Enforcement: Conservative group sees politics in play in EPA’s Dimock retreat — Tuesday, July 30, 2013 — www.eenews.net
July 31, 2013
PEER – NO SURPRISE FEDERAL PIPELINE SAFETY EXERCISES SINCE 2005
July 18, 2013
PEER – NO SURPRISE FEDERAL PIPELINE SAFETY EXERCISES SINCE 2005.
For Immediate Release: Jul 17, 2013
Contact: Kirsten Stade (202) 265-7337
NO SURPRISE FEDERAL PIPELINE SAFETY EXERCISES SINCE 2005
Scant Oversight or Local Coordination on Pipeline Emergency Response Plans
Posted on Jul 17, 2013
Washington, DC — The federal pipeline safety agency has not conducted a single surprise exercise for more than eight years to determine whether an operator can execute emergency response plans, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Nor does the agency have a ready account of which emergency response plans it has approved, rejected or changed.
More than 2.5 million miles of pipelines carrying oil, natural gas and high-hazard liquids, honeycomb the U.S. Each year, there are more than 100 “significant” pipeline accidents involving loss of life, injuries, fire and/or major spillage. Recent pipeline spills and explosions have had catastrophic results.
Federal guidelines call for up to 20 unannounced exercises annually to demonstrate an operator’s “ability to respond to a worst case discharge spill event.” Yet in documents obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) concedes that –
- It has not conducted any unannounced safety exercise since 2005, when it only conducted one. In the preceding 10 year period, the agency conducted 36 surprise exercises, peaking with 14 in 1997;
- In the last five years, PHMSA has completed only 26 announced safety reviews, with only one initiated in 2012. More than half of all these reviews (15) occurred in 2011; and
- The agency cited two exercises in 2004 which were labeled “unknown” because PHMSA had no record on whether they were surprise or scheduled.
“Since there are no surprise safety drills, it should be no surprise when the on-scene response to actual emergencies is lacking,” stated PEER Counsel Kathryn Douglass, who brought the suit that pried the documents loose. “Given PHMSA’s supine posture, pipelines in America are essentially self-regulated.”
Beyond whether operators can carry out their emergency response plans, the adequacy of those plans also remains in question. Months after PEER asked and ultimately sued PHMSA to produce response plans submitted by pipeline operators, the agency still has only been able to provide a handful of the 314 current plans. Moreover, PHMSA cannot identify a single one of the more than 1,000 pipeline response plans it has reviewed during the past five years that it has rejected or amended.
“If it takes PHMSA months to produce copies of emergency response plans, that means communities on the front line have no access to the safety playbook in case of an accident,” Douglass added, noting that in recent major pipeline spills, local emergency response agencies were in the dark both about what was occurring and what the planned response was supposed to include. “We should not have to sue in federal court to obtain pipeline emergency response plans – they should be posted routinely on the web.”
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See PMSA list of pipeline safety exercises – unannounced, announced and unknown
Look at federal guidance on unannounced pipeline exercises
Scan the list of all current and archived facility response plans
View PHMSA failure to implement NTSB recommendations following recent disasters
10/12/2011: Oil Company Pleads Guilty to Clean Air Act and Obstruction Crimes in Louisiana
October 13, 2011
10/12/2011: Oil Company Pleads Guilty to Clean Air Act and Obstruction Crimes in Louisiana.
HARRISBURG — Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Mike Krancer announced today that DEP has submitted technical guidance for single source determinations for oil and gas operations, also known as “air aggregation” determinations, to the Pennsylvania Bulletin for public comment. The public comment period will close Nov. 21.
This guidance deals with the process of determining whether two or more stationary air emissions sources should be aggregated together and treated as a “single source” when it comes to air permitting programs.
“Natural gas holds great promise as a clean-burning fuel that could greatly reduce air emissions associated with electricity production and transportation,” Krancer said. “It has been recognized that the use of natural gas can have very beneficial impacts on air quality.”
This guidance, which is subject to public review and comment, involves three sets of regulations: the federal Prevention of Significant Deterioration regulations, which the state incorporates and implements in their entirety; the Pennsylvania nonattainment New Source Review regulations; and the Title V permitting program.
“This takes a practical, common-sense and legally required approach to air aggregation issues,” Krancer said. “DEP’s state Air Quality program already regulates this industry.”
New sources, including some natural gas processing operations, are required by state law to meet stringent air emissions control requirements, which prevent, reduce or control emissions with the use of the best available control techniques or equipment, Krancer said.
Krancer said that the program also regulates air emissions in the oil and gas industry via plan approvals along with both general and operating permits.
The test for determining whether or not to aggregate comes out of federal case law from 1979 and the federal regulations stemming from that case, along with the commonwealth’s regulations, which mirror the federal regulations.
The law states that to be aggregated, the different sources must belong to the same industrial grouping, must be located on one or more contiguous or adjacent properties and must be under the control of the same person. All three of these conditions must be met if the sources are going to be aggregated.
“Over time, there was a tendency by some regulators to morph the meaning of ‘contiguous’ or ‘adjacent’ properties to mean only that operations on the properties be ‘interdependent,’” Krancer said. “This view has been expressed in various federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommendation letters or policy statements in recent years after the court case on this topic in 1979 and after the EPA’s adoption of the regulations on this topic in 1980. That interpretation is not supported by the court decision, the EPA or state regulations.”
DEP’s technical guidance relies on the plain meaning of the words in the regulations and the plain meaning of the words “contiguous or adjacent,” which mean the distance or spatial relationship between locations.
A similar approach was recently affirmed by the West Virginia Air Quality Board whose analysis focused on the proximity of the properties. In addition, other natural gas-producing states, including Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, use a quarter-mile rule of thumb, meaning that sources located a quarter mile apart are considered contiguous or adjacent.
“Every case remains, as it always has, unique, with its own facts and circumstances,” Krancer said. “The single source determination test will continue to be applied on a case-by-case basis, depending on the facts of each particular case.”
DEP’s Air Quality permitting staff will begin implementing the technical guidance in permitting decisions on an interim basis immediately, while public comments are being received and considered.
For more information and to view the technical guidance in its entirety, visit www.dep.state.pa.us.
Media contact: Katy Gresh, 717-787-1323
Re-cycling Drilling Waste in PA
July 25, 2011
In response to the barrage of criticism about frack waste disposal and/or treatment, the industry now says it will “recycle” all water used in hydrofracking. Recycling is a nice green word and sounds benign. But the quote below shows otherwise. It is taken from an interview with David Bohlander. a highly respected accountant and business consultant in Pennsylvania. His farm has been in his family for 150 years.
The interview was posted on another list on July 19. After the quoted section I have attached the entire interview.
Jim Weiss
The intention is to refrack over and over the same drilled wells. They are now claiming there is 60 years of gas here. Simultaneously, although not on all pads, they use the pads for other things such as equipment storage, frack water storage, and the worst: frack water recycling which we have three in our neighborhood and 2 are 10 year permits (one is in the review process, 9 days to go). These are REGIONAL frack water recycling operations bringing in dirty radioactive brine from 15 miles away or more, operating 24/7 with extensive noise, lights and traffic.
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?
[Bohlander] We have two wells on the farm (190 acres). We had a detailed baseline water testing done on both before any of the gas activity happened in our area. We subsequently have had another 6 or so tests done on these wells. It is crucial to have certified baseline testing done prior to any activity by gas companies or they will claim there is no proof they are the cause and argue it was a pre-existing condition. We also retained a very competent hydrologist (who has the gas company clients) who was the plaintiffs hydrologist in the Dimock, PA contamination (highlighted in the movie Gasland). The well for the barn/and original farmhouse was so contaminated with methane they thought it would explode so the well pump was disconnected for six months and water was trucked in by the gas companies for the animals, and spring water for the humans!
2. The operations end up being more extensive than anticipated. The “pads” are large, and end up being used for other operations.
[Bohlander] Gas companies are major deceivers. They do this many ways. One is using land agents that are not their employees so that they can claim “we never said that ..they did”
Most all the neighbors were told that the gas wells would be drilled, it would take 3 months or so, and then land would be restored to earlier state. In reality this is what happens. They excavate a pad obliterating the natural terrain, hauling in 100’s of trucks of stone, gravel, etc. Once the pad is completed, they only drill 2-4 actual gas wells of what ultimately are likely going to be 12 or so on that pad. They may not frack the drilled wells immediately, but wait sometimes a year. The intention is to refrack over and over the same drilled wells. They are now claiming there is 60 years of gas here. Simultaneously, although not on all pads, they use the pads for other things such as equipment storage, frack water storage, and the worst: frack water recycling which we have three in our neighborhood and 2 are 10 year permits (one is in the review process, 9 days to go). These are REGIONAL frack water recycling operations bringing in dirty radioactive brine from 15 miles away or more, operating 24/7 with extensive noise, lights and traffic. DEP is way behind on enforcement. The neighbors are the enforcers, but it is David vs. Goliath (the gas companies). After four years now, I have not seen one well pad restored back to the original state. The stated plan by the gas companies is that there will be one well pad every 50 acres. If the well pad is 10 acres, 20% of our surface land area will be a perpetual well pad.
3. Extensive light pollution due to 24/7 operation.
[Bohlander] 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.
The gas drilling when it goes on makes it almost impossible to sleep. 24/7, 7 days a week.
4. Extensive trucking.
[Bohlander] The gas companies make new roads over smaller older roads to accommodate their extensive traffic. The state allows them to exceed the weight limit of the road by paying some fee or posting a bond. The small country road in front of our farm is now elevated 3 feet in the air from normal ground level. Certain roads are used as main arterial roads after they have been rebuilt –this happened to ours. The trucks are hauling huge amounts of gravel, fill, fresh water for fracking and the dirty brine water out, as well as all the equipment for the drilling process. Each well on the pad uses 5 million gallons of water. 60% flows back and is recycled, but removed from the site. Our road was destroyed initially and impassible. The gas companies then closed 10 mile stretches of the road for months at a time as they began rebuilding it. One landowner could only get to and from his property with a four wheeler.
5. Feel free to add any other relevant details.
[Bohlander] The gas companies have a very systematic playbook from the years of operating and polluting Colorado, Wyoming, Texas, etc. They have two sides: a friendly neighborly “give $35K to the fire company” and then a ruthless no holds barred side. 3 times they threatened that in 24 hours they were going to stop trucking in water for the cows in our barn unless we agreed to things. These things include non-disclosure agreements, consent not to sue, etc. Read the book Collateral Damage. A lot of good environmental activist groups with websites and a lot of info. Many have been to our house. We were one of the first contaminated sites in this region from the drilling.
The public does not have any idea how bad the permanent environmental contamination is going to be. There has been major barium and radiation poisoning with some already. One not far from us is a 13 year old girl with barium poisoning. One of our immediate neighbors’ daughters is having clumps of hair fall out and his dog got sick and parakeet died from drinking his well water. He abuts one of the frack water recycling sites.
Air pollution is the sleeping giant. Each well pad on an ongoing basis emits things into the air (like toluene) as the gas goes through a preliminary filtering process at the well pad. The absolutely worst are the gas compression stations for both noise and air pollution.
As you may know, the gas drilling is exempt from the Clean Water Act — we actually are more apt to be fined if manure is spread on the road, than these major infractions the gas company are doing. The environmental enforcement agencies only slap their wrists with fines. Cost of doing business to gas companies –easier to just pay the fine.
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GDACC 
