Drilling law hurts health, docs say
thetimes-tribune.com/news/gas-drilling/drilling-law-hurts-health-docs-say-1.1298897#axzz1rpg4bvIU
Published: April 12, 2012
PITTSBURGH – Public health advocates and doctors on the front lines of Pennsylvania’s natural-gas-drilling boom are attacking the state’s new Marcellus Shale law, likening one of its provisions to a gag order and complaining that vital research money into health effects was stripped at the last minute.
Doctors say they don’t know what to tell patients who suspect their ailments are related to nearby gas industry activity because of a lack of research on whether the drilling of thousands of new wells – many near houses and drinking-water supplies – has made some people sick.
Yet when legislative leaders and the governor’s office negotiated the most sweeping update of the state’s oil and gas law in a quarter century, they stripped $2 million annually that included a statewide health registry to track respiratory problems, skin conditions, stomach ailments and other illnesses potentially related to gas drilling.
Just last week, the Department of Health refused to give The Associated Press copies of its responses to people who complain that drilling had affected their health. That lack of transparency – justified in the name of protecting private medical information – means the public has no way of knowing even how many complaints there are or how many are valid.
Studies are urgently needed to determine if any of the drilling has affected human health, said Dr. Poune Saberi, a University of Pennsylvania physician and public health expert.
“We don’t really have a lot of time,” said Saberi, who said she’s talked to about 30 people around Pennsylvania over the past 18 months who blame their ailments on gas drilling.
Working out of public view, legislative negotiators also inserted a requirement that doctors sign a confidentiality agreement in return for access to proprietary information on chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, process.
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EPA: Water quality OK at 20 wells in Pa. gas town
www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-04/D9TVLHPG0.htm
DIMOCK, Pa.
Testing at 20 more water wells in a northeastern Pennsylvania community at the center of a debate over the safety of natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale shows no dangerous levels of contamination, according to a report issued Friday by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA had already tested 11 wells in Dimock, showing the presence of sodium, methane, chromium or bacteria in six of the wells before the results of the latest round of testing.
Three of the newly-tested wells showed methane while one showed barium well above the EPA’s maximum level, but a treatment system installed in the well is removing the substance, an EPA spokesman said.
Featured in the documentary “Gasland,” the Susquehanna County village of Dimock has been at the center of a fierce debate over drilling, in particular the process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The process involves injecting a mixture of water and chemicals deep underground to free trapped natural gas so it can be brought to the surface.
State environmental regulators previously determined that Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. contaminated the aquifer underneath homes along Carter Road in Dimock with explosive levels of methane gas, although they later determined the company had met its obligation to provide safe drinking water to residents.
The EPA is still providing drinking water to three homes where prior tests showed contamination. A second round of tests is under way, regulators said.
A group of Dimock residents suing Cabot assert their water is also polluted with drilling chemicals, while others say that the water is clean and the plaintiffs are exaggerating problems with their wells to help their lawsuit.
A Cabot spokesman said in a statement Friday that the “data confirms the earlier EPA finding that levels of contaminants found do not possess a threat to human health and the environment.”
“Importantly, the EPA again did not indicate that those contaminants that were detected bore any relationship to oil and gas development in the Dimock area, particularly given the fact that any contaminants are more likely indicative of naturally-occurring background levels or other unrelated activities,” the statement said.
EPA faces suit from 11 groups over coal ash
www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/health/epa-faces-suit-from-11-groups-over-coal-ash-630121/
April 6, 2012 12:00 am
By Don Hopey / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Eleven environmental organizations are suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to force it to better regulate toxic coal ash and citing recent groundwater contamination at 29 coal ash dump sites in 16 states, including two in Western Pennsylvania.
According to the EPA’s own data, coal ash has caused contamination of groundwater at coal-fired power plants in Homer City, Indiana County, and near New Castle, Lawrence County.
Earthjustice, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the other groups Thursday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., said in a release that the EPA hasn’t updated coal ash disposal and control regulations in more than 30 years and that it continues to delay new rules despite recent evidence of “leaking waste ponds, poisoned groundwater supplies and threats to public health.”
Coal ash is produced mainly by coal-fired power plants and contains a mixture of toxic chemicals and compounds, Earthjustice said, including arsenic, lead, hexavalent chromium, manganese, mercury, selenium and cadmium.
The EPA data, based on a 2010 questionnaire sent to 700 fossil- and nuclear-fueled power plants to asses water discharges, show ash from GenOn’s 60-year-old, 330-megawatt New Castle power plant in West Pittsburg, Lawrence County, has contaminated groundwater with arsenic.
The 1,884-megawatt Homer City power plant operated by Midwest Generation EME LLC and owned by General Electric, uses 19 ponds or landfills to dispose of its ash and, according to the EPA, has contaminated groundwater with iron, lead, manganese and sulfate.
GenOn, which announced in March it will close the New Castle power plant in April 2015, did not return calls requesting comment. Midwest Generation EME, operator of the 43-year-old power plant 50 miles east of Pittsburgh, also did not return calls.
The environmental groups’ lawsuit seeks an order to force the EPA to set deadlines for review and revision of coal ash regulations, as well as changes to tests done to determine if the waste is hazardous under federal law.
“The numbers of coal ash ponds and landfills that are contaminating water supplies continues to grow, yet nearby communities still do not have effective federal protection,” said Lisa Evans, an Earthjustice attorney.
Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project and a former EPA regulator, said the dumping of toxic coal ash is on the rise. In 2010, he said, toxic heavy metals in power plant ash disposal topped 113 million pounds, a nearly 10 percent increase from 2009.
In September 2010, the EPA held public hearings in Pittsburgh and six other cities across the nation on a proposal to federally regulate coal ash for the first time, a proposal that the coal and power industries opposed. Industry leaders at the hearing said federal regulation would be costly, hurt the industry, cost jobs and increase electric rates.
Mr. Schaeffer said EPA’s proposed standards for safe disposal, including a plan to close unsafe ash ponds within five years, “have gone nowhere.”
The nation’s power plants produce approximately 150 million tons of ash a year, about 20 tons of that in Pennsylvania.
Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983.
First Published 2012-04-06
Goddard Forum to examine oil, gas development impacts on forests
live.psu.edu/story/58780#nw69
Thursday, March 29, 2012
The conference, which focuses on protecting forests, will feature more than 30 speakers.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State’s 2012 Goddard Forum, “Oil and Gas Development Impacts on Forested Ecosystems: Research and Management Challenges,” will bring together scientists, managers, conservation organizations and industry representatives working with oil and gas development to share research results and management strategies.
The conference, to be held April 9-10 at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, is sponsored by the School of Forest Resources in the College of Agricultural Sciences. The U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Research Station, headquartered in Newtown Square, Pa., is a co-sponsor of the event.
“During this two-day meeting, we will have a diversity of invited and offered presentations focused specifically on impacts on and adaptive management strategies for forested ecosystems,” said Jim Grace, Maurice K. Goddard Chair in Forestry and Environmental Resource Conservation.
“The pertinent questions revolve around how we can manage gas-development activities in a manner that preserves our environmental quality of life and deals with our social needs, while providing economic benefits to our citizens and bolstering our supply of clean domestic energy.”
Grace, who served as director of the Bureau of Forestry in the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources from 1994 to 2007, noted that conference presentations by both managers and scientists will explore the full range of forest issues.
“They will discuss landscape modification, water, air, habitat, roads, timber supply, invasive species, noise, landscape restoration, management and monitoring strategies, and other topics focused on forests,” he said. “Sessions will cover public as well as industrial and other private forests.”
More than 30 conference speakers will represent academia, state and federal government, industry, and environmental and conservation organizations. Additional information, including a complete list of speakers and presentations, is available on the 2012 Goddard Forum website at http://psu.ag/wJUONr.
For information about conference accommodations, meals and registration, contact the Office of Conferences and Short Courses toll-free at 877-778-2937 or at csco@psu.edu via email.