Sep 6
2009

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.

sootypaws-wetzel-1-slide10 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.

sootypaws-wetzel-2-slide25		 .

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
injuries and accidents in the oil and gas industry. About 25% of deaths are caused by road accidents.

sootypaws-wetzel-3-slide66		 .

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.

sootypaws-wetzel-4-slide50		 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.

sootypaws-wetzel-5-slide51		 .

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.

sootypaws-wetzel-6-slide43		 .

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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Jun 6
2009

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

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Trackback  •  Posted in Bad Neighbors, Community Effects, Cost Externalization, Fraccidents, On the Bleeding Edge, The Fox is Guarding the Henhouse