Environmental, legal expert speaks about recent ‘fracking’ legislation
www.lehighvalleylive.com/thebrownandwhiteblog/index.ssf/2012/04/environmental_legal_expert_spe_1.html
Published: Monday, April 23, 2012
Michael Krancer, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), spoke and answered questions about Act 13 —a new state law establishing regulations over the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, process being used to drill natural gas out of the Marcellus Shale deposit in many northern and western Pennsylvania counties— at a town hall meeting in Packard 101 Friday.
Act 13 requires drilling companies to report to the DEP the chemicals they use in the fracking process, including concentrations on a well-by-well basis, as well as publically disclose chemicals on FracFocus.org, according to the website of the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, a watchdog group Krancer referenced in his talk.
Questions have been raised about difficulties medical professionals are having under the new law. According to the PEC website, doctors are having trouble getting access to chemical information needed in the diagnosis or treatment of patients. Fracking involves boring a high-pressure mix of water and toxic chemicals into fissures in the ground to force natural gas to the surface.
Evidence that chemicals are leaking from natural gas drilling sites and contaminating private wells and public waterways has turned fracking into a serious environmental and public health concern in Pennsylvania.
The Marcellus shale deposit extends throughout much of northern and western Pennsylvania, and into New York, where a moratorium was placed on drilling in December 2010.
Krancer said that 3 million Pennsylvania residents get their water from private wells — one of the highest proportions of any state in the country. He said 40 percent of the state’s wells have exceeded maximum contaminant levels at some point, regardless of fracking.
Act 13 is the state government’s first attempt to regulate fracking, and Krancer’s talk was intended to reassure residents that the DEP is robustly monitoring the actions of drilling companies.
“We do need to pay attention to what happens at the front end,” he said. “We can’t get the promise of cleaner air through the use of natural gas in transportation without paying attention to what’s happening during the exploration and drilling phase.”
Krancer promised “additional boots on the ground, paid for by permit not taxpayer money” in Bradford county in northeastern Pennsylvania, which has been at the center of the fracking controversy.
“I frankly think we’re getting it right,” Krancer said. “Any form of energy production has aspects that need to be managed. That’s true of coal and oil; it’s true of nuclear power, and it’s true of wind and solar.”
When asked by one audience member how the state can allow fracking to occur in an aquifer, Krancer explained that groundwater supplies usually occur at depths of several hundred feet below the earth’s surface and that natural gas drilling occurs far below those depths —at depths of around 8,000 feet.
Krancer called Act 13 one of the most progressive and environmentally forward-thinking regulations in the country; he said it is modeled on a Colorado law that was hailed by environmental groups nationwide when it was passed.
“We’re going to have increased monitoring during the earthmoving process,” Krancer said. “We have more inspectors than Oklahoma; and if we need more, we’re going to get more.”
Krancer said that the state will take cases of non-compliance seriously, prosecuting where necessary.
“I happen to believe in enforcement and so does the governor,” Krancer said.
He also reminding the audience that Pennsylvania’s Republican Governor, Tom Corbett, served eight years as state attorney general, and as chief U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh before that, where he prosecuted environmental violators.
Krancer called himself a believer in free-market economics. He said drilling companies that don’t comply with the new environmental regulations are trying to “steal a competitive advantage from those that are complying.”
“I have a fundamental idea that cheaters should be called out,” he said.
Regulation and monitoring makes sense from both environmental and economic standpoints, he said.
“The free marketplace is the engine for a lot of research and development, opportunities that don’t exist in other parts of the world,” Krancer said.
Krancer also said “the ethos of compliance has to be in the company.”
He cited his experience as general council for Excelon Corporation, an energy company where, Krancer said, the CEO enforced compliance with a top-down mentality. Ten members of Lehigh’s environmental student group Green Action attended Krancer’s talk.
“We wanted to mobilize for this event because Secretary Krancer takes a strong stance in favor of drilling the Marcellus Shale, and we hoped showing him that well-educated students think he is making a big mistake,” said Green Action president Tyler Tobin, ’12, in an email.
“Natural gas wells emit plumes of methane into the atmosphere contributing to climate change; the well casings are not 100 percent perfect, allowing frack fluids and gases to escape the well shaft and enter ground water,” Tobin said, detailing some of the environmental concerns associated with fracking.
“The lagoons where spent frack fluid are held infiltrate into ground water and run off into surface water; on top of it all there seems to be a huge environmental justice issue where companies pay off poor families for their mineral rights then completely de-value their land and livelihood,” Tobin said.
The meeting was co-sponsored by Lehigh’s Environmental Initiative, the Office of the Vice President and Associate Provost for Research and Graduate Studies and the engineering school.
Story by Brown and White news writer Kirk Greenwood, ’12.
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Ex-DEP Official Says All Pa. Oil, Gas Waste Needs Treatment
www.manufacturing.net/news/2012/04/ex-dep-official-says-all-pa-oil-gas-waste-needs-treatment
Mon, 04/16/2012
PITTSBURGH (AP) — A former top environmental official says Pennsylvania’s successful efforts to keep Marcellus Shale wastewater away from drinking water supplies should be extended to all other oil and gas drillers.
“It’s the same industry. It is the same contaminants. And the goal should be the same,” said George Jugovic Jr., who was formerly the Department of Environmental Protection’s southwest regional director. He’s now president of PennFuture, an environmental group.
An AP analysis of state data found that in the second half of 2011 about 1.86 million barrels — or about 78 million gallons — of drilling wastewater from conventional oil and gas wells were still being sent to treatmentplants that discharge into rivers.
The core issue is whether a problem in waterways has been solved, or if more needs to be done.
In 2010 health experts raised alarms when they found soaring levels of ultra-salty bromides in rivers and streams that are major sources of drinking water. The general view was that wastewater from Marcellus Shalegas drilling — polluted with heavy bromides from deep underground — was contributing to the problem.
High levels of bromides can contaminate drinking water with levels that exceed national safety standards and are potentially harmful. Though not considered a pollutant by themselves, the bromides combine with the chlorine used in water treatment to produce trihalomethanes, which may cause cancer if ingested over a long period of time.
Bromide levels were so high in rivers during 2010 that they caused corrosion at some plants that were using the water.
But since the spring of 2011 most Marcellus drillers have been recycling the fluids, or sending then to deep underground wells mostly in Ohio.
The gas-rich Marcellus, which lies thousands of feet underground, has attracted a gold rush of drillers who have drilled almost 5,000 new wells in the last five years. But the state also has about 70,000 older oil and gaswells, according to DEP statistics, that target different, shallower reserves.
Researchers say the bromide levels did drop last summer, but they had also expected even more of a decline after virtually all of the Marcellus Shale drillers stopped disposing wastewater into plants that discharge into rivers.
But conventional oil and gas wells weren’t included in last year’s recycling push — a loophole that state environmental officials downplayed at the time.
Jugovic said DEP secretary Mike Krancer should now take “the next step” and get voluntary compliance from the rest of the gas industry.
“It’s hard scientifically to justify a distinction between treating conventional wastewater differently. The wastewater is being disposed in plants that are not capable of treating those contaminants,” he said.
Dave Mashek, a spokesman for the Pa. Independent Oil & Gas Association, declined to comment.
Kevin Sunday, a DEP spokesman, claimed that the volume of conventional oil and gas waste is “substantially smaller” than the Marcellus amounts.
But the AP found that 78 million gallons of oil and gas wastewater were still being taken to treatment plants in the last half of 2011 — about 33 percent less than the Marcellus quantity that was raising concerns in 2010, but still a substantial amount. If that rate continues, the conventional wells will send about 150 million gallons of the wastewater to treatment plants that discharge into rivers this year.
Sunday said the agency encourages wastewater recycling, “regardless of the industry involved,” and added that the conventional oil and gas drillers don’t produce as much wastewater as the Marcellus drillers.
Sunday also said that the agency has created a new, revised permit to encourage recycling of waste. Ten facilities have applied for the new permit, and if all are approved, that would double the number of such facilities in the state.
David Sternberg, a spokesman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, didn’t directly answer a question about whether there was any scientific justification for treating the non-Marcellus waste differently. Sternberg said EPA, which urged Pennsylvania regulators last year to halt the dumping, is working closely with state regulators “to ensure that, where wastewater treatment facilities are accepting oil and gas wastewaters, discharges from these treatment facilities are in compliance with the Clean Water Act.”
Jugovic said that some previous assumptions about the non-Marcellus waste turned out to be false. For example, there were suggestions that it generally contained much lower levels of bromides and other contaminants.
He said some of the shallow wells had very high levels of total dissolved solids and other contaminants that can be a problem for drinking water supplies.
Jugovic also said that the fact that 97 percent of Marcellus drillers appear to be complying with the wastewater restrictions raises a fairness issue. Why, he asked, should the conventional oil and gas drillers and the remaining 3 percent of drillers get a pass?
Now, researchers are waiting for expected lower river levels in the summer, to see if the bromide problem has really gone away. The higher flows in early spring dilute any contaminants and make it harder to draw conclusions about the bromides.
New website provides guidance on Marcellus Shale development
live.psu.edu/story/59159#nw69
Friday, April 13, 2012
The 'Marcellus Shale Electronic Field Guide' provides information about mitigating landscape changes as a result of natural-gas development, such as the well-pad construction pictured here.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A new website developed by Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences and Penn State Extension offers assistance in land management at all stages of shale-gas infrastructure development.
The “Marcellus Shale Electronic Field Guide” is an unbiased manual aimed at presenting the best possible options in Marcellus Shale development for Pennsylvania’s future.
“The guide provides a comprehensive overview of how landscapes change during shale-gas development and offers ways throughout the process to minimize adverse effects while maximizing long-term site restoration success,” said Patrick Drohan, assistant professor of pedology and one of the website’s lead authors.
The guide’s sections reflect the questions asked most frequently by landowners and managers and by gas-industry employees.
The field guide introduces ecological concepts relevant to shale-gas development, including habitat fragmentation and restoration and basic wildlife science. It includes sections on predevelopment issues, such as effects of shale-gas development on agriculture and forestland, control of site activity, soil erosion and compaction, and planning for spills, accidents and invasive species control.
Restoration of shale-gas development sites is explored through pages on setting goals for restoration, landscape reconstruction, revegetation options, and restoring or creating wildlife habitat. The site includes detailed analyses of important wildlife species in Pennsylvania: wild turkey, ruffed grouse and white-tailed deer, with more featured species to come.
Landowners looking for general guidance on leasing provisions may benefit from sample leases and a section on best management practices.
The field guide also includes an image gallery and a public forum in which registered users can ask questions and receive feedback from those with on-the-ground experience.
“Exploration and development of natural gas within the Marcellus Shale formation is occurring at an accelerating rate across much of Pennsylvania and may produce large-scale ecological change,” said Margaret Brittingham, professor of wildlife resources and website co-author.
“There is a critical need among public and private landowners for information on how to develop drilling sites and their associated infrastructure so as to minimize ecological damage and allow restoration of sites to predrilling conditions,” she said. “We hope this website helps to fill that need.”
The website is based on work supported by the Heinz Endowments and was designed by Penn State’s Center for Environmental Informatics. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in the field guide are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the sponsor.
The website, which is also accessible from smart phones and similar devices, can be viewed at http://marcellusfieldguide.org/index.php
Drilling law hurts health, docs say
thetimes-tribune.com/news/gas-drilling/drilling-law-hurts-health-docs-say-1.1298897#axzz1rpg4bvIU
Published: April 12, 2012
PITTSBURGH – Public health advocates and doctors on the front lines of Pennsylvania’s natural-gas-drilling boom are attacking the state’s new Marcellus Shale law, likening one of its provisions to a gag order and complaining that vital research money into health effects was stripped at the last minute.
Doctors say they don’t know what to tell patients who suspect their ailments are related to nearby gas industry activity because of a lack of research on whether the drilling of thousands of new wells – many near houses and drinking-water supplies – has made some people sick.
Yet when legislative leaders and the governor’s office negotiated the most sweeping update of the state’s oil and gas law in a quarter century, they stripped $2 million annually that included a statewide health registry to track respiratory problems, skin conditions, stomach ailments and other illnesses potentially related to gas drilling.
Just last week, the Department of Health refused to give The Associated Press copies of its responses to people who complain that drilling had affected their health. That lack of transparency – justified in the name of protecting private medical information – means the public has no way of knowing even how many complaints there are or how many are valid.
Studies are urgently needed to determine if any of the drilling has affected human health, said Dr. Poune Saberi, a University of Pennsylvania physician and public health expert.
“We don’t really have a lot of time,” said Saberi, who said she’s talked to about 30 people around Pennsylvania over the past 18 months who blame their ailments on gas drilling.
Working out of public view, legislative negotiators also inserted a requirement that doctors sign a confidentiality agreement in return for access to proprietary information on chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, process.
Read more
EPA: Water quality OK at 20 wells in Pa. gas town
www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-04/D9TVLHPG0.htm
DIMOCK, Pa.
Testing at 20 more water wells in a northeastern Pennsylvania community at the center of a debate over the safety of natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale shows no dangerous levels of contamination, according to a report issued Friday by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA had already tested 11 wells in Dimock, showing the presence of sodium, methane, chromium or bacteria in six of the wells before the results of the latest round of testing.
Three of the newly-tested wells showed methane while one showed barium well above the EPA’s maximum level, but a treatment system installed in the well is removing the substance, an EPA spokesman said.
Featured in the documentary “Gasland,” the Susquehanna County village of Dimock has been at the center of a fierce debate over drilling, in particular the process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The process involves injecting a mixture of water and chemicals deep underground to free trapped natural gas so it can be brought to the surface.
State environmental regulators previously determined that Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. contaminated the aquifer underneath homes along Carter Road in Dimock with explosive levels of methane gas, although they later determined the company had met its obligation to provide safe drinking water to residents.
The EPA is still providing drinking water to three homes where prior tests showed contamination. A second round of tests is under way, regulators said.
A group of Dimock residents suing Cabot assert their water is also polluted with drilling chemicals, while others say that the water is clean and the plaintiffs are exaggerating problems with their wells to help their lawsuit.
A Cabot spokesman said in a statement Friday that the “data confirms the earlier EPA finding that levels of contaminants found do not possess a threat to human health and the environment.”
“Importantly, the EPA again did not indicate that those contaminants that were detected bore any relationship to oil and gas development in the Dimock area, particularly given the fact that any contaminants are more likely indicative of naturally-occurring background levels or other unrelated activities,” the statement said.
Goddard Forum to examine oil, gas development impacts on forests
live.psu.edu/story/58780#nw69
Thursday, March 29, 2012
The conference, which focuses on protecting forests, will feature more than 30 speakers.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State’s 2012 Goddard Forum, “Oil and Gas Development Impacts on Forested Ecosystems: Research and Management Challenges,” will bring together scientists, managers, conservation organizations and industry representatives working with oil and gas development to share research results and management strategies.
The conference, to be held April 9-10 at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, is sponsored by the School of Forest Resources in the College of Agricultural Sciences. The U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Research Station, headquartered in Newtown Square, Pa., is a co-sponsor of the event.
“During this two-day meeting, we will have a diversity of invited and offered presentations focused specifically on impacts on and adaptive management strategies for forested ecosystems,” said Jim Grace, Maurice K. Goddard Chair in Forestry and Environmental Resource Conservation.
“The pertinent questions revolve around how we can manage gas-development activities in a manner that preserves our environmental quality of life and deals with our social needs, while providing economic benefits to our citizens and bolstering our supply of clean domestic energy.”
Grace, who served as director of the Bureau of Forestry in the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources from 1994 to 2007, noted that conference presentations by both managers and scientists will explore the full range of forest issues.
“They will discuss landscape modification, water, air, habitat, roads, timber supply, invasive species, noise, landscape restoration, management and monitoring strategies, and other topics focused on forests,” he said. “Sessions will cover public as well as industrial and other private forests.”
More than 30 conference speakers will represent academia, state and federal government, industry, and environmental and conservation organizations. Additional information, including a complete list of speakers and presentations, is available on the 2012 Goddard Forum website at http://psu.ag/wJUONr.
For information about conference accommodations, meals and registration, contact the Office of Conferences and Short Courses toll-free at 877-778-2937 or at csco@psu.edu via email.
Study: ’Fracking’ may increase air pollution health risks
www.timesleader.com/stories/Study-Fracking-may-increase-air-pollution-health-risks-,129383
By Neela Banerjee, Los Angeles Times
Air pollution caused by hydraulic fracturing, a controversial oil and gas drilling method, may contribute to “acute and chronic health problems for those living near natural gas drilling sites,” according to a new study from the Colorado School of Public Health.
The study, based on three years of monitoring at Colorado sites, found a number of “potentially toxic petroleum hydrocarbons in the air near the wells including benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene and xylene.” The Environmental Protection Agency has identified benzene as a known carcinogen.
Soon to be published in an upcoming edition of Science of the Total Environment, the report said that those living within a half-mile of a natural gas drilling site faced greater health risks than those who live farther away. Colorado allows companies to drill for natural gas within 150 feet of homes.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, involves injecting great volumes of water and sand laced with chemicals into shale formations to break apart the rock and unlock reservoirs of oil and gas. Its advocates say it carries minimal environmental risks and the chance of great economic rewards for companies and communities. Its critics have largely focused so far on fracking’s possible contamination of underground and surface water.
But when a well is fracked, it’s almost as if a small factory is rapidly erected at the drilling site, as machinery and tanks of chemicals and water are brought in. Studies have shown that air pollution at many of these sites is greater than in surrounding areas. Adhering to EPA standards, the researchers for this study used air toxics data collected in Garfield County from January 2008 to November 2010. A small rural community in Colorado, Garfield is poised to undergo a sharp increase in drilling activity.
The study pointed out that earlier research indicated that prolonged exposure to petroleum hydrocarbons in the air near refineries, oil spills and petrol stations pointed to “an increased risk of eye irritation and headaches, asthma symptoms, acute childhood leukemia, acute myelogenous leukemia, and multiple myeloma.”
“Our data show that it is important to include air pollution in the national dialogue on natural gas development that has focused largely on water exposures to hydraulic fracturing,” said Lisa McKenzie, Ph.D., M.P.H., lead author of the study and research associate at the Colorado School of Public Health.
The EPA is finalizing new rules to curtail air pollution at oil and gas drilling sites. A recent Bloomberg News poll suggested a majority of Americans would like to see tighter regulation of fracking.
For Pennsylvania’s Doctors, a Gag Order on Fracking Chemicals
www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/for-pennsylvanias-doctors-a-gag-order-on-fracking-chemicals/255030/
By Climate Desk
Mar 27 2012
A new provision could forbid the state’s doctors from sharing information with patients exposed to toxic—and proprietary—fracking solutions.
Under a new law, doctors in Pennsylvania can access information about chemicals used in natural gas extraction — but they won’t be able to share it with their patients. A provision buried in a law passed last month is drawing scrutiny from the public health and environmental community, who argue that it will “gag” doctors who want to raise concerns related to oil and gas extraction with the people they treat and the general public.
Pennsylvania is at the forefront in the debate over “fracking,” the process by which a high-pressure mixture of chemicals, sand, and water are blasted into rock to tap into the gas. Recent discoveries of great reserves in the Marcellus Shale region of the state prompted a rush to development, as have advancements in fracking technologies. But with those changes have come a number of concerns from citizens about potential environmental and health impacts from natural gas drilling.
There is good reason to be curious about exactly what’s in those fluids. A 2010 congressional investigation revealed that Halliburton and other fracking companies had used 32 million gallons of diesel products, which include toxic chemicals like benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene, in the fluids they inject into the ground. Low levels of exposure to those chemicals can trigger acute effects like headaches, dizziness, and drowsiness, while higher levels of exposure can cause cancer.
Pennsylvania law states that companies must disclose the identity and amount of any chemicals used in fracking fluids to any health professional that requests that information in order to diagnosis or treat a patient that may have been exposed to a hazardous chemical. But the provision in the new bill requires those health professionals to sign a confidentiality agreement stating that they will not disclose that information to anyone else — not even the person they’re trying to treat.
“The whole goal of medical community is to protect public health,” said David Masur, director of PennEnvironment. He worries that the threat of a lawsuit from a big industry player like Halliburton or ExxonMobil for violating a confidentiality agreement could scare doctors away from research on potential impacts in the state. “If anything, we need more concrete information. This just stifles another way the public could have access to information from experts.”
The provision was not in the initial versions of the law debated in the state Senate or House in February; it was added in during conference between the two chambers, said State Senator Daylin Leach (D), which meant that many lawmakers did not even notice that this “broad, very troubling provision” had been added. “The importance of keeping it as a proprietary secret seems minimal when compared to letting the public know what chemicals they and their children are being exposed to,” Leach told Mother Jones.
The limits on what doctors can say about those chemicals makes it impossible to either assuage or affirm the public’s concerns about health impacts. “People are claiming that animals are dying and people are getting sick in clusters around [drilling wells], but we can’t really study it because we can’t see what’s actually in the product,” said Leach.
At the federal level, natural gas developers have long been allowed to keep the mixture of chemicals they use in fracking fluid a secret from the general public, protecting it as “proprietary information.” The industry is exempt from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory — the program that ensures that communities are given information about what companies are releasing. In 2005 the industry successfully lobbied for an exemption from EPA regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act as well, in what is often referred to as the “Halliburton Loophole.” The Obama EPA has pressed drillers to voluntarily provide more information about fracking fluids, but the industry has largely rebuffed those appeals.
The latest move in Pennsylvania has raised suspicions among the industry’s critics once again. As Walter Tsou, president of the Philadelphia chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, put it, “What is the big secret here that they’re unwilling to tell people, unless they know that if people found out what’s really in these chemicals, they would be outraged?”
This story was produced by Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
DEP asks gas driller to help remedy Franklin Twp. methane spike
citizensvoice.com/news/dep-asks-gas-driller-to-help-remedy-franklin-twp-methane-spike-1.1287800#axzz1pfKvaAid
DEP asks gas driller to help remedy Franklin Twp. methane spike
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: March 20, 2012
The Department of Environmental Protection has asked a natural gas drilling company to step in and help three Franklin Twp. families whose well water contains high levels of methane.
State environmental regulators have not determined the source of the gas and are not saying WPX Energy is responsible for the methane, DEP spokeswoman Colleen Connolly said. But in a letter to the driller Friday, regulators asked that WPX help address the problem.
“They can offer to put in (methane) mitigation systems. They can offer to buy bottled water. We did ask them to vent at least one well,” Ms. Connolly said.
“We’re looking at a situation where some temporary fixes need to be put in, and we’re putting the ball in WPX’s court.”
The department began investigating elevated methane in the water wells in December when residents along Route 29 in the hamlet of Franklin Forks noticed discolored water and intermittent eruptions of gas and water from their well.
WPX has been cited by the DEP for flaws in the steel and cement barriers in two of its Marcellus Shale wells closest to Franklin Forks, but the company has said those well casings were properly installed and cemented.
WPX spokeswoman Susan Oliver said that the company received the message from DEP late Friday and reached out to the department Monday to set up a meeting this week.
“WPX Energy has been a good neighbor to the Endless Mountain area,” she said, adding that the company has spent more than $2 million on road repair, charitable giving and flood relief in the last year.
Methane, the primary component of natural gas, has seeped into water supplies through faults or weaknesses in Marcellus Shale wells in other areas of Susquehanna County and the region.
The department also is investigating a natural methane seep in nearby Salt Springs State Park as a possible cause of the well contamination.
Ms. Connolly said she did not have a copy of the letter to WPX to release on Monday.
Tammy Manning, whose family of seven lives in one of the affected homes, said the amount of methane dissolved in her well water rose from 38.9 milligrams per liter during a DEP test in December to 58.4 milligrams per liter during a test this month.
A flammable gas, methane can pose a fire or explosion risk when it escapes from water and becomes trapped in enclosed spaces.
The atmosphere in the open gap in Mrs. Manning’s water well was 82 percent methane during a recent DEP test, she said – too rich to pose an explosion risk, she was told.
Methane is generally explosive at a concentration of between 5 and 15 percent in air.
As of Monday afternoon, her well was still not vented.
Contact the writer: llegere@timesshamrock.com
First 11 Dimock homes sampled by EPA show no health concerns
citizensvoice.com/news/first-11-dimock-homes-sampled-by-epa-show-no-health-concerns-1.1286406#axzz1pCMrG0Lu
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: March 16, 2012
The first 11 Dimock Township water supplies tested by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency did not reveal levels of contamination that could present a health concern, but the samples indicated the presence of arsenic and other compounds that will require further tests at some homes, the agency said Thursday.
Agency officials hand delivered test results to residents whose wells were sampled during the week of Jan. 23 and will meet again with the families individually to review the results and answer questions.
The first test results reported Thursday represent about a sixth of the data collected by the EPA over weeks of sampling in a nine-square-mile area of Dimock where the agency is investigating the potential impact of nearby natural gas drilling on water supplies.
In a statement Thursday, the EPA said samples from six of the 11 homes showed concentrations of sodium, methane, chromium or bacteria, but all were within the safe range for drinking water. The sampling results also identified arsenic in two homes’ water supplies, both of which are being sampled again by the agency.
“Although the (arsenic) levels meet drinking water standards, we will resample to better characterize the water quality of these wells,” EPA spokesman Roy Seneca said in the statement.
Three of the 11 homes tested during the first week of sampling are receiving replacement water deliveries from the EPA. Those deliveries will continue “while we perform additional sampling to ensure that the drinking water quality at these homes remains consistent and acceptable for use over time,” Seneca said.
The agency began testing about 60 water wells in January after the EPA’s review of past tests by the state and other groups raised concerns about contamination from Marcellus Shale drilling.
Seneca said that the agency will share more test results with Dimock homeowners “as further quality assured data becomes available for the remaining homes.”
The statement released by the EPA did not include a complete list of the compounds detected in the first 11 water supplies.
In the test results given to the families, the EPA highlighted compounds found at concentrations that exceeded what the agency described as “trigger levels” based on risk-based screening levels or the standards for public drinking water supplies.
Although all of the results were reviewed by a toxicologist before they were presented to residents, compounds above a trigger level were reviewed sooner by toxicologists and processed quicker by the agency “should we need to take an immediate action to provide water,” Seneca said.
“EPA conducted those reviews and found no health concerns,” he said.
Dimock resident Scott Ely said his test results showed five compounds above their trigger levels, including arsenic, chromium, lithium, sodium and fluoride. The arsenic level in his well water, 7.6 micrograms per liter, was below the federal drinking water standard of 10 micrograms per liter but above the 3 micrograms per liter chronic drinking water screening level for children established by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Ely, who has three small children in his home, said the results reveal “nothing surprising: my water is contaminated.”
The number of compounds in his water well that triggered an expedited toxicological review “just confirms that we have issues,” he said.
The natural gas industry said that the results confirm that their operations have not affected drinking water.
George Stark, a spokesman for Cabot Oil and Gas Corp., the firm drilling extensively in the township, said the company is “pleased that data released by EPA today on sampling of water in Dimock confirmed earlier findings that Dimock drinking water meets all regulatory standards.”
He said that the company will continue to work with the EPA as well as state and local regulators to address concerns in Dimock, but he chided federal regulators for intervening in the case.
“We hope that lessons learned from EPA’s experience in Dimock will result in the agency improving cooperation with all stakeholders and to establish a firmer basis for agency decision making in the future,” he said.
llegere@timesshamrock.com