Preparedness is top priority for local first responders at gas well emergencies
June 5, 2011
Preparedness is top priority for local first responders at gas well emergencies.
Fayette radio host says shale criticism led to firing
June 4, 2011
Fayette radio host says shale criticism led to firing.
Fayette radio host says shale criticism led to firing
Monday, May 30, 2011
Controversies over Marcellus Shale drilling have shaken up the airwaves in Fayette County.
A longtime conservative radio host on WMBS in Uniontown claims he was fired last month over views aired on his show that criticized the health and environmental impact of natural gas drilling in the area.
Robert Foltz, host of the show “Let’s Talk” for 10 years, said he was terminated on April 20, after a guest on his show, Dan Bailey, president of the board of directors of the Carmichaels Municipal Authority, said that bromine, a byproduct of natural gas drilling, had contaminated the area’s public water supply.
The station’s general manager, Brian Mroziak, at first declined to comment on the reasons for Mr. Foltz’s departure, saying he could not discuss personnel matters.
The station’s Facebook page, however, described Mr. Foltz’s departure as a “leave of absence.”
But Mr. Foltz said he never asked for a leave of absence from the show.
Minutes after the April 20 program aired he received a letter signed by Mr. Mroziak and Robert Pritts, president and owner of the Fayette Broadcasting Corp., which owns the station.
“This letter acknowledges that, by mutual agreement, you have agreed to terminate your at-will status with Fayette Broadcasting Co. Inc,” according to the letter. At-will agreements allow employers to terminate employees legally at any time.
“Also,” the letter continued, “by your choice, you have decided to let your listeners know … that you have elected to ‘take a personal leave of absence’ from WMBS Radio.”
Station managers replaced Mr. Foltz with Mark Rafail, an alternate on the Fayette County Zoning Hearing Board, which, among its duties, approves or rejects drilling permits based on whether they meet the zoning code.
“It amazes me that the station took this stance,” Mr. Foltz said last week. “It was a combination of politics and [comments on] the drilling,” that forced him out, he said.
Mr. Mroziak disagreed. “The natural gas stuff had absolutely nothing to do with Bob being let go,” he said.
The station is one of a few sources of local information in rural Fayette County where, according to a study released by PathWays PA in 2009 in partnership with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, 35 percent of the county’s families could be categorized as “economically distressed.”
The natural gas industry has already invested millions of dollars in the county, one of the more active counties for drilling in the state, where 169 permits for drilling were signed in 2009 and 2010.
Just a month before Mr. Foltz’s hosting ended, the station began airing a weekly, two-hour show called “Natural Gas Matters” on Fridays in the slot following the show Mr. Foltz used to host. The show answers listeners’ questions about Marcellus drilling. Its major sponsors are McDonald Land Services, which surveys land for drilling companies, and National Brokerage, a financial services firm that helps landowners manage leases.
The show’s hosts “talk about the positive impact of natural gas, the jobs it creates,” Mr. Mroziak said. “They let people know what they can do with their newfound wells.”
On the first episode of “Natural Gas Matters,” host Jason Miller said, “We’re pro-industry. Just so you know. [Co-host] Chris and I are pro-industry,” according to online audio files of the show.
“We both get paychecks from gas companies,” explained Chris Whinery, the show’s other host.
Mr. Mroziak says the show is a moneymaker, popular with those who fund it as well as listeners. “We have a lot of nice sponsors lined up for the show.” He declined to say how much revenue it brings in for the station.
Mr. Foltz’s show often addressed potential environmental and health effects of the drilling prevalent in Fayette County.
On the April 20 show, Mr. Bailey, the Carmichaels municipal authority president, explained to listeners that increasing levels of trihalomethanes have been measured in the borough’s public water supply since late 2010. Trihalomethanes, which are possible carcinogens, are formed when chlorine at water treatment plants and organic material mix with bromine, a byproduct of drilling through the hydraulic fracturing process.
Mr. Foltz said these segments airing environmental concerns were popular. “Oh, I was loaded with calls, start to finish,” he said.
A repeat guest on Mr. Foltz’s show was Marigrace Butella, a tax collector in Dunbar who had taken an interest in the environmental and health impacts of drilling. She belongs to a local chapter of the Izaak Walton League of America, a national nonprofit active in environmental conservation efforts, and the Mountain Watershed Association.
Sometimes, Ms. Butella brought in constituents who had health problems they believed to be the result of nearby drilling. She and Mr. Foltz also made calls to the office of Rep. Camille “Bud” George, D-Clearfield, where Matthew Maciorkoski, cq executive director of the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, would call back to update them and the show’s listeners on developments in state policy regarding the drilling.
“I was impressed that they had a forum for public discourse,” Mr. Maciorkoski said of the show.
“We’re an economically disadvantaged area,” Ms. Butella said. “There’s a lot of farmland. When these people come in and they offer people thousands of dollars [to have wells on their property], they just can’t refuse it. I felt that the radio station was a good way to get information out.”
Delma Burns, a frequent listener to Mr. Foltz’s show who has lived in Lake Lynn for 61 years, agreed. “He was quite popular in the area,” she said of Mr. Foltz. “He covered a lot of problems and would let people call in with whatever their concerns were. That was one venue that we had that we don’t really have anymore.”
Mr. Foltz said he is looking for another job in radio journalism.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11150/1150213-55-0.stm#ixzz1OL0THPkg
Living in gasland
June 3, 2011
Living in gasland
Glen Spey’s Homestead School visits Dimock
DIMOCK, PA — William Farnelli would like to move to Australia because he’s heard there isn’t any gas drilling there. That’s what the fifth-grader told a student from The Homestead School in Glen Spey, NY who traveled with fellow fourth through sixth graders to Dimock for a firsthand look at what it’s like to live where natural gas exploration is taking place.
The experience appeared to be a sobering one for those who got to glimpse the landscape of rolling hills blanketed in fall foliage and studded with drilling rigs and well pads next to houses and barns. It prompted the question—have you ever thought of moving?—that led to William’s quietly voiced answer.
With his sister Rachel, a third-grader, at his side, the wide-eyed pair and their mother, Pat, described the ways in which drilling activities have changed their lives over the past three years. They live on bottled water to avoid the nausea and cramps that come if they drink their well water. They must purchase what they consume and continue to bathe in their well water while suffering rashes, dizziness and headaches.
The chronic noise of the trucks, which continues through the night, and the constant light make it hard to sleep. And while it would be a relief to slip away to somewhere else, Pat says it’s not likely anyone will want to buy their house.
The community continues to divide, as Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection battle over the proposed solution to install an $11.8 million water main. The decision has prompted the formation of Enough Already, a local group of business and homeowners opposed to the pipeline.
The day began at Julie and Craig Sautner’s home on Carter Road, where students learned how the couple copes with the loss of their water well to contamination that the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection traces to nearby drilling operations at Cabot sites.
The group then paid a visit to Congressman Chris Carney’s home approximately a mile away, where they introduced themselves to Mrs. Carney and left one of their Green Power Alliance t-shirts, along with a promise to follow up with letters to the congressman about their experience and concerns.
Continuing along the rural roads, the students observed cleared acreage where well pads, drill rigs and gathering lines are being stitched into the fabric of farmland and neighborhoods. A stop at the local K-12 school revealed a drilling rig rising into the horizon near the school track.
Later, perched on the lawn of a local church, speakers attempted to shout their messages over the chronic grinding drone of heavy trucks hauling excavation materials, residual waste water and tanks filled with clean water for some homeowners.
Before leaving, the Homestead students wanted William and Rachel to know that they’re not alone and gave them each a t-shirt. “Now you can be part of the Green Power Alliance,” they said.
For more information, contact Peter Comstock, head of school and Green Power Alliance advisor at 845/856-6359. Visit riverreporter.blogspot.com to read some responses to the Dimock experience submitted by those on the trip.
Local landowners, others repeat fracking concerns
June 2, 2011
Local landowners, others repeat fracking concerns.\
Local landowners, others repeat fracking concerns
Area landowners and residents gathered last Thursday to discuss hydraulic fracturing, a method for drilling for natural gas that can have big economic benefits but that critics say also can damage local land and water supplies.
A panel of five people, including state Rep. Debbie Phillips, D-Athens, spoke to a room full of curious and concerned residents at the Athens County Extension Office.“The hot topic at the Statehouse has been language in the budget, which would grant pretty broad authority to the state to sign leases on state lands for drilling,” Phillips said.
A panel of five people, including state Rep. Debbie Phillips, D-Athens, spoke to a room full of curious and concerned residents at the Athens County Extension Office.“The hot topic at the Statehouse has been language in the budget, which would grant pretty broad authority to the state to sign leases on state lands for drilling,” Phillips said.
Horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or fracking for short, involves sinking a vertical well thousands of feet into the ground, and then bending the well horizontally into layers of gas-filled shale. Once the concrete piping is in place, thousands of gallons of chemical-laced water and sand are pumped into the wells, and then exploded into the shale formation. Cracks open in the shale, allowing natural gas to seep out, which is then pumped to the surface along with the wastewater and chemicals.
While the natural-gas boom has revitalized the economies of many rural communities in Pennsylvania and other states, while offering a viable domestic energy alternative, the process also has potential for serious environmental and aesthetic consequences. As the increased use of fracking moves west into Ohio, much of the debate, including in Athens County, involves how serious those hazards are.
Rep. Phillips mentioned House Bill 133, which would allow natural gas and oil drilling and extraction on state lands, including state parks. The bill, opposed by the House minority caucus (Democrats), passed in the House last Wednesday and a similar bill is currently in the state Senate. The House bill would not allow drilling in state preserves.
In other states and increasingly in Ohio, natural gas companies have been offering residents up to several thousand dollars per acre for oil and gas leases. But some who have signed the leases have reported illness due to the chemicals getting into their water supplies. In isolated instances, property owners in other states have reported their tap water catching fire due to chemicals infiltrating their wells.
“If people take what the industry offers when they show up on their doorsteps, they’re not getting (a deal), even if (fracking) is something they want to do,” Phillips said of the leases. “They’re not getting as good a deal, and it’s allowing a lot more profit to the company and less to the landowners.”
Defenders of natural gas fracking have said the criticism is exaggerated or false, and that the chances of chemicals released in shale deposits infecting water supplies thousands of feet closer to the surface are small or none.
In fact, much of the concerns about fracking involve what happens with the wastewater and chemicals after it’s pumped back to the surface. Some municipalities in Pennsylvania, for example, have pumped the tainted water through their sewage systems with little or no treatment.
Democratic House members introduced amendments to H.B. 133, including one that would not allow drilling in state lands (and Lake Erie) where tourism is important. That amendment was tabled, Phillips said.
“(This means) you can frack in places where 5 percent or more of revenue comes from tourism,” she explained, noting that this includes Hocking County, where one out of seven jobs is based on tourism. The county’s Hocking Hills State Park and the Hocking State Forest are popular tourist destinations.
Kip Rondy, a farmer and landowner near Amesville, echoed Phillips concerns, cautioning attendees about the price that comes with leasing out their land.
“First we sold our timber, then we lost our land, washed down the river, and then sold our coal and then we sold our gas,” he said. “Are we any better for those schemes? Those things were not going to make us richer; did they make us rich? I argue not.”
Rondy said he first discovered the perils of fracking when he lived in West Virginia in the 1980s. In his town, he recalled, tap water would light on fire, as a result of underground natural gas extraction, as a result of chemicals getting into the water table.
He said he knew a man who died of stomach cancer two years after the drillers moved to town; it was from drinking the water, he claimed.
Panelist Greg Howard, an engineer, spoke firsthand about his personal experience with drinking well water in areas with natural gas drilling.
“I tasted gas well water. It was way worse than ocean water; the heavy metals really come through,” he said. “You have to wash your mouth (after).”
A few hours later, Howard recalled, he got sick.
“If you drink water with natural gas, it will make you throw up in a few hours,” he said. “At least that’s what it did for me.”
Mary Beth Lohse, conservation chair for the event’s sponsor, the Appalachian Group of the Sierra Club, said during the panel that she is most concerned about the high volume of toxic water that is used to drill and how deep the wells will be.
Gas companies use as much as 4 million gallons of water for one well, she said, but then claim that only 1 percent of it is petro-chemicals.
Doing the math, she added, “40,000 gallons of highly toxic stuff is a lot of stuff.”
Panelists urged local landowners to keep track of fracking-related legislation currently moving through the General Assembly, and to also engage an attorney if natural gas companies come calling with lease proposals.
DEP official: Pennsylvania might have the world’s largest gas reserves – News – Daily Review
May 31, 2011
DEP official: Pennsylvania might have the world’s largest gas reserves – News – Daily Review.\
DEP official: Pennsylvania might have the world’s largest gas reserves
Published: May 28, 2011
Article Tools
Review Photo/JAMES LOEWENSTEIN Scott Perry, director of the Department of Environmental Protection’s Bureau of Oil and Gas Management, speaks Friday in Laporte.
LAPORTE – Pennsylvania might be sitting on the largest gas reserves in the world, a Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection official said in Laporte on Friday.
The Marcellus Shale is the second largest natural gas reserve in the world, said Scott Perry, the director of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Bureau of Oil and Gas Management. And underneath the Marcellus Shale lies another source of natural gas, the Utica Shale, “which is potentially as productive at the Marcellus Shale, maybe even more so,” Perry said.
Together with other existing underground reserves of natural gas in the Commonwealth, “Pennsylvania might be sitting on the largest gas reserves in the world,” Perry said at a meeting of Sullivan County Energy Task Force in Laporte.
Perry also said that the Department of Environmental Protection inspects Marcellus Shale wells “multiple times,” which contradicts an assertion made several weeks ago by Bradford County Commissioner Mark Smith that many Marcellus Shale gas wells are not being inspected by the DEP.
Making sure that gas wells are properly constructed and that gas well sites are properly developed “is a priority for us,” Perry said in an interview after the meeting.
At the meeting, Perry said that the DEP increased the Marcellus Shale permit fees to pay for more gas well inspectors. “If they think we need more people resources, we can increase the fee” again, he said.
Perry also said that the Department of Environmental Protection does not require that Marcellus Shale gas well pads be lined to protect the ground from spills or that berms be constructed at gas well sites to contain large spills.
However, he said that “a substantial number” of companies do voluntarily install a liner on their well pad sites. And, he said, Chesapeake Energy installs both a liner and berms at its newer well sites.
However, companies that are responsible for spills can be fined, and they are also responsible for remediating the site after a spill, he said.
The issue of lining wells and installing berms was raised by Dean Marsh of the Benton area, who said that a gas drilling company, Williams LLC, is getting ready to frack a well near where he lives. While the site is lined, there is no berm, so a substantial spill would flow off the site and could impact a trout stream in the area if there were a heavy rain, Marsh said in an interview.
Perry also said at the meeting that hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” of gas wells has not resulted in contamination of ground water. “I have yet to see an instance where hydraulic fracturing has split open rock and impacted fresh ground water zones,” Perry said.
Friday’s meeting was open to the public.
James Loewenstein can be reached at (57)) 265-1633; or e-mail: jloewenstein@thedailyreview.com.
First Person Report from PA
May 19, 2011
This is from an email sent to me by a friend in Sullivan Co, PA. She has given me permission to post it her. Sullivan Co sits at Bradford Co’s souther border. My friend lives near Dushore which is right near the border and works in Towanda. She did not lease her 5 acres but her neighbor did. Drilling began there last fall and shortly thereafter, methane showed up in my friend’s water. Fracking has not begun yet.
Here is her email:
Sorry about taking so long to get back to you.
My class that does all the talking is only 6 students. One of them is the wife of a man who supervises the well completion– which is what we’re told went wrong at Canton – the well head. (personally I suspect that they ran into a vein of gas that was much stronger than the well cap could handle but they’re not going to say this to the public. That’s the only reason I can see that they would stop all “wellhead completion actions” until they figured out what went wrong. As far as I know, they haven’t returned to the “well head” completions yet). She’s the one that told us they were stuffing paper products from the local minimart down the wellhead to get the gusher to slow down — thus my tweak that they didn’t have a back up plan for such a situation. And I wonder if they have any back up plans at all? She also said that her spouse has worked for years with the drilling going on in Texas and was transferred up to PA because of his know-how; however, he can’t move up the supervisory ladder because he doesn’t have a degree! Instead he is working under some newcomer who has a degree in HISTORY (!) that they hired as supervisor and her spouse is training him. She also said that most of the rig workers don’t know what they’re doing and are guessing at how to go about the drilling. One well, she said, was put in backwards – as in the hole was to grow smaller as it went deeper but they were drilling so it widened instead. Nice, huh. She said men are being injured all the time at the well sites because it is such physically demanding work. She also said that she has 3 children and her spouse insists that they use only bought water! She has the most to tell but I’m guessing that her spouse won’t allow her to talk publicly. I was surprised she shared this much.
Another student (an older man who is retraining since his company closed down) said that in his area where there’s lots of wells going in, he & his friends (hunters who have lived there for all their lives) noticed that there was absolutely no wildlife around last fall. He said at some point, he could hear an audible grrrrrr that felt like the sound of an earthquake deep in the ground under his house. We figured the animals felt that too and took to higher ground. (this is part of my theory about my pond fish dying from the impact of the drilling sounds within the ground – we’re talking 24/7 for at least 6 weeks for just one drilling session – there’s no escape from it while it’s happening and the sounds go right through the walls of your home. I live 2000 feet away from the drilling & there’s a woods between us and the pad yet our house resounded with the sounds for the entire time even with the windows closed.)This is no small production as they’d like you to believe. It’s the greed of military-like industry backed by outlandish amounts of money.
A student from fall semester scared me (another older man) by saying that when they frack near your home, the house will shake from the explosions so strongly that things will fall off the walls.
One girl mentioned that she had been stalked by a Mexican who figured out that she was the last one to close up at her job in the evening — she quit her job.
Another one said that they were building “man camps” near her (Sayre area) just to house the workers who will be coming. I don’t think they’ve even seriously begun yet and the rains are slowing them down for which I’m grateful. She also said that her home is surrounded by drilling pads and lately she’s noticed that their water smells – which she’s never noticed before. She was getting pretty scared about it. There are already people in Wyalusing with class action suits because their water has been destroyed.
I’m noting that as they re-create the roads around here so that it can handle the impending increase in truck traffic (I can now hear the trucks on 87 which I could never hear before), they are building them up so high that the shoulders are incredibly steep. One swerve to get away from an oncoming truck (& these trucks are driven by newly licensed CDL drivers which they are churning out like flies on shit), and my car will be irreparably damaged – if not rolled over – because the inclines are so steep and the sides of our mountain roads are all about steep hills (and curves). I’ve never been cautious of the sides of the roads before and now, even having the road to myself, I’m hypervigilant. The railings that are in place were sufficient for the minor traffic but there’s no where near enough for the heightened roads, lack of shoulders and steep hillsides. They haven’t even repaired the railing that was taken out last fall when a water truck couldn’t make the S curve and went down over the bank.
My neighbor came home one day and called the police because he and his wife were driving around a serious curve on 87 and witnessed 2 water trucks (these are massively long) driving by them in the opposite direction at breakneck speed which almost tipped over on them! My neighbor has been driving trucks for years (not affiliated with this gas industry), and he knows when they are driving too fast and what they look like when they’re about to tip. He was really seriously pissed.
It’s so disgusting on so many levels, I can only absorb so much at a time. They’re polluting our air and our water, tearing down mountains to erect gas compressor stations (NOISE – coming soon), flattening trees to make way for their 4 acre pads, scattering holding ponds for toxic wastes (?) throughout the back woods (what happens to the wildlife that drinks from them?) — destroying the peace with constant sounds (thunderous rigs, planes & helicopters), chasing the wildlife out of their homes & hitting them on the roads (deer all the time), chewing away at the earth to get gravel for their pads, gashing through the mountains for their pipelines, making driving anywhere a concern for one’s life, destroying the normal roads and constantly we are held up in traffic due to construction. Getting in and out of Towanda (due to the bridge bottleneck) during peak hours is a long wait. Just to get in and out of town yesterday, I had to take back roads all around the light. I imagine once the rains settle down, the gray dust covering the sides of the roads – from the continuous Mac trucks taking gravel to the pads – will be nauseating to view. So much for the by-the-road wildflowers that were so gorgeous to view throughout the season.
Oh, and this too — the influx of newcomers is changing the entire essence of community. Everywhere I go when I’m in Towanda, I’m seeing these tough-looking young guys with tatoos. I’m sure they’re the workers brought here from Texas and other states. They look to me like the type that could do some violence under the influence… oh and there’s drugs coming through with them. Of course. I’ve already seen several young people at public places who looked like they were near death’s door literally. It’s the inner city come to the country.
All this for economic growth? ! Then why are there men near retirement age enrolled at Lackawanna because they lost their jobs and can’t get anything without a freakin degree! And every time I hear someone spout “responsible well drilling” as the answer, I want to throttle them. It doesn’t exist at this pace — no way.
It’s so indescribable that the “natural” gas companies get away with it – singing their songs of wealth – because no one who hasn’t been there can consciously grasp the complete devastation until they are in it. This is why I’m sending out everything that’s happening around here — I really want people to have their eyes open when it sets its sights on your area. I’ve never in my life witnessed something so all-encompassingly evil though I know this kind of selfish consumptive razing been going on all over the world and now it’s literally reached my back yard. It certainly has opened my heart to the pain in our world in ways that I wouldn’t have been able to feel otherwise BUT I’ve always known the world is getting weakened by our doings and that’s exactly why I hid myself in the mountains. Now, I too, like the wildlife, am being pushed out, killed off, and dehumanized. It’s very hard to be joyful about life or to respect us as Americans right now. I have to hold my fire of fierce opposition within me just to get through the days (and distract myself with animal rescue). This is how bad it is now – just a little over a year into this travesty – and they haven’t dug in yet. They’re just getting warmed up! Think about that.
GDACC 
