Can DEC adequately monitor NYS drilling?

Used with permission

One of the things DEC stresses in its newest edition of the draft SGEIS is that the well casings will protect our water from any contamination.

OK, but folks who find old wells wonder just how committed DEC is to keeping that promise. After all, there’s loads of wells across the state that haven’t been properly plugged and abandoned.

Back in 1984 Chesapeake drilled this well into the Queenston formation in the town of Sennett, NY just east of Auburn. DEC has been notified that this well should be plugged and abandoned. But the question remains: why did the DEC and Chesapeake allow the condition of this well to degrade to this extent? And how many more wells are out there like this?

The person who sent me this photo has asked DEC for more information about whether and how this well has been abandoned, and what sort of testing – above and below ground- has been done.

He’s also posted a full DEC file on this well – photographs he took at the Avon DEC office. You can see more photos and documents at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~springport/pictures385/potter_web/

DEC Extends Fracking Comment Period

New Yorkers have an additional thirty days to prepare comments on high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing. At the outset of today’s DEC hearing in New York City – the fourth and final public hearing – a DEC spokesperson announced that the deadline for public comment has been extended an additional month, until January 11. The decision came in response to numerous requests from environmental groups and others who wanted more time to sort through the humongous 1500-page environmental impact study and the proposed rules.

Read the SGEIS at http://www.dec.ny.gov/energy/75370.html

Read the proposed regulations at http://www.dec.ny.gov/regulations/77353.html

Submit comments:

Via the Web at http://www.dec.ny.gov/energy/76838.html

By mail to Attn: dSGEIS Comments; New York State Department of Environmental Conservation; 625 Broadway; Albany, NY 12233-6510

Some Fracking Humor

used with permission of artist, Russeau

My friend, an artist, cartoonist and all around excellent person, has been doodling weekly gas-field humor for the Broader View Weekly (Chemung & Tioga Counties, NY) for the past couple years or more. Every now and then he lets me post 'em.

Gas Leases Conflict with Mortgage Rules

well pad construction behind home in Towanda, PA

According to attorney Elisabeth Radow, gas leases conflict with home mortgage rules. One problem: hydraulic fracturing for shale gas carries heavy industrialized risks, and those risks can spread with a ripple effect through residential communities.

 “A growing number of banks won’t give new mortgage loans on homes with gas leases because they don’t meet secondary mortgage market guidelines,” says Radow. Mortgages prohibit the storage, use, disposal or release of hazardous substances (including gas) on the mortgaged property. They also prohibit landowners from transferring an interest in the property, such as mineral or gas rights, without the written consent of the mortgage lender.

During a recent phone conversation, Radow delved into the messy conflicts between gas leases and mortgage rules. The main problem she sees is that a gas lease redistributes traditional rights of homeownership to the gas company.

“But not the responsibilities,” Radow emphasizes. One of the responsibilities that falls on the landowner is liability. That’s because the industry has not fully insured their operations, she notes. And it’s not clear whether the companies have funds reserved to self-insure to make up for a shortfall in insurance coverage.

In disclosure statements filed with the SEC, both Chesapeake Energy and Range Resources state that drilling is inherently risky; drilling operations can result in injury, loss of life, damage or destruction to property and environmental clean-up. But, they caution, their insurance may not cover all those risks.

In the Form 10-K included with its 2010 Annual Report, Chesapeake reported that it has $400 million in general liability insurance, Radow said. While they have interests in 45,800 productive wells, they control drilling on 25,700 of those wells – that’s about $15,500 in liability coverage for each well they’re drilling. On top of that they carry $75 million for sudden risks, such as blow-outs and $130 million for pollution liability insurance.

“But,” says Radow, “from what appears to be the current practice, the amount of liability insurance gas companies carry may be potentially inadequate for even one catastrophic event. Consider the costs associated with BP and the recent upstate flooding.”

What does this have to do with mortgages? We have a $6.7 trillion secondary mortgage market, Radow said.  As shale gas extraction takes hold nationwide, if the gas company passes the liability from drilling accidents onto the homeowner and the homeowner defaults on his loan, and pension plans and others investment vehicles have invested in the secondary mortgage market ….  “I see potential for another serious secondary mortgage market impact,” Radow said.

Bubble or no, there are other potential financial problems with gas leases on residential properties. Recent data show that the value of homes and property near wells is declining. If the assessed value of a property goes down, that property’s taxes could follow suit. On a municipal-wise basis, decreases in the assessed value of homes near drill sites could affect the rest of the town by increasing what they pay to make up for that loss in tax revenue. Even people who don’t lease to gas companies could find their finances adversely affected by drilling on their neighbor’s property, Radow said.

“We are all in this together,” says Radow, noting that tens of thousands of New Yorkers have signed gas leases. “While New Yorkers hope to reap royalties from their underground shale gas, on the expense side we haven’t an inkling of how it will all shake out.”

You can read the longer, print edition of this article at Tompkins Weekly.

For a more detailed study of this issue read Radow’s article, “Homeowners and Gas Drilling Leases: Boon or Bust” in the Nov/Dec 2011 issue of NYSBA Journal.

Scientist Devotes Award to Fight Fracking

What does an environmental scholar do with an extra $100,000? If you’re Sandra Steingraber, you dedicate it towards the fight against fracking. 

Steingraber – ecologist, author, and cancer survivor – is one of this year’s winners of the prestigious Heinz Award. She lives modestly, and readily admits that she could certainly use the money to open a college fund for her children, start a retirement account or put the cash towards living expenses while she works on another book. But she’s not going to. Instead, she will devote her award to fighting hydro-fracking here in upstate New York.

This week Steingraber and other cancer survivors and medical sent a letter to Governor Cuomo warning that the rush to issue hydrofracking permits threatens to expose New Yorkers to a host of carcinogens. The state should conduct a full assessment of health risks, they say, instead of negligently exposing NY residents to the same carcinogens that have been identified in communities in other states once gas drilling began.

In Texas, for example, women living in the six counties with intensive gas drilling suffered a significant increase in breast cancer rates while during that same time period breast cancer rates declined across the rest of the state.

“New York State ranks 11th in highest overall annual incidence cancer rate in the United States at 486.2 cancer diagnoses for 100,000 New Yorkers each year – well above the national average of 455.7 (National Cancer Institute, 2011),” the letter reads. “We urge to you to improve this situation rather than risk raising our cancer rank further by allowing a carcinogen-dependent industry into our state.”

Our country’s dependency on fossil fuels, says Steingraber, creates insecurity in the end.  “When we light them on fire, we fill the atmosphere with heat-trapping gases that destabilize the climate and acidify the oceans,” she explains.  “When we use fossil fuels as feedstocks to make materials such as pesticides and solvents, we create toxic substances that trespass into our children’s bodies, raising their risks for cancer, asthma, infertility, and learning disorders.”

Drilling into unconventional fossil fuels – shale gas and shale oil – does little to reduce this insecurity, Steingraber notes. If we put our minds to it, our nation could be running on renewable energy sources within two decades. “But, right now, that is not the trail we are blazing,” she says. “Instead, evermore extreme and toxic methods are being deployed to blast fossilized carbon from the earth. We are blowing up mountains to get at coal, felling boreal forests to get at tar, and siphoning oil from the ocean deep.”

                    

The most ominous technology, she feels, is fracking. It fractures the bedrock, fragments the landscape and divides communities, all in the name of energy security. But real security, Steingraber says, is being able to buy tomatoes, cheese, and peaches at her local farm stand. Real security is being able to drink the water that bubbles up from the aquifer beneath her feet. And that, she says, is worth fighting for.