Five spills reported at gas pipeline sites
citizensvoice.com/news/five-spills-reported-at-gas-pipeline-sites-1.1313538#axzz1uZEq4r00
By Elizabeth Skrapits (Staff Writer)
Published: May 11, 2012
DALLAS TWP. – The state Department of Environmental Protection is monitoring a series of drilling mud spills at a natural gas pipeline installation.
Chief Gathering LLC, recently bought out by PVR Partners, hired contractors to install a pipeline to connect natural gas wells in Susquehanna County to the Transco interstate pipeline in Dallas Township.
Since May 1, there have been five spills of more than 6,000 gallons of water containing bentonite, a type of clay used in drilling operations, at two different Dallas Township sites: Leonards Creek on Kunkle Road and Upper Demunds Road and Goodleigh Road, outside Goodleigh Estates, according to a report from DEP. On Thursday, crews sucked up the mud at the Upper Demunds Road site using vacuum trucks.
Chief’s Vice President of Industry Affairs Kristi Gittins said releases of mud at pipeline boring sites are not uncommon and “we plan for them and we deal with them.” No chemicals or additives were used, she said.
DEP has been to the site and approved remediation plans, Gittins said. She said Chief is providing information to DEP and the agency does regular follow-up visits.
The DEP report shows five “inadvertent return to surface” incidents involving drilling mud with bentonite coming up from the ground at two horizontal drilling sites.
The first occurred at 8:30 a.m. May 1, with 50 gallons of mud released at a wetlands next to Leonards Creek on Kunkle Road. It was contained at the site. The next day at the same site 20 gallons escaped containment but did not impact the creek. Then again on May 2, 200 gallons overflowed at the site. It was also cleaned up, DEP reported.
In the fourth incident, on Monday, about 1,000 gallons of bentonite was spilled and drilling mud was discovered coming from an old springhouse between Kunkle Road and Leonards Creek. Not all the bentonite was contained at the time, and DEP reported the creek was cloudy. By Thursday, most of the bentonite was cleaned up.
The fifth incident occurred Saturday, when 5,000 to 6,000 gallons of bentonite was lost in wetlands about 200 feet off Upper Demunds Road, according to DEP. The drilling mud was contained on the site with hay bales and is being removed by a vacuum truck.
The Upper Demunds Road spill occurred outside an upscale development where the pipeline installation created controversy.
Several Goodleigh Estates residents sued their neighbors for leasing Chief a right-of-way, asking Luzerne County court to stop the pipeline construction on the grounds it violated the development’s covenants and would create a nuisance.
Chief was not named in the suit, but the company sued the residents, claiming their efforts to delay the pipeline could cost the company from $683,000 to $18 million or more. Chief also asked them to pay damages for making “defamatory and malicious” statements about the company in local media and on Facebook.
Chief and the residents came to an agreement in November that dismissed the suits.
Under the undisclosed terms of the agreement, the residents are prohibited from commenting about Chief.
eskrapits@citizensvoice.com, 570-821-2072
Water testing lab in PA to pay fine, surrender accreditations
www.waterworld.com/index/display/article-display/2696067775/articles/waterworld/drinking-water/water-quality/2012/05/Water-testing-lab-in-PA-fined.html
WILKES-BARRE, PA, May 10, 2012 — Northeastern Environmental Laboratory (NEEL) of Scranton will pay a $20,000 fine and voluntarily surrender the majority of its accreditations for drinking water and wastewater management and testing after Pennsylvania DEP inspectors found several violations.
Discovered during non-routine visits in September 2011, violations included failure to properly train staff; failure to oversee and supervise testing of water samples; failure to maintain records; and failure to adhere to proper collection, receipt and handling of samples.
The lab’s certificate of accreditation expired on April 1, and the business subsequently notified DEP that it will not seek re-accreditation.
More shale wells to be levied fee than first thought
citizensvoice.com/news/more-shale-wells-to-be-levied-fee-than-first-thought-1.1311520#axzz1uHygpsqW
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: May 7, 2012
Lackawanna and Luzerne counties may get a cut of the state’s shale drilling impact fee after all.
The state’s Public Utility Commission, which is charged with collecting and distributing the fee, said its interpretation of the law allows the state to levy a fee on Lackawanna County’s two exploratory Marcellus Shale wells, at least for one year.
The same might hold true with Luzerne County’s two wells, even though they were not considered productive and were subsequently plugged and abandoned.
PUC spokeswoman Jennifer Kocher said there may be a possibility for one year’s worth of fees from the Luzerne County wells.
“It would all depend on how the wells fit into the definitions that were laid out by the law,” she said.
Encana Oil & Gas USA Inc. drilled two wells in the summer of 2010, one on Route 118 in Fairmount Township and the other on Zosh Road in Lake Township. The company announced in November 2010 that the wells were not economically viable.
Kocher said the potential for Luzerne County and Lake and Fairmount townships to get a share of the drilling revenue for the two wells depends on the definition of “spud,” or the actual start of drilling an unconventional well.
Asked what Luzerne County might stand to receive, Kocher said, “We’re not providing any numbers at this time, because we’re still scrubbing data” from the state Department of Environmental Protection.
Because Lackawanna County’s wells are considered shale or “unconventional” gas wells subject to the law, the county and its municipalities will likely get a small share of the approximately $207 million that will be collected from drillers for wells drilled prior to Jan. 1, 2012.
If all 4,802 of the unconventional wells included in the state Department of Environmental Protection’s official list are subject to the fee, Lackawanna County would receive $16,215, Benton and Greenfield townships would each get about $8,330 and all the county’s municipalities would get a portion of $12,160, according to the distribution formula outlined in the drilling law, known as Act 13.
Although the law levies a smaller fee on vertical wells – like those drilled in Lackawanna County – than horizontal ones, it does not distinguish between the two types of wells for distributing the fee to local governments. Vertical wells are assessed at 20 percent of the horizontal well fee, which is $50,000 for wells drilled before 2012 and may change each year based on the average price of natural gas.
Kocher said Lackawanna County’s two vertical wells “are subject to the 20 percent fee in year one. In year two if they are not producing at the designated levels outlined in the act, they do not have to pay the fee.”
After the law was adopted in February, the fee fate of the state’s exploratory wells and their host communities was not clear.
The law defines a vertical gas well as one that has been hydraulically fractured and produces more than 90,000 cubic feet of gas per day – a definition that the law’s architects said was intended to exclude low- or non-producing wells that are used to assess the quantity of gas in an unexplored region of the shale.
But the law defines an “unconventional well” more expansively, as “a bore hole drilled ⦠for the purpose of or to be used for the production of natural gas from an unconventional formation,” and the state’s official list of unconventional wells includes many vertical, non-producing wells, along with inactive wells and unsuccessful wells that have been plugged.
Organizations that commented on the PUC’s draft interpretation of the law suggested different ways of dealing with the uncertainty.
Three trade organizations for natural gas producers pointed out that the law, and the PUC’s interpretation of it, is not clear about whether the impact fee would be levied on wells drilled into the shale for reasons other than direct gas production, like geologic analysis, although they suggested the answer should be no.
They also wrote that the law does not directly address what to do with “dry holes” – wells that are plugged because they would not produce economic amounts of gas. They suggested that wells drilled and plugged before Jan. 1, 2012, “owe no fee” and that any future wells drilled and plugged in the same year also “do not owe the fee.”
The Pennsylvania State Association of Boroughs offered an opposite interpretation and advocated that any well drilled and plugged in the same year pay at least one year’s fee.
“The fact that a well does not produce quantities above a stripper well or is plugged will not mitigate the impacts to the communities from the drilling of the well,” the group wrote.
The PUC has delayed issuing its final implementation order for the law in response to a court injunction that temporarily postponed some aspects of the act relating to local zoning rules.
Luzerne County Council voted 6-5 on April 16 to pass an ordinance enabling the county to accept a share of natural gas revenue if available.
Councilman Stephen A. Urban, one of the “no” votes, said council never got a definite number on how much revenue the county might be eligible for. However, he voted against the ordinance because he believes Act 13 is unconstitutional, going against the provision in the state constitution allows municipalities and counties to do their own planning and zoning.
“It wasn’t a money issue to me. It was a matter of constitutionality and a matter of principle,” Urban said.
Elizabeth Skrapits, staff writer, contributed to this report.
llegere@timesshamrock.com
About one-third of drinking water wells are contaminated with bacteria
www.publicopiniononline.com/ci_20566632/about-one-third-drinking-water-wells-are-contaminated/
By Jim Hook
Penn State Extension ups awareness of testing
CHAMBERSBURG — Homeowners often don’t know the quality of the water they are drinking, and an estimated one third of their wells are contaminated with bacteria.
About one quarter of homes in Franklin County get their drinking water from private wells.
Typically only half of homeowners ever have their water tested, and then only once, according to Penn State Extension Educator Thomas Richard McCarty.
“The major risk for most people is contamination from bacteria,” he said. “This is hidden both from sight and taste. Health effects may be hidden too by building resistance to the presence of bacteria, which suffices as long as bacteria counts are low and the householders are in generally good health. Symptoms properly due to poor water may easily be blamed on something else.”
Penn State Extension is offering discounted water testing kits this week.
According to Penn State Extension data for well water in Franklin County:
— About 35 percent of private wells have coliform bacteria in their water. Coliform bacteria come from soil, sewage, or manure and enter groundwater from heavily fertilized areas – home lawns, farm fields or septic systems.
— One in 10 has fecal coliform levels exceeding safe drinking water standards. This branch of the coliform family includes the dreaded E. coli.
— One of every six have nitrates above the limit for drinking water. Nitrate is of concern when infants under six months drink the water or older people with stomach problems.
— One of every 13 homes supplied by a well has lead levels exceeding the maximum allowable concentration. Children absorb more of the lead in their diet than adults do. Lead in water comes primarily from solder joints in copper pipe. Exposure to high levels of lead can result in delays in physical and mental development, along with slight deficits in attention span and learning abilities. Adults exposed to lead over a number of years can develop high blood pressure or kidney problems.
“The lack of testing by well owners is not for a lack of concern over their water quality, but instead, a lack of awareness and understanding of what testing should be done,” according to a 2009 Penn State study Drinking Water Quality in Rural Pennsylvania. “The great majority of well owners that were told of health-related water quality issues in their water supply had voluntarily solved the problem within one year.”
A deeper well does not always have purer water. Limestone bedrock has more to do with bacterial contamination of wells than does the depth of the well, according to a 2001 U.S. Geological Survey study of wells in south-central Pennsylvania. Bacterial concentrations actually increased with depth to the waterbearing zone in limestone. Many of the wells in Franklin County are drilled in limestone geology.
Franklin County lacks current data on the use of private wells.
“The 1980 Census reported that 63 percent of homes were on public water,” said Phil Tarquino, chief of the county planning department. “The remaining 37 percent were on drilled wells, dug wells or cisterns. It would seem that the percent of homes on public water has increased in the last 30 years as most new development has occurred in areas where public water is located. In addition public water has been extended to areas that were previously on wells or cisterns.”
Pennsylvania has more residents using private wells than any other state, except Michigan, and each year another 20,000 are drilled, according to Penn State’s manual for well owners.
McCarty said he is at a loss to explain why interest in Penn State’s water testing program has declined of the years. A steeply discounted program in Adams County attracted few participants.
Researchers making new push in cancer cluster search
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
Science-based surveillance effective in minimizing BSE risk in cattle
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.”
State investigating methane in water near Dimock Twp.
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
1.8 million gallons of sewage leaks into river in Tamaqua
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.
Relax, It’s Just a Run-of-the-Mill Nuke Spill
www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/26/relax-its-just-a-run-of-the-mill-nuke-spill/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=relax-its-just-a-run-of-the-mill-nuke-spill
by DAVE LINDORFF
April 26, 2012
The Limerick Incident Wasn’t an “EPPI”
A little over a month ago, back on March 19, at 3:00 in the morning, the Limerick Nuclear Power Station, which runs two aging GE nuclear reactors along the Schuylkill River west of Philadelphia, had an accident. As much as 15,000 gallons of reactor water contaminated with five times the official safe limit of radioactive Tritium as well as an unknown amount of other dangerous isotopes from the reactor’s fission process blew off a manhole cover and ran out of a large pipe, flowing into a streambed and on into the river from which Philadelphia and a number of smaller towns draw their municipal water supplies.
No public announcement of this spill was made at the time, so the public in those communities had no idea that it had occurred, and water system operators had no opportunity to shut down their intakes from the river. There was no report about the spill in Philadelphia’s two daily newspapers or on local news programs.
Only weeks later, after the regional office of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was finally sent an official report by Exelon, the owner of the plant, did a public notice get posted on the NRC’s website, after which some excellent reporting on the incident was done by Evan Brandt, a reporter for a local paper called The Pottstown Mercury.
We contacted the NRC regional office with oversight over Limerick and were told that Exelon had only reported the incident to state authorities — the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA). A call to the DEP elicited a response that the state agency, now in the hands of a Republican governor who has shown open distain for environmental concerns ranging from nuclear waste to regulation of natural gas fracking chemicals, that it did not feel it was necessary to issue any public report on the spill. “Exelon assured us that it was not an EPPI incident,” explained DEP regional office spokeswoman Deborah Fries.
“What’s an EPPI?” she was asked. “It’s an Event of Potential Public Interest,” Fries replied.
In other words, Exelon and the state’s DEP and PEMA officials, meeting behind closed doors, agreed that the spilling of up to 15,000 gallons of radioactive isotope-laced reactor water into a river that supplies drinking water to hundreds of thousands of people was not an event of “potential public interest,” and so they didn’t make it public, thus insuring that it would not become a matter of public interest, or even of public knowledge! The logic is impeccable, though the NRC subsequently protested that Exelon should have reported the incident to the commission, which would automatically have posted it on its website as public notice of a spill.
Read more
Pennsylvania law on fracking worries doctors
www.pennlive.com/newsflash/index.ssf/story/pennsylvania-law-on-fracking-worries-doctors/dd15e865ab528519210b827575117d4f
April 25, 2012, 8:14 a.m. EDT
McClatchy/Tribune – MCT Information Services
AVELLA, Pa. _ About two years ago, Dr. Amy Pare began treating members of the Moten family and their neighbors from a working-class neighborhood less than half a mile from a natural gas well here.
A plastic surgeon whose specialty includes skin cancer, Pare removed and biopsied quarter-size skin lesions from Jeannie Moten, 53, and her niece, only to find that the sores recurred. “The good news is that it wasn’t cancer, and the bad news is that we have no idea what it is,” Pare said.
Determined to understand the illnesses, Pare went last May to the Motens’ neighborhood to collect urine samples from a dozen people. To her dismay, she found chemicals not normally present in the human body: hippuric acid, phenol, mandelic acid.
The Motens and their neighbors suspect their ailments could be tied to the natural gas well. Pare says she is not sure what is causing their problems. But she worries that she may have a hard time determining the exact cause because of a provision in a new Pennsylvania law regulating natural gas production.
The law compels natural gas companies to give inquiring health care professionals information about the chemicals used in their drilling and production processes _ but only after the doctors or nurses sign a confidentiality agreement.
Some physicians complain that the law is vague and lacks specific guidelines about how they can use and share the information with patients, colleagues and public health officials, putting them at risk of violating the measure. But refusing to sign the confidentiality agreement denies them access to information that could help treat patients.
“I just want to make my patients healthy,” Pare said, adding that she might sign an agreement. “And I can’t do that if I don’t know what it is that’s making them sick.”
The possibility that increased natural gas development could threaten public heath lies at the core of resistance to a controversial process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The technique involves high-pressure injection of water and sand laced with chemicals deep underground to break shale formations and unlock oil and gas deposits.
Some people living near well sites have complained that their well water has been contaminated by fracking. The industry asserts that tiny amounts of chemicals are used in fracking and that the water problems are unrelated to the procedure.
Supporters of the Pennsylvania law _ including the gas industry, Republican Gov. Tom Corbett and many legislators _ said it was designed to help health care providers. Environmental groups and opposing lawmakers said the provision was not in the natural gas law’s original version and was slipped in behind closed doors at the last minute by industry-friendly legislators.
Patrick Henderson, the governor’s energy executive, said the new law would increase disclosure. Companies would have to share the chemical composition of fluids they use in natural gas production, including proprietary mixes. The confidentiality agreement would not prevent doctors from sharing information with colleagues or patients, only with the company’s competitors, he said.
Dr. Marilyn Heine, president of the Pennsylvania Medical Society, said her group had been assured by the state that as regulations are developed to implement the law, state officials “will clarify the provisions so that physicians will know what they can do.”
Some doctors, however, want the details in writing before they sign any confidentiality agreements.
“Right now, any physician reading the law would not go anywhere near the issue, because the language of the law has a very chilling effect,” said Dr. Bernard Goldstein, former dean of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and an expert on possible health effects of natural gas development. “I very much hope that the regulations permit” information sharing, he added.
So far, there are no comprehensive, independent studies of the possible health effects of natural gas development.
Dr. Sean Porbin, a family practitioner in Avella, thinks natural gas development could revive many struggling towns in Pennsylvania. “We need to ask questions,” he said. “It’s not about shutting down industry, but fixing it. And if the data show what they’re doing is safe, then we need to defend them.”
Pennsylvania’s new law is not unprecedented, according to the state’s Republican leadership, the natural gas industry and at least two prominent environmental groups. The measure is based on a new rule in Colorado and on two decades-old federal laws from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Health and Safety Administration.
The comparisons between Pennsylvania’s provision and the federal laws, however, are inexact, experts said. According to a statement from OSHA, what doctors can disclose and to whom would come down to “the terms of the agreement between the employer and the health care provider.”
In any case, there is little precedent for how nondisclosure agreements between doctors and companies would work when the patients are residents near a fracking site, not company employees, experts said.
If the state guidelines are stringent, doctors probably will forgo the agreement _ and the information they are seeking from a company, Goldstein and other physicians said. That, too, could imperil doctors.
“It exposes us to lawsuits from our own patients, who might say, ‘Why didn’t you sign the confidentiality agreement?’ or if you did, ‘Why didn’t you share the information with so-and-so?’ ” said Dr. Mehernosh Khan, who has filed suit against the state over the provision. “The law sets up a precedent for doctors not being able to practice medicine properly.”