Gas Drilling Awareness for Cortland County
February 24, 2011
Sky 4 Video: Firefighters Battle Thick Smoke, Flames In Washington County – Video – WTAE Pittsburgh.
POSTED: 8:38 pm EST February 23, 2011
February 2, 2011
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 2, 2011
http://www.damascuscitizens.org/DRBC-lawsuit.html <blocked::http://www.damascuscitizens.org/DRBC-lawsuit.html>
CONTACT:
Damascus Citizens for Sustainability – Jeff Zimmerman (240) 912-6685
Delaware Riverkeeper Network – Tracy Carluccio (215) 692-2329
Groups File Federal Gas Drilling Lawsuit against Delaware River Basin Commission
Trenton, New Jersey —The Delaware Riverkeeper Network and Damascus Citizens for Sustainability have joined forces in filing a federal lawsuit against the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) in federal district court in Trenton, NJ. Complaints were served on the DRBC today. The conservation groups are challenging the actions the DRBC took to allow certain exploratory natural gas wells to be drilled without DRBC review and approval and despite a Basin-wide moratorium on gas wells.
In May, 2009, Carol Collier, Executive Director of DRBC, issued a determination requiring individual review by the Commission of each shale gas production well. A year later the Commission decided to defer action on all gas production wells until regulations are adopted by the Commission to protect the Basin’s water resources. But the Commission left open a loophole for exploratory wells created by the 2009 Executive Director Determination. In June, 2010, the Executive Director issued a supplemental determination that closed the exploratory well loophole. However, in this exploratory well determination, the Executive Director exempted wells that had obtained state drilling permits while the loophole was in effect. These wells are referred to as “grandfathered” wells.
“The drilling of a gas well, whether exploratory or production, has serious environmental impacts. Since the DRBC is supposed to protect the River and the clean drinking water for over 15 million people, they shouldn’t have allowed these wells to proceed without DRBC oversight. These wells threaten pollution and may have already caused pollution. We want these wells removed and the land restored,” said Maya van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper.
At its July, 2010, meeting, the Commission granted a number of hearing requests challenging different aspects of the executive director’s exploratory well determination. One of the requests granted was a challenge by the conservation groups to the “grandfathered” wells reservation. The hearing was supposed to examine whether the Executive Director exceeded her authority when she excluded the grandfathered wells from DRBC regulation.
The DRBC also ignored the National Park Service by not reviewing the grandfathered wells. The Park Service had invoked its authority under the DRBC’s rules to refer all exploratory wells to the DRBC for review, and Ms. Collier had no authority to allow any exemptions from this federal referral.
In accordance with pre-hearing procedures directed by the hearing officer, the conservation groups obtained and submitted a series of nine reports from experts on issues related to the pollution risks associated with drilling the grandfathered exploratory wells, which are essentially vertical gas wells that are not yet hydraulically fractured but which inflict all the impacts of well construction and drilling, including the use of drilling chemicals in fragile geology, the clearing of land in ecologically sensitive areas, and the installation of an industrial operation in rural landscapes. Moreover, the wells, in what may be environmentally risky locations, can become long-term production wells. The expert reports showed clearly that state regulations are not adequate to prevent pollution from the grandfathered wells; that groundwater, streams, and the main stem River would pay the price; and that the wells would violate the DRBC’s anti-degradation requirements.
“When the Commission terminated the hearing process, it forced us to go to court to uphold the protection the Compact provides for the critical water resources for New York City, Philadelphia and all the other communities and water supply systems that depend on the Delaware River for water,” said Barbara Arrindell, director of Damascus Citizens for Sustainability. She continued, “The proper process would be to look first, before allowing any wells, at the cumulative impacts that would be produced by this type of industrial development, It certainly is wrong to allow these gas wells without any review whatsoever. The DRBC does not exist to facilitate the aims of the drillers.”
The conservation groups allege that the DRBC Executive Director’s actions on the grandfathered wells were arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of her discretion and in violation of applicable law in the Compact and the Commission’s administrative Rules of Practice and Procedure. The complaint asserts that by terminating the hearing process before the hearing could be held, the Commission violated the conservation groups’ due process rights.
The conservation groups seek relief in the form of a declaratory judgment that the Commission and the Executive Director violated applicable law, that no further exploratory wells should proceed, and that the already drilled wells were wrongly allowed, should be removed, and the sites cleaned up and restored to natural conditions.
FULL COMPLAINT:
http://www.damascuscitizens.org/DRN+DCSvsCollier+DRBC.pdf <blocked::http://www.damascuscitizens.org/DRN+DCSvsCollier+DRBC.pdf>
or
http://www.delawareriverkeeper.org/resources/Comments/DRN%20v%20Collier%20Final%20Complaint.pdf <blocked::http://www.delawareriverkeeper.org/resources/Comments/DRN v Collier Final Complaint.pdf>
January 18, 2011
List of EPA Peer Review Panel http://yosemite.epa.gov/sab/sabpeople.nsf/WebCommitteesSubcommittees/Hydraulic%20Fracturing%20Study%20Plan%20Review%20Panel
Gas-drilling/peer-review-panel-for-epa-fracking-study-includes-six-pa-scientists-1.1091757. Times Tribune
Peer-review panel for EPA fracking study includes six Pa. scientists
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: January 18, 2011
A panel of geologists, toxicologists, engineers and doctors that will peer-review a high-profile Environmental Protection Agency study of hydraulic fracturing will include six scientists from Pennsylvania, more than any other state.
The panel will review the techniques and analysis the EPA uses to draft a study of the potential environmental and health impacts of hydraulic fracturing – the process used in natural gas exploration of injecting a high-pressure mix of chemically treated water and sand underground to break apart a rock formation and release the gas.
The panel might also be called on to review the conclusions of the study, which are slated for release in 2012.
The board, called the Hydraulic Fracturing Study Plan Review Panel, was narrowed to 23 members from a list of 88 nominated candidates, some of whom were criticized in public comments submitted by industry or environmental groups for being biased.
All but four members selected for the panel are affiliated with research universities and none is currently employed by an oil or gas company.
Five of seven members of a previous peer-review panel involved in a 2004 EPA study of hydraulic fracturing in coal-bed methane wells were current or former employees of the oil and gas industry. That study’s findings, that hydraulic fracturing poses “little or no threat” to drinking water aquifers, has been touted by the industry but challenged by an EPA whistle-blower.
In a memo announcing the new panel, the EPA found “no conflicts of interest or appearances of a lack of impartiality for the members of this panel.”
It will be led by David A. Dzombak, professor of environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, and include Michel Boufadel of Temple University; Elizabeth Boyer of Penn State University; Richard Hammack, a Pittsburgh-based roject manager for the U.S. Department of Energy; Jeanne VanBriesen of Carnegie Mellon and Radisav D. Vidic of the University of Pittsburgh.
Contact the writer: llegere@timesshamrock.com
January 4, 2011
Pennsylvania alone allows waterways to serve as primary disposal sites for fracking waste
1/4/2011
Observer-Reporter
By David B. Caruso
The Associated Press
Monday, January 3, 2011
The natural gas boom gripping parts of the U.S. has a nasty byproduct: wastewater so salty, and so polluted with metals like barium and strontium, most states require drillers to get rid of the stuff by injecting it down shafts thousands of feet deep.
Not in Pennsylvania, one of the states at the center of the gas rush.
There, the liquid that gushes from gas wells is only partially treated for substances that could be environmentally harmful, then dumped into rivers and streams from which communities get their drinking water.
In the two years since the frenzy of activity began in the vast underground rock formation known as the Marcellus Shale, Pennsylvania has been the only state allowing waterways to serve as the primary disposal place for the huge amounts of wastewater produced by a drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
State regulators, initially caught flat-footed, tightened the rules this year for any new water treatment plants, but allowed any existing operations to continue discharging water into rivers.
At least 3.6 million barrels of the waste were sent to treatment plants that empty into rivers during the 12 months ending June 30, according to state records. That is enough to cover a square mile with more than 81/2 inches of brine.
Researchers are still trying to figure out whether Pennsylvania’s river discharges, at their current levels, are dangerous to humans or wildlife. Several studies are under way, some under the auspices of the Environmental Protection Agency.
State officials, energy companies and the operators of treatment plants insist that with the right safeguards in place, the practice poses little or no risk to the environment or to the hundreds of thousands of people, especially in Western Pennsylvania, who rely on those rivers for drinking water.
But an Associated Press review found that Pennsylvania’s efforts to minimize, control and track wastewater discharges have sometimes failed.
For example:
• Of the roughly 6 million barrels of well liquids produced in a 12-month period examined by The AP, the state couldn’t account for the disposal method for 1.28 million barrels, about a fifth of the total, due to a weakness in its reporting system and incomplete filings by some energy companies.
• Some public water utilities that sit downstream from big gas wastewater treatment plants have struggled to stay under the federal maximum for contaminants known as trihalomethanes, which can cause cancer if swallowed over a long period.
• Regulations that should have kept drilling wastewater out of the important Delaware River Basin, the water supply for 15 million people in four states, were circumvented for many months.
In 2009 and part of 2010, energy company Cabot Oil & Gas trucked more than 44,000 barrels of well wastewater to a treatment facility in Hatfield Township, a Philadelphia suburb. Those liquids were then discharged through the town sewage plant into the Neshaminy Creek, which winds through Bucks and Montgomery counties on its way to the Delaware River.
Regulators put a stop to the practice in June, but the more than 300,000 residents of the 17 municipalities that get water from the creek or use it for recreation were never informed that numerous public pronouncements that the watershed was free of gas waste had been wrong.
“This is an outrage,” said Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, an environmental group. “This is indicative of the lack of adequate oversight.”
The situation in Pennsylvania is also being watched carefully by regulators in other states, some of which have begun allowing some river discharges. New York also sits over the Marcellus Shale, but Gov. David Paterson has slapped a moratorium on high-volume fracking while environmental regulations are drafted. Read more of this post
December 27, 2010
Cabot and its attorneys have attempted to use a consent order entered with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to allegedly mislead their clients into waiving their rights to continue the litigation.
December 25, 2010
Strong Support Across Party Lines Seen in Pennsylvania For Putting Emphasis on Energy Production With Minimum of Pollution; More than Four Out of Five Want Better Disclosure of Risks.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 21, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Do Pennsylvania residents think natural gas is as “clean” as it is touted as being by the energy industry? Three out of five Pennsylvanians are already very or somewhat aware of the controversy about hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) drilling used to tap cheap natural gas supplies in the state, according to a new Infogroup/Opinion Research Corporation (Infogroup/ORC) survey of 403 state residents conducted for the nonprofit Civil Society Institute (CSI). Among Pennsylvanians who already are aware of “fracking,” more than four out of five are concerned about the drilling technique’s possible threat to clean drinking water.
December 24, 2010
By Liz Zemba
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
GDACC 
