, blocking fire trucks if there were to be an emergency. |
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The scale of everything is either huge, large or enormous. In the foreground on the right is a three-story barn. In the middle ground is a large volume pit holding fracture fluid.
Operators “dewater” rivers and streams for all the water used in drilling and fracturing, turning good water into waste. |
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This is a photo taken at night showing just a portion of a pad during drilling a horizontal well. Drilling goes on day and night. Once two wells are drilled on this pad the equipment will be moved to another pad to drill two more wells. Eventually there will be 6 wells on this pad. |
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The EPA waived sedimentation control requirements for the oil and gas industry. This means that oil and gas sites don’t need to use silt fencing or other control to protect streams, rivers and lakes. The rivers in Wetzel County are now running thick slurry instead of clear water. |
Our own gas well study has focused on problems at well sites and older ones at that. What’s happening in Wetzel County, West Virginia, and in parts of Pennsylvania, Texas and Arkansas and a host of other places is the future writ large as the oil and gas industry converts rural America into an industrial wasteland.
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Visit original post at:
http://sootypaws.livejournal.com/15049.html
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Tags: accidents, drilling, exploration, extraction, Marcellus, natural gas, traffic, trucks, Wetzel County, WV
…You wonder if they wondered why.
Smells like… astroturf, don’t you think?
___________________Credit all photos Cecile A Lawrence (c)____________________
Tags: astroturfing, Bainbridge, coalition, Marcellus, our rights our land our future, rally
Like water into wine, like the loaves and fishes, somehow there were more people at the rally than arrived or left – even resorting to adding those 2 figures together. This handful of people who attended a coalition rally in Bainbridge on August 23 were, through the magic of reporting, turned into “two thousand.”
These pictures were taken at the height of the attendance, not early in the day.
On the evidence, it could easily be concluded that most of the people there were family members of organizers – or selling something. Look at all the company and bank reps standing around with no one to peddle their wares to.
It’s hard to conclude that in real terms, this thing was anything other than a bust. But when you can get the media to report that 2000 people showed up, and then you can take the newspaper article with the bloated figures to your politicians to pressure them to betray the majority population of their constituencies, suddenly, the sow’s ear becomes a silk purse.
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Kudos to the voice of caution – who evidently wasn’t standing alone on the fringe of the field, as reported by the media.
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___________________Credit all photos Cecile A Lawrence (c)____________________
Tags: astroturfing, Bainbridge, coalition, Marcellus, our rights our land our future, rally
http://bradfordera.com/articles/2009/09/03/news/doc4a9f350208adc444487486.txt
Tags: Bradford Township, Burch, DEP, hazardous fluids, leaks, Marcellus, McKean County, PA, Pennsylvania, propane, Schreiner, stripper, VOCs, water, water wells, zoning
http://www.state.nj.us/drbc/dockets/D-2009-20-1.htm
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Tags: Chesapeake, DRBC, hearing, Marcellus, water withdrawal
Letter published today in the Cleveland Sun Star Courier:
by James W. Cowden, Guest Columnist
Monday August 31, 2009, 9:24 AM
This is being sent as a result of the several letters on oil and gas drilling that have appeared in your pages over the past month.
The other paper has also published material including a column on the financial benefits to Ohio.
What has not been publicized has been the impact of oil and gas drilling on the natural resources and the public health of Ohio and its citizens.
I have been a consultant on environmental and resource issues for over 30 years. I have worked with Ohio EPA and the Division of Oil and Gas to curb and control the problems associated with the industry for a number of those years.
I have written ordinances for many cities in Northeast Ohio to allow them to control drilling in their communities. I have written a technical guide book for Ohio EPA. I have testified in court cases against drillers and their haphazard waste disposal practices, their drilling proposals, and the lack of adequate regulation.
The development of oil and gas wells is inherently a dangerous activity. Although there are few deaths and injuries reported, they do occur.
For instance, two men were killed in Marion County last October by an explosion of a crude oil storage tank.
The industry has too little concern for public health, for our groundwater resources, and for facts.
Natural gas is a highly compressible, highly expansible mixture of hydrocarbons, with approximate percentages of Methane-80%, Ethane-7%, Propane-6%, Butane-2.5%, Pentane-3% and Isobutane 1.5%.
In addition, natural gas may contain quantities of nitrogen, helium, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide and water vapor. In Pennsylvania, methane related to the natural gas industry has contaminated water wells in at least seven counties since 2004.
In one case, methane was detected in water sampled over 15 square miles. In another, a methane leak led to an explosion that killed a couple and their 17 month old grandson. These cases were linked to newly drilled, active natural gas wells.
Essentially, the methane migration was linked to improper construction of gas wells that allowed gas to seep out of the well structures and into water supplies.
An adequate inspection system would have prevented these accidents from happening. Since the passage of HB 278 by our feckless state legislature, neither regulation nor inspection has been carried out adequately by the state.
Groundwater constitutes the most important mineral resource annually extracted from beneath the earth’s surface.
Water is an economic resource for Ohio and preservation is an economic necessity. Groundwater monitoring in the state is inadequate to detect water quality problems.
A product of oil and gas well drilling is brine.
What’s so bad about brines?
Brines are too concentrated, they have too much sodium and there is far too much of it, Clinton brines have 175,000-210,000 parts per million of sodium.
For comparison, ocean brines have only 18,000-35,000 ppm of sodium.
The USPHS standard at one time was a maximum of 250 ppm. One volume of Clinton brine can raise 800 volumes of fresh water above the 250 ppm limit.
There is no adequate program to address lack of disposal capacity. I do not have data beyond the 1980’s but I have no reason to believe the ratios have changed.
At that time, there were 56,000 producing wells with an average brine production of 184,000 barrels with an estimated injection well capacity of 36,000 barrels. The excess was 148,000 barrels.
That is roughly 6.2 million gallons, which if dispersed could make 4.8 billion gallons of fresh water unsuitable for use.
I tried to get legislation passed to prohibit brine in surface or groundwater in such quantity as to cause:
1. Taste and odor problems
2. Exceedance of safe drinking water standards or limit of 100 ppm of sodium
3. Damage or injury to public health or safety to include damage to the environment beyond the immediate site of drilling and storage of oil and gas.
4. This would include exposure to benzene, ethyl benzene, alkyl benzene, toluene, xylene, naphthalene, and 2,4 dimethyl-phenol that exceed drinking water standards. Also exposure to concentrations of silver, arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, mercury, lead and zinc that exceed drinking water standards.
This came from “Toxicological Analysis of Ohio Brine Constituents and Their Potential Impact on Human Health.” By Dr. Gerald Poje.
Regulation 1501-9-9-02 at one time required all reasonable means to safeguard against hazards to life, limb and property. It should require notification of local fire officials of fire, explosion, major gas leaks, water and air pollution and training on how to cope.
There are a number of recommendations I would make to amend state law and regulations and require compliance.
First would be to abolish the subservience of the legislature to the oil and gas industry and think about the public they supposedly serve.
There is a need to redefine the ground surface water system and restructure the approach from correction to prevention.
But unless the Division of Mineral Resources is mandated to protect human health and drinking water and is given the funds and staff to accomplish this, both public health and the economy will continue to suffer.
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James W. Cowden is a resident of Brecksville. He has been a researcher, educator, coordinator and consultant at Kent State University and Hiram College and has written extensively and provided expert testimony on a range of topics including water resources planning, pollution control, public health and public involvement in policy development.
http://www.cleveland.com/sunstarcourier/index.ssf/2009/08/brecksville_resident_weighs_in.html
Tags: brine, contamination, DMR, explosion, gas leak, groundwater, Marcellus, natural gas, OH, regulators
From Hedgehog Lane, Bradford Township, McKean County, PA:
“There is a Crossett truck here this morning. The second that I saw it pull up, I closed every window because I knew what was coming. My house is currently full of vapors that are making me nauseous….even with every window closed, this is the result. What more can I do???? There is nowhere in my house that I can go to escape the fumes, I certainly can’t go outside, and I have no vehicle. So I am forced to sit here light-headed, dizzy, and with a headache sucking in these fumes. This is the third time in the past 6 days that we have been exposed to this severity of stench. This is a very real problem that is going on way too long.”
“I spent 2.5 hours in my basement because the fumes were so bad in my home while a propane truck filled up from the stripper plant. It’s the 3rd time in 6 days that the stench has been so bad, but today was by far the worst! The basement even stunk, just not as bad as the rest of the house…I have had calls from neighbors over a pretty large area that say that they experienced the vapors today as well.”
Tags: Bradford Township, Marcellus, McKean County, PA, propane stripper, truck
PA DEP Investigating Natural Gas Well Leak In Lycoming County
WILLIAMSPORT, Pa., July 28 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection is investigating a natural gas well leak at an East Resources well in McNett Township, Lycoming County.
“East Resources is cooperating fully with our investigation, and has already implemented measures to stop the leak,” said DEP Northcentral Regional Director Robert Yowell. “DEP staff will continue to work closely with East Resources and local emergency responders to ensure the safety of nearby residents.”
DEP was alerted to the problem last week by a citizen who reported discoloration of water in a tributary to Lycoming Creek and in a nearby spring. DEP staff investigated on July 24 what was then a suspected sediment problem in the creek.
On Monday, DEP received a report of possible natural gas bubbling from the tributary. DEP staff collected water samples from the spring and the tributary. Those samples are being analyzed for methane and other parameters in the department’s laboratory in Harrisburg. DEP staff confirmed the bubbling in two Lycoming Creek tributaries earlier today.
East Resources personnel monitored 18 private water wells in the nearby area that same day, and are providing water to four homes. They also monitored methane levels in the homes.
East Resources has three wells in the area, which are in the Oriskaney [sic] geologic formation, and not in the Marcellus Shale area. Two of the wells are drilled and completed, but not yet in service due to the lack of gathering lines in the area. The third well was previously plugged and abandoned.
East Resources began flaring the Delciotto #2 well on Monday to reduce pressure from the natural gas, and is currently working to flare the other two wells. The company is investigating the possibility that a casing failure in part of the Delciotto #2 well caused the natural gas leak. The company is attempting to seal off the leak with drilling mud to stop the natural gas from escaping.
CONTACT: Daniel T. Spadoni (570) 327-3659
SOURCE Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
Tags: contamination, DEP, gas drilling, groundwater, leak, Lycoming County, Marcellus, McNett Township, natural gas, PA, water wells
We don’t have to wonder how New York State could be affected by HD/HVHF (horizontal drilling / high-volume hydraulic fracturing. All we have to do is look at what’s happened – and happening – in other states. Here’s a voice from the Barnett Shale in Texas:
“We have learned that the industry we are dealing with is a mafia within itself, a criminal industry that has the backing of government at all levels. All of the communication the public receives from this mafia-esque industry comes through “public relations” people–that is to say, paid professional liars.
“Our advice to you is don’t ever believe a word they say about important issues. Don’t ever enter into negotiations with them. Any time you are forced to deal with them, be advised that nothing they refuse to put into a contract is an enforceable commitment.
“Once you have signed a mineral lease and the driller has spudded in a bit, you have become a junior co- owner of your property with no power over what is done on the surface or below.”
- Jerry Lobdill, http://www.fwcando.org/, http://fw-credo.com/
Tags: industry, lease, lies, Marcellus
Does Schreiner’s ‘right’ to extract natural gas supersede residents’ right to clean water and safe homes? And does the industry’s ‘right’ to process natural gas supersede the neighborhood’s right to clean air?
These folks didn’t move into this neighborhood knowing their air and water was going to be ruined. They had good water and air. Drilling and processing of (un)natural gas by someone else has taken their property.
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June 9, 2009
“Our neighbor who has been out of his house for 11 weeks brought a sample of his water from his newly drilled well up to our house, and it still catches on fire- we got video again. Plus, now there is some weird black stuff in it- it’s a little like oil but a little like charcoal or something. Very strange. Schreiner apparently didn’t know that our neighbor already tested his water, because he told him that he has great water now and can move back in! I just can’t believe that. Also, it appears that Schreiner has lied to State Representative Martin Causer’s secretary Rhonda because he told her that the Bailey family was already back in their home- definitely not true.
“Another neighbor told me that he heard that Schreiner has been kicked out of New York state and Sheffield, PA for bad practice before. I’d sure like to try and find those details.
“Another neighbor has a new well and a reverse osmosis system, and his water is still bad. DEP alluded to the idea that as long as they can get good water out of one tap in the house for drinking, then that will be all that Schreiner has to do. Ridiculous.
“The stripper plant is still way too noisy and the vapors coming off of it are not getting any better. The couple of neighbors who have detectors in their homes (I think CO2 and methane) have had the alarms go off several times. These are issues that we are going to stress at the next township meeting on the 22nd.”
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June 16, 2009
“My neighbor who has been out of his home for 12 weeks now was forced to move back in tonight. His water still catches on fire, but Schreiner said that he’s done and won’t pay for a hotel anymore. DEP claims that it’s perfectly safe… even though when my neighbor runs the washer there is free methane left in the machine after the laundry is done! Unbelievable. Schreiner says he put $100,000 into addressing our problems, and even though not one house has their issues fixed, he is “done” and if we want more we just have to sue him. He’s even been giving State Representative Causer’s secretary crap telling her to stop calling him with our complaints and that he is just going to stop answering his phone.”
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It’s time to take the oil & gas industry in hand.
Tags: Bradford Township, contaminated, DEP, gas drilling, groundwater, hydraulic fracturing, Marcellus, McKean County, methane, PA, property values, Schreiner, water wells
And another critique:
“AD 44 KIngs County Assemblyman Brennan’s A08748 is a remodeled version of Brennan’s earlier A01322.
“A08748 would provide Jim Crow environmentalism… separate and unequal protection.
“Under the provisions of Brennan’s A08748, the waters of the Catskill/Delaware Watershed, which was colonized by and for the disproportionately politically powerful New York City, would be exclusively and absolutely protected from Halliburton’s high pressure chemical hydrofracking process; while the air, water and soil, that all the far less powerful individuals throughout the Southern Tier of New York State depend upon for their health and well being, would be relentlessly assaulted by that same process that Brennan clearly understands can’t ever be safe… no matter how it is done, nor who is watching it while it is done.
“Fact is, the DEC hasn’t regulated gas drilling. The drillers manage, monitor and investigate themselves… on the corporate honor system. Even if all the smoke surrounding Brennan’s bill were to remain, if it were passed without any amendments, it would then be just the soot of empty promises. The thoroughly corporate compromised Albany government would never allow the DEC to have sufficient staff to effectively protect our environment from corporate short-term profit based practices. Brennan’s bill only serves to aid the DEC in regulating and neutralizing dissent.
“The goal of Brennan’s bill is for New York City to be able to continue to drink reliably pure water, while the entire Southern Tier (outside the Catskill/Delaware Watershed) is inexorably Iraqified to provide stone gas for New York City to burn.
“New York City should use its enormously disproportionate power within New York State to protect the water of all New Yorkers — everywhere within this state — by providing state legislation banning the stone gas extraction Halliburton horizontal hydrofracking everywhere within New York State.
“In interpreting provision 2 of 23-2901 of Brennan’s bill,
‘2. Natural gas drilling shall not be permitted within the watershed of the Delaware River, in any recharge area of a sole source aquifer, in any area where groundwater contributes a significant base flow to surface water sources of drinking water, and in any other area where the department shall find presents a significant threat of hydraulic fracturing compounds entering into a significant source of drinking water’
it’s important to first grasp the meaning of the last sentence of the first paragraph of Section 1 (its **INTENT** clause):
“‘Legislative intent. 1. The legislature finds that the process used to stimulate natural gas extraction referred to as hydraulic fracturing utilizes components that are often toxic, that are non-biodegradable, and that are virtually impossible to remove once they enter the natural environment. Thus, they pose such a high level of environmental risk that the policy of the state must be to insure [sic] they are excluded from any area that is significant for public drinking water resources or any other area that is environmentally sensitive.’
“a) The intent of Brennan’s bill is clearly to protect special people’s places only, while corporate invaders are allowed to occupy and exploit those of other people, who are not so special. Every provision of the bill must be interpreted in that light. It’s easy to enforce a complete and absolute ban on drilling within a specific area special to special people. It will not be possible for the DEC to ever actually protect the health and well being of all those not so special people, at hazard from the thousands of stone gas drilling sites industry desired over the vast area in which the Halliburton process would still be allowed by the Brennan bill.
“b) Note the interesting ambiguity of that provision 2, of 23-2901 of Brennan’s bill, which you quoted. It’s just one sentence, using commas… not semicolons. Is it intended as a list of different places? That should use semicolons. The 1st clause is independent. The other 3 that follow might be fully dependent (embedded or subordinate to the 1st clause: i.e. related to the watershed of the Delaware River)… which a contextual reading of that bill (and a knowledge of its precursor) implies. But let us be generous, and assume that each clause in that sentence does refer to discretely different situations. The first (“watershed of the Delaware River”) is quite explicit. The others are vague and subject to proofs necessarily provided by those targeted for drilling… proofs that places where their water comes from are “significant” “public” and “environmentally sensitive” too. Even without knowing the history of this bill, it is obvious that its goal is an absolute ban for protection for New York City’s water supply, while allowing for as much stone gas drilling as possible outside the watershed that New York City is dependent upon. The recent inclusion of “sole source aquifers” is merely an act of political expedience, cynically calculated to gain support for the bill in those few population areas within the Marcellus formation region, that are supplied by the already designated sole source aquifers (see map): http://www.epa.gov/Region2/water/aquifer/
“c) Note that the one and only river mentioned anywhere in Brennan’s bill, which its 12 sponsors deem worthy of mention to be worthy of any particular protection within all of New York State, is the Delaware River (the river upon which New York City is greatly dependent, and near which river a great number of relatively affluent New York City residents have 2nd homes). Why doesn’t Brennan’s bill also specifically call for the same protection within the watersheds of any of the other rivers in New York State, like the Susquehanna, or the Genesee? Why doesn’t it call for the same protection for the watersheds of **ALL** the rivers within New York State? Why doesn’t it call for the same protection of **ALL** watersheds and **ALL** wells within New York State? The reason is clear. It’s a bill designed to absolutely protect the water of those having more political power, while allowing the air, water and soil of those not having as much political power to be jeopardized by the hazard of the Halliburton process… while ignoring the reality that the strong share the same environment as the weak… that what is done to the weak will some day eventually affect the strong too.
“d) Note that the qualifier “significant” is used 3 times in that one sentence of the Brennan bill that you quoted. Who will actually be deciding who and what is significant?
“Consider the first complete sentence in the NYS Constitution’s Article 1 (Bill of Rights) Section 11: ‘No person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws of this state or any subdivision thereof.’”
David J. Cyr
Delhi, NY
GPNYS SC member – Delaware County
see also pdf: brennan-a8748-merits-and-demerits1
Tags: A08748, Brennan, Marcellus, unequal protection
Meanwhile, from just on the other side of the hill from Bradford Township, 1490newsblog.blogspot.com reports:
“Some Foster Township residents seem to be having a problem Hedgehog Lane residents have been dealing with for months – oil and gas drilling affecting their water wells.
“Interstate Parkway resident Joe Piganelli told Foster Township Supervisors Monday night that the water in his neighbor’s well turned brown, but DEP told him his well had gone bad. However, it went bad the day fracking was done in the area.
“Piganelli asked that the supervisors contact the drilling company.
“‘If the three of you got a hold of US Energy and said ‘Hey, what the heck’s going on?’ … We had pristine water and now it’s garbage. Pretty soon you’ll be able to drink out of your sewer better than you can your water.’”
. . . . .
“Piganelli also raised several concerns about drilling company trucks and what they’re doing on the roads.
“One concern is speeding.
“‘They’re going fast up there at 2, 3, 4, 5 o’clock in the morning,’ he said. ‘And I’ll tell ya – they’re raising hell.’
“Another concern he has is the drivers using Jake Brakes when they come down the hill.
“He also said they’re leaving mud on the road, which could be dangerous. He specifically mentioned driving out of Allegany State Park when it’s raining.
“‘If you hit that mud that they’ve left there … When I worked for Halliburton we had to clean up the highway,’ he said, adding that if they came out of the woods and had mud and dirt all over their trucks they had to clean the road.
“‘There’s no reason they can’t do that,’ he said.”
The same blog post reports this irony:
“Also Monday night, supervisors reminded residents that if they’re going to repave their driveways, they need a permit.
“Supervisor Chairman Bob Slike said the reason for the permit “is not to make a buck or anything off of it. It’s to make sure that driveway is put it so in the wintertime the plows don’t gouge it out.
“Supervisors said it’s the homeowner’s responsibility to get the permit, but the contractor should know enough to ask if they have one.”
That is, townships are allowed to protect their residents from building driveways less than optimally but they’re not allowed to do much to protect their residents from gas drilling … which presents just a few more risks than a gouge or two in some asphalt.
For the complete post, visit http://1490newsblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/water-well-problems-in-ft-too.html
Tags: DEP, Foster Township, fracking, gas drilling, hydraulic fracturing, Marcellus, PA, traffic, trucks, water well
“I live on Hedgehog Lane in Bradford, PA where oil and gas drilling has contaminated many water wells. The DEP recognizes seven, but there are more of us.”
“We also have a stripper plant in our residentially-zoned neighborhood that has us furious. It consists of a 19,000 gallon propane tank less than 300 feet from our house, a compressor and generator that run 24/7 – the noise is simply unbearable – and pipes that seem to leak propane so that we smell it all of the time. Propane trucks the size of semi’s routinely come to the pipes to fill up with propane. We just don’t understand how this all fits into zoning laws, and we are frustrated with how it has changed our neighborhood and property values. ”
Glycol leak 1
Glycol leak 2
Methanol leak
Click here>> Video: methanol leak
Oil leak
Oil leak
Oil leak
Oil staining of soil
15w40 drum and leak
“Our water smells and tastes weird enough that we don’t drink it, and we don’t even give it to our animals. It smells musty- like dirt. It reminds me of an organic that I used to work with when I was a chemist. DEP officials have agreed that they smell and taste it, but that the standard test they run for about 15 or so substances come back normal. We have asked DEP repeatedly to test for VOCs, but they refuse. They say that the test is tricky because a neighbor spilling oil or gas could be the cause. I told him, I agree – a neighbor IS spilling oil – Aiello Brothers Oil and Gas – drillers for Schreiner (http://abogi.net/default.aspx) … and I have the pictures to prove it. They still refused to test for VOCs. They said that it isn’t standard operating procedure to do so. When I responded that my neighborhood isn’t going through a “standard” situation, they replied that we actually are. When I asked for clarification, I was told that this sort of thing happens every month. I said I found that interesting because this very same DEP official was quoted in a newspaper article as calling the situation in Dimock an anomaly, so I asked him which was it? Was it typical, or an anomaly? He said that he didn’t know where I got that info but that I shouldn’t believe everything I read. Because my water doesn’t have one of the about 15 substances that DEP tests for (Fe, Mn, methane) we have been written off. I find that to be ridiculous and negligent. One of my neighbors has been given the very same treatment. So much for presumptive liability when the wells are drilled within 1000ft from your water well!!!”
Propane tank
Propane truck
“As I research and find that this is happening all over the country, I get more angry! It’s just wrong. And to think that in our case we are asking for so little…..they can’t use just a smidgin of the millions that they gain from our hill to give us safe drinking water? Absurd.”
Tags: Bradford Township, DEP, hazardous fluids, leaks, Marcellus, McKean County, noise pollution, Pennsylvania, propane, Schreiner, stripper, VOCs, water, water wells
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