This is a human-powered movement, and humans get tired or have changes in circumstances. Below, some terrific blogs currently on hiatus, but loaded with excellent info. Be sure to explore them.
DISH, TX — Shortly after a natural gas well was fractured using the controversial technique of hydraulic fracturing, a private water well within a thousand feet of the natural gas well site began showing sedimentation. DISH resident Amber Smith says shortly after the well was fractured a fine sand like sediment was present in the water from their private water well. The Smith family installed a water filtration system shortly after the sediment became present and continued using the water. However, after a year the sedimentation reached the point that it clogged the entire plumbing system, and the water well is now unusable.
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The Smith family removed the tank from the water well and removed over ten pounds of the sand like substance. After dismantling and cleaning the well system, the Smith family reassembled the well only to have it completely obstructed after only 30 minutes of operation. Devon Energy who is the operator of the gas well has refused to take responsibility for the failure. The Railroad Commission of Texas responded and took samples of the tainted water for limited analyzing. The town of DISH also had independent testing accomplished to determine the content of the sand like substance. The water well owned by the Smith family shows levels of arsenic at 7.5 times the acceptable level for drinking water. The water also contained lead at levels that were 21 times above the acceptable levels, and chromium at more that double the allowable limits. Independent testing shows elevated levels of butanone, acetone, carbon disulfide, strontium, as well as heavy metals, all above safe drinking water standards. The town is awaiting additional test results.
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DISH is located in the epicenter of the Barnett Shale gas play and is home to a megacomplex of compressor stations, as well as pipelines, metering stations, gathering lines and gas wells. The town of DISH spent nearly 15% of its annual budget on a comprehensive air study after months of complaints to the state regulatory agencies and the operators of the compressor sites, gave the citizens no relief. DISH mayor Calvin Tillman says that “we are finally getting our air cleaned up, and now our water is showing signs of pollution, we take two steps forward and three steps back”. These results clearly show a correlation between the natural gas drilling process and water contamination, and this industry should no longer make claims that they have never contaminated a water source. DISH resident Amber Smith is extremely concerned that her young children has been drinking this water. Attached is a photo of the contaminated water.
After her well water was contaminated by nearby fracking in 2006, Ernst decided to go public, showing visiting reporters how she could light her tap water on fire, and speaking out about Alberta land owners’ problems with the industry, especially Calgary-based EnCana. EnCana is Canada’s second biggest energy company (after Suncor) and is now also a major player in British Columbia, with hundreds of natural-gas wells in the province.
Ernst, a biologist and environmental consultant to the oil and gas industry, says EnCana “told us ‘we would never fracture near your water.’ But the company fracked into our aquifer in that same year [2004].” By 2005, she says, “My water began dramatically changing, going bad. I was getting horrible burns and rashes from taking a shower, and then my dogs refused to drink the water. That’s when I began to pay attention.” More than fifteen water-wells had gone bad in the little community.
Tests revealed high levels of ethane, methane, and benzene in Ernst’s water. “EnCana told us they use the same gelled [fracking] fluids as in the States.” Fracking has become a huge controversy in the US, with pending legislation that would impact its regulation.
Ernst says she heard from “at least fifty other landowners the first year” she went public, and she continues to get calls. Groundwater contamination from fracking “is pretty widespread” in Alberta, “but they’re trying to keep it hidden.” Canada has no national water standards and conducts little information gathering about groundwater.
“Update: PEMA urges residents to prepare now for possible flooding.”
“DEP directs gas drillers to replace water.”
“Man killed by fall off Towanda drilling rig.”
I read these three stories in that order. The first two were in the Pike County [Pennsylvania] Courier, the third in the Binghamton [New York] Press & Sun Bulletin. The headlines of the first (get ready for a flood) and third (a man died in a gas-drilling accident) are self-explanatory. The second, about “replacing” water, went like this:
“The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) . . . ordered Schreiner Oil and Gas Co. to provide a permanent solution to water supply issues at two homes the company’s drilling activity impacted near Hedgehog Lane, McKean County.
“DEP previously determined that the company, based in Massillon, Ohio, was liable for affecting the water supplies of homes. . . . among the contaminants identified were total dissolved solids, chlorides, manganese, iron, dissolved methane and ethane gas.”
Does this not terrify everyone who lives in the huge gas-drilling and potential gas-drilling region? (The Marcellus Shale encompasses large swaths of New York State, almost all of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, and parts of Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. A total of 31 or 32 states have deposits of so-called “natural” gas, more properly termed “fossil-fuel gas.”)
Here are some facts:
1) The horizontal, slick-water hydraulic fracturing process of gas drilling (“chemo-fracking”) uses and releases numerous toxic chemicals — carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, naturally occurring radioactive materials.
2) Accidents happen.
3) People make mistakes.
4) Floods occur.
Anyone who has ever experienced a flash flood knows that you’re going to run for your life and your loved ones’ lives first, and for your most expensive and/or most precious possessions next.
Even if gas companies had our best interests at heart — and you’d have to be a total naïf to think they do — there is simply no way to protect us from all these toxins that would go streaming into our water systems in the event of a flood, let alone the inevitable accidents and mistakes that will occur.
Because they will.
In the cases where the gas companies have to “replace” water, what are we talking about?
You can’t “replace” water that has been contaminated with poisons. You can bring in huge “water buffaloes” with 300 or 500 gallons of “fresh” water from elsewhere (and who is monitoring that water? Where does it come from?) to resupply a family with drinking, cooking, and bathing water, but the ground is still contaminated.
The vegetables and flowers and shrubs in the family’s garden are still reliant on that water for survival. The squirrels, bunnies, and raccoons . . . the chickadees, warblers, and woodpeckers . . . the frogs, fish, and turtles . . . the crickets, bees, and peepers . . . the family cat and dog . . . all drink the water from that contaminated ground. Toddlers in sandboxes eat the dirt. Kiddie pools and grown-ups’ pools, bird baths, ponds, streams, rivers, and lakes . . . all can be contaminated from just one spill.
You can’t “replace” bad water with good. Period.
There is not enough recompense in the world to mitigate this kind of permanent damage to a person’s home and property or to our surrounds, or to our own health and our children’s health.
It is up to communities to decide if the risks are worth the riches that will go to the gas companies and to a few members of the communities.
Let’s think about these risks for a moment: Someone in my community will die because of fracking. It’s inevitable. The man who was killed on a gas rig in Towanda, Pennsylvania, has a name: Greg Allen Henry. He was from Athens, Tennessee. He was 31 years old and was killed when he fell from a rig and suffered massive head trauma.
Are the risks worth the reward? How many lives are worth how many dollars? The job (of the many promised to Pennsylvanians and New Yorkers) came, no doubt, with pretty good pay to bring a Tennesseean so far from home. But was it enough for Greg Henry’s family? Will it help ease their grief?
Will you be getting free energy for life, if you lease your land and it’s fracked? Will you ever feel safe drinking the water? Will the royalty fees cover the loss of your home’s value? Where will you go if you are forced to leave your valueless home? What will happen to the investments of time, equity, sweat, and tears—let alone cash—you’ve poured into it? How much money is enough?
Is a Tennessee man’s life worth as much as a Towanda child’s life? If your child drinks contaminated water today and develops cancer in five years, will a gas company come forward to help you pay for your child’s chemotherapy and radiation treatments, and hold your hand while you wait for the latest medical test results that will tell you if she will live or die?
…of the 17 families [whose water has been affected] I am aware of they are not all seniors-some are younger with children. They are not all within 1000 feet of the Gesford site which was the site where the gas company contaminated the aquifer with methane gas which did not come from the Marcellus but from gas above it- isotopic testing was done. The activities of the gas company have altered the water quality in our valley and above. Today I have bubbles. Others have a film on their dishes and their animals are extremely thirsty all the time. Some families get water from the gas company most buy and haul water in. The gas company has stated that unless DEP orders them to provide water they do not have to. Also DEP does not have an accurate record of who is not drinking their water and why. Water wells are private and not regulated by DEP. So unless the water well owner calls them with a complaint they are unaware of any problems. My question is how can the “on going investigation” be accurate if all the information is not compiled. The missing info could be the key.
The gas migration issue is still being investigated-the headlines were misleading stating no fracking fluids found in Dimock water supply….the violation was that the company contaminated the aquifer-fact-they did.
As far as the “promises” we were all promised great compensation- “you’ll see $90,000 a year on as little as 5 acres! or “you won’t be living in this trailer next year. You’ll have a nice new house.” Nothing was ever disclosed to most of us concerning the nature and scope of the industrialization of our community – ONE well was mentioned with the infamous little Christmas tree pipe to mark its location. Drive around our neighborhood- you will see tall vents on water wells, jugs of water behind homes, and disillusioned folks inside the same homes they had 3 years ago. The dwindling royalty checks will soon equal the amount of money some of us spend on buying water…
Drilling Contamination Spreads as Polluter’s Bankruptcy Looms
Joint Release: Powder River Basin Resource Council * EARTHWORKS
Clark, WY, 10/01 — Clark Resource Council has learned that Windsor Energy Group, LLC recently put its assets up for bid. At a public meeting in September Windsor representatives explained that benzene is also above regulatory levels east of Line Creek where Windsor had guaranteed it would not go. Assuming no buyer is found, the logical next step is bankruptcy: leaving the community’s groundwater, and cleanup of the pollution, in doubt.
“Every thing Industry told us would not happen, has,” says Deb Thomas local resident and organizer for the Clark Resource Council. “Before the first operators of this project bankrupted, we were told that drilling was safe and no toxic chemicals were used. Since Windsor bought the development, we’ve had years of leaking waste pits, illegal dumping of drilling fluids, inadequate engineering, and finally, the blow out, which left us with contaminated drinking water aquifers. Windsor said the contamination plume wouldn’t move into private water wells or jump the Creek, and it did both. Now we fear that Windsor will join their predecessors by bankrupting and simply walk away from their mess.”
Windsor Energy Group’s Crosby 25-3 gas well blew out in the small community of Clark, Wyoming three years ago. Contamination plumes have continued to move since then, and how clean up will occur remains undecided. The blowout resulted in a 10 million cubic foot plume of groundwater contamination or more than 100 Olympic-size swimming pools worth.
The plume has contaminated drinking water aquifers, 2 private water wells and natural springs with benzene, diesel range organics, and an extensive list of toxic chemicals. The plume is also putting more than 20 downstream drinking water wells at risk. As much as 300,000 gallons of contaminated water has dumped daily into the Line Creek drainage, which then flows into the Clark Fork of the Yellowstone River.
Clark Resource Council, Powder River Basin Resource Council and Earthworks’ Oil and Gas Accountability Project emphasize that the experience in Clark shows that State agencies are not adequately equipped to address the impacts and risks associated with drilling projects.
“I want other communities who are facing development to understand that they’re at risk from the oil and gas industry’s cavalier regard for the environment and human health, ” says impacted resident, Dick Bilodeau. “When oil and gas companies screw up, the results are neither simple, nor cheap, to clean up. We need adequate federal oversight to protect areas under development, and complete disclosure so that impacted people can determine what health problems they’re facing now and will be in the future.”
In Wyoming the State’s Voluntary Remediation Program allows polluters like Windsor to remediate contamination and then be released from liability. With Windsor Energy Group’s bankruptcy looming, Bilodeau and other community members fear that the extent of the contamination will never be adequately assessed and clean up will never happen.
The news of contamination crossing under Line Creek and Windsor’s asset sale comes just after the EPA released it’s investigative finding on water contamination in Pavillion, Wy, which residents fear is associated with EnCana’s deep gas operations.
“These cases demonstrate the clear and present danger posed by drilling operations under current regulation,” says Bruce Baizel, staff attorney for EARTHWORKS’ Oil & Gas Accountability Project. “They clearly show the urgent need for incremental federal regulation, like the FRAC Act now before Congress, and they also show that the FRAC Act only begins to address the need for stronger oversight.”
Jim Beam over ice with a splash of H20 is my favorite cocktail, and since all three ingredients require water I am concerned when somebody comes along and threatens the earth’s supply.
Fort Worth Weekly was among the first news organizations to explore the largely unregulated use of water by gas drillers and to explore how laws are stacked in the industry’s favor (“Til Your Wells Run Dry,” June 29, 2005, and “Water…Water…Where?” Oct. 4, 2006).
This paper has published numerous stories about people’s water wells being contaminated or dried up after a gas well began drilling nearby. Every time, the energy companies denied responsibility and said there’s no proof, you go get your expert and we’ll get our 12 experts, you go get your lawyer and we’ll get our team of lawyers and we’ll all meet in court…for many, many years until you’re bled dry, sucker.
Tarrant County and the Barnett Shale aren’t unique. The same fight is being waged across the country, wherever drilling is occurring.
Here’s the latest report, a good one from Reuters about polluted water wells in Wyoming. The EPA, which is taking baby steps toward growing a set of balls these days, says water wells tested positive for 14 contaminants and that nearby gas drilling might possibly maybe kinda be at fault.
As usual, the gas industry says “prove it, pal.”
Randy Teeuwen, a spokesman for EnCana Corp., which operates 248 wells in that part of Wyoming, was quoted by Reuters as saying, “The industry contends drilling chemicals are heavily diluted and injected safely into gas reservoirs thousands of feet beneath aquifers, so they will never seep into drinking water supplies. There has never been a documented case of fracking that’s contaminated wells or groundwater. We know they don’t have the science to prove what they say.”
The Reuters article ends with this: “Critics say their kids have gotten sick, their animals have died, and their water has in some cases become flammable because methane escaped into aquifers from gas wells. But they have been unable to prove their case because drilling companies are not required to disclose exactly what chemicals they use, thanks to an exemption to a federal clean water law granted to the oil and gas industry in 2005.”
Back in 2005, the Weekly was just perking up to the potential for water problems. The industry, of course, was way ahead of the game, already getting exemptions passed in their favor. Lobbyists and their wheelbarrows filled with cash have a way of encouraging exemptions.
An op-ed published in the New York Times: Recovering From Wyoming’s Energy Bender
By ALEXANDRA FULLER
Published: April 20, 2008
Wilson, Wyo.
FOR all its Old West mythology, Wyoming is and always will be a mining state, more roughneck than cowboy. Frankly, in a land of long winters and high winds, there aren’t a lot of other economic choices. And a powerful oil lobby reminds us with Orwellian regularity that we owe everything to oil and gas taxes, bullying those who disagree. (In February, a committee of the Wyoming Legislature rejected a spending increase for the University of Wyoming’s Ruckelshaus Institute of Environment and Natural Resources after institute scientists dared to raise concerns about water produced in coal-bed methane wells.) Even so, the oilier side of our nature has never threatened to unhorse the cowboy entirely, not even now, when the pressure to develop every last seam of energy is end-of-administration intense.
Since 1996, oil and gas companies have leased from the federal government the mineral rights to nearly 27 million acres of land in the Rocky Mountain West, and Wyoming has shouldered the greatest share of that development. In the last decade, oil companies have leased a fifth to a quarter of the state’s land — 15.5 million acres administered by the Bureau of Land Management, as well of hundreds of thousands of acres of national forest and private land. If Wyoming were a country, it would be one of the largest coal-producing nations in the world, and its output of natural gas is among the greatest in American history. The argument has never been that we shouldn’t provide energy. But is that all we’re good for? And what, if anything, should we leave for future generations? These are global questions posed on a local level.
Jonah Basin, WY, 40 acre spacing
During his second term, President Bill Clinton, under pressure from a Republican Congress, leased out just as much of Wyoming’s land as the current administration has to date. The difference was that the Clinton administration enforced laws encouraging the Bureau of Land Management to “manage, protect and improve” our public lands while allowing for other values like recreation, grazing and wildlife habitat. The Bush administration, on the other hand, has lifted every possible impediment to industry.
For example, oil and gas companies are exempt from provisions of the Clean Water Act that require construction activities to reduce polluted runoff as well as from provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act that regulate underground injection of chemicals. The industry is also generously permitted to drill on critical wildlife winter range (close to 90 percent of all their requests to drill on winter range have been granted). Oil rigs are drilling for natural gas on the banks of the New Fork River (the headwaters of the Colorado) and in the foothills of the Wyoming Range. Well sites in many parts of the southern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem are so closely spaced that, with roads, gas pipelines and compressor stations, the development is continuous.
Meantime, drug treatment centers and domestic abuse shelters across the state have declared themselves overwhelmed and, in spite of what the oil companies keep telling us, we’re far from happy. Wyoming has the uneasy distinction of having one of the country’s highest suicide rates. We top the national death toll on the job with 16.8 deaths per 100,000 workers. Wyoming is responsible for by far the highest percentage of deaths on the job in the interior West’s oil and gas industry. At public meetings organized by the Bureau of Land Management to announce the development of Wyoming’s public lands, oil company executives initially argued to a largely receptive audience that a new boom would be good for the state’s economy. Lately, executives have been telling increasingly unhappy communities that domestic drilling is our moral duty, an alternative to sending more soldiers to war. They imply that anything less than full support for the oil companies is un-American. But a bumper sticker on a pick-up truck hints at the truth: “The war is over. Halliburton won.”
Meanwhile, cattle and sheep ranchers and hunting and tourist guides have found themselves wondering what has happened to their Wyoming. Wildlife suffers as oil leases overlap with habitat: 14.1 million acres of sage grouse habitat, 3.2 million acres of pronghorn winter habitat, 2.9 million acres of mule deer winter habitat and 1.1 million acres of elk winter habitat. Even most of the state’s wild horse herd management areas (the only Wyoming lands on which wild horses may legally roam) are destined for oil development.
Eighty-five water wells in the southern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem have recently tested positive for hydrocarbons, indicating that toxic chemicals from drilling have leaked into the water table. Air pollution in the same area was so great this winter that vulnerable residents were warned not to venture outside. Oil companies argued that strong winds would rectify the problem.
They were right to predict a wind of change, but it came in the form of an unprecedented experiment in the art of listening. In the last few months, Terry Tempest Williams, a writer in residence at the University of Wyoming, has taken her students on the road to conduct what she calls “weather reports” in small communities. Addressing packed rooms, Ms. Williams turns the microphone over to the people of Wyoming — a stoical populace whose habitual stance against something they don’t like is a tight lip. Astonishingly, they have opened up, voicing their concerns over the rapidity and scale of the oil and gas development.
“One day, I fear I will wake up and all that will be left of Wyoming is a hole in the ground,” one resident of the southern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem said.
Oil executives have pushed back. One oilman, State Senator Kit Jennings, took the microphone in Casper and declared that Ms. Williams had demonized the oil companies. He rejected her contention in a local newspaper article that the energy boom had helped drive up the use of crystal methamphetamine in the region and announced that he had demanded that she be fired from the university for her criticism of the industry.
Oil and gas are accustomed to dominating the debate. But Ms. Williams’s forums have created an opportunity for grass-roots rebuttal. Residents, who have so far been cowed by the enormous tax contributions that energy companies make to the state’s coffers, are upholding values not counted in dollars. “My hope is that with our backs against the wall we will finally speak up,” another weather reports participant said.
Maybe Wyomingites, justifiably proud of their roughneck heritage and anxious to keep the oil field work, have realized that this boom isn’t going away soon, and they’d like a little of Wyoming left when the oil companies move back to Texas. “We’re Mother Nature’s bodyguards,” a billboard sponsored by Sportsmen for the Wyoming Range warns. “And yes, we are heavily armed.”
Alexandra Fuller is the author of the forthcoming “The Legend of Colton H. Bryant.”
Hedgehog Lane residents made it clear to Department of Environmental Protection officials Wednesday that their water and quality-of-life problems due to recent oil drilling are far from solved.
About 20 residents and Bradford Township Supervisors Chairman Don Cummins gathered at the Lions Club community building to ask tough questions of four DEP representatives who made the trip to provide an update on the issues and answer concerns. State Rep. Martin Causer, R-Turtlepoint, also attended the meeting, the second of its kind in recent weeks.
“I’m sure this has dragged on longer than you would’ve liked it to,” Regional Director Kelly Burch said of the problems, for which DEP issued violation notices to Schreiner Oil and Gas for four overpressured oil wells and contamination to seven water wells.
“Gas migration cases are very difficult.”
Schreiner drilled nearly two dozen wells last fall. Since then, residents have complained of everything from poor water quality to odor, noise, oil lease access road runoff onto Hedgehog, and other issues.
“We think most of the problems are corrected,” Burch said.
Several residents took exception to that claim. Many of them said their water still has foul odor and abnormal taste, while DEP countered that the water passes the agency’s 18 parameters for safe drinking.
“The source of the gas has been abated,” said Craig Lobins, regional manager of DEP’s Oil & Gas Management Program.
The plant strips unwanted gas out of the gas product that is coming out of wells. The structures, residents say, are a hazard because of its propane tanks that were placed only a few hundred feet from homes; also, the compressor station is noisy and produces an odor.
So the residents were likely not happy to hear that DEP granted New Century Pipeline a permit for the plant a few weeks ago — months after the structure was already built without permission.
That company, which is under Schreiner partner Aiello Bros. Oil & Gas, is facing a yet-unscheduled Bradford Township Zoning Board hearing on grounds that it never filed for a zoning permit. The matter could end up in McKean County Court if the company appeals the zoning officer’s findings.
“We are obliged by law to issue the permit if they meet our standards,” said DEP Air Quality Coordinator John Guth.
Cummins complained that the permit shouldn’t have been issued if the plant was in violation of township zoning laws. New Century has also faced DEP fines because it never informed the agency of its building plans, either.
“They have been noncompliant since the day they started operating,” Burch acknowledged.
Hedgehog natives wondered aloud why their neighborhood has been slow to receive help and why repeated offenses by Schreiner have been tolerated.
“When people are acting like this over and over and over, that’s where my frustration lies,” one Hedgehog resident said.
“Why is it up to us to try and stop somebody else who’s obviously breaking the rules?” asked another resident.
Schreiner’s permits for the several remaining wells to be fractured are valid until spring. DEP would not deny him that right, but Lobins said the wells are nearly worthless at this point because they’ve been open for so long.
“I don’t know if (Schreiner’s) going to drill any more of those,” Lobins said.
DEP had ordered Schreiner to stop further oil and gas drilling on Hedgehog until the water supplies were “restored or replaced,” which they have done by supplying bottled water and redrilling water wells. Of course, that matters little to the residents who say their water is still coming up bad.
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Overall, it’s clear the residents are tiring of the water situation and what they believe is DEP’s negligence of obvious problems with its drinkability.
“I’ve lived there 21 years, and my water in the last year, it’s gone to crap,” said a man who identified himself as a resident of 177 Hedgehog Lane. Several residents cited the water as tasting “musty” and “old.”
A few visitors even questioned DEP reports they found online, saying the reports twisted what agents and residents said about their water’s poor odor and taste during recent visits.
Burch was swift in defending his staff.
“Many of my employees have a private well just like many of you … I know they wouldn’t tolerate it.”
After nearly two hours of back-and-forth between Cummins’ constituents and DEP officials, the supervisor boiled it down to one simple question.
“How do we get their water back to the way it was?” Cummins asked Burch.
As of today, the DEP does not seem to have an answer.
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