Group: Corbett should heed drilling study
http://www.timesleader.com/news/Group__Corbett_should_heed_drilling_study_05-09-2011.html
Posted: May 10, 2011
STEVE MOCARSKY smocarsky@timesleader.com
The head of a local group that supports more restrictions on natural gas drilling says a scientific report released on Monday substantiates group members’ concerns and should be evidence enough for Gov. Tom Corbett to impose a moratorium on drilling in Pennsylvania.
Dr. Tom Jiunta, president and founder of the Luzerne County-based Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition, said a report by a team of Duke University scientists that is to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, “documented pathways from where they frack to drinking water supplies.”
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the injection of water, sand and a low concentration of chemicals into a shale formation a couple thousand feet underground at high pressure to stimulate the release of natural gas from the formation. A perforation gun lowered into the well casing detonates charges that create initial fractures in the shale.
Jiunta said a Cornell University scientist, Anthony Ingraffea, showed his group slides indicating that scientists believe the fractures are “unpredictable.”
“If pathways exist for methane, then it also exists for the toxic heavy metals found underground along with the brine solutions that are hazardous and the fracking chemicals,” Jiunta said. “It’s common sense.”
“Gov. Corbett said last week he would rely on science, not emotion” for making decisions related to natural gas exploration. “There’s plenty of science out there now, and I think this proves it,” Jiunta said.
In a prepared statement, Kathryn Klaber, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, said Pennsylvania has “an extensive and well-documented history of naturally occurring methane impacting private water wells, long before Marcellus development began just a few years ago.”
She called the report “at best inconclusive. Further, the fact that is was prepared, in part, by a vocal and outspoken natural gas production critic raises a host of questions regarding academic veracity.”
Travis Windle, spokesman for the coalition, pointed to a New York Times article that quoted John Conrad, a New York hydrogeologist “closely affiliated with the drilling industry,” who said the researchers may have “jumped the gun” by relying on only post-drilling data without testing water wells before drilling occurred in the area.
Windle also noted that Conrad told The New York Times that the thermogenic methane found in the water wells, which many scientists say comes from the same deep gas layers where drilling occurs, could be naturally occurring.