Oops - There goes Another Road in the Gas Patch

The other day a huge truck - a 37-plus-ton monster with 14 rows of wheels (8 wheels per row) - got itself stuck on Turnpike road in Brooklyn Township, Susquehanna County, PA. Seems it was on its way to the Williams Central Compressor station and couldn't make the grade. Not only did it require a bit of pushing to get it out of stuck, but it left the road a mess - a road that, according to the residents, the company just "fixed" in order to accommodate their trucks.

Frank Finan posted a video of how they finally got the monster truck moving again. This is what traffic looks like, say the locals. Plus they can hear drilling and fracking all around them, so there's never a dull - or quiet - moment.

Tompkins County Legislature Deliberates Law to Protect Roads

Tonight and tomorrow the Tompkins County legislators are holding a pair of meetings on the proposed road law. Tonight’s an information meeting and tomorrow night is the public hearing.

Up for discussion: an extension of the county code that would require non-permanent commercial and industrial activity generating heavy truck traffic on county roads to obtain permits for the roads they will use, and post bonds for potential damage.

Legislators emphasize that the new law won’t have an impact on local contractors and businesses. The purpose is to regulate the kinds of heavy road use that has the potential to damage roads, such as large-scale construction projects, logging or gas drilling.

They define high-impact truck traffic as more than 10 truck trips a day to or from a single project site, for more than three days in any given week. It also includes trucks with a gross weight that exceeds 20 tons. Local farmers won’t have to worry about milk shipments and feed deliveries because the law specifically excludes agricultural activities.

Under the new law, managers of temporary projects would have to apply for permits that would designate their travel routes and any restrictions. The companies generating the traffic would have to submit documentation about the condition of roads before obtaining their permit, and they would have to post a bond.

You can read a copy of the local law by going to the legislature's page and clicking on “Lla-11” (it’s a PDF). You can read a longer article on this issue in the January 31 issue of Tompkins Weekly.

The information meeting is tonight, 7 pm in the first-floor conference room of the County’s Old Jail office building on 125 E. Court Street in Ithaca.

The public hearing is tomorrow, February 1 at 5:30 pm in the Legislative Chambers of the Tompkins County Courthouse at 320 North Tioga Street in Ithaca.

PA Drilling to Increase Heavy Truck Traffic on NY Roads

You don’t have to have drilling in your town – or even in your state – to experience heavy truck traffic associated with drilling. At least that’s what residents of Owego, NY are learning. Last month the Owego Village Board discussed plans for selling wastewater to drilling concerns – a business opportunity, for sure, but one that will bring in a lot of additional water-hauling trucks.

Then, earlier this month Mark Clark, Town of Owego highway superintendent, reported that Talisman Energy has expressed a great desire to use four of the town’s roads. The company is looking for access to drilling sites in Pennsylvania, just across the town border.

According to my colleague Patricia Bence, Talisman has asked the town for permission to use four roads to carry 700 of their tri-axle trucks full of gravel for drill pad construction. Once the proposed well is operational, Talisman explained that heavy tanker trucks would haul water to the well, and frack-and waste-fluid from the well.

The problem, says Clark, is that the roads can’t take the weight. He urged the town to get a bond to insure that Talisman repairs any damage. Given that the county and neighboring towns have been moving on a multi-municipal road agreement at a snails pace (or as my mama used to say, “slower than molasses in January”) it looks like Owego-ites will have to fend for themselves if they hope to keep their country roads drivable.

You can read Bence’s full article here.

Roads Crumbling to Dust under Heavy Truck Traffic

At the beginning of August I took a field trip to Bradford County, PA through the towns of Ulster and Towanda. Lots of drilling activity going on there: tankers pumping water from the Susquehanna, construction crews preparing impoundments and well pads, and a few wells.

According to my local guide, Marcellus drilling has just started in the area. But already there has been a lot of road damage. We drove along one road (shown in photo) which, until the drilling had begun, was paved. There was not a lick of asphalt to be seen, however; it had been ground to dust. But there was a continuous train of dump trucks hauling dirt and gravel, and road machinery to grade and roll the surface so that the residents had a smooth dirt road to drive on.

A similar thing happened closer to home. Epsilon Energy drilled three wells in the neighboring town of Van Etten (Chemung county, NY). Prior to drilling, the company entered into an agreement with the town board that, 30 days after a well was completed, they would fix the roads. So in mid-to late-March they began moving the heavy equipment in, and preparing the drill pads and by the beginning of April the roads were in bad condition (you can read earlier post here)

By May the drilling was pretty much done and residents figured that the road repair would be happening soon. A road construction company did eventually put down a layer of crushed gravel, but the road was never completed. "They told our highway superintendent that they wanted to put off completing the road repair till they had drilled into Marcellus," said Van Etten Town Supervisor George Keturi. Problem is, Epsilon won't be drilling into Marcellus anytime soon - maybe as long as another year before they get those permits.

That's not good enough for the people who live there and whose children ride the school bus back and forth on that road. So at the August 12 town board meeting one of the residents told the board to force the company to repair the road. As of yesterday Epsilon has agreed to do the repairs.

Meanwhile, Epsilon's failure to take their promises to fix roads seriously has sent the wrong sort of message to the town board. While neighboring town boards are sending resolutions to the State Legislature urging them to refrain from voting on a drilling moratorium, Van Etten's town board has not. Says supervisor Keturi, "Because of what happened, our town board will not be signing any resolutions supporting gas drilling."

Roads Wrecked and Drilling hasn't even started

Ruts in Rumsey Hill Road near the Morey Road intersection.

Saturday a friend who lives in Van Etten invited me to drive up his road. "It's being ruined by the heavy trucks working at the well site up the hill," he said. The irony: those trucks are carrying the rock needed to fix up the well pad so the drillers can do their work.

So I drove up Rumsey Hill Road. It's still in good shape where it takes off Wyncoop Creek, where the sign says "Weight Limit 10 Tons". Over the past few years the Town highway department has been putting down oil and stone and, last year they'd just finished extending the improvements not quite to Shoemaker Road, but a good distance up the hill.

"It took only 8 days to ruin that road," said one of the Rumsey Hill residents. The constant pounding of heavy trucks destroyed the stone & oil surface, crumbling it back into dirt. And adding lots of ruts in the process. the ruts are so bad that a couple of motorcycle riders have bit the dust and the residents worry that fire and EMS vehicles might not be able to drive up in an emergency.

 There's still a good portion of Rumsey Hill Road that remains dirt, with farms and residences along it. The ruts up near Shoemaker Road were so bad that the town put up markers cautioning drivers to avoid that section of road.

How deep are the ruts? Well, if you don't have four-wheel drive you could easily high-center your car or put a few dents in your exhaust system.

And this is what 8 days of truck traffic has done - the drilling hasn't even started yet, and this is for a vertical well into the Oriskany formation, not Marcellus. Though, to be fair, Epsilon admitted they have plans to go after Marcellus later, once the DEC sorts out the new regulations.

Epsilon has promised to pay for all road damage, but residents and EMS crews can't wait until the drilling is completed... so earlier today a town grader showed up and sliced the tops off the worst ruts, making the road passable. At least until the drilling starts.....

How Can We Protect Our Roads from Overweight Gas Industry Trucks

... or any overweight trucks, for that matter? Owego residents raised this issue time and again during planning board meetings regarding Patriot Water Treatment LLC.

Residents all over upstate New York are concerned that taxpayers may end up bearing the economic brunt of natural gas development, leaving the industry - and a few lucky landowners - to benefit.  This week Broome County is looking into requiring a special permit for overweight trucks - $10 per truck.

To read more about how NY towns are dealing with road protection issues see this article in Daily Yonder.

Overweight Trucks fuel Road Rage

In the space of a week, give or take a dozen hours, five drivers received citations for overweight trucks hauling loads to gas drilling sites.

On Tuesday, January 26, Kevin Parsons parked his truck on Covered Bridge Road in Burlington Township, Bradford County, PA. He was driving a truck for Hodges Trucking Company, out of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, a company that is listed by Chesapeake Energy lists as a subsidiary on its Web site. Had Parsons read the road signs he would have known that Covered Bridge Road is posted for a weight limit of 10 tons, and he might have chosen a less conspicuous place to park.

You see, the state police noticed the truck because it was parked illegally. They thought it looked a bit heavy, so they hauled out their handy-dandy scale and discovered that Parsons' truck weighed more than 51 tons. Not only was that 41-plus tons over the posted weight limit, but that's a lot of extra tonnage to be hauling around on two-lane gravel-and-oil country roads.

The police also found a whole bunch of permit violations and fined Parsons $25,000.

Then, just yesterday the state police fined four more drivers of gas industry service trucks for hauling illegal oversize loads. The guys, driving in a convoy, were stopped on US Route 6 in North Towanda. They were employed by T.K. Stanley Inc., an energy industry services company based in Waynesboro, Mississippi, a company that provides everything from roustabouts to preparing drilling sites to trucking in the drill rigs and equipment. Their fines ranged from $1440 to $6600. Unfortunately, the truckers couldn't post bail and were sent to the hoosegow to cool their heels.

Ask people what they're concerned about with drilling and somewhere near the top of the list is "truck traffic". People worry that overweight trucks will put undue wear and tear on the road. They worry that the increased amount of traffic will put additional wear and tear on the roads. They worry that speeding truckers may run into school buses (this has also happened recently; thankfully no one was hurt). They worry that truckers from Oklahoma and Alabama may not know how to drive on steep icy mountain roads. Well, maybe after this winter the good folks in Oklahoma will have mastered the art of steering into a skid, but still, these concerns are valid.

But what really galls most people is the idea that the gas companies will tear up the roads, extract the natural gas, and skip town leaving the taxpayers to cover the costs of repairing the roads. People are outraged at the idea that the public will be subsidizing the profits of wealthy multinational corporations - and a few lucky landowners who happen to strike it rich.

How to protect Bridges and Roads once Gas Drilling begins?

That's the question that town board members and highway superintendents have been puzzling out for the past few months. Highway superintendents from towns across our county have been meeting with town and county attorneys to discuss everything from crafting road laws to developing road use agreements.

The problem: once the NY Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) adopts their rules for drilling in Marcellus and other shales, the drilling rigs will begin to move into NY in earnest. While no one knows how many wells to expect - the estimates range from 2,000 to 4,000 - there are 10 permit applications pending in my town alone. And we expect more..... lots more.

The concern is that the truck traffic associated with construction of the well pad and the drilling operations will damage local roads, leaving the taxpayer stuck with the bill. It's happened in other towns - one town is coping with over $300,000 in damages and another a mere $80,000 or so - and our town has experienced some road damage already. So now, before the heavy trucks come, is the time to hammer out the details.

Which is why earlier this week our town highway supervisor sat down with a group of town council members, planning board members, and citizens to go over language for a potential "road use agreement". The idea behind a road use agreement is that drilling companies and municipalities agree on truck routes prior to any well pad construction or drilling activity. It also lays out expectations for maintenance and reimbursement for road damage.

The DEC suggests in their supplementary Generic Environmental Impact Statement - the draft of the rules for drilling in Marcellus - that gas companies ought to consider local road use agreements. They don't require it.

But maybe they should. According to the DEC's own document it could take as many as 8900 truck trips to construct the drilling site and drill and frack a multi-well pad with 8 wells. These aren't pick-up trucks either; they're 18-wheelers weighted down with tons of equipment, chemicals or water.

Our highway super would like to give each gas company a list of acceptable truck routes. After all, who knows more about the roads than the guy who patches them and plows them? He also suggested that gas companies should complete a survey of all roads they will use prior to any activities.

One point he stressed is that gravel and seasonal roads cannot withstand the structural and functional damage that would result from heavy vehicle use.So if the gas companies are going to be driving out in the boonies - which pretty much describes most of the area around here - they will need to make improvements to the roads so their heavy trucks won't get bogged down. (Go to any talk on drilling in these parts and there's the obligatory slide of the bulldozer pulling an 18-wheeler up a very muddy, rutted rural road.)

Bridges and culverts are also an issue. Our town has 10 bridges that are large enough to be inspected by the state and, according to one town councilman (who served as highway superintendent years ago), it would take a minimum of  $1 million to repair one of those bridges.

“It’s not the weight," he says. Rather, it's the combination of weight and frequency of trips that damage a bridges. His solution: have drilling companies build truck by-passes. "That's a relatively inexpensive and quick solution,” he said. 

Just how many truck trips does it take to build a well?   

  

In chapter 6 of the SGEIS (section 11) DEC estimates the number of truck trips required for a multi-well pad ( 8-wells) in the Marcellus:

Drill pad & road construction equipment   10 – 45 trucks

Drilling rig                                                 60 trucks

Drilling fluid & materials                             200 – 400 trucks

Drilling equipment (casing, etc)                  200 – 400 trucks

Completion rig                                          30 trucks

Completion fluids & materials                    80 – 160 trucks

Completion equipment (pipe, wellhead)    10 trucks

Hydraulic fracture equipment                    300 – 400 trucks

Hydraulic fracture water                           3200 – 4800 tankers

Hydraulic fracture sand                             160 – 200 trucks

Flowback water removal                          1600 – 2400 tankers