Concerned New Yorkers to Governor: Withdraw the SGEIS

This is a busy time for board members and other municipal officials in Upstate NY. They've got til the end of December to submit their comments on the NY Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) regarding horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing in Marcellus and other shales. This is not a trivial pursuit; the Town of Danby's comments spread over 20 pages.

But even as public officials try to beat the comment deadline, thousands of others are calling on Governor Paterson to withdraw the SGEIS.  Last week over 100 people attending a meeting in Ithaca signed on to the letter, and they're hoping to get another couple thousand over these next few days.

Their reason? The SGEIS presumes that the 1992 Generic Environmental Impact Statement for oil and gas drilling - a document that took over a decade to produce - adequately protects human health and the environment.

But it doesn't, says Walter Hang of Toxics Targeting. The current regulations fail to adequately safeguard citizens against impacts on water quality, land use, economic and cultural resources and wildlife - and he has 270 cases of spills and accidents to prove it.

Regulations for current gas wells aren't protective enough and the industrial nature of drilling in the Marcellus will create multiple opportunities for even more environmental problems. The SGEIS would allow huge impoundments for flowback and brine - and already PA's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has slapped a couple corporate wrists for poorly engineered impoundment structures.

Then there's the problem of wastewater. “Where will it go?” Hang asks. Public wastewater treatment plants in NY aren't equipped to deal with the high levels of dissolved solids in the brines. Nor are public treatment plants set up to deal with the radioactivity expected to be in Marcellus brines. Instead, NY drillers have been transporting millions of gallons of brine and well wastewater to Pennsylvania and Ohio. But at the last DEC hearing in Corning a Pennsylvania man said, "don't send it to us. We don't want it."

“The bottom line,” says Hang, “is that the [NY] government is not safeguarding your public health and safety. That's why he is actively circulating the petition that asks Governor Paterson to withdraw the SGEIS. "That action will allow the de-facto moratorium on drilling permits to continue," Hang says, and a continued moratorium will allow towns and citizens more time to push for stronger environmental cleanup protections.

As of last Monday, nearly 2,000 people and organizations had signed on to the letter. Now it's your turn. Anyone concerned about the flaws in the proposed rules (even folks outside NY) can read the letter and sign on right here. And if you can get a few celebrities to sign on, so much the better!

You'll also find an interactive map and the profile of 270 oil and gas spills at that site. And check out the facebook page "no fracking way".
 

Citizens Sue Village over Schlumberger Project

Since July, and throughout three public hearings, residents of Horseheads, NY and the surrounding area have been asking the village elders to conduct a more thorough environmental review of the proposed Schlumberger building project. 

Last winter Schlumberger Technology Corporation plunked down a chunk of change for 88 acres in the Horseheads Industrial Center. It is an area zoned for light industry and manufacturing and contains warehouses and distribution centers. There is also another gas field service industry on the site - a company that provides equipment needed for drilling.

Schlumberger hopes to construct a 400,000 square foot facility to store fracking chemicals and explosives needed for gas field development. And they claim that their facility will bring 300 to 400 jobs to the area.

But residents are concerned that local municipal officials have embraced potential economic gain at the cost of potential environmental contamination. During the public hearings they repeatedly expressed their concern to village board members that it seemed like the project was a “done deal”. They begged the town board to conduct a more complete environmental review.

In particular, residents raised questions about stormwater permits, air quality and the impact of increased truck traffic on adjacent schools and residential neighborhoods.

At one point the Horseheads Village board seemed to agree; during their review of Part I of the environmental assessment (at their September 30 meeting) they  determined that the Schlumberger facility could potentially impact ground and surface water quality, air quality, wildlife and public health and safety. Less than a week later, the Village determined that there was no need for further environmental review, and on October 15 they issued a “negative declaration.”

This decision cleared the way for site plan approval and outraged many local residents. Outraged them so much that on November 12 a group calling itself People for a Healthy Environment filed a lawsuit against the Village. They claim that approval of the Schlumberger project was “illegal, arbitrary and capricious” and ask that the project be halted until more a complete environmental review can be done.

Horseheads Village didn’t just give a deaf ear to the people. They – and Schlumberger –also ignored demands from the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to cease activity on the site until certain requirements had been met.

Since summer Schlumberger has been operating on the site, with permission of the Village. They have a temporary structure, chemical storage silos as well as trucks parked on the site. Still, Schlumberger insists that what they are doing is not "construction" and therefore requires no permits.

The NY Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is not amused. On September 30 the DEC issued a Notice of Violation to Schlumberger for failure to obtain proper permits for stormwater discharges. You see, stormwater from the Schlumberger site discharges into a NY state freshwater wetland and into Catherine Creek, which eventually spills into Seneca Lake – precisely the concern raised by residents at board meetings and public hearings.

DEC directed Schlumberger to: discontinue all chemical and material storage; discontinue all construction support, maintenance and storage operations; and discontinue all storage and maintenance for vehicles providing oil and gas field services.

Schlumberger’s response was to continue their activities at the site. Until recently. It took another letter from DEC, but according to Peter Lent, regional permit administrator for DEC, as of November 13 Schlumberger is honoring the cease work directive.

In the meantime they are trying to get a stormwater permit for their temporary site.

It won’t be easy. In an 8-page letter to Schlumberger, DEC listed a number of things Schlumberger needs to clarify before a permit will be issued. Schlumberger needs to make sure chemicals are stored correctly; an October 15 inspection revealed a tarpaulin roof leaking water onto chemicals stored on pallets. It also cited chemical and additives dust on the storage building floor.

DEC has also requested Schlumberger to be more forthcoming about the chemicals stored on site. Instead of lumping them together in a broad category, such as “dry additives” they will need to list the components of the mixture.

 As for the citizen lawsuit, the group expects a response from village officials sometime in December.

You can read about the October public hearing here . You can read more articles about Schlumberger here.

News from around

Here's some updates from a few of my colleagues found on The Gathering Line. The Gathering Line is a round-up of oil & gas drilling news brought to you by National Alliance for Drilling Reform (NA4DR), a broad alliance of grassroots activists from states across the nation that are affected with drilling development.

Amy Goodman interviews of Toxics Targeting, an Ithaca, NY-based environmental database firm which released a report last week, uncovering 270 documented hazardous chemical spills which occurred over the past thirty years. PA's own Department of Environmental Conservation's database contained records of fires, explosions, wastewater spills, well contamination, and ecological damage related to gas drilling. Take a moment to watch the interview Amy Goodman Interviews Walter Hang of Toxics Targeting Mr. Hang is calling on NY Governor David Paterson to withdraw the Draft Supplemental Geologic Environmental Impact Statement, citing woefully inadequate reporting which will not come close to protecting the environment, water, and public health. This is a must-see interview! Visit Gas Wells Are Not Our Friends to find out more from Peacegirl!

Would you consider this a small footprint?See the effects of 40 years of drilling!Read it at Cheap Tricks and Costly Truths.

Gas drilling is destroying Pennsylvania's wilderness. The Pennsylvania Wilds include more than 2,000,000 acres of publicly owned virgin forest, clear mountain streams and abundant wildlife. Read about how these public lands are being violated and watch for public action you can take soon to defend the Allegheny National Forest, part of the Pennsylvania Wilds.

TXsharon continues to follow the abuses of Aruba Petroleum in a Barnett Shale backyard and Wednesday the Wise County Messenger picked up the story--don't miss the comments. It's all on Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

Colleyville tables application for first well site. See story at Flower Mound Citizens Against Urban Drilling

Compressor Stations a side-effect of Marcellus Drilling

The current message to landowners situated over the Marcellus shale is that if they want to lease their land for good money, they need to provide a way for the gas company to get the gas out and send it to market. That means allowing drilling on their land and allowing pipelines.

It also means allowing gas compressor stations, and over the past summer Chesapeake Energy constructed a new and larger compressor station just a few miles from here. Gathering lines from six local wells carry natural gas to the station on Federal Road in Erin, NY. The compressors increase the gas pressure so it can be pushed into the Millennium Pipeline (which carries the gas off to NYC).

Chesapeake threw the on-switch last month and already two of the nearby neighbors are complaining about the noise.

“It runs 24 hours a day seven days a week,” said Richard Usack who lives close to 500 feet away. “It sounds like a lawnmower running outside my window all the time. This is ruining my life.”

And it’s not just the noise that bothers Usack. “At night it’s lit up like a Christmas tree,” he said, and those lights shine into his windows all night long. Usack has called Chesapeake a couple of times about his concerns, and they’ve sent someone down to measure the sound. But they don’t share the results with Usack.

What really bothers Usack, though, is that the town didn't have a site review or notify neighbors about the project. Sure, he sold the one-acre parcel to Columbia a few years back - and Columbia sold it to Chesapeake - but Usack didn’t realize they would use it for such a large compressor because the town has zoning. And that area is zoned residential/agricultural, not industrial. The compressor, he says, is industrial in nature.

According to the Town Code Enforcement officer John McCracken, Chesapeake, already had an existing compressor there. Therefore, they were exempt from everything except the building permit for the structure surrounding the compressor.

Flipping through the blueprints on his desk, McCracken reads off a few design specifications:  a hospital-grade muffler; estimated engine power around 700 hp; noise level expected to be 40 decibels at the site. Oh yeah, and it's powered by natural gas. More about that later.

McCracken estimates that Erin will see another five compressor stations as the Marcellus shale is developed. To place an essentially industrial activity in the currently zoned residential/agricultural district will require special use permits, he notes adding, “If towns don’t have zoning, they won’t be able to control where compressor stations are located.”

This is becoming a problem south of the border, in Bradford County, PA.  Brian Davis, Bradford County planner, says the county has no zoning and already there are three compression stations. He expects more to come.

Residents may have little say about where a compression station goes, but that doesn’t mean they’ll keep mum. When people complained about the noise at a compressor station near Albany, the company installed acoustic blankets inside the compressor station buildings to help muffle the sound.

Right now nobody in Erin is thinking about potential air quality concerns. That's because there's only one compressor in town. But Calvin Tillman, the mayor of Dish, Texas, warns that emissions from gas-powered compressor stations like the one in Erin have the potential to pose serious problem.

In a phone interview last week he explained some of the problems Dish residents were experiencing. But we have eleven compressor engines, he emphasized. The problem is, they are located just outside the town boundaries, and just beyond town jurisdiction. Dish has no control over where those compressors are located.

"Texas allows the companies to permit each station separately," Tillman explained. It's done with "permit by rule". As long as each compressor does not reach or exceed the allowable emissions threshold they are permitted. "They don't consider the cumulative effect of all the compressors in the area," he said.

The air in Dish got so bad that the folks in town voted to use  a chunk of taxpayer money - 15 percent of their annual budget - to fund an air quality study. Of course, the energy companies have been saying our study wasn't well done, Tillman said. But now the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality is conducting their own studies and, according to Tillman, their results support the earlier Dish study. Results are posted on the town website at www.townofdish.com

AMA concerned about endocrine disruptors

Earlier this week The Endocrine Society released a news blurb noting that the American Medical Association may be closer to working with the federal government to enact new policies to decrease our exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs).  Given that frack chemicals contain EDC's, any effort to reduce public exposure is welcome news.

According to the Endocrine Society, the resolution states that the AMA will work with the federal government to pursue regulatory oversight of endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Regulations, they say, should pass through a single office to ensure coordination among agencies - with the exception of pharmaceutical agents that are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration and are used for medicinal purposes.

The resolution also requires that policy be based on comprehensive data covering both low-level and high-level exposures and that national policy should be developed and revised under the direction of a collaborative group comprising endocrinologists, toxicologists, occupational/environmental medicine specialists, epidemiologists and policymakers. You can read more here.