Pa. fracking case among first involving Marcellus Shale
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Thirteen families in tiny Lenox Township in northeastern Pennsylvania are suing Southwestern Energy, alleging that in drilling for Marcellus Shale, the company contaminated their water supply and made them sick.
The lawsuit is one of the first in the nation linking hydraulic fracturing — the process used to extract the natural gas — to tainted groundwater. But legal experts say it won’t be the last.
Drilling underground for the abundant natural gas supply in the Marcellus rock formation that stretches from New York to West Virginia is considered by some to be the answer to the nation’s energy woes. It’s also proving to be a boon to the economy, creating thousands of jobs in rural communities where factories have long since closed up shop.
But what’s happening under the surface is a concern for residents and environmentalists alike.
“We’re seeing this pretty violent act, blasting apart a formation, explosive by its very nature” said Julia LeMense, an environmental attorney at the New York firm, Weitz & Luxenberg. “There’s the possibility of creating problems that are unforeseen. A lot can happen out of sight.”
Hydraulic fracturing — also known as fracking — presents one of the biggest potential problems. Millions of gallons of water, mixed with sand and other chemicals, are pumped into the ground to split the rock and extract the natural gas.
In the Southwestern case, the families claim that the fracking fluid leaked into the water supply, causing neurological problems. The energy company told The Associated Press there were no problems with the well.
It’s a case that sounds straight out of “Erin Brockovich,” the movie based on an unemployed mother’s efforts to bring down a power company accused of polluting a California town’s water supply. In fact, the film’s namesake herself is involved in the Marcellus Shale controversy. LeMense’s firm has a partnership with Brockovich, who in her role as a consumer advocate, is often contacted by residents first.
“People are concerned, and we have a discussion with them about what we know,” LeMense said. “I think it’s educational for people to understand they are not alone.”
LeMense has also spoken to community groups in West Virginia where gas drilling is relatively new about potential risks and problems.
What they are concerned about, LeMense said, are negative health effects they attribute to water pollution. “A lot of these chemicals have the capacity to cause cancer,” she said.
More frequently she hears complaints of respiratory problems and neurological issues such as numbness in the hands and feet, dropping things and becoming more forgetful.
The contention among environmentalists, some of whom have formed anti-fracking groups with celebrity spokespeople, is that oil companies won’t disclose what chemicals they mix with the water.
Industry experts disagree.
“What the industry uses in fracking fluids, the DEP, at least in Pennsylvania, has been publishing for months,” said Joseph Reinhart, an attorney with BCCZ in Pittsburgh who represents oil companies. “We’re talking about small percentages of this stuff. And different operators might mix it up in different ways, but what is used is out there. A lot of information is out there.”
Kathryn Klaber, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry trade group, says many wells have been contaminated long before drillers came to town. It is, after all, an area where coal mining has dominated for decades. In fact, Klaber says, the industry has a “no questions asked” policy to replace a water supply when testing shows any sign of contamination, regardless of its cause.
“Our best practices go beyond the regulations,” she said.
In addition to health and environmental concerns, plaintiff lawyers are also tracking cases where workers or residents are injured in the process of drilling into the Marcellus Shale. By its very nature, the work is dangerous and accidents and explosions have already occurred.
“There are large, heavy pieces of machinery, there’s gas and liquid at high pressures, at high temperatures,” said Michael Rosenzweig, a partner at Edgar Snyder & Associates in Pittsburgh. “You’re dealing with toxic fluids. Accidents are going to happen.”
Rosenzweig’s firm has begun running advertisements seeking clients who have been injured in Marcellus Shale accidents. Some of the cases include motorists who were injured in car accidents allegedly caused by damage to the road from the big rigs used to transport equipment to the wells and workers who sustained injuries when a tank on one site exploded.
“You don’t have a single person responsible for safety,” Rosenzweig said, referring to the various contractors doing work on any given well site. “I’m a firm believer that when you have too many cooks, that’s when you spoil the broth.”
Because the industry is still in its early stages in terms of Marcellus drilling, industry experts say they are taking every precaution to ensure the safety of workers and residents, but that like in any business, accidents inevitably happen.
“Nobody wants anything bad to happen with Marcellus Shale,” said Joel Bolstein, an attorney with Fox Rothschild in Philadephia who works with companies treating backwater. “It’s getting top priority with the DEP in terms of enforcement. There’s also a certain amount of self-policing going on.”
Plaintiff lawyers say there aren’t enough regulations in the industry and say sometimes bringing lawsuits is the only way to enact change.
“People have recourse through the court system,” Rosenzweig said. “The tort system is really the last rail of regulation. If the government doesn’t regulate, the law provides for safety. If they’re hit with enough lawsuits, they’ll change.”
BY CARRIE ANN CHERRY
http://www.legalnewsline.com/spotlight/232091-pa.-fracking-case-among-first-involving-marcellus-shale
State expanding water tests for contaminants from drilling
Most treatment facilities unable to remove many pollutants, EPA letter says.
HARRISBURG — Prodded by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the state said it is expanding the scope of water tests to screen for radioactive pollutants and other contaminants from the state’s booming natural gas drilling industry.
The state Department of Environmental Protection’s acting secretary, Michael Krancer, wrote Wednesday to the EPA to say that he has requested additional testing from some public water suppliers and wastewater treatment facilities.
Those steps, he said, were in the works before the EPA’s regional administrator, Shawn Garvin, sent a March 7 letter asking Pennsylvania to begin more water testing to make sure drinking water isn’t being contaminated by drillers. The state’s requests for additional testing, however, were made later in March, Krancer said.
The tests should check for radium, uranium and the salty dissolved solids that could potentially make drilling wastewater environmentally damaging, according to copies of letters the DEP said it sent to 14 public water authorities and 25 wastewater facilities.
In his letter last month, Garvin said most treatment facilities are unable to remove many of the pollutants in the often-toxic drilling water. Substances of concern, he said, include radioactive contaminants, organic chemicals, metals and salty dissolved solids.
In his letter to Garvin, Krancer seemed to bridle at the perceived suggestion that the state isn’t doing its job keeping up with the drilling industry’s hot pursuit of the nation’s largest-known natural gas reservoir, the Marcellus Shale.
“Rest assured that well before receiving your letter, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has been focusing on issues relating to natural gas drilling, and prioritizes protecting the environment and public health and safety above all else,” Krancer wrote.
Garvin also had asked the state to re-examine permits previously issued to the treatment plants handling the waste, saying they lacked “critical provisions.” Krancer responded that requirements to monitor for substances of concern will be added to permits upon renewal and where warranted.”
An EPA spokeswoman, Donna Heron, said Thursday that her agency received Pennsylvania’s letter and is reviewing it.
Pennsylvania is the center of Marcellus Shale drilling activity, with more than 2,000 wells drilled in the past three years and many thousands more planned.
Drilling for gas in deep shale deposits is emerging as a major new source of energy that supporters say is homegrown, cheap and friendlier environmentally than coal or oil.
But shale drilling requires injecting huge volumes of water underground to help shatter the rock — a process called hydraulic fracturing. Some of that water then returns to the surface. In addition to producing gas, the Marcellus Shale wells produce large amounts of ultra-salty water tainted with metals like barium and strontium, trace radioactivity and small amounts of toxic chemicals injected by energy companies.
Most big gas states require drillers to dump their wastewater into deep shafts drilled into the earth to prevent it from contaminating surface or ground water. Pennsylvania, however, allows partially treated drilling wastewater to be discharged into rivers from which communities draw drinking water.
Before Garvin’s letter, water suppliers typically tested only occasionally for radium, and it had been years since the utilities drawing from rivers in the affected drilling region had done those tests.
Krancer also said his agency is seeking money to add more water-quality testing stations on Pennsylvania’s rivers. The state already is testing at seven spots on Pennsylvania’s waterways that are downriver from treatment plants that discharge partially treated gas-drilling wastewater, but upriver from public drinking water intakes.
Some Pennsylvania drilling wastewater is reused or trucked out-of-state for disposal underground. Of the wastewater taken to treatment plants in recent months, the great majority went to seven plants that discharge into the Allegheny River, the Mahoning River, the Conemaugh River, the Blacklick Creek, the Monongahela River, the Susquehanna River and the South Fork Ten-mile Creek.
Last month, the DEP said earlier tests from those seven waterways showed no harmful levels of radium, which exists naturally underground and is sometimes found in drilling wastewater that gushes from wells.
Radium that is swallowed or inhaled can accumulate in a person’s bones. Long-term exposure increases the risk of developing several diseases, such as lymphoma, bone cancer, and diseases that affect the formation of blood, EPA said.
April 8, 2011
http://www.timesleader.com/news/State_expanding_water_tests_for_contaminants_from_drilling_04-07-2011.html
State orders drilling halt after 2 wells are polluted in Forest County
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The state Department of Environmental Protection has determined that natural gas has contaminated well water at two homes on private properties within the Allegheny National Forest in Forest County and ordered Catalyst Energy Inc. to halt drilling and hydraulic fracturing at 36 non-Marcellus Shale wells in the area.
The order requires Catalyst, headquartered in Cranberry, to halt all drilling operations on new wells and to conduct tests to determine which of the 22 vertical wells it has already drilled in the Yellow Hammer area of Hickory is causing the water contamination.
The 22 vertical wells already drilled are combination oil and gas wells. Eighteen of those 22 wells have also been “fracked,” a procedure that uses water, chemicals and sand pumped down the well under high pressure to fracture the rock layers and release the oil and gas.
The Catalyst wells are all between 1,500 feet and 3,000 feet deep and extend into the Bradford Group, an upper Devonian oil and gas sands formation containing an estimated 250 billion cubic feet of recoverable gas. The Marcellus Shale is a middle Devonian formation and its wells in the state are usually 5,000 feet to 8,000 feet deep.
Residents of the two homes within 2,500 feet of the wells complained to the DEP in January about odors and cloudy water. Notices of violation were issued to Catalyst on Feb. 10 and March 1 for groundwater contamination.
Freda Tarbell, a DEP spokeswoman, said the DEP’s follow-up investigations confirmed that natural gas had contaminated the water supply at both homes.
Catalyst is required by the March 30 order to immediately provide temporary, whole-house water systems to the affected homes and permanently restore or replace the water supplies by July 1.
Catalyst wells already producing in the area will be allowed to continue operations, Ms. Tarbell said.
Phone calls to Catalyst requesting comment were not returned. Catalyst was incorporated in 1992 and, according to the company’s website, has developed and operates more than 400 oil and gas wells in the state.
Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11095/1137024-503.stm
Board to hear gas proposal about plans to build Dallas Twp. metering station
DALLAS TWP. – Resident Jane Tolomello plans to attend the Dallas Township zoning hearing tonight to express her concerns about Chief Gathering LLC’s latest proposal to build a natural gas metering station near her home on Fairground Road.
“It’s going to be within feet of my home,” said Tolomello, who owns the Snooty Fox Consignment Shop in Shavertown. “It will be in my community, near my business, by where my daughter goes to school.”
Representatives from Chief Gathering will provide testimony before the three-member zoning board at 7 p.m. in the Dallas Middle School auditorium.
The company applied for special zoning exceptions for the construction of two metering facilities, two flow control buildings, a 100-foot communications tower, a 10-foot flare and an 8,000-gallon mercaptan tank on a site off of Hildebrandt Road, about one-third of a mile from the Dallas School District campus.
In a press release, Chief’s Vice President of Public Affairs Kristi Gittins said the metering facility is an important aspect of transporting the natural gas that flows into the Transco interstate pipeline used to heat homes and businesses.
She said the metering facility needs to be placed near the point of transfer from the Chief pipeline to the Transco line, and the station’s purpose is to measure the quality of the gas.
Earlier this year, Chief submitted plans to the township for the location of a proposed seven-unit compressor station on the Hildebrandt Road site. Parents flooded the Dallas Middle School auditorium in February to express their concerns, which included worries about air and noise pollution.
“It’s toxic,” said Tolomello, who said she’s joined the Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition as a result of these developments in Dallas Township. “If this is approved, there could be a lot more industry to this area.”
After listening to the concerns of state Sen. Lisa Baker, R-Lehman, and state Rep. Karen Boback, R-Harveys Lake, the company announced plans to relocate the compressor station to a “more rural area of Dallas Township.”
“Chief made a commitment and will not build its Luzerne Compressor Station within a mile of Dallas schools,” stated Ted Wurfel, Chief’s vice president of environmental, regulatory and safety affairs.
April 4, 2011
http://www.timesleader.com/news/Board_to_hear_gas_proposal_04-03-2011.html
Delaware River basin residents see chance to profit, but those downstream fear pollution
Gas drilling pits North vs. South
PHILADELPHIA — Debate over setting conditions to allow natural gas drilling in the Delaware River basin is pitting landowners in Northeastern Pennsylvania who want to profit from the commonwealth’s drilling boom against people downstream who are concerned about the possible environmental impact
The Delaware River Basin Commission, a New Jersey-Pennsylvania agency that oversees withdrawals and water quality in the watershed drained by the 330-mile-long river, proposed regulations in December that would open wide-scale drilling for the first time but with generally stricter rules than in the rest of Pennsylvania. The agency is taking public comments until the middle of the month.
The issue has divided landowners seeking to take advantage of the boom and those concerned about the environment.
Louis Matoushek, for one, is upset that the panel halted production on his land in Wayne County three years ago after a company had already drilled a well.
“They changed the rules in the middle of the game,” he told The Philadelphia Inquirer.
But in Philadelphia about 150 miles downstream, Christopher Crockett, who is in charge of planning for the city’s water department, fears the effect on the drinking water for millions of people in Philadelphia and its suburbs.
“We want to make sure we have the science before the policy,” he said.
Before the commission acted, thousands of acres were leased and seven wells drilled in Northeastern Pennsylvania, but none were fracked — a process of injecting millions of gallons of water into the ground to free the gas.
Environmental advocates had urged the commission to wait for a study to assess the impacts, as New York is doing. The industry, however, urged action, citing the region’s need for an economic boost and the national market for clean-burning, domestic energy.
The commission says the shale areas of the basin, which includes portions of New York, could have 15,000 to 18,000 wells at some point, built on about 2,000 well pads encompassing up to 12,000 acres, plus more land for pipelines and infrastructure.
But 15 million people from Philadelphia to New York use the water, and some pristine areas of the river north of Trenton have been federally designated for extra oversight.
Pennsylvania, which has seen landowners enriched and businesses profit from the portion of the massive Marcellus Shale underneath the commonwealth, is pressing ahead. But Delaware and New Jersey, with no shale and therefore less to gain, have been cautious.
“These are decisions that are going to affect multiple generations,” said Delaware’s Collin O’Mara, secretary of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. “It’s better to get it right than to do it fast.”
John Plonski, assistant New Jersey commissioner for water resources and the state’s commissioner on the interstate panel, said New Jersey “has always taken the position that our primary responsibility is to protect the integrity of the Delaware River.”
April 4, 2011
http://www.timesleader.com/news/Gas_drilling_pits_North_vs__South_04-03-2011.html
Blood Cancer Research Foundation Changes Name
In response to blood cancer re-classifications by the World Health Organization, the MPD Foundation announces it is changing its name to Myeloproliferative Neoplasms (MPN) Research Foundation.
The MPD Foundation, a patient-led foundation dedicated to the discovery of treatments and a cure for three rare blood cancers (myelofibrosis, polycythemia vera, and essential thrombocythemia) announces today a new name for the organization, which will now be known as the MPN Research Foundation.
This change of name is in response to a 2008 World Health Organization reclassification of the Myeloproliferative Disorders (MPDs), and reflects the consensus that these diseases are blood cancers, or ‘neoplasms’. The three classic MPDs are therefore now referred to as ‘MPNs’, or ‘myeloproliferative neoplasms’. The word “neoplasm” defines these diseases far more precisely than the word “disorder”. Neoplasia (Greek for “new growth”) means the abnormal proliferation of cells – in the case of the MPNs, one or more lines of blood cells.
The reclassification also added a handful of new blood diseases to the MPN category, such as chronic neutrophilic leukemia, chronic eosinophilic leukemia, hypereosinophilic syndrome and a general category labeled “MPNs, unclassifiable.”
The three MPNs that have always been the focus of the Foundation – polycythemia vera (PV), essential thrombocythemia (ET) and myelofibrosis (MF) – are still considered the “classic” Philadelphia chromosome-negative myeloproliferative neoplasms. The Foundation’s focus will remain on funding research to find effective treatments and ultimately a cure for all patients with these diseases.
Information on the MPN Research Foundation’s mission, current grants, and other programs can be found at http://www.mpnresearchfoundation.org.
Chicago, IL (PRWEB) April 4, 2011
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/04/prweb5214514.htm
Workshop to train private well owners
Residents of Tioga and surrounding counties will be offered a training workshop on how to properly manage their home wells, springs, or cisterns.
Residents who rely on private water systems for home drinking water can be at risk of drinking contaminated water.
Resource professionals such as Penn State Cooperative Extension, the Pennsylvania Ground Water Association, the state Department of Environmental Protection, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency will offer this training from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. May 14, at the Tokishi Training Center, 124 Nypum Drive, Wellsboro.
Private water systems are unregulated, so landowners need to take the proper measures to ensure that their drinking water is safe for consumption.
This workshop is offered as part of the “Master Well Owner Network,” a program intended to teach volunteers from across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania about proper management of their own private water system.
In return, the volunteers must go out into their local community to educate others about the importance of proper management of private drinking water supplies.
To become part of this network or for more information, please contact Stephanie Clemens at 814-865-2250 or by email at mwon@psu.edu.
Information and a volunteer application can be found at extension.psu.edu/water/mwon. Space is limited and applications will be received by April 23
Williamsport Sun-Gazette
April 3, 2011
http://www.sungazette.com/page/content.detail/id/562324/Workshop-to-train-private-well-owners.html?nav=5014
Natural gas drilling might not just be an environmental concern
It might hit you in the pocketbook.
Communities and farmers are under mandates to reduce pollutants going into the Chesapeake Bay. The byproducts of drilling also are going into the bay but are largely unaccounted for.
The natural gas companies aren’t going to be held responsible for that. Farmers and communities will be, and they will have to spend more money to get rid of stuff they’re not producing.
In other words, it’s not your fault. But it might be your responsibility.
That’s the argument behind the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s call for a comprehensive study of drilling impacts. The foundation made the pitch at the opening meeting of the Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission, a panel appointed by Gov. Tom Corbett.
It’s not so much about the well-publicized drilling waste discharged into rivers, but rather the myriad other impacts of the industry that, for the most part, get little attention.
With drilling comes a lot of land disturbance and deforestation, which impacts water quality.
And it’s not a matter of drillers flouting regulations, they say. Even if the drilling industry follows existing law to the letter, studies show it has an impact on rivers and streams.
But at the moment, that impact is not part of the equation in plans to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.
Read more
Federal oversight of fracking in dispute
U.S. Sen. Bob Casey drew jeers from drillers and cheers from environmentalists last month when he launched his latest push to bring hydraulic fracturing under federal oversight.
Depending on one’s perspective, allowing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the controversial technique would either disrupt the natural gas industry and erect a new regulatory hurdle or provide baseline standards and reassure people who fear that the process can ruin underground supplies of drinking water.
“The bill is designed to make sure that we don’t have problems. I think it’s a very important precaution,” Mr. Casey, D-Pa., said during a recent interview.
Developed more than 60 years ago by oil and gas company Halliburton and used today in all Marcellus Shale wells, hydraulic fracturing is a technique that injects a mixture of water, sand and chemicals into the ground under high pressure to crack rock and allow trapped natural gas to flow.
Some of the mixture remains underground. And some of the chemicals, although added in relatively small quantities, are harmful.
That toxicity is what scares environmentalists, who wonder exactly what substances drillers are shooting into the earth, whether the fluid can foul drinking water, and if the process is being adequately regulated.
“So far, states have not stepped up to the plate to fill those shoes,” said Jessica Goad, policy fellow at The Wilderness Society.
Mr. Casey’s FRAC Act — Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals — has two components.
One would put hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” under the auspices of the EPA and remove a 2005 congressional exemption — dubbed the “Halliburton loophole” — that prevents the agency from regulating it.
The other would force drillers to reveal publicly all chemicals used in fracking, except for proprietary formulas.
Read more
Luzerne, Schuylkill and Carbon counties rank among the unhealthiest in the state
Luzerne ranked only 59th healthiest of the state’s 67 counties, according to the County Health Rankings report issued Wednesday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin’s Population Health Institute.
Schuylkill ranked 56th while Carbon ranked 61st, the report said. The healthiest county in the state, which received the number one ranking, was Chester County.
The nationwide report looks at a variety of factors that contribute to the overall health ranking, including premature death rate, access to healthy foods, income, access to doctors, use of preventative screenings, environmental factors, and health behaviors such as smoking, obesity and alcohol use.
Luzerne, Schuylkill and Carbon all had higher than state and national rates for smoking, obesity, excessive drinking and motor vehicle crash death rates, the report said.
“It’s hard to lead a healthy life if you don’t live in a healthy community,” said Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “The County Health Rankings are an annual checkup for communities to know how healthy they are and where they can improve.”
The numbers didn’t surprise Drums physician Phillip Benyo, who was interviewing candidates for the Commonwealth Medical College in Scranton Friday afternoon.
“There’s a lot of blame to go around,” he said. “As physicians, we’re not treating preventative and health issues, instead we’re treating diseases.”
Patients share some of the blame as well, Benyo added.
“We live in an abusive, health-wise, society,” he said, pointing to unwise choices about smoking and food, and neglecting to treat silent diseases such as hypertension and high cholesterol.
Benyo said some people take better care of their cars.
“They take their cars for annual inspections, and our cars can be replaced. We come in last on the list of things to do,” Benyo said.
“Patients and physicians need to join together and grow the boat of wellness,” he said.
Benyo hopes the new medical college will turn out physicians willing to stay in the area, allowing patients greater access to health care, especially preventative measures.
The report showed that people in Luzerne, Carbon and Schuylkill counties had access to fewer primary care physicians.
Nationally, there is one primary care physician per 631 people, and one for 838 people in Pennsylvania, the report said. In Luzerne County, there is one physician for every 1,027 people; Carbon has one for every 2,121 people and Schuylkill one for every 1,989, the report said.
Linda Thomas-Hemack, a primary care physician and program director for the internal medicine residency at the Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education, said the shortage of doctors is “an impending disaster” for the community.
“Access is a pillar of the population’s health,” she said.
To read the report, visit www.countyhealthrankings.org/pennsylvania.
Staff writer Erin Nissley contributed to this report.
By KELLY MONITZ (Staff Writer)
Published: April 2, 2011
http://standardspeaker.com/news/area-s-health-among-state-s-worst-1.1126997