DEP secretary answers questions on Marcellus Shale drilling

republicanherald.com/news/dep-secretary-answers-questions-on-marcellus-shale-drilling-1.1269964

by mark gilger jr. (staff writer mgilgerjr@republicanherald.com)
Published: February 10, 2012

ORWIGSBURG – State Sen. David Argall, R-29, and the Schuylkill County Chamber of Commerce co-hosted a lunch meeting Thursday with state Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Krancer.

The controversial subject of Marcellus Shale drilling was the topic of discussion as Krancer answered questions from chamber members concerning the bill passed Wednesday by the House of Representatives that established a county-option drilling impact fee and the state review of local drilling ordinances.

“At the end of the day, my job is to make good choices – which I think we are – to obtain this resource and use it in a safe and effective manner,” Krancer said Thursday at the meeting at Madeline’s restaurant.

Gov. Tom Corbett is expected to sign the bill, which received a vote of 101-90 in the House. The Senate approved the same bill Tuesday.

“The House made the right call. The Senate made the right call. We thank them for that and all of Pennsylvania should thank them,” Krancer said.

The danger of water contamination has been one of the harshest criticisms raised against the drilling and was addressed Thursday by Krancer.

“There is a culture of half-truth and misinformation and that is where I try to help out by providing information,” Krancer said. “I think it was Mark Twain that said, ‘A lie makes it halfway around the world by the time the truth gets its boots on.’ Well, I’ve seen that a lot in the last few years.”

The latest legislation extends drilling to 500 feet from existing buildings or water wells, 1,000 feet from water used by a supplier, and 300 feet from any body of water greater than one acre.

Drillers can also be held responsible for pollution of waterways within 2,500 feet of a well for up to one year after completion. Previously, responsibility lasted only six months after completion of a well within 1,000 feet of a body of water. Maximum penalties for violations were also increased from $300 to $1,000.

“We have county commissioners and conservation districts on board saying let’s go for it, and in light  of that I really have to say that the folks that are decrying the legislation are really out on the fringe,” Krancer said. “The House and the Senate did absolutely the right thing and it’s a huge step forward to be able to responsibly harness this great resource that is under our feet.”

The law allows counties with active wells to collect impact fees from drillers. Wells producing less than 90,000 cubic feet of gas per day will be exempt from the fee, which can be enacted by a county 60 days after the law is put into effect and can be retroactive for 2011. The bill also gives municipalities the ability to pursue an impact fee if not put into place by the county.

The fees will be collected by the Public Utility Commission and 60 percent will go to municipalities with the ordinance and 40 percent will be used for state environmental projects.

“I think the number-one priority of this administration is to get Pennsylvanians working again,” Krancer said.

While answering a question, Krancer said the bill also addresses concerns of municipalities losing their zoning privileges. He said the bill is simply a way to create uniformity of environmental standards and municipalities will retain zoning ordinances.

“It’s about private property and allowing those who want to use their private property the way they want to use it,” Krancer said.

Another question asked Thursday concerned the possibility of creating a level playing field for the booming Marcellus Shale industry in the Northeast.

“We are not going to live in a world where a state does not compete with another state,” Krancer said. “Capital competes, even within its own company. Capital is mobile and it will go. Economics is amoral.”

PennEnvironment Research and Policy Center has voiced its disapproval of the law based on an argument that it will strip control from local governments and will set one of the lowest impact fee rates in the nation.

“We have opposed the bill since it lacked any kind of local provisions,” Erika Staaf, clean water advocate for PennEnvironment, said Thursday. “If legislators were looking to pass a proposal that will allow more gas drilling near people’s homes, and the parks, playgrounds and schools where our children play and spend their days, then mission accomplished. Prior to the bill, drilling was kept to where it was wanted. At this point, any company can just drill in a commercial district.”

Landfill proposes to mill Marcellus waste

citizensvoice.com/news/landfill-proposes-to-mill-marcellus-waste-1.1267758#axzz1lW6h1Lkv

By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: February 6, 2012

Keystone Sanitary Landfill plans to process rock waste from natural gas drilling at its properties in Throop and Dunmore in a switch from its years-old practice of accepting already processed waste from the region’s Marcellus Shale well sites.

The first-of-its-kind facility in the state, proposed in a permit application to the Department of Environmental Protection in December, has raised concerns in Throop, where community leaders oppose Keystone taking the waste at all.

“Bad enough bringing the stuff here,” Throop council President Thomas Lukasewicz said, “but treating it here is almost like adding insult to injury.”

Keystone proposes to import the rock waste, called cuttings, in “unprocessed or unsolidified form” then mix it in a custom-designed mill with lime-based material to solidify it for disposal or as a replacement for soil to cover the working face of the landfill at the end of each day.

The landfill has been accepting cuttings for years from Marcellus Shale drillers who mix it with lime or sawdust at their well sites. The cuttings are displaced as the drillers bore to and through the gas-bearing rock about a mile underground.

Keystone accepts 600 tons of cuttings daily, the landfill said last spring in an application to increase its total daily waste capacity, which is pending. It wants to increase its daily intake of cuttings to at least 1,000 tons – the processing capacity of the mill.

The cuttings will be captured in water-tight containers placed at drill sites, trucked to the landfill and processed six days a week, according to the application.

Efforts to reach Keystone site manager Joseph Dexter were unsuccessful.

Penn State Cooperative Extension associate David Yoxtheimer, a member of the university’s Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research, said it makes sense for the landfill to want to process the rock waste itself so the finished product used for daily cover is uniform.

“It would ensure they would get a more consistent material that meets their needs,” he said, “rather than get 10 different companies giving them the material which would probably vary in composition and texture.”

It might also be appealing to gas drillers, whose space at a well site is limited and whose costs might be higher with the current practice of processing containers of waste on site, one by one, he said.

Although Keystone refers to the lime-based material – either quick lime or lime kiln dust – as a “bulking” or “drying” agent for the sometimes-saturated cuttings, it is also used to counteract the potential for the rock to produce acidic runoff.

The gas-rich layers of the Marcellus Shale coveted by drillers also contain pyrite, which, when exposed to oxygen and water, can produce acidic, metals-laden fluid similar to the acid mine drainage associated with the region’s abandoned mines.

“If you mix it with enough lime it might counteract those properties,” Yoxtheimer said.

Keystone does not expect the cuttings to change the chemistry of the landfill’s wastewater, called leachate, which is treated then discharged through sewer lines to the Scranton Sewer Authority, according to its application. But it is not entirely sure what might concentrate in the rain and wash water that runs off the mill site into its treatment system.

“Given that this process is the first of its kind in Pennsylvania, there is not data on the exact makeup of the wash water that will be collected, stored and disposed of as a result of Keystone’s drill cuttings processing facility,” the landfill wrote in its application.

Such unknowns have alarmed Throop officials, who petitioned the DEP to consider the mill proposal a “major,” not “minor,” modification of the landfill’s permit – a classification that would trigger a more thorough public vetting of the project.

“Throop Council feels there is enough information confirming the need for a change in the approved leachate collection and treatment method, change in the groundwater monitoring plan, and the submission of a radiation protection action plan,” all items that should trigger a major permit review, council solicitor Louis A. Cimini wrote in a Jan. 11 letter.

DEP continues to consider the proposal a minor permit modification, a spokeswoman said.

Marcellus cuttings can contain elevated levels of naturally occurring metals and radioactive material, including radium-226, which is a key concern for Throop officials.

Recent DEP tests of the cuttings at Keystone found radium-226 “slightly elevated” above the background levels found in the region’s soil, but at a level that “does not present any worker exposure, public health, safety and welfare or environmental concerns,” the agency wrote.

The radiation monitor that screens all incoming waste loads at the landfill was triggered at least 19 times between July and November, but none of those incidents involved drill cuttings, a DEP spokeswoman said.

Throop has hired a contractor to do its own testing and plans to sample loads it suspects might have elevated levels of radioactivity.

Adding to Throop’s concerns is Keystone’s proposal to speed up the approvals necessary for it to accept cuttings from new gas well pads. Instead of having a laboratory analyze and submit the chemical makeup of the waste from each pad, as required by state regulations, the landfill wants to receive a full analysis for a gas operator’s first eight well sites then a summary of that data and an “abbreviated review” for the next 20 sites.

Past data indicated only small variations between the makeup of the drill cuttings from across the region, Keystone argued. The landfill will require drillers to sign a certification form indicating they used the same drilling process and materials for new wells as for past wells.

A full analysis will be submitted to the state and Keystone once a year.

DEP has approved the expedited procedure, a spokeswoman said.

llegere@timesshamrock.com

DEP Investigating Three Spills at Gas Well

http://www.wnep.com/videobeta/3866ad3c-c127-4d9a-988c-f27dd79637bf/News/DEP-Investigating-Three-Spills-at-Gas-Well

New databases improve access to state gas drilling records

republicanherald.com/news/new-databases-improve-access-to-state-gas-drilling-records-1.1263776

By laura Legere (Staff Writer llegere@timesshamrock.com)
Published: January 28, 2012

A redesigned website for the state’s Office of Oil and Gas Management features new data tools that simplify the public’s access to permit records, drilling dates, inspections and enforcement actions for the state’s multiplying natural gas wells.

The site debuted two weeks ago for the Department of Environmental Protection’s high-profile office, which has come under recent criticism for inconsistency in its public data about Marcellus Shale gas wells.

At the heart of the new site are several data tools that will be updated automatically and nearly immediately rather than manually by a DEP staff member every month or so. For the first time, visitors to the new compliance database will find details for every inspection, not just those that uncover a violation at a well site.

The compliance database, which takes the place of what DEP spokesman Kevin Sunday called a “cumbersome” but “workable Marcellus Shale Excel spreadsheet,” also presents years of enforcement information in one place.

“You can check out an operator and get a look at how they’ve performed over the last few years, how much they’ve paid in penalties, what the violations were,” he said. “This is one standard format that definitely improves our transparency and our communication.”

Sunday was unsparing in his assessment of the old website, which has been replaced with a cleaner, better organized design complete with a logo pairing a green leaf with a blue gas flame.

“It was a hodgepodge of links,” he said. “Once you knew where everything was you kind of ignored the mess, but there was a lot of mess there.”

The new site, in comparison, is “very neat, very orderly and organized with specific audiences in mind.”

The agency has admittedly struggled with the massive amount of data generated by the gas industry to comply with state reporting rules, but Sunday said the problem had more to do with the consistent presentation of data across several online reports rather than missing or omitted information.

“It’s not that we’re lacking the data,” he said. “It’s that the public reports weren’t quite communicating well with our internal databases.”

The new site should help that. Now more automated, the public databases will show when a new well is drilled or a site is inspected as soon as it is entered into the department’s internal database, limiting the opportunity for error.

As new industry-reported data comes online – as a huge amount of it will in February when six-month oil and gas waste and production reports are posted – the goal is to “tether” the databases together to present more uniform, accurate information, he said.

Matt Kelso, data manager for FracTracker.org, a natural gas drilling database and mapping tool, draws heavily from the state’s data to analyze industry trends.

He said the new Office of Oil and Gas Management site is better organized and easier to navigate, especially across years of records, although he found the data to be largely the same.

“It’s an improvement,” he said. “I think it’s an overdue improvement, but I’m happy that they made those changes.”

www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt?tbb=dep and oil and gas

pa.gov/portal/server.pt/community/oil_and_gas/6003