Forum to Address Threats to Water Supplies in Delaware Basin
Forum to Address Threats to Water Supplies in Delaware Basin: Connecting Four States for Drinking Water Protection
Release date: 03/02/2011
Contact Information: David Sternberg 215-814-5548 sternberg.david@epa.gov
PHILADELPHIA (March 2, 2011) – Threats to sources of drinking water and public health for more than 15 million people in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and New York will be the focus of a high-level forum in Philadelphia and five satellite locations on March 10.
Government leaders and national water experts will highlight challenges to the quality and quantity of water fed from the Delaware River Basin, a 13,000-square-mile area that includes 838 municipalities in parts of Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and New York.
The Delaware River Basin Forum will feature a central session at the WHYY Hamilton Public Media Commons on 150 North 6th St., Philadelphia, where speakers will describe current and emerging impacts on water resources basin-wide. The forum will feature state-of the-art interactive technology to link live to five satellite locations, in four states outlining local drinking water concerns.
At the WHYY venue, Tufts University Professor Jeffrey K. Griffiths, one of the nation’s leading experts on waterborne disease and public health, will make the keynote presentation on “Drinking Water: Fact, Fears and the Future” at 12:15 p.m. Morning presentations will include the impacts to public health in the Delaware River Basin from water use, population growth and climate change, and will feature model water protection efforts in Philadelphia, New York City and Washington Township, NJ. EPA Regional Administrator Shawn M. Garvin will provide opening remarks at 8:15 a.m.
The satellite locations are in Newark, DE; Reading and Stroudsburg, PA; Bordentown, NJ; and Loch Sheldrake, NY.
Information on the forum, including a full lineup of speakers at the Philadelphia location, agendas and directions for each satellite location and background on issues facing the Delaware River Basin is available at http://www.delawarebasindrinkingwater.org/
Nearly 1,000 community water systems depend on water resources in the Delaware Basin, and the water is used extensively for recreation, fisheries and wildlife, energy, industry and navigation.
The Delaware River Basin begins in the Catskill Mountains in New York State and courses through 13,500 square miles of rural and urban landscapes to the Atlantic Ocean.
The forum is sponsored by the Source Water Collaborative, a coalition of 23 national organizations and agencies united to protect sources of drinking water. Local hosts for the forum include the US EPA (Region II and Region III), state environmental and health agencies of Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania, and the Delaware River Basin Commission.
Casey calls for water testing
U.S. Sen. Bob Casey joined a chorus of lawmakers on Tuesday seeking additional testing of public water supplies following a report that the wastewater produced from Marcellus Shale gas wells in Pennsylvania contains higher levels of radioactive materials than was previously disclosed.
An article published Sunday in The New York Times, detailed a lack of testing for those radioactive constituents at 65 public water intakes downstream from treatment plants that have discharged Marcellus Shale wastewater into rivers.
State regulators have limited how much drilling wastewater publicly owned sewer plants can discharge since 2008 and further discharge restrictions were adopted by the state last August.
“Alarming information has been raised that must be fully investigated,” Casey said and asked the state Department of Environmental Protection and the federal Environmental Protection Agency to “increase inspections of Pennsylvania drinking water resources for radioactive material and to account for why sufficient inspections haven’t taken place.”
Several other federal lawmakers have asked for similar increases in oversight since the publication of the article. On Sunday, former DEP Secretary John Hanger wrote on his blog that DEP “should order today all public water systems in Pennsylvania to test immediately for radium or radioactive pollutants” and report the results to the public.
In that post and at least six subsequent posts, Hanger also criticized The New York Times for not detailing the stricter regulations, increased staff and more frequent well site inspections that have been adopted by the state in the last three years as it strengthened its enforcement of Marcellus Shale drilling.
DEP spokeswoman Katy Gresh said the department is still evaluating how to respond to the calls for further testing.
“We’re certainly taking into consideration these recommendations,” she said.
Acting DEP Secretary Michael Krancer will face questions at a confirmation hearing today before the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee during which Marcellus Shale issues will surely be a primary topic.
Casey’s comments came as The New York Times published a second article in the series on its website on Tuesday afternoon that raised questions about the toxic constituents that remain in liquid or solid form after the Marcellus Shale wastewater is treated and recycled.
The article also details one occasion when more than 155,000 gallons of wastewater containing high levels of radium from an Ultra Resources well in Tioga County were sent to nine towns in Tioga, Bradford and Lycoming counties to spread on roads for dust suppression.
Pennsylvania regulations allow “only production or treated brines” from gas wells to be spread on roads for dust control or de-icing, according to a DEP fact sheet posted on its website. “The use of drilling, fracking, or plugging fluids or production brines mixed with well servicing or treatment fluids, except surfactants, is prohibited.”
Marcellus Shale brine is wastewater that gradually returns to the surface over the decades-long life of a well after a larger initial flush of fluids that had been injected underground returns to the surface in the first 30 days.
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
llegere@timesshamrock.com
Published: March 2, 2011
http://citizensvoice.com/news/casey-calls-for-water-testing-1.1112658#axzz1FMuTSTtV
Industry tried to get ‘Gasland’ disqualified
Film is still contender for Oscar documentary; sequel planned.
The natural gas industry has spent months attacking the documentary “Gasland” as a deeply flawed piece of propaganda. After it was nominated for an Oscar, an industry-sponsored PR group asked the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to reconsider the film’s eligibility.
The reply: Let Oscar voters have their say.
“We do not have the resources to vet each claim or implication in the many (documentary) films that compete for our awards each year, and even if we did there would be no shortage of people disputing our conclusions,” Bruce Davis, the academy’s executive director, wrote in a reply obtained by The Associated Press.
“Gasland” is up for best documentary at Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony. Director Josh Fox’s dark portrayal of greedy energy companies, sickened homeowners and oblivious regulators has stirred heated debate among the various stakeholders in a natural gas boom that is sweeping parts of the U.S. The film has galvanized anti-drilling activists while drawing complaints about its accuracy and objectivity.
In a letter to the academy, Lee Fuller, the executive director of an industry-sponsored group named Energy In Depth, called “Gasland” an “expression of stylized fiction” with “errors, inconsistencies and outright falsehoods.”
He asked the academy to consider “remedial actions” against the film.
Davis, the executive director, wrote to Fuller that if the academy were to act on every complaint made about a nominated film, “it would not be possible even to have a documentary category.” He said the academy must “trust the intelligence of our members” to sort out fact from fiction.
“If facts have been suppressed or distorted, if truth has been twisted, we depend on them to sniff that out and vote accordingly,” he wrote.
The letter was given to the AP by Energy in Depth, whose spokesman, Chris Tucker, said the group had no expectation that “Gasland” would actually be disqualified from Oscar consideration. The point, he said, was to educate academy voters.
“I think it’s a fairly good bet that a large majority of the folks who are going to be voting on this film don’t have a background in petroleum engineering,” quipped Tucker, who put together a 4,000-word rebuttal of “Gasland” last summer.
Fox said the industry’s campaign against “Gasland” has backfired.
“What they’re doing is calling more attention to the film, so I think it works against them,” the director said from Los Angeles. “But I think it shows how aggressive they are, how bullying they are, and how willing they are to lie to promote the falsehood that it’s OK to live in a gas drilling area.”
The documentary category is no stranger to controversy. Michael Moore films like “Bowling for Columbine” and “Sicko,” as well as Al Gore’s 2006 global-warming tale, “An Inconvenient Truth,” have likewise been attacked as biased and inaccurate.
Like Moore, Fox defends his film as accurate. But he rejects comparisons to the bombastic, ideological director.
“What they’re trying to do is make (’Gasland’) look like a liberal, elite, Michael Moore thing, which of course it isn’t. It’s bipartisan,” he said.
Fox, a 38-year-old New York City theater director, took an interest in drilling after a gas company approached him in 2008 about leasing his family’s wooded 20-acre spread in Milanville, near the Delaware River in northeastern Pennsylvania, where he has lived off-and-on since childhood.
Camera in hand, he went on a cross-country tour of places where large-scale drilling is already under way, interviewing residents who say they were sickened by nearby drilling operations and aiming his lens at diseased livestock and flammable tap water that he also blames on gas industry malfeasance.
February 26, 2011
MICHAEL RUBINKAM Associated Press
http://www.timesleader.com/news/Industry_tried_to_get__lsquo_Gasland_rsquo__disqualified_02-26-2011.html
Pro-drilling group wants states to regulate gas drilling
A coalition of landowners in the Delaware River Basin plans to tell the interstate agency that regulates water quality in the basin to stop trying to regulate natural gas drilling.
Instead, the pro-drilling group suggests the Delaware River Basin Commission renegotiate and strengthen its agreements with its member states, including Pennsylvania and New York, and let those states handle the regulation of gas drilling in the basin’s borders.
“They are going to put in rules that duplicate what the states are already doing, they’ll be forced to create a staff which will be green and inexperienced, and they will not be able to do the job,” Peter Wynne, spokesman for the Northern Wayne Property Owners Alliance, said Friday after the coalition held a press briefing in Honesdale about its criticisms.
The group, which finds the commission’s proposed drilling regulations “totally unworkable,” will be among many concerned citizens, lawmakers and groups that will offer comment on the draft rules in written testimony and at public hearings next week.
The proposed rules are available for review at www.drbc.net.
A set of local hearings will be held at Honesdale High School at 1:30 and 6 p.m. Tuesday.
Published: February 20, 2011
http://standardspeaker.com/news/pro-drilling-group-wants-states-to-regulate-gas-drilling-1.1107714
Landfill accepts gas drilling waste
DUNMORE – Keystone Sanitary Landfill in Dunmore has accepted tons of gas drilling waste that can contain radioactive material and heavy metals, according to documents obtained by Times-Shamrock newspapers.
Environmentalists raised red flags about the practice, but industry and state officials said it posed no public health risk.
At least four natural gas companies have received approval from the landfill to dump “drill cuttings” – deep underground rock and soil removed during the drilling process along with chemical additives. Cabot Oil and Gas, Chesapeake Energy, Chief Oil and Gas, and Stone Energy are identified in the documents, obtained through a Right-To-Know request to the state Department of Environmental Protection.
The documents were submitted by Keystone Sanitary Landfill manager Joe Dexter in a report to DEP last summer. Multiple efforts to contact Dexter, including a visit to the site by a reporter Friday, were unsuccessful.
The landfill accepted at least 17,710 tons of the material over a six-month period last year from July through December 2010, mostly from Cabot Oil and Gas, according to DEP records.
The documents show Chesapeake Energy was approved to dump drill cuttings at Keystone as early as November 2009, including from multiple Marcellus Shale wells in Auburn Township, Susquehanna County.
The drill cuttings, which gas company officials say are benign and environmentalists claim contain a stew of chemical additives, is an economic boon for Keystone, which had an average daily volume of 4,000 tons of waste accepted in 2010.
The landfill is owned by Dunmore businessman Louis DeNaples. Keystone also accepts sludge from municipal wastewater plants, asbestos and other products containing PCBs, and a medley of residential and commercial waste.
The new trash stream has come from Marcellus Shale wells as close as Susquehanna County, where horizontal drilling and gas production has kicked into high gear. One completed Stone Energy natural gas well in Rush Township produced 630 tons of drill cuttings that made its way to Keystone Sanitary Landfill last year.
One Marcellus Shale well can produce as much as 1,000 tons of drill cuttings, Cabot spokesman George Stark said, as drill bits bore more than a mile vertically and horizontally beneath the ground through several geologic layers to reach the gas.
Keystone is among a growing number of landfills throughout the state that are taking the cuttings as gas companies move away from on-site burial, which is allowed under state law as long as drill cutting pits are lined and covered in plastic.
“We’re hoping to develop that side of the business,” said John Hambrose, spokesman for Alliance Sanitary Landfill in Ransom and Taylor. “It happens that we haven’t received any yet. We’re always looking to increase our volume.”
Mark Carmon, a DEP spokesman, said landfills are allowed to take the drill cuttings under their general municipal waste permit, but must abide by special regulations for the material. Regulators also examine its chemical composition on a “well pad by well pad basis” to determine if it is safe for disposal, Carmon said.
Keystone also has radiation monitors in place that would detect if drill cuttings contained unsafe levels.
“We are sensitive to the concern. That’s why there are a lot of controls on these facilities,” Carmon said. “We are not seeing any problems at all. If we did, they wouldn’t be able to accept it.”
He added there has been no indication of any issues at Keystone with the material.
Landfills cannot accept wastewater from gas drilling, the toxic mixture of fracking fluids and underground substances produced after a well is hydraulically fractured. Hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” involves blasting millions of gallons of chemically treated water thousands of feet into the ground to open cracks in the shale and release the gas. Besides the chemical additives, the water comes back with substances from the depths, including naturally-occurring radioactive material and a high concentration of salt.
“Wastewater would have to be either recycled or go to a (wastewater) treatment facility,” Carmon said.
Gas industry officials say the move to deposit drill cuttings in landfills is part of a “closed loop” approach that attempts to mitigate environmental impact and reuse some materials.
“Chesapeake utilizes a closed-loop drilling process that eliminates the need for drilling (disposal) pits throughout the Marcellus,” Brian Grove, a company executive based in Towanda, wrote in an e-mail. “This process separates drill cuttings into steel bins that are taken off-site for disposal in approved regional landfills.”
Grove said the process reduces the footprint of a well site since a disposal location is not needed and works better with sites that have multiple gas wells that produce thousands of tons of drill cuttings.
Stark, of Cabot, and Chief spokeswoman Kristi Gittins said all of their companies’ drill cuttings are now being disposed of in landfills, including Keystone. The companies are drilling extensively in Susquehanna County.
The drill cuttings are considered residual waste, a category removed from household waste, Carmon said. DEP chemists decide whether a toxic substance can be safely deposited in a municipal landfill, testing its reactivity to other substances, among other procedures.
“This is not an issue,” Carmon said. “We’re talking about rocks. If there was going to be a consistent problem setting off these (radiation) monitors, it wouldn’t be worth it for the landfills.”
Not everyone agrees.
Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of Delaware Riverkeeper, an environmental advocacy group, said drill cuttings contain a host of “dangerous chemicals,” other substances found deep underground including arsenic and mercury, and naturally occurring radioactive materials that may present environmental and public health risks, even in a landfill.
“Everything that is in that (underground geologic) formation is going to be in those cuttings,” Carluccio said. “We may be seeing the buildup of radioactive and other hazardous materials in landfills.”
Glenn C. Miller, Ph.D., an environmental chemist at the University of Nevada, said judging the potential environmental harm of drill cuttings is difficult in part because gas companies refuse to disclose the additives used during drilling, claiming the information is proprietary.
Miller said it is also less understood how harmful the naturally occurring radioactive material in the Marcellus Shale rock can be, considering that its intensity can greatly differ depending on the location of a well.
“Exactly what the risks are, I think they are still evolving,” he said. “It’s not well-defined.”
By Steve McConnell
smcconnell@timesshamrock.com
Published: February 20, 2011
http://citizensvoice.com/news/landfill-accepts-gas-drilling-waste-by-steve-mcconnell-1.1107634#axzz1EJyoubc5
Harveys Lake to hold hearing on drilling ban
HARVEYS LAKE – After months of pressure by residents, council gave in Tuesday and voted for an official hearing on a proposed ordinance to ban natural gas drilling in the borough.
Council members Diane Dwyer, Larry Radel and Carole Samson voted to advertise and hold a hearing to adopt the “Harveys Lake Community Water Rights and Local Self-Government Ordinance” drawn up by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. Councilman Ryan Doughton and President Fran Kopko voted no, and Councilman Boyd Barber abstained.
“Hallelujah,” said resident Neil Turner, a main proponent of the ordinance.
About 70 people attended, many of whom favored the ordinance, which would prohibit water from any source in the borough being used in natural gas drilling, hold neighboring municipalities liable for harm to water sources and make it “unlawful for any corporation to engage in the extraction of natural gas” in the borough.
Critics of the ordinance say the self-governance aspect and potential conflict with the state Oil & Gas Act could get the borough sued or else lose its state funding.
“It’s plain and simple: this ordinance violates state law,” Doughton said. “There’s not one logical, reasonable explanation that makes sense to pass this.”
Those in favor say there’s no conflict and point to other communities, such as Pittsburgh, that passed similar ones. Although council asked a consultant to look into ways the borough can be protected via the zoning ordinance, Turner said they are “two totally different approaches.”
The state Oil & Gas Act could override a zoning ordinance but not the CELDF ordinance, resident Carol Culver said, adding that if the borough does get sued, CELDF will help defend its ordinance in court.
By Elizabeth Skrapits, Staff Writer
Published: February 17, 2011
eskrapits@citizensvoice.com, 570-821-2072
http://citizensvoice.com/news/drilling/harveys-lake-to-hold-hearing-on-drilling-ban-1.1106145#axzz1EJyoubc5
Webinar next Wednesday on Household Water Treatment Systems
The Water Resources Extension Webinar series will continue next week with a presentation on Household Water Treatment Systems on February 23 from noon to 1 PM by Dr. Tom McCarty. Tom is an Extension Educator with Penn State Cooperative Extension in Cumberland County.
Webinar Summary
If you have seen one of those fiberglass “missile” tanks in a basement and wondered “what is that for?” or have been curious about the extra sink spout that supplies “RO” water, please come and join the discussion at noon on February 23rd. The webinar will discuss the need for household water treatment and various approaches to treatment. We’ll discuss disinfection, softening, iron removal, rotten-egg odor (hydrogen sulfide) treatment, corrosion control, chlorine removal, and other devices to provide small amounts of high purity water for drinking and cooking. You won’t be an expert by the end of lunch but the tips we’ll provide will allow you to ask some pretty good questions of the next water treatment salesman. And for sure you will have some insight into whether or not there should be some treatment equipment on your drinking water supply.
How to Partcipate
The live webinar will occur from noon to 1 PM and is accessible at: https://breeze.psu.edu/water1
To participate in the live webinar you will need to have registered and received a “Friend of Penn State” ID and password. To learn more about registration and additional details about the webinar series, go to:
http://extension.psu.edu/water/webinar-series/schedule/registration
Taped versions of each webinar in the series are available to anyone. A link to the presentation video along with a PDF copy of the presentation slides, links to relevant publications, and a copy of the question/answer session are posted at:
http://extension.psu.edu/water/webinar-series/past-webinars
Addional Upcoming Webinars
March 30, 2011 – Management of Nuisance Aquatic Plants and Algae in Ponds and Lakes
April 27, 2011 – Using Rain Barrels and Rain Gardens to Manage Household Stormwater
Budget cuts tap out safe drinking water
In all of the debate on Capitol Hill about cutting budgets, you wouldn’t expect water to get a great deal of attention. But it should.
The Continuing Resolution set to emerge from the House this week makes drastic reductions in support for critical functions of the Environmental Protection Agency – the federal entity charged with protecting water supplies for hundreds of millions of Americans. But slashing the EPA’s budget, without shifting legal and financial responsibility to polluters, will leave America’s fisheries, drinking water supplies, and coastal areas vulnerable. No one else is guarding the door to the henhouse – quite literally, it turns out, when it comes to water pollution.
Industrial animal agriculture operations in the U.S. generate up to one billion tons of manure annually, most of which is applied – untreated – to cropland. As a result, according to the EPA, drinking water sources for an estimated 43 percent of the U.S. population have suffered some level of pathogen contamination associated with livestock operations, and 29 states have identified livestock feeding operations as a source of water pollution. In Congressional testimony, the U.S. Geological Survey identified livestock manure as the single largest source of nitrogen pollution in major rivers across the country, including rivers in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Florida, Arkansas, California and Wisconsin.
As food animal production in the U.S. has shifted from family farms to a concentrated industrial production system, efforts to protect the environment, rural communities and water supplies have not kept pace. These massive operations, housing thousands of hogs or hundreds of thousands of chickens in tight quarters, produce manure and other waste on an equally large scale, but continue to be regulated under a now-antiquated set of rules designed for small family farms. Corporations that own slaughterhouses, packing facilities and livestock often contract with farmers to raise the animals to the point of slaughter and argue that they bear no liability for compliance with Clean Water Act permits during the production period. The companies own the animals; the farmers are stuck with the manure.
Under this system, corporate owners have not been obligated to provide any financial assistance to farmers for the costs of waste treatment and disposal. As a result, local water utilities spend millions monitoring and treating this water pollution, and treasured gems like the Chesapeake Bay suffer from livestock-related pollution, while taxpayers pay the cleanup costs through EPA water programs. These programs are now on the chopping block.
Congressional efforts to find legitimate savings through efficiency and the elimination of waste in government programs are of course laudable. But members of Congress also have a responsibility to ensure that alternatives to government spending are identified so the health and welfare of millions of Americans is not jeopardized.
When it comes to water pollution, the polluters – and not the general public – should be responsible for cleaning up their own waste. It¹s time for industrial animal agriculture to pay its fair share.
By Karen Steuer – 02/15/11
Karen Steuer is Director of Government Relations for the Pew Environment Group.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-a-budget/144261-budget-cuts-tap-out-safe-drinking-water
Go slow on shale drilling
baltimoresun.com Opinion: As Pennsylvania has learned, it’s better to ask questions first before allowing energy companies to use hydraulic fracturing to exploit a massive natural gas deposit.
The Marcellus shale natural gas deposit could prove a vital resource for this nation’s energy future. Scientists have estimated that the Appalachians may yield hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, at a value of $1 trillion.
Maryland could have a piece of that action. The Marcellus runs under the western part of the state, perhaps a mile below the surface. It can potentially be extracted by a controversial technique known as hydraulic fracturing, where water is used to break up rock and allow the gas to be released.
It is tempting to want to see domestic natural gas production flourish, not only because of the money and jobs it might bring to the state but because gas can potentially help make this country less dependent on other more problematic fossil fuels. Nevertheless, some caution is in order.
That was the message heard last week from John Quigley, the former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. He is no opponent of natural gas, but he sees “complex and daunting” environmental consequences to Marcellus extraction.
Appearing before the House of Delegates’ Environmental Matters Committee, Mr. Quigley said his state’s experience with the industry so far should sound a cautionary tale to others. Already, Pennsylvania has seen drinking water wells contaminated, leaks of wastewater pits, well blowouts, explosions and fires. Altogether, there have been thousands of recorded violations of environmental regulations, he told the committee.
Clearly, natural gas is not the only precious resource at stake in this debate. Clean water is, too. The industry claims that the potential for the water and chemicals used in fracturing to be released into the groundwater is small and the technique has been in use for decades, but the risk posed to the environment is too great to be treated lightly.
Nor is groundwater contamination the only problem that has surfaced in Pennsylvania. Questions have also arisen as to whether the state had appropriate regulations in place to protect local communities from other problems associated with gas development, ranging from heavy truck traffic to the influx of out-of-state workers.
That’s why legislation pending in Annapolis that would slow down new natural gas production in Maryland is a sensible step. The measure would require the Maryland Department of the Environment to consider many of the environmental issues raised in Pennsylvania and involve local governments in the decision-making process before any permits could be granted.
Why not learn from the mistakes made in Pennsylvania and elsewhere? The nation will need natural gas years into the future as much as it does today — or next month or next year. Better to do it right than to allow big energy companies to exploit Maryland’s natural resources first and have questions asked later.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-shale-gas-20110214,0,7717194.story
baltimoresun.com
February 14, 2011
Harveys Lake citizens hear about drilling ordinance
Law would protect rights to fresh drinking water and preserve eco-systems from gas drilling.
HARVEYS LAKE – Residents of Harveys Lake borough, adjacent to the largest natural lake in Pennsylvania of the same name, met Saturday to hear about a possible self-governing ordinance which would protect the municipality from possible problems caused by natural gas drilling.
The ordinance, written by the Community Environment Legal Defense Fund was given to the borough council in late summer with the request for a public meeting to be held for an open discussion of the ordinance.
Last month, the request was left dangling with a tie vote and a mayor who did not offer to break the tie. Residents, visibly upset, arranged for their own meeting to get the information out and ask residents to help put pressure on the council to schedule and hold a special public meeting.
Ben Price, program director of the CELDF, came in to help answer questions from a packed audience.
“What can communities do, to use their local government to achieve the ends they want?” Price said. “To protect the community and to be sure they can preserve it and they can create the kind of community they want to live in and pass on to their children and grandchildren.”
With grim faces, residents listened when Price explained the gas industry has many exemptions in its favor including the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Water Act, the Superfund Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. These exemptions seem to override any laws local municipalities could enact to prohibit the gas industry, Price said.
The 1984 Gas Act basically said local municipalities have no control over what the corporations do, said Neil Turner, Harveys Lake resident and co-organizer of the meeting.
Price said the best municipalities can do is regulate gas drilling through zoning laws. He said zoning laws can limit certain activities in certain areas of a municipality, on the surface. But he said nothing regulates the horizontal drilling that gas companies are now performing.
“You are never allowed to say no, in the zoning laws, to a legal permitted use of land,” Price said. “How do you know it is legal? Because they issue permits. A permit is a license to engage in an activity. What activity? Hydrofracking. An activity which has been exempt from the protection of federal and state laws.”
The Harveys Lake community is in a good position, Turner said, as a nearby Noxen Township well came up dry and EnCana Oil and Gas U.S.A. pulled out of Luzerne County after exploration results at two wells did not yield large amounts of natural gas.
The ordinance Price presented would establish a Bill of Rights for borough residents banning “commercial extraction of Marcellus Shale natural gas with Harveys Lake borough because that extraction cannot be achieved without violating the rights of residents and communities or endangering their health, safety and welfare.”
The ordinance also nullifies state laws, permits, and other authorizations which interfere with the rights secured by the ordinance.
The four-page ordinance claims residents have inalienable and fundamental rights to access, consume and preserve water drawn from the natural water sources within the borough and protect the natural ecosystems of the community.
Harveys Lake is a large watershed area which feeds into the Ceasetown and Huntsville reservoirs, which provide drinking water to about 100,000 Wyoming Valley residents. Concern over contaminated water from upstream flowing into the lake was also addressed.
The ordinance states “corporations and persons using corporations to engage in natural gas extraction in a neighboring municipality, county, or state, shall be strictly liable for all harms caused to natural water sources, ecosystems, and natural communities within the borough.”
The ordinance also has an enforcement section, which states any person or corporation found in violation of the provisions of the ordinance will pay the maximum fine allowable under state law.
Price said the ordinance is designed to give residents their inalienable rights afforded under the First and Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. He told residents it is not an easy fight.
The ordinance is similar to the one recently passed in Pittsburgh and Licking Township, Turner said.
Price then opened the floor for questions. Residents had several concerns over the possibility of being sued by a gas company over the ordinance. Price responded people can sue each other over anything.
Price said his agency will offer free legal services in terms of drafting and explaining the ordinance, and arguments. More than 120 similar ordinances have been adopted and only about five lawsuits have occurred, he said.
EILEEN GODIN Times Leader Correspondent
Posted: February 13, 2011
http://www.timesleader.com/news/Harveys_Lake_citizens_hear_about_drilling_ordinance_02-13-2011.html