Public has 40 days to Comment on Gas Wastewater Treatment Facilities

Company to Upgrade Treatment and Pay Penalties after Discharge Violations at Western Pa. Oil and Gas Wastewater Treatment Facilities

(PHILADELPHIA – May 22, 2013) U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today announced a Clean Water Act settlement with Fluid Recovery Services, LLC (FRS), which operates three wastewater treatment plants in western Pennsylvania. The settlement resolves discharge permit violations associated with the treatment of wastewater generated from oil and gas extraction activities.

Under the settlement, FRS must seek renewal of their Clean Water Act discharge permits from Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) and request that PADEP include the more stringent discharge limits in Pennsylvania’s wastewater treatment standards. This includes a new standard of 500 milligrams per liter for total dissolved solids in their renewed permits.

In addition, the company will pay an $83,000 penalty for violations that occurred at facilities located in Franklin, Creekside, and Josephine, Pa.

FRS will invest as much as $30 million to upgrade the facilities to comply with the new more stringent discharge limits.   Meeting the more stringent discharge limits will enable the facilities to be eligible to treat wastewater from unconventional oil and gas extraction activities, such as hydrofracking.

The agreement prohibits FRS from discharging wastewater from hydrofracking or other unconventional oil and gas extraction activities until after the facilities have achieved full compliance with the more stringent discharge permit limits.

The facilities, which discharge to the Allegheny River watershed, have not been discharging such wastewater since September 2011 following the issuance of an order to each facility by EPA and a request from PADEP in April of 2011 that asked oil and gas producers not to send their wastewater to treatment facilities that could not meet the more stringent discharge limits.

The former operators of the facilities, Hart Resources Technology, Inc. (Hart) and Pennsylvania Brine Treatment, Inc. (PBT), recently merged to form FRS. As part of the proposed penalty settlements, Hart and PBT neither admitted nor denied responsibility for the violations.

The public has 40 days to comment on the proposed penalty settlements, which can be found at:

  http://www.epa.gov/reg3wapd/public_notices.htm#hartpabrine

Three Nights Living in a Gasfield

 The following story is from a resident living in the gas fields of Northeast Pennsylvania. I post it for all those NY landowners who want drilling, and say they recently drove down through Bradford or Susquehanna County and "it's so nice, you'd never know they'd drilled there..." So here, from one who knows, a sample of what living in gasland is all about:

The shutdown of the Williams Central Compressor yesterday left us with the same wonderful sounds we had taken for granted for years: the sound of chirping birds, dueling bullfrogs, the sound of a gentle breeze. We decided we should savor sitting on our front porch last night, which used to be a relaxing way to recharge on a lovely summer evening.....there was no constant traffic associated with the expansion project of the compressor about a mile up the road from our home.

We used to walk up to the Newton Hill Cemetery, a leisurely walk on our country road. Our road has turned into an industrial highway with as many as 2000 vehicles a day as documented by video. We wanted to retrace our memories and do those things we have not done in over a year since the compressor and well pad were installed off our road. We decided not to walk as there are so many transient workers in our area for the pipeline, compressor, well pad. So we drove, and parked along our neighbor’s cornfield, and sat in the field looking at the beautiful starry sky down the valley. The view from their tilled field has always been a favorite; you feel you are on top of the world looking out over the distant mountain ridges and down our valley.

We have permission from our neighbor to walk in their field; they also use a 30 acre field of ours for crops. The view has changed as there is a Cabot well pad waiting to be completed on the adjoining field belonging to a different neighbor. We sat in the field, enjoying the starry sky, savoring the respite from traffic and noise 24/7, savoring the sounds of a beautiful country evening. We saw a truck drive up to our parked car. It slowed down to pass it, to turn around and slowly go back down the hill. It was Cabot security. We decided we would leave, as we suddenly felt scared. We drove up Turnpike Rd past the Williams Central Station, and could hear it was back up and running to some degree. We turned right onto Puzo Rd, and suddenly there were two cars behind us following closely. We turned left onto Caitlin, then right onto 167 South. We wanted to see if they were in fact following us before we went home. They did follow, one pick up passed up and then stopped in front of us, blocking us by parking the truck over the double solid yellow lines on the road. My daughter was scared, I was mad, she was driving. I told her to go around these vigilantes, but she rolled her window down as a man came to her driver door. He accused us of trespassing and drinking. I told him he had no right to stop us in the middle of a road, that he was a thug and that we were not trespassing. He insisted we were on Cabot property, and I told him he was dead wrong, we were not on the well pad property; we were on our neighbor’s field with permission. He said he had called the police as we were trespassing and drinking, neither of which we were doing. I was irate and he refused to tell me his name, and said only that he was local. He had tattoos all over his arms and some scruffy facial hair. He was a slim build. He got back in his car and we were escorted back to our home with one thug behind us and one thug in front of us. I was furious, alarmed and shocked, but we did go home. We sat on our porch, feeling unsettled, angry, saddened, confused as to how drastically living on our hill has changed as so many transient employees subcontracted by industry now travel our road.

Three nights ago we stopped to find help to get two of our neighbors cows back into a field they had escaped, two nights ago there was the fire at the Williams Central Compressor, and last night we were followed and stopped on the road by two security vigilantes: subcontracted by Cabot to guard their well pad about 1500 feet from our home. Half an hour passed, two white pickups went back and forth in front of our house. About 5 minutes later a PA State Trooper car pulled up, and turned into my driveway. He bottomed out as the road is now too high for the driveway since industry built it up to accommodate their heavy traffic. Trooper Bowman said Cabot Security had called them to come make sure we were "OK". I was furious, and recounted our evening sitting in our neighbor’s field, how the two thugs followed us and stopped us by blocking us on a state road, Route 167. The Trooper listened politely, and said he would go get the other half of the story. I was in disbelief at having a Cabot Rent a Cop call the cops to come to my home after their outrageous behavior. I want a copy of the Trooper's report.

This morning I spoke with a Sargent from the Gibson State Police Barracks. He did indicate the roadblock was not appropriate and he would follow up with Cabot. He also indicated the level of suspicion is high as the cause of the Williams Central Compressor fire is still under investigation and is undetermined at this time.

Wetterling Well- short lived & leaky

photo provided - Wetterling well, Owego

Back in October, Owego residents living near McHenry Road were surprised to see a well rig in their neighborhood. The well was drilled, the rig and truck traffic disappeared, and that was the end of it - or so people thought.


By late October, Carrizo had their exploratory data and were preparing to plug the well. That's when they noticed some bubbling. Gas was leaking between two of the casings.

This new information comes from a pair of DEC inspection reports obtained through a Freedom of Information request submitted by an Owego resident. It makes for interesting reading.

On Oct 25 the DEC inspector notes that gas was leaking at a rate of 15-20 cubic feet a day. The well operator, Carrizo was  concerned about Hurricane Sandy and proposed monitoring the gas leak. A couple weeks later, on November 13, Al Owings of Carrizo calls DEC and asks whether they can abandon the well with a vent pipe.

Notes from DEC investigator: "I told him that I did not know and that NY has no specific regulatory guidelines about the matter."

Now there's a rig back on the pad, and it appears that Carrizo is going to plug the well - the first real "Marcellus" well in Tioga County. Granted, it was a vertical well and drilled primarily to extract data, not gas. Vertical wells, while allowed under current permits, are not the most efficient way to exploit shale gas - but they serve well for exploring the new formations.

The Wetterling well was drilled to 4745 feet, not as deep as some of the wells around the area (some go deep into the Trenton Black River formation around 10,000 or so feet below the surface). There was no horizontal drilling, no hydrofracking. And yet it still sprung a leak.

Methane leaks are not unusual for shale gas wells in Pennsylvania. In fact, citizen reporter Vera Scroggins recently compiled a stack of "Letters of Determination" from PA's Department of Environmental Protection advising homeowners that they have methane - and other contaminants - in their water wells, and that gas drilling activities in the area may have affected their water supply. This is not the kind of letter anyone living near a well wants to receive - whether they live in Bradford County, PA or Owego, NY.

Tom Wilber has posted more about this on his excellent blog, Shale Gas Review.

NY Appeals Court: Towns CAN Ban Fracking

NY towns can ban hydro-fracking and shale gas drilling within their municipal borders – that’s the decision handed down from the state Appellate Division today. Pro-drilling landowners in the towns of Dryden (Tompkins County) and Middlefield (Otsego County) had sued the towns in an attempt to get drilling bans overturned. When they lost their suit in the lower court (the state Supreme Court) they appealed.

Today’s decision, from the Appellate Division, Third Judicial Department upholds last year’s decision and clarifies that, although NY environmental law gives all regulatory oversight of drilling to the state, it does not curtail a town’s ability to use land-use laws to protect the town’s interests.

In the decision for the Dryden case, the justices find that municipal zoning ordinances that ban drilling do not conflict with the policies or intent of the Oil, Gas and Solutions Mining Law. In their conclusion they state that the “…policy of the OGSML explicitly seeks to protect the rights of ‘all persons including landowners and the general public’ – not just the owners of oil and gas properties”… and that this goal is realized when “… individual municipalities can determine whether drilling activities are appropriate for their respective communities.”

Thus, writes Justice Peters for the court, “we hold that the OGSML does not preempt, either expressly or impliedly, a municipality's power to enact a local zoning ordinance banning all activities related to the exploration for, and the production or storage of, natural gas and petroleum within its borders.”

They upheld that same decision for the Middlefield case.

Letters from the Chemung County Jail #5

Sandra Steingraber was released from the Chemung County Jail at 12:01 am Thursday morning. Later that day she told environmental activists, "Don't be afraid of jail." Before she was released, she wrote one last letter, which she says is a Message to Fellow Mothers:

My book, Raising Elijah: Protecting Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis, was released in paperback this week. But, being in jail, I was unable to grant interviews or otherwise to participate in its promotion. That’s not a situation that book publicists appreciate, although mine is being very good about it. But, being in here, I feel that I am walking my words.

The fundamental message of Raising Elijah is that the environmental crisis is a crisis of family life, as it robs parents of our ability to carry out our two most basic duties: to protect our children from harm and to provide for their future. When inherently toxic chemicals – including developmental toxicants linked to asthma, birth defects and learning disabilities – are legally allowed to freely circulate in our children’s environment, we can’t protect them. When heat trapping greenhouse gases create extreme weather events that slash the world’s grain harvests (this is happening) and acidify the oceans in ways that threaten the entire marine food chain, starting with plankton (and this is happening too), then we can’t plan for our kids’ futures – no matter how much we sock away in their college funds or Tiger Mom them into athletic or musical mastery.

This crisis requires our urgent attention. And by attention, I mean sustained political action, not intermittent, private worrying. Hence, unless the kids can get there and back, under their own steam,then piano lessons, karate, Little League, play practice, SAT prep, and Scout meetings are cancelled until further notice. Ditto for yoga, date night, and book club (with apologies to my long-suffering publicist).

Look, one in every four mammal species is headed for extinction. The world’s available drinking water is becoming less and less available. Insect pollinators, which provide us one-sixth to one-third of the food we eat, are in trouble. The price index for 33 different basic commodities is rising, and financial analysts are predicting shortages of the kind that lead to social unrest. Meanwhile, the world’s leading and most powerful industry is preparing to blow up the nation’s bedrock and frack out the last wisps and drops of gas and oil – releasing inherently toxic chemicals into our communities to do so.

In short, we don’t have time for out-of-town sporting events. Consider this commentary in the preeminent science journal, Nature:

I have yet to meet a climate scientist who does not believe that global warming is a worse problem that they thought a few years ago. The seriousness of this change is not appreciated by politicians and the public. . .  Recognition of the facts is delayed by the frankly brilliant propaganda and obfuscation delivered by energy interests that virtually own the US Congress . . . This is not only the crisis of your lives – it is also the crisis of our species’ existence. I implore you to be brave. (Nature, 491, Nov. 15, 2012)

The author, Jeremy Grantham, was speaking to the world’s scientists, but his message is equally applicable to mothers and fathers. Consider that the World Health Organization has identified climate change as the number one threat to public health for people born today. Otherwise known as our kids.

Now, do you have time to participate in a civil rights–style uprising? Protecting our kids, making sure they have a future: it seems to be a basis part of our job description.

I am here in the Chemung County Jail on a charge of trespassing as a result of blockading a compressor station site belonging to the nation’s largest gas transportation and storage company. Inergy’s plan is to compress, liquify, and store fracked gases from out of state in depleted salt caverns under Seneca Lake, the largest and deepest of New York State’s eleven Finger Lakes. This practice has led to catastrophic results in other states – including explosions and collapses. Even now, Inergy itself is chronically out of compliance with the maximum legal limits for its chemical discharges into this lake, which is the source of drinking water for 100,000 people.

This compressor station, which is less than 20 miles upwind from my house, is just one piece of fracking infrastructure among millions. I chose to take a stand here both because Inergy’s plans represent a direct risk to my children’s air quality and safety, and because my son was born nearby. The west shore of Seneca Lake is his birthplace, and the sound of green frogs twanging in the night was the theme song for my labor and delivery.

So, yes, my course of political action has taken me away from my own children in an attempt to redress this problem on their behalf, and during the first five days, when I was kept in 24-hour lock-up, I had no access to them. But I am convinced the tears of my children now will be less than their tears later – along with the tears of my grandchildren – if we mothers do nothing and allow the oil, coal, and gas companies to hurdle us all off the climate cliff.

I’m also aware that human rights movements throughout history – from abolition to suffrage to civil rights – included many people who were parents of young children. They were surely just as busy as you and me. They, like I, probably also kept a list labeled, “Things to do before going to jail.” Their list, like mine, probably included: making meal plans, paying bills, cleaning the bathroom, and finding a costume for the school play.

To fight against Hitler, anti-fascist partisans sent their children away to safe places in case they were betrayed. They were busy parents, too. They loved their children just as much as we do. The difference is: now there is no safe place for our children. We can’t hide them from the ravages of climate change.

And here are two observations from the inside: the jails are already full of mothers. Every single woman on my cell block has kids. One of them is trying, from behind bars, to find her son a kidney because he desperately needs one. That’s hard to do from a pay phone, but she’s doing it. And yet, what do you suppose Marlene (not her real name) spoke about with me as we walked around and around the walled-off, barbed-wire rec area at 6:35AM this morning? The same thing that mothers throughout New York State are talking about this morning – how our kids are handling the state testing. Last week was ELA. This week is math.

The mothers in jail are fierce and proud. When the male guards insult them, they insult back. Their voices echo down the corridor, penetrate the iron doors, walls, carry messages through the heating vents and, when they can, out the windows. When Stingray cussed out a guard for demanding she remove a towel from her face while sleeping, she received six days in “the box.” So she told me while we were all lined up against the wall to head out for rec. An hour later, when the guard ordered us to line up and come in, she did not walk meekly to the door. Instead she ran the other direction and then, in a stunning gymnastic display, turned a whirling series of cartwheels, round-offs and flips, landing – Olympic-champion style – at the guard’s feet. Stingray has two kids and is six months pregnant with the third.

Imagine what we mothers could do if we brought that spirit of loud, uncompromising, creative defiance to the necessary project of dismantling the fossil fuel industry and emancipating renewable energy, which is its hostage? Imagine hundreds and hundreds of mothers peacefully blockading the infrastructure projects of the fossil fuel industry, day after day. Imagine us, all unafraid, filling jails across the land. Imagine the press conferences we would give upon our release. Imagine us living up to our children’s belief in us as super heroes.

As Stingray shouted down the vent to another inmate yesterday, “You know I’m loud. My words are my magic.”

Sandra Steingraber

April 24, 2013

Seneca Protesters Ask: Just Who is Doing the Trespassing Here?

Three protesters of conscience - Melissa Chipman, Michael Dineen, and Sandra Steingraber - gained their freedom in the wee hours of midnight/morning. They were released from custody a little after midnight in front of the "Public Safety Building" - no irony intended, given that they were arrested for protesting what they see as a very unsafe situation: Inergy's proposed natural gas/propane storage facility in the salt caverns edging Seneca Lake.

Today at 1 pm the three returned to Seneca Lake to talk about their experiences. "I come out reforged and rejuvenated for the fight ahead," said Steingraber. Seneca Lake serves as a drinking water source for 100,000 people. Inergy's project puts that at risk: risk of leaks, risk of explosions, risks of air pollutants. Furthermore, the company is not in compliance and has experienced two brine spills in the past three years. "But I don't see anyone from Inergy wearing an orange jump suit!"

All three were arrested from trespassing when they protested in March against Inergy's planned storage plant. But, who are the trespassers here? they asked. The people who live in this community? Or an out-of-town company that hides crucial information and engages in bad (polluting) behavior?

The three protesters, part of a larger group calling themselves the Seneca 12, tried all legal channels they could to halt what they see as a travesty happening on the lake. And once you've followed all those avenues and had no answers, what's left? asked Steingraber.

Dineen, an organic farmer, sees himself as just an ordinary person. We can write letters, he said, attend rallies, make comments. But when these don't work we have to turn to blunt instruments, like standing in front of a gate. "I'm going to defend my land, my family, and my granddaughter's future," he said.