Gas Drilling Awareness for Cortland County
August 3, 2011
University of Rochester Medical Center: Department of Environmental Medicine.
July 29, 2011
https://gdacc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/5-26-11-encon-health-transcript-hydrofracking.doc
July 25, 2011
RE: frack water recycling: They power huge lights that light of the pads for the whole night. They don’t use street electric but generators which contribute to the noise. The trucks have large pumps that due to the volume of 5200 gallons per truck are large motors, the trucks endlessly are using their backup safety beepers, horns for instructions to the ground crew, etc. The three sites in our neighborhood will generate 800 trucks a day, 1600 with return trip passes.
Complete Interview:
1. Pollution of your well (two wells?). How did this show up?
2. The operations end up being more extensive than anticipated. The “pads” are large, and end up being used for other operations.
3. Extensive light pollution due to 24/7 operation.
4. Extensive trucking.
5. Feel free to add any other relevant details.
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July 25, 2011
July 25, 2011
HRW trip to Pa to see Hydrofracking – entire interview 7 18 11 – YouTube. Hydro Relief Web
On July 16th 2011, a group of people from Oneida County, New York drove to Bradford County, Pennsylvania to see the process of Hydrofracking for themselves. The trip was organized by Hydro Relief Web
Three of the people who attended (Toshia Hance Bonnie Jones Reynolds and Carleton Corey) were later interviewed by Reporter/Anchor Gary Liberatore from WKTV news Channel 2. This video is the extended form of that interview.
Reporting that Tonawanda resident that the local newspaper has told her not to write anymore letters to the editor about hydrofracking because the paper will not print them.
July 12, 2011
FOR RELEASE 7/12/11
Contact:
Denny Larson, Global Community Monitor, 415-845-4705
Josh Joswick, San Juan Citizens Alliance, 970-259-3583
Shirley McNall, San Juan County, NM Residents Worried About Our Health, 505-334-6534
Paul Light, Battlement Concerned Citizens, 970-285-7791
New Report Reveals Toxic Air Near Natural Gas Operations
Citizen Samples Confirm Neighboring Communities at Risk
El Cerrito, CA– Citizen sampling of air quality near natural gas production facilities has identified highly unsafe levels of toxic chemicals near homes, playgrounds, schools and community centers in Colorado and New Mexico. A new report issued by Global Community Monitor, GASSED! Citizen Investigation of Toxic Air Pollution from Natural Gas Development, details the air sampling results, environmental and public health threats with living amid the natural gas boom.
A coalition of environmental and community based organizations in Colorado and New Mexico collected nine air samples that were analyzed by a certified lab. The lab detected a total of 22 toxic chemicals in the air samples, including four known carcinogens, as well as toxins known to damage the nervous system and respiratory irritants. The chemicals detected ranged from 3 to 3,000 times higher than what is considered safe by state and federal agencies. Sampling was conducted in the San Juan Basin area of Colorado and New Mexico, as well as Garfield County in western Colorado.
“Carcinogenic chemicals like benzene and acrylonitrile should not be in the air we breathe – and certainly not at these potentially harmful levels,” said Dr. Mark Chernaik, scientist. “These results suggest neighboring communities are not being protected and their long-term health is being put at risk.”
“My husband, pets, and I have experienced respiratory and other health related problems during the twelve years we have lived on Cow Canyon Road in La Plata County, Colorado. We believe these health issues are related to the air quality in our neighborhood and in the area,” said Jeri L. Montgomery, neighbor of natural gas development. Through the course of the pilot study, neighbors of natural gas production facilities documented chemical odors and sampled the air. Neighbors have appealed to local, state and national government agencies to investigate their air quality complaints, to limited recourse.
“We are very concerned about the total disregard for the health and welfare of the people “existing” near the sickening toxic oil and gas industry dumps located in neighborhoods such as the land farm on Crouch Mesa and the waste disposal facility in Bloomfield that are permitted and approved by the State of New Mexico and Federal EPA,” said Shirley McNall, member of San Juan County, NM Residents Worried About Our Health.
“Experts and agencies recognize more air monitoring is needed, but it’s not happening,” said Paul Light, co-chair of the Battlement Concerned Citizens. “Rather than wait for the government, we used the Bucket Brigade to collect much-needed air quality information.”
The community and environmental groups in the San Juan Basin and western Colorado worked with Global Community Monitor, which trains community members living near industrial operations to run their own “Bucket Brigade” to sample their air. The Bucket Brigade has been used in 27 countries internationally. The bucket uses EPA methods for testing and an independent lab for air sample analysis.
Complaints about air quality have also surfaced in other states around the country, including West Virginia, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wyoming. Little information exists to educate and inform citizens about the chemicals being stored, emitted into the air, ground or water in close proximity to their homes. “People are getting gassed, and they don’t even know what is coming at them. The air monitoring provides crucial information in understanding what families are being exposed to on a day-to-day basis,” said Denny Larson of Global Community Monitor.
Federal loopholes in the Clean Air Act allow major corporations to circumvent basic protections that put public health first. US EPA is currently drafting new regulations to control and monitor air pollution from natural gas development. Congress is debating new legislation, such as the Bringing Reductions to Energies Air Born Toxic Health Effects (BREATHE) Act.
As regulation moves forward, GASSED! states that solutions are possible. The natural gas industry should invest in pollution controls to increase efficiency and reduce the amount of chemicals in the air. The report also calls for mandatory air monitoring at all natural gas operations and disclosure of chemicals used in the process to local residents.
In addition, the proximity of neighbors and wells is often too close. The report recommends a minimum quarter mile buffer zone between homes, schools and natural gas operations. This is similar to regulations enacted by Tulare County, CA on pesticide spray and St. Charles Parish, LA on industrial development. The report further states, “As the natural gas industry continues to grow, so will the number of families neighboring and affected by the emissions. Industry and government leaders have a unique opportunity to address public health and environmental issues. For coexistence between communities and gas industry to be possible, chemical exposure has to be immediately addressed.”
The full report can be downloaded at: Gassed! Full Report
Download the Appendix:
Complete Air Samples Results Spreadsheet
Full Air Sample Data Interpretation Letter from Mark Chernaik, Phd
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July 12, 2011
DEP study refutes Crystal Stroud’s claim of gas well poisoning – News – Daily Review.
DEP study refutes Crystal Stroud’s claim of gas well poisoning
June 21, 2011
Pa. health chief wants to analyze drilling areas – WSJ.com.
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Gov. Tom Corbett’s top health adviser said Friday that he wants to make Pennsylvania the first state to create a registry to track illnesses in communities near heavy drilling in the Marcellus Shale natural gas formation to determine what kind of impact, if any, the activity has on public health.
Health Secretary Eli Avila told Corbett’s Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission that creating such a registry is the timeliest and most important step the Department of Health could take, and that his agency is not aware of anything like it in other drilling states.
“We’re really at the frontiers of this and we can make a speedy example for all the other states,” Avila told the commission at its fourth meeting.
Collecting information on drilling-related health complaints, investigating them, centralizing the information in one database and then comparing illnesses in drilling communities with non-drilling communities could help refute or verify claims that drilling has an impact on public health, he said. The aggregation of data and information also would allow the Department of Health to make its findings public, in contrast to the privacy that surrounds its investigation into individual health complaints and the findings that may result.
The Marcellus Shale formation, considered the nation’s largest-known natural gas reservoir, lies primarily beneath Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Ohio. Pennsylvania is the center of activity, with more than 3,000 wells drilled in the past three years and thousands more planned in the coming years as thick shale emerges as an affordable, plentiful and profitable source of natural gas.
The rapid growth of deep shale drilling and its involvement of high-volume hydraulic fracturing, chemicals and often-toxic wastewater are spurring concerns in Pennsylvania about poisoned air and water.
“As drilling increases, I anticipate, at least in the short term, a proportionate increase in concerns and complaints which the department must be prepared to address,” he said.
In the past year or so, the Department of Health has received several dozen or so health complaints, he said.
One woman, Crystal Stroud of Granville Summit in northern Pennsylvania, told an anti-drilling rally in the Capitol this month that she is hearing from others in Bradford County about bizarre and sudden health problems that they blame on contaminated water from the area’s heavy drilling.
Stroud herself blames her barium poisoning on well water polluted by drilling near her home, and accused state agencies of turning a blind eye.
“I am extremely confused as to why our Health Department is not interested in these issues and no one from (the) Pennsylvania Health Department has contacted us, and why are they not investigating this?” Stroud, 29, told the crowd on June 7.
“Every week I receive a phone call from someone different in my county that has unexplained rashes, high blood pressure, heart palpitations, high barium levels, a child with blisters all over his face from his mother bathing him in the water, and even a woman whose spleen burst in an unexplained way, all with contaminated water,” she said.
A spokesman for Corbett has said both the departments of Health and Environmental Protection have active investigations into Stroud’s claims, and the company that drilled the well, Dallas-based Chief Oil & Gas LLC, has denied responsibility for Stroud’s health problems.
On Friday, Avila said his agency has found no links between drilling and the illnesses and diseases presented to it so far, but he added that a wider study is necessary to determine whether there are any associations, and a health registry could accomplish that.
Such health registries are common, and in the past have been created to monitor and study data related to cancer and rare diseases, health department officials said. To set up a drilling-related registry and fully investigate drilling-related health complaints would require another $2 million a year for the department and possibly require the help of the state’s schools of public health, Avila said.
Shale drilling requires blending huge volumes of water with chemical additives and injecting it under high pressure into the ground to help shatter the thick rock — a process called hydraulic fracturing. Some of that water returns to the surface, in addition to the gas, as brine potentially tainted with metals like barium and strontium and trace radioactivity by the drilling companies.
—Copyright 2011 Associated Press
GDACC 
