Posted by Frank on May 8, 2012 · Leave a Comment
live.psu.edu/story/59583#nw69
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Increasingly, bus companies are switching to natural gas fuel. Shown here, a Centre Area Transportation Authority vehicle 'gases' up.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A one-day conference in Lehigh County, sponsored by Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, will provide a comprehensive overview of using natural gas as a transportation fuel in Pennsylvania and the mid-Atlantic region.
“Natural Gas Vehicles: The Road Ahead in Pennsylvania” will be held from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Monday, June 11, at Penn State Lehigh Valley in Center Valley. The program is being organized by Penn State Extension.
“The conference will be a place where clean-air and clean-transportation advocates, industry stakeholders, fleet managers and policymakers can learn the fundamentals of using natural gas as a transportation fuel,” said conference coordinator Dave Messersmith, extension educator and member of Extension’s Marcellus Education Team.
“Professionals attending the sessions will be able to network with other natural gas vehicle stakeholders, and they can discuss opportunities and challenges to greater adoption of natural gas as a transportation fuel.”
The conference will feature sessions titled “A Primer on Natural Gas as a Transportation Fuel,” “What’s Happening with Natural Gas Vehicles in Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic,” “Understanding Shale Gas in Pennsylvania and Natural Gas Market Outlook,” “The Texas Clean Transportation Triangle: A Model for Success,” “Engine and Conversion Technologies,” and “Fueling Station Concepts and Technologies.”
Presenters include researchers, entrepreneurs and industry experts who will provide a fundamental understanding of natural gas as a transportation fuel.
The registration fee for the conference is $149. For more information, contact Carol Loveland at 570-433-3040 or by email at cal24@psu.edu.
To register for the conference by phone, call toll-free 877-489-1398. To register online, go to the conference website at http://agsci.psu.edu/natural-gas-vehicles and click on RSVP in the gray bar near the top of the page.
Posted by Frank on May 3, 2012 · Leave a Comment
www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-tamaqua-cancer-cluster-20120430,0,6418002.story
By Andrew McGill, Of The Morning Call
11:26 p.m. EDT, April 30, 2012
After a long year, Pennsylvania’s coal country still knows only three things for sure.
People are getting cancer in the region, rare cancer. They’re dying. And no one can say why.
In a Centers for Disease Control investigation that has already stretched seven years and is likely to last several more, researchers are returning to Carbon, Luzerne and Schuylkill counties in force next week, setting up shop in hospitals to interview the sick and collect data.
Their question is the same as last year’s, and the year before that, and the year before that: Exactly how many people have the blood-thickening cancer that, while supposedly rare, seems all too common in the three counties?
“We’re really hoping to get one last wave of interviews and consents here,” said Jeanine Buchanich, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh working with the CDC. “As it draws to a close it’s growing more and more important that people get back to us.”
Polycythemia vera puts the body’s blood-producing cells into overdrive, clogging arteries with up to five times as many red blood cells as normal. Itching, headaches and fatigue are the milder symptoms — if left untreated, the cancer can form fatal blood clots.
The most popular treatment tends to the medieval: bloodletting, which goes by “phlebotomy” these days and has been shown to reduce congestion in arteries. But a fancier name doesn’t make the process any more pleasant, and patients need treatment as often as once a month.
Nationwide, researchers think only one in 100,000 people have the disease. Scientists say that percentage is much higher in coal country, and the CDC has officially labeled the area a cancer cluster since 2005, a rare designation from a cautious agency.
More than $8 million has been spent to find out what’s making people sick. Two universities — the University of Pittsburgh and Drexel University — are conducting studies. A pair of hospitals are running their own tests.
It hasn’t been easy going.
Of the 340 potential Polycythemia vera patients Pitt scientists have contacted, only 80 have agreed to hand over their medical records. Even the promise of $50 gift cards couldn’t persuade the 30 people who refused to participate, or the hundreds more who haven’t responded.
Buchanich hopes her full-court press for more participants May 8-10 will change a few minds, but it is looking likely the study will end with far fewer subjects than she had hoped.
“We’re hoping to get that number as high as we can before we have to close the study,” Buchanich said. “We’ll be kind of dependent on how this goes.”
Then there’s the local community, which has watched its seat at the table shrink as the investigation continues. Funding for a liaison group linking research scientists and residents ended last year, and volunteers are still months away from securing the nonprofit status that would allow them to raise money.
In the meantime, many residents have doubts about the state Department of Environmental Protection’s investigation into environmental factors. Pennsylvania’s coal country has no lack of those, with toxic dumps from a long industrial history still festering in hills and crannies. Every resident has a theory for which spill or leak made their neighbors sick.
But a 28-point list of concerns to the CDC — why aren’t investigators sampling air inside homes? Will coal dust be considered as a possible cause? — was largely dismissed by the agency, with officials siding with their hired contractor.
Local activists say the lack of funding means they won’t be able to weigh in on study methodology before tests are conducted. As of late, federal officials haven’t even told them what’s going on, they say.
It was the residents who first brought to light the fact that their friends were dying, said Joe Murphy, coordinator of the Community Action Committee, a coal region group.
“And now we’re being told, ‘Thanks, see you later,’” he said. “We’re tossed to the side.”
andrew.mcgill@mcall.com
610-820-6533
Copyright © 2012, The Morning Call
Posted by Frank on May 2, 2012 · Leave a Comment
live.psu.edu/story/59461#nw69
Friday, April 27, 2012
BSE was discovered in a dairy cow in California, but the country's beef supply is safe, according to an expert in the College of Agricultural Sciences at Penn State.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Beef consumers should not overreact to the first case of so-called “mad cow disease” in the United States since 2006, discovered recently in a dairy cow in California, according to a veterinarian in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences.
The infected cow, the fourth ever discovered in this country, was found as part of an Agriculture Department surveillance program that tests about 40,000 cows a year for the fatal brain disease, more accurately called bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. The disease can cause a fatal human brain disease in people who eat tainted beef.
It’s that close scrutiny of the nation’s beef supply by USDA that should reassure consumers, noted Bhushan Jayarao, professor of veterinary and biomedical sciences, who is director of the Penn State Animal Diagnostic Laboratory.
One of three facilities in the Pennsylvania Animal Diagnostic Laboratory System, the lab on the University Park campus has been testing animal tissues for disease since the mid-1980s and was formally established in 1992. It is a part of the national surveillance network that performs tests for BSE.
“No meat from that cow in California was bound for the food supply,” said Jayarao. “The cow, more than 30 months old, had died and was to be rendered — made into soap or other household products. Because the cow died, it was tested for BSE.”
BSE is caused by an abnormal protein called a prion. Research indicates that the disease is most commonly spread when cattle eat feed containing rendered byproducts from infected cattle. As a result, the United States in 1997 banned the practice of feeding animal by-products to ruminants.
However, in this most recent case, Jayarao explained, analysis found that the cow had what is referred to as an atypical case, which is believed to have occurred spontaneously through a mutation.
“That means the cow didn’t get the disease from eating infected cattle feed, and that’s critical,” he said. “It’s just a random mutation that can happen every once in a great while in an animal. Random mutations do occur in nature.”
BSE in cows has been a problem in the past when animal byproducts were used to supplement animal feed. In the United Kingdom, more than 180,000 cows may have been infected during the 1980s and 1990s. In other countries, the infection’s spread was blamed on farmers adding recycled meat and bone meal from infected cows into cattle feed.
Jayarao said the fact that the testing system found “what is a really rare event” is a strong indication that the system works. He suggested that the California cow’s form of the disease so rarely occurs that consumers should not be alarmed.
“USDA has taken a proactive stance with its surveillance program, which caught this case,” said Jayarao. That’s the good news.”
The previous three confirmed cases of BSE in cows in the United States occurred in a Canadian-born cow in 2003 in Washington state, in 2005 in Texas and in 2006 in Alabama. Both the 2005 and 2006 cases were also atypical varieties of the disease, Jayarao said.
He described the measures put into place by the U.S. government and other nations in recent years to prevent BSE from entering the food chain as interlocking safeguards, and he stressed that there is evidence they are effective. In 2011 there were only 29 confirmed cases of BSE worldwide, a dramatic decline since the peak of 37,311 cases in 1992.
Jayarao credited the decline of the disease to effective banning of animal products in cattle feed.
Frightening as BSE is, Jayarao contends that it is best for the public to have the latest and most accurate information about risks and safeguards that exist related to their food supply. “It is always better for producers to have educated consumers,” he said. “Everyone benefits when consumers get reliable information from credible sources.
“There are so many checks and balances in place now, and that should be of great comfort to the consumer,” said Jayarao. “Beef in the retail market is very safe.”
Posted by Frank on April 28, 2012 · 2 Comments
citizensvoice.com/news/state-investigating-methane-in-water-near-dimock-twp-1.1307137#axzz1t9VLaOeL
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: April 28, 2012
State environmental regulators are investigating a possible case of methane migrating into water supplies just north of the 9-square-mile box in Dimock Township where the state halted a gas driller’s operations because of methane contamination in 2010.
Regulators with the state Department of Environmental Protection emphasized that they have not determined the source of elevated methane discovered in two Susquehanna County water wells and whether it is caused by Marcellus Shale drilling or a natural occurrence of gas in the aquifer.
One focus of the investigation is Cabot Oil and Gas Corp.’s Greenwood 1 well, where the company recently squeezed additional cement between steel barriers that are meant to seal off gas and fluids from the aquifer.
The work in late March was an effort to stop the problem, DEP spokesman Kevin Sunday said, even though inspectors have not pinpointed the well as the cause.
“The next step is to determine the effectiveness of the remediation work and to continue water well sampling,” he said.
Regulators began investigating the elevated methane levels in August 2010 after a resident complained about water quality.
The gas wells being evaluated are less than 400 feet from the northern boundary of a section of Dimock where Cabot’s drilling and hydraulic fracturing operations have been on hold since April 2010, when state regulators blamed faulty Cabot wells for allowing shallow methane to channel into 18 private water wells. Cabot disputes the state’s findings in that case.
The current investigation is separate from the ongoing review of Cabot’s wells in the off-limits area.
Cabot spokesman George Stark said Friday that the company “always investigates landowners’ concerns as they are brought to our attention. Cabot has been working closely with the Department of Environmental Protection on this matter and will continue to do so with the best interest of our landowners in mind.”
Neither of the two water wells involved in the current investigation has been vented because one well is buried and has not been located and inspections of the other have not found gas trapped in the open space above the water in the well, Sunday said.
Methane in drinking water is not known to cause any health risks, but at high concentrations it can seep out of water into the air and create an explosion hazard in enclosed spaces.
The state has not reached a determination 20 months into the investigation because a number of factors need to be considered, including the construction of nearby gas wells and identifying features of the methane, DEP spokeswoman Colleen Connolly said.
“It’s not different from any case,” she said. “There are just many issues to deal with.”
The Greenwood 1 well was the first Marcellus Shale well drilled by Cabot in Dimock, in September 2007, according to state records.
Three horizontal wells later drilled on the same pad in November 2009 and May 2010 were among the top-producing wells in the state early last year.
Those wells, the Greenwood 6, 7 and 8, have also been evaluated as part of the investigation. Cabot was cited by DEP for a “failure to case and cement” the three wells “to prevent migrations into fresh groundwater” in January 2011 but Cabot has argued in a letter to the state that the wells were properly constructed and the violations should be rescinded.
Connolly said that DEP is addressing the violations with Cabot. The defects cited by the department “could have been a means of allowing methane to migrate into the fresh groundwater, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the water supply has been impacted,” she said.
llegere@timesshamrock.com
Posted by Frank on April 27, 2012 · 2 Comments
republicanherald.com/news/1-8-million-gallons-of-sewage-leaks-into-river-in-tamaqua-1.1306715#
By KENT JACKSON (Staff Writerkjackson@standardspeaker.com)
Published: April 27, 2012
TAMAQUA – Contractors on Thursday finished patching a concrete pipe through which workers accidentally drilled, causing up to 1.8 million gallons of sewage to spill into the Little Schuylkill River in Tamaqua a day earlier.
The state Department of Environmental Protection will continue to investigate how the accident occurred about 3:15 p.m. Wednesday during construction of the bridge on state Route 309 and whether any penalties will be assessed, Colleen Connolly, the department’s spokeswoman, said.
Fish didn’t appear to have died from the spill, said Connolly, who estimated the amount of sewage that leaked into the river. She also noted that the section of the river near the bridge is tainted by acid water from mine workings.
Workers pierced the concrete pipe, which is 24 inches wide, while sinking a caisson for a temporary bridge, said Ronald Young of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
At the Tamaqua wastewater treatment plant a short distance from the bridge, workers noticed flow in the plant plummeted from 1,700,000 gallons a day to 200,000 gallons per day, said Tamaqua Borough Manager Kevin Steigerwalt.
Their observation led to the discovery of the broken pipe.
Steigerwalt heard what happened at the treatment plant at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and went to the bridge with a supervisor from the plant.
“I had a suspicion that the bridge was involved. The plant is just a short distance south of the bridge,” he said.
No workers were on bridge when they arrived, but discharge was flowing from a combined sewer overflow that should have been quiet.
The overflow provided an outlet for the sewage, which otherwise would have backed up into cellars of people’s homes, Steigerwalt said.
He and the plant supervisor contacted the project inspector from PennDOT and telephoned the emergency number for the Department of Environmental Protection.
Early Wednesday morning, officials from the state departments and the borough planned how to make repairs with workers from the contracting firm, Clearwater Construction of Mercer, Mercer County.
Workers built a coffer dam – an enclosure that kept the river water away from the sewage outfall. They rigged pumps to push the sewage to a manhole downstream, Steigerwalt said. That was complete by about 9 p.m. Wednesday, he said.
Young said tanker trucks also hauled away some of the sewage from the broken pipe. Meanwhile, other workers dug a trench to uncover the broken section of the pipe.
They affixed a new section of pipe about 1 a.m. Thursday, Steigerwalt said after checking a timeline prepared by Tamaqua’s public works director, Rob Jones, who stayed at the bridge through the night.
State officials told Clearwater Construction’s crew to remain on the job until the leak stopped. Attempts to contact the company were unsuccessful Thursday. A voice mailbox for a project supervisor was full, and a message left with a receptionist wasn’t returned.
Connolly said DEP wants to know more about how the accident occurred and why four hours passed before the department was notified.
By 10 a.m. Thursday, workers encased the new section of pipe with cement. They let the cement harden and filled in the trench to finish the repairs.
Replacing the bridge is a $3.18 million project for which the contract was awarded in July 2011.
Young said workers will erect a temporary bridge, demolish the existing bridge and build a new permanent bridge.
The work is scheduled to end in May 2013.
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