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.

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In-the-Shadow-of-the-Marcellus-Boom: How Shale Gas Extraction Puts Vulnerable Pennsylvanians at Risk. May, 2011

May 10, 2011

In-the-Shadow-of-the-Marcellus-Boom  Full Report

In the Shadow of the Marcellus Boom How Shale Gas Extraction Puts Vulnerable Pennsylvanians at Risk
May 2011
Written by:
Travis Madsen and Jordan Schneider, Frontier Group
Erika Staaf, PennEnvironment Research and Policy Center

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday, May 5, 2011
Contact: Erika Staaf, PennEnvironment Research and Policy Center
New report: Shale Gas Extraction Poses Risk to Vulnerable Populations in
Pennsylvania
Report uncovers local schools, hospitals, and daycares located near gas
extraction
Pittsburgh, PA – Pennsylvania’s vulnerable populations are often situated
near Marcellus Shale gas extraction, which has had a track record of
pollution, accidents and violations, according to a new PennEnvironment
Research and Policy Center report, In the Shadow of the Marcellus Boom: How
Shale Gas Extraction Puts Vulnerable Pennsylvanians at Risk.
The study shows that permitted well sites exist within two miles of more
than 320 day care facilities, 67 schools and nine hospitals statewide.
“Just weeks after a gas well blowout in Bradford County spilled thousands of
gallons of chemical-laced flowback water and forced seven local families to
be evacuated from their homes, our report shows that our most vulnerable
populations across the state could be at risk to a similarly dangerous
scenario,” said Erika Staaf, clean water advocate for PennEnvironment
Research and Policy Center. “Whether it’s air or water pollution, accidents
or explosions, we’ve seen that the effects of Marcellus Shale gas extraction
don’t necessarily end at the drilling pad’s borders. We cannot put our most
vulnerable populations at risk of these problems any longer.”
Children are likely more vulnerable to the impacts of gas extraction because
they are still developing. The sick and diseased, meanwhile, are more
susceptible to health effects from pollution exposure.
“I’m like any other American parent who wants the best for their children.
From the basics of water, food, healthcare, and a home, to the joys we had
in our own childhood – ice cold lemonade after a hot day of, climbing trees,
playing hide and seek in the woods and building space ships to explore outer
space,” said Michelle Boyle, a nurse at Allegheny General Hospital and a
parent of two daughters. “For my own children I now worry if the woods that
our children are playing hide and seek in will suddenly erupt in an
explosion, like in Independence Township in Washington County, or like in
Canton, Bradford County, where seven families had to be evacuated.”
From Pittsburgh to Scranton, gas companies have drilled more than 3,000
wells in the Marcellus Shale and the state has issued permits for thousands
more. During 2010, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
(DEP) issued permits to gas companies to drill or deepen nearly 3,450
additional wells. With the industry projecting on the order of 50,000 new
wells over the next two decades, gas extraction activity is likely to move
into even greater proximity to more vulnerable populations across the
region.

Filed under Health Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Gulf Oil Spill

April 7, 2011

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra1007197

The Gulf Oil Spill

Bernard D. Goldstein, M.D., Howard J. Osofsky, M.D., Ph.D., and Maureen Y. Lichtveld, M.D., M.P.H.

N Engl J Med 2011; 364:1334-1348April 7, 2011

Article
References

One year after the Gulf oil spill (also known as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the BP oil spill, or the Gulf of Mexico oil spill), the full magnitude of the environmental, economic, and human health effects of this major disaster remain unknown. Despite a growing literature describing the impact of oil spills on health1-28 (Table 1Table 1Studies of Effects of Oil Spills on the Health and Safety of Workers and Communities. and Table 2Table 2Studies of Effects of Oil Spills on Mental Health of Workers and Communities.), it is difficult to respond to the many questions asked by clinicians and the public about this spill or the risk of future spills. The uncertainty is exemplified by the study of 55,000 Gulf oil spill workers by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), which is open-ended rather than focused on a specific number of end points.29 The uncertainty also has consequences for the economic and psychosocial well-being of Gulf Coast residents.

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Policy Brief on Gas Development in NY and PA

February 9, 2011

http://devsoc.cals.cornell.edu/cals/devsoc/outreach/cardi/publications/upload/Policy_Brief_Jan11-draft08.pdf

Research & Policy Brief Series. ISSUE NUMBER 39/JANUARY 2011

Natural Gas Development:

Views of New York and Pennsylvania Residents in the Marcellus Shale Region

By

Richard Stedman, Cornell University, Fern Willits, Kathryn Brasier, Matthew Filteau, and Diane McLaughlin, The Pennsylvania State University, andJeffrey Jacquet

, Cornell University.

 

 

How much do residents feel they know about the potential impacts?

Department of Development Sociology

Cornell University

 

 

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Tompkins Co. Road Protection Ordinance Public Hearing Jan. 31, 2011

January 24, 2011

Public Information Meeting January 31 on Proposed Road Preservation Law
 
Residents will have the opportunity to learn more about the County’s proposed road preservation law at an information meeting on Monday, January 31, beginning at 7:00 p.m., at the first-floor conference room of the County’s Old Jail office building, 125 E. Court Street, Ithaca.
 
The meeting, sponsored by the Legislature’s Government Operations and Facilities and Infrastructure Committees, will provide information about the proposed local law that would amend the County Code to regulate certain heavy commercial or industrial uses of County roads with the potential to cause road damage.  At its February 1 meeting, the Legislature will conduct a public hearing on the proposed road preservation law.
 
The proposed amendment focuses on any temporary commercial or industrial activity that generates “high frequency, high impact truck traffic”—traffic to or from a single project site generating more than ten truck trips per day for more than three days in a week, involving trucks with a gross weight that exceeds 20 tons, as could occur in activities such as timber harvesting, mining, and natural gas drilling.  The law would establish procedures of posting notice on county highways that could be affected by such temporary projects, a permitting system for those seeking exemption for vehicles that provide essential local pick-up or delivery, and bonding to ensure that the condition of County roads, shoulders, and related highway structures is not adversely affected by such truck traffic.
 
The Legislature delayed scheduling of the public hearing to allow additional time to inform commercial entities and other users about the proposed local law before the hearing is held.  Anyone who wishes to learn more about the proposed law is invited to attend the information meeting January 31.
 
The draft local law is available for review at the County Legislature’s web site at
http://meetings.tompkins-co.org/Citizens/Detail_LegiFile.aspx?ID=2308 (Under “Attachments,” click on “Lla-11.”)
 
Media Contact:  Michael Lane, Chair, Government Operations Committee, 844-8313 or 844-8440.
 
– END -propos
 
——
Marcia E. Lynch
Public Information Officer
Tompkins County
125 E. Court Street
Ithaca, NY  14850
Tel: 607-274-5555/Fax: 607-274-5558

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Dr. Ingraffea’s Letter from Gas Industry

January 8, 2011

Oct 15: This is the letter the gas industry WOULD write if they were as keen on safety as they claim to be – by Prof. Tony Ingraffea

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alison-rose-levy/an-engineer-drafts-a-lett_b_762133.html

Alison Rose Levy
www.healthjournalist.com
Posted: October 15, 2010 12:46 PM
  
What if the Gas Industry Really Wanted to Make Fracking Safer?

Do you know those letters you write to people who are really troubling you — but you usually never send? Well, Cornell Professor Anthony Ingraffea just wrote one.

But in this case, the distinguished senior engineer wrote the letter that the gas industry would write if they were as keen on safety as they claim to be. Although his letter is a fantasy, in it, an earnest, diligent, accountable, and safety concerned gas drilling industry reaches out to all of the citizens of New York and the dozen or so other states where fracking (a higher risk gas drilling process) is happening, or pending.

Admittedly, none of the valuable suggestions that Professor Ingraffea, (who is the Dwight Baum, Professor of Engineering at Cornell), offers in this letter are routine gas company practices. They fully resist such measures. Still, citizens of states where fracking is pending or present, would be well-advised to read Ingraffea’s letter to learn what they are in for, should fracking proceed.

Dear Citizens:

We are writing to ask your permission to develop shale gas in your states using high-volume, slickwater, hydraulic fracturing from long horizontal well legs (HVSHF).

Although you have allowed us to produce oil and gas for many years, we recognize that we are now asking you to allow us to do much more intense development than ever before, using a technology never before used in your area. We acknowledge our development plan for your states might eventually involve over 400,000 wells alone, with thousands more in other shale, and be valued in the trillions of dollars, over decades to come.

We have seen how such intense development with this technology has caused problems where we are using it already in gas shales. We have listened closely to your concerns about these problems, and others on the horizon, so we are writing you now to make a compact with you. We understand that you are granting us a privilege, that, collectively, all of you have to give us the right to develop your gas, because, quite honestly, our plans will significantly affect all of you, not just landowners with whom we might have a business relationship.

Therefore, if you give us the permission we seek, here are our promises to you:

1. Since we will not be developing in your area for another 2-3 years, we have time to help you prepare for our arrival:

* We will immediately fund appropriate training programs in your community colleges to produce homegrown workers for our industry. We will subsidize tuition for the students who commit to work in our industry. Those workers will get right-of-first-refusal on our job openings.

* We will immediately fund appropriate training programs for your emergency response teams — fire, police, medical, and spill hazards — and we will equip them at our expense.

* We recognize that our heavy equipment will damage many of your roads and bridges. We will start now to pay to upgrade these so that they all remain usable not just by our equipment, but by you, too, throughout the development process. This will be a “stimulus” to help your unemployment situation now. When development is complete in an area, we will pay for final repairs necessary to leave all impacted roads and bridges in state-of-the-art condition. This will be a legacy gift to you from our industry.

* We will fund the construction or upgrading of regional industrial waste treatment and disposal facilities with adequate capacity to process safely all of the solid and liquid wastes we produce. We will not truck our wastes to other states.

2. We will be transparent about our entire plan for development:

* We will tell you as soon as practicable, but no later than 1 year before start of activity, where and when we will drill, and what pipelines and compressor stations will be needed where and by when.

* We will publish gas and waste production figures from every well, accurately, and on-time.

* We will tell you where your gas is going to market, and not sell your gas to foreign markets.

* We will disclose, completely, all chemicals and other substances we use.

3. We will accept, without debate, all new regulations that might be proposed by your regulatory agencies: your existing regulations are inadequate to cover the new technologies and cumulative impact of HVSHF. We will offer your agencies suggestions for continuous evolution of the regulations as a result of lessons we are learning.

4. With respect to your natural environment legacy:

* For every tree we uproot, we will plant at least 1 replacement. We will reforest all access roads as quickly as we can, and minimize the width of all forest cuts.

* We will pay a fair price for the water we extract from your lakes and rivers, which will average several million gallons per gas well.
* Whatever we break, despoil, or pollute, we will repair, replace, or remediate, at our expense.

5. We will safely dispose of all liquid and solid wastes from our development:

* We will never store any flowback fluids or produced water in open pits. All such fluids will be recycled to the highest extent possible by existing technologies, regardless of increase in cost to us.

* All liquid and solid wastes remaining from recycling will be treated at the above-mentioned industrial waste treatment plants.

* We will provide radiation monitoring equipment on every well pad: any materials, including drill cuttings, leaving a well pad that trigger an alarm will be sent to a licensed radioactive waste disposal facility.

6. We will not cause an increase in the tax levy on your citizens.

* We will agree to a substantial increase in permit fees to reflect the expected 4-fold increase in person-time we expect you to spend on review of permits for HVSHF.

* We will agree to a state severance tax, the level of which will be floating, according to an accurate accounting of all costs to the state and municipalities.

7. We will practice what we preach about clean fuels and emissions:

* Every truck, every generator, every pump, every compressor will run on natural gas — no diesel, no gasoline engines.

* We will not allow uncaptured gaseous emissions from any of our processes: no evaporation from open pits, no pressure releases from compressor stations or condensate tanks.

8. We will be sensitive to noise and light pollution, even if a community does not have zoning restrictions in place to regulate such:

* All of our pads and compressor stations will have sound/light suppression measures in place before startup.

* Site drill pads, compressor stations, and pipelines in collaboration with the community.

9. We will not unduly stress any of your communities:

* We will never experiment with drilling many wells in a small area over a brief period of time.

* We will abide by all area and time restrictions on permitting.

* We will never contest loss of water use by any citizen. If a well is lost, we will replace it with whatever type of supply is requested by its owner at our expense.

* We will never require a citizen harmed by our development to promise silence in return for remediation.

Finally, and humbly, we note that even our best plans and efforts will come up short, sometime, someplace, somehow. Therefore, in addition to all the contributions noted above, we also pledge to establish an escrow account which will receive 1% of the value of all gas produced from shale gas wells using HVSHF each year. This account will be administered by an independent 3rd party, advised by an independent panel you select, and will be used as an emergency fund to compensate those financially or physically harmed by our development in your state.

Yours truly,
The Gas Industry

**************************************************************************************

Gosh, that’s a pretty thorough letter. Too bad they’ve never written one like it. But what if they did? How should citizens respond? Would fracking be safe enough to consider if we all woke up one day, and (surprise) all of these measures were guaranteed to be implemented?

Well, Professor Ingraffea has a draft response. Here it is:

Dear Gas Industry

We have observed, calculated, thought, done the science, and we have concluded that
even “doing it right” is wrong.

No thanks.

The Citizens who live over the Marcellus Shale

 

Filed under Right vs Wrong Tagged with , , , , , ,

OP Ed Pages

December 22, 2010

Recent opinions expressed by local citizens and submitted to the media

WORLD WATCHING NYS ON FRACKING –Cortland Standard. Opinion, Dec. 21, 2010, Jim Weiss, Marathon.

In his letter (“New York state lost”), Mr. Ken Diaz criticized Governor Paterson’s extension of the ban on hydrofracking for another 6 months. If Mr. Diaz had his way, there would be well drilling rigs all over the county by now.

Lets ignore the fact that 14,000 comments were submitted to the DEC on their proposed guidelines, including four from Cortland County (Legislature, Planning Dep’t., Health Dep’t, and Soil/Water Service).

Let’s ignore the fact that in Pennsylvania, besides Dimock, gas migration is being investigated in some 20 other Pennsylvania communities and that Cabot Oil was just fined $4 million to rehabilitate contaminated water wells.  (Personally, filling up my basement with water purification equipment doesn’t sound all that attractive.)

Let’s ignore the fact that Pittsburgh’s public water supply is measurably saltier due to contamination of the Monongahela River with waste brine from hydrofracking.  Pittsburgh just enacted a ban on the process.

Let’s ignore the fact that there were over 500 violations of Pennsylvania regulations by gas drilling operations in the first half of  2010 and over 1000 trucking violations logged by the state police (even a close call with a school bus).

Let’s ignore the fact that Pennsylvania hastily enacted new regulations on gas drilling because the existing ones had holes big enough to drive a drilling rig through.

The current conflict over high volume slick water horizontal drilling hydrofracturing is not just about New York State.  The gas industry has run roughshod over communities all around the country, and drillers are pushing forward in other countries as well.  The world is watching how this plays out in New York.  We all owe a debt of gratitude to the people who put the industry on notice that business as usual is over and New York State will not be abused.

Chris Applegate. This Landowner Makes a Choice on Gas Drilling.  Nov. 26, 2010 Press & Sun Bulletin. http://www.pressconnects.com/article/20101126/VIEWPOINTS03/11260306/1120/This-landowner-makes-a-choice-on-gas-drilling

Response to Palmerton op ed in July 7 Syracuse New Times: On Jul 13, 2010, at 11:02 PM, Mary wrote:
In response to Palmerton in New Times July 7th:  we’ll see if it sees print…

To the Syracuse New Times

Let’s Get It Fracking Straight

David Palmerton, of the Palmerton Group, a champion of natural gas drilling, would like us to believe that drilling for natural gas is nothing new and it is very safe.   He accuses Josh Fox of misrepresenting the facts in his volatile film Gasland. Mr. Palmerton himself presents the facts halfway. Read more of this post

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Cornell Planning Students research on impacts of drilling in PA Dec. 12, 7pm

December 4, 2010 1 Comment

On Sunday evening December 12th graduate and undergraduate students from the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University will host a public meeting at 7:00 PM in the Town of Ithaca Town Hall, 215 North Tioga Street, Ithaca.  The students will present their findings on some of the impacts and issues associated with Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania to members of the public.
For the past three months the students in the field workshop have been studying several aspects of the industry and its impacts in Bradford County, PA and elsewhere in that state.  The four issue areas that the workshop participants have focused on are:  impacts on housing, visual impacts, water quality, and land use and zoning.
The workshop participants have travelled to Bradford County to speak with residents and public officials, and to observe drilling operations, impacts on roads and short- and long-term impacts of drilling operations on the land.  In addition they have heard from a number of guest speakers actively involved in the issue in Bradford County.
The ability of local municipalities to control the industry is a key issue that the workshop participants have been investigating.  Although state laws may pre-empt local governments from regulating actual drilling operations, many other activities in support of drilling may be subject to local zoning regulations, and local governments can have a major role in deciding where such activities will occur and ensuring that their adverse impacts are mitigated.  A number of recent court decisions in Pennsylvania have also opened the door for local governments to exert more control over where natural gas drilling may occur within their boundaries.
For more information on the workshop and presentations contact George Frantz at grf4@cornell.edu.

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Pa. farmer: Natural gas drilling ‘a nightmare’ Nov. 16, 2010

November 17, 2010

Pa. farmer: Natural gas drilling ‘a nightmare’

By Derrick Ek
Posted Nov 16, 2010 @ 11:44 PM
Elmira, N.Y. —

Ron Gulla, a farmer from Hickory, Pa., says he had no idea what he was getting into when he leased his land for gas drilling.

“When I saw what was happening on my property, I couldn’t believe it,” Gulla said. “They totally misinformed us and misrepresented the lease.”

Over the past few years, he saw his farm – in a rural area just south of Pittsburgh – become a large industrial site over which he had no control, and had his water supply tainted by high levels of toxic chemicals, he said.

Gulla – who also sells construction and forestry equipment and once spent six years working in the oil and gas industry – tried to take out a mortgage loan to finance a lawsuit against the well operator, Range Resources, but was told by the bank that his land was basically worthless because of the drilling activity there.

Gulla told gutwrenching stories of other farmers in Washington County whose property was virtually ruined by drilling. Many of their calves have been born with strange deformities, he said. Cows and horses – even dogs – have been sickened or killed from drinking the water from streams and ponds near the well pads. Folks living near compressor stations have had serious health issues from air pollution, he added.

The farmers affected in his area have received nothing in compensation, he said.

“It’s been a nightmare for a lot of people,” Gulla said. “You’re going to hear some people say this is the best thing that’s happened to them, that it’s the best thing since sliced bread. And they’re making money, granted, but at what price, and what risk?”

Gulla was one of a half-dozen speakers to tell cautionary tales about the gas rush under way in Pennsylvania – and on the horizon in New York – at a public forum Tuesday night in a crowded parish hall at Trinity Episcopal Church in downtown Elmira.

The event was organized by area environmental groups People for a Healthy Environment, Coalition to Protect New York, Committee to Preserve the Finger Lakes, and Pax Christi Upstate New York. It was clearly not a balanced panel on the issue, although recent chamber of commerce forums touting the economic benefits of gas exploration haven’t been either: those have mostly featured speakers from the gas industry and pro-drilling elected officials.

Not all of Tuesday’s speakers spoke directly against drilling.

One of them, Lou Allstadt, is a retired Mobil Oil Corp. executive vice president and a past director of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association. A Cooperstown resident, he has extensively reviewed the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s proposed permitting guidelines – now being finalized – for high volume, horizontal hydraulic fracturing, and believes they are insufficient.

In his remarks, Allstadt gave a list of suggestions on how gas drilling might proceed safely in New York, some of which are being developed but are not yet widely implemented, he said.

Among them:

Developing a “green” fracking fluid, and ending government exemptions that allow the industry to use the fracking fluid it currently does. In the meantime, identifying markers should be added to fracking fluid, so if there is a case of suspected water contamination, it can be traced to the source, he said.

Using a closed loop system for drilling wastewater, rather than storing it in open, lined ponds where toxins can evaporate into the atmosphere. “It’s a bad system, and it doesn’t have to be that way,” said Allstadt, who also called for greater recycling of fracking fluid at well sites.

Allstadt also called for seismic testing prior to each time a well is fracked, to identify underground cracks and fissures that could lead to toxins migrating to aquifers, he said.

Better standards are needed for the casings that line well bores near the surface and protect aquifers, he claimed.

There should also be greater setback distances for well pads from drinking water sources and residential areas. Also, the state should give local governments a say in regulating drilling locations, Allstadt said.

Saying human error contributes to most drilling accidents, he called for more stringent training for drilling crews, which often have a high turnover, he said. He also called for making gas companies post multi-million dollar “performance bonds” to fund cleanups should any incidents occur.

Allstadt also said the DEC needs to greatly increase its mineral resources staffing levels, saying it would be “impossible” to properly monitor a shale drilling boom with its current staffing levels. He also called for the state to form a separate agency to issue permits and collect revenues, so the DEC can focus solely on protecting the environment.

Organizer Susan Multer of People for a Healthy Environment said she counted approximately 240 people at Tuesday’s forum.

Filed under agriculture, Spills-Accidents-Suits Tagged with , , , , , , ,

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