243 and counting... contaminated water cases in PA

Back in July the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) admitted that oil and gas operations damaged water supplies 209 times since end of 2007.

Finally – six years into the Marcellus gas boom – DEP has released details of 243 cases in which oil and gas companies were found to have contaminated private drinking water wells. This past week the agency posted online links to the documents. Names and identifying information has been redacted, but you can read the documents here.

Some of these cases date back to 2008 but, when you look at the dates, DEP never got around to responding to them until months - or in some cases - years later. The cases include some where a single drilling operation affected multiple water wells.

Problems listed in the documents include: spills (waste fluids and other pollutants); high levels of methane gas; ethane; heavy metals; and wells that went dry or were otherwise undrinkable. These documents cover drilling-related water well problems in 22 counties, but most of the cases come from Bradford, Susquehanna, Tioga, and Lycoming counties.

PA admits Oil & gas operations damaged water supplies

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection admits that oil and gas operations damaged water supplies 209 times since end of 2007. This picture is worth a thousand words, but you can read the entire  article in Post Gazette.

Environmental Groups Demand Reform for PA DEP

Twenty-five organizations are asking PA Governor Tom Corbett to take immediate action to reform the PA Department of Environmental Protection’s well water testing and notification policies. According to a letter sent today, the DEP’s policies are outdated, lack transparency, and do not adequately protect residents and drinking water from pollution caused by gas drilling

The organizations request three things:

(1) That DEP report all data from households where well water was sampled due to suspected pollution from gas and oil operations. A court deposition of the technical director of DEP's Bureau of Laboratories indicated that DEP routinely omits data on 16 of 24 heavy metals for which it conducts water analyses from the final reports provided to well owners. Some of the omitted metals have serious health impacts and have been found in drilling flowback and produced water. DEP should revise its testing protocol to include all potential contaminants so the agency can accurately evaluate drinking water impacts and affected residents can make informed decisions about their water supplies.

(2) That DEP revoke the new policy requiring administrators in Harrisburg to approve any positive notices of water contamination before public notification is made. In response to previously made requests in this regard, Secretary Krancer claimed DEP was fully transparent. In light of the revelations of Kiskadden vs. PADEP, the groups reasoned that the data used by DEP and provided to the public is neither complete nor accurate, and should not be the basis of determining whether pollution has occurred. Notification of contaminated water should be made without delay and bureaucratic red tape eliminated due to the potential harmful health impacts on residents waiting for testing results.

(3) That the missing results from all well water tests ordered by the DEP should be provided immediately to well owners. This includes all tests using special reporting codes that omit from reports data that is necessary for accurate determinations by DEP of whether pollution occurred and whether residents’ health and water supplies are being harmed. Determinations by DEP based on partial data must be questioned.  

“One the biggest fears for people living near drilling is the possibility of having your drinking water supply impacted,” says Steve Hvozdovich, Marcellus Shale Policy Associate with Clean Water Action.  People trust the DEP to safeguard the public, but DEP’s policies and actions have eroded that trust.

 Residents living in gas drilling areas turn to DEP to help them find answers, says Nadia Steinzor, with Earthworks’ Oil & Gas Accountability Project – “not limit the very information on which those answers depend.”

Many people feel that the regulatory agency has held back critical information from those who need it. “Pennsylvania residents in fracked communities have complained for years that DEP has protected the industry instead of protecting their water, air, land and health,” says Iris Marie Bloom, director of Protecting Our Waters. “Withholding information from impacted homeowners endangers public health and is inexcusable.”  

You can read a copy of their letter here. Read more about the problems with DEP’s water quality testing here.

Drilling near Nuclear Reactors gives new meaning to "Energy Boom"

Chesapeake Energy has a permit for hydraulic fracking just one mile from the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station in Shippingport, PA. That’s about 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh.

The big question is whether blasting away at Marcellus shale might cause a different sort of energy boom at the power station.

The PA Department of Environmental Protection told the press that there are no “required setbacks” specifically related to drilling distances from nuclear facilities. On the other hand, they know of no other well located near a nuclear facility. And the Nuclear Regulatory Commission doesn’t seem to have any guidelines about this matter, either.

One concern is the potential for seismic activity related to injection wells used to store Marcellus drilling wastes. Not a concern now, say the drillers – because this is a gas well, not an injection well. But just three years ago Chesapeake was looking to turn an old gas well in Pulteney, NY into an injection well.

Ever since the earthquake that hit Japan, and the ensuing damage to the Fukushima reactor, seismic activity has been high on the list of “things we oughta be concerned about” for the nuclear facilities managers. As for the folks near Shippingport, PA, a 2010 NRC report found that the Beaver Valley Power Station was ranked the in the top five “most vulnerable” to earthquake damage in the US. Read more here.

Wetterling Well Under Way in Owego, NY

The other day a resident in Owego was out for her morning walk. She knew a gas well was planned for the area - but was surprised to see the top of a drilling rig poking above the treetops.








Apparently, drilling for the Wetterling Well, just off McHenry Road (North of Bodle Hill Rd) is underway. Carrizo Oil and Gas (out of Houston, TX) filed a permit application for a vertical Marcellus well on a 43-acre unit back on May 17 of this year. A couple months later - August 9 - the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) approved the application and issued a drilling permit. According to the DEC records, Carrizo began drilling on September 18; at least that's the "spud date" reported.

But, say the locals, the drilling rig just went up a couple days ago, complete with stadium lights that can be seen at least a mile away. This is supposed to be a "test" well; given that the industry insists that Marcellus is all over the place, we're not too sure what exactly they're testing for - unless it's for local resistance.

Ironically, even as Carrizo was moving their rig into New York, Pennsylvania Senator Jim Ferlo and other PA lawmakers were calling on their state to "enact a drilling moratorium during which a comprehensive study on the effects of fracking would take place." Ferlo's concerns: impacts on public health, environmental impact, and the erosion of infrastructure needed to support PA's commerce including agriculture, tourism, hunting, fishing and recreation.

How Far is "Safe" when Protecting Aquifers?

Like land use, making pro-gas political statements is within a town’s rights. And the Joint Land Owner’s Committee is encouraging towns to do so. But the impacts of drilling don’t stop at municipal borders. That means that neighbors in the next town – even a town with a moratorium or a drilling ban – may feel the impacts of industrialized drilling.

A couple weeks ago I asked Don Barber, supervisor for the Town of Caroline what it’s like sharing a border with a “pro-drilling” town. Last March the Caroline town board passed a moratorium, and tonight they’re considering a ban.

“We anticipate that drilling activity will take place around us,” says Barber. The moratorium and ban effort are to allow the town more time to “address a number of impacts that the SGEIS (Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement) doesn’t address.” A big concern for Barber is road preservation. Most wells will be sited off a town road, he says. So those roads will see more traffic than ever before – traffic that the roads were not designed to handle.

 

Caroline also wants to look at site plan reviews, as drilling creates a lot of ancillary activities: transfer stations for drilling wastes and materials, gravel pits, staging areas and more. “These will be changes to agricultural land,” says Barber. “Our site plan review process needs to ensure that any development is done in a way that preserves the town’s character.”

Another big concern is groundwater protection. Whether there’s drilling in town or frack trucks passing through, there are many opportunities for spills and accidents, says Barber. So Caroline is developing an aquifer protection plan.

But part of Caroline shares an aquifer with Candor, a town that just last month passed a “pro-drilling” resolution. Drilling activity in Candor could potentially affect the water that Caroline residents drink, says Barber. “But there’s not anything we can do about it.”

As if to underscore this sort of quandary, some residents in Great Bend Township, PA found their water affected by drilling the next town over. The well is located in Liberty Township and feet from the township line. It is also about 2500 feet – a distance far enough that the affected residents were not notified about predrilling tests, nor did WPX, the drilling company, conduct any.

According to residents, their water turned black and stayed that way for at least three days. It eventually cleared up, but questions remain:

• Is there any contamination that residents should be aware of?
• If residents 2500 feet away are seeing effects, what about the protected aquifer areas along the Susquehanna River that is only 5200 feet away?
• And how far away is “safe”?

Small Towns Embrace Pro-Drilling Resolutions

Candor, NY

Last month two towns to the west of me, Van Etten and Spencer, NY passed resolutions stating that the towns supported gas drilling. Van Etten’s resolution was simple – a single sentence stating that the town has “decided to allow gas drilling in the Town of Van Etten.” Spencer’s is lengthier, commending the state’s leadership in developing a “comprehensive” statewide drilling program, stating their confidence in the state’s development of “safe” and “responsible” gas development, and all but promising to ignore any citizen petitions for moratoria or bans.

It is, word for word, the same resolution that will be considered by our town board at their next meeting on June 12. It’s already on the agenda: “Review/approve Planning Board recommendation on a resolution supporting natural gas development in the Town of Candor”. But, unlike previous resolutions, this one has not been posted for citizens to read prior to the meeting.

Last month our town supervisor, Bob Riggs received an email from the Tioga County Landowners Group urging the town to adopt the “pro-drilling” resolution.

The thing is, Riggs said in a phone interview Monday morning, while he feels that the board is mostly pro-drilling, he thinks this resolution is being rushed. The driving force, he says, is a news article in which Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Joe Martens was quoted as saying that local land-use rules will “continue to be a consideration” in the permitting process for gas drilling.

Riggs admitted that the only ones who contacted him about considering the resolution were the head of the landowner’s group and another individual who doesn’t live in the town.

When asked whether the town is ready for drilling, Riggs noted that Candor does have a road use agreement and that the planning board has been reviewing a wellhead protection plan for the village. But the town has not yet completed a checklist of actions that will help prepare for industrialized drilling. That checklist comes from TING, a non-partisan county taskforce that developed a thick binder of information meant to guide towns through actions that will protect the town’s infrastructure and environment once drilling commences.

People move here for the small town, rural atmosphere

Neither has the town determined whether drilling is compatible with the Town Comprehensive Plan. That plan seeks to preserve the rural character of Candor, encourage small business and light industry, and maintain or improve property values – goals that conflict with large-scale industrialized shale gas drilling.

A few towns to the west, another town council is considering the same resolution. Theirs came in a thick envelope from Southern Tier Economic Growth, a Chemung county economic council that in 2011 received close to 75% of its funding from taxpayer dollars. And yes, the resolution was, word for word, identical to the one that Candor is considering; that Spencer passed; that went out to every town in Steuben county.

A council member in one of the Chemung county towns currently considering the resolution speculates that this resolution as a response to the growing movement to ban drilling. Towns don’t want to become embroiled in lawsuits by landowners angry that they can’t lease their land. On the other hand, he said, “if it can be proven that this resolution encourages drilling to come into a town, and if problems result, then towns could be sued for that. This resolution opens towns up to more lawsuits than if we do nothing.”

The other problem he sees is that people voting on this resolution have a vested interest in seeing drilling happen in their town. “Elected officials who have leases should not be voting for this kind of resolution,” he said. “Indeed, they should recuse themselves from voting on any of these issues where they have a financial stake in the outcome.”

Marcellus Drilling Affects Human Health - but no one's keeping track

A couple weeks ago AP reporter Kevin Begos reported that the Pennsylvania Department of Health had received fewer than 30 health complaints on drilling. This information resulted from a FOIL request, but in light of the fact that the DOH noted “several dozen” complaints in the first half of 2011, it makes little sense. Except maybe to point out that the system intended to protect public health is broken.

well just over the backyard fence; provided by T. Ruggiero

Upon closer investigation, AP has learned that the Dept. of Health isn’t following through on all drilling-related health complaints they’ve received. Furthermore, many people may not even be reporting health complaints because the DOH website doesn’t have a specific place for people to file such complaints. And, the agency has no current investigations regarding people who claim gas drilling has impacted their health.

The fact is this: drilling and production of gas is not healthy for children and other living things. People living in the Marcellus drilling fields are suffering ill health, and it’s not just the drilling; compressor stations and storage fields are contributing to health problems too. It’s not just groundwater and fracking – it’s the whole enchilada.

People are suffering from rashes, headaches, fatigue, dizziness, nausea, nosebleeds, sore throats, sinus congestion, blisters, skin lesions, respiratory distress, and hearing difficulties. They are suffering from vomiting, diarrhea, pain, elevated heart rate, hair loss, headaches, eye irritation, intestinal cancer, ruptured spleens, stomach cramps, loss of balance, slurred speech, memory loss, and tremors.

One 32-year old woman, living in a home 200 feet from a gas well, became comatose for three weeks. Her liver failed, her lungs filled with fluid.  Her heart valves had been encrusted by an unknown foreign body. When tested, her blood had 11 times the “maximum allowable” amount of barium, and that was two years after she had moved from the drill site. Recently her 12-year old daughter has been having balance problems, falling down while walking. 

So, how many people are we talking about?  In media reports alone, we’re looking at close to 90 Pennsylvania residents who have complained about health impacts related to drilling. There are more, for sure; people who can’t – or won’t – report illnesses because they may not see a link to industrial activities in their neighborhood. While asthma is related to pollution, the last asthma study PA completed was in 2009, for data collected before drilling really started.

Then there are things like heart attacks, also influenced by air pollution. A survey done in one Barnett Shale community revealed anecdotal evidence linking an increase in the rate of heart attacks with exposure to drilling emissions.

The lack of health complaints in PA does not mean that people aren’t suffering health impacts. It means that no one is collecting this vital public health data.