State penalizes drilling waste firms
HARRISBURG — State environmental regulators took action Monday against a pair of southwestern Pennsylvania businesses operated by a man charged last week with dumping gas drilling waste and sludge illegally.
The Department of Environmental Protection issued administrative orders against R. Allan Shipman, Tri County Waste Water Service Inc. and Allan’s Waste Water Service Inc.
The orders suspended operation of Tri County’s wastewater facility and suspended the authorization of Allan’s Waste to collect, transport or store solid waste.
Shipman, 49, and Allan’s Waste Water Service of Holbrook were both charged last week with dozens of criminal counts for, among other things, allegedly dumping millions of gallons of wastewater into streams and mine shafts.
The administrative order against Allan’s Waste and Shipman said they were responsible for the illegal depositing of gas well production water, sewage sludge, grease trap water and other wastewater onto the ground, underground or in state waterways.
Christopher Capozzi, a lawyer for Allan’s Waste, declined to comment.
March 22, 2011
http://www.timesleader.com/news/State_penalizes_drilling_waste_firms_03-22-2011.html
Pa.’s attempts to track gas drilling waste flawed
Liquid that comes out of the wells — first in a gush, and then gradually for the years and decades it is in operation — is ultra-salty and contaminated with substances like barium, strontium, radium, and other things that can be damaging to the environment.
The natural gas industry’s claim that it is making great strides in reducing how much polluted wastewater it discharges to Pennsylvania rivers is proving difficult to assess because of inconsistent reporting by energy companies — and at least one big data entry error in the state’s system for tracking the contaminated fluids.
Last month, Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection released data that appeared to show that drillers had found a way to recycle nearly 6.9 million barrels of the toxic brine produced by natural gas wells — fluid that in past years would have been sent to wastewater plants for partial treatment, and then discharged into rivers that also serve as drinking water supplies.
But those figures were revealed Thursday to have been wildly inflated, due to a mistake by Seneca Resources Corp., a subsidiary of Houston-based National Fuel Gas Co. The company said a worker gave some data to the state in the wrong unit of measure, meaning that about 125,000 barrels of recycled wastewater was misreported as more than 5.2 million barrels.
The error left the false impression that, as an industry, gas companies had created about 10.6 million barrels of wastewater in the last six months of 2010, and then recycled at least 65 percent of that total.
“They did put in gallons where they should have put in barrels,” Seneca spokeswoman Nancy Taylor explained after the error was reported Thursday by the Philadelphia Inquirer. There are 42 gallons in every barrel. Taylor said the company was working to correct its information.
So how much waste did the industry actually recycle? It may be impossible to say with certainty.
Not counting Seneca’s bad numbers — and assuming that the rest of the state’s data is accurate — drillers reported that they generated about 5.4 million barrels of wastewater in the second half of 2010. Of that, DEP lists about 2.8 million barrels going to treatment plants that discharge into rivers and streams, about 460,000 barrels being sent to underground disposal wells, and about 2 million barrels being recycled or treated at plants with no river discharge.
That would suggest a recycling rate of around 38 percent, a number that stands in stark contrast to the 90 percent recycling rate claimed by some industry representatives. But Kathryn Klaber, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry group, stood by the 90 percent figure this week after it was questioned by The Associated Press, The New York Times and other news organizations.
“I am definitely holding to the 90 percent,” she said, adding that her figure was based on internal industry data. “It is definitely high and going higher.”
As for the wastewater management reports filed annually with the state and reported to the public, she and other people in the industry said they aren’t fully representative of the industry’s practices.
At least one company, Range Resources of Fort Worth, Texas, said it hadn’t been reporting much of its recycled wastewater at all, because it believed the DEP’s tracking system only covered water that the company sent out for treatment or disposal, not fluids it reused on the spot.
Another company that had boasted of a near 100 percent recycling rate, Cabot Oil & Gas, also Houston-based, told The AP that the figure only included fluids that gush from a well once it is opened for production by a process known as hydraulic fracturing. Company spokesman George Stark said it didn’t include different types of wastewater unrelated to fracturing, like groundwater or rainwater contaminated during the drilling process by chemically tainted drilling muds.
DEP officials did not immediately respond to inquiries about the problems with the state’s data.
The AP reported in January that previous attempts by the state to track where wastewater was going were also flawed. Some companies reported that wells had generated wastewater, but failed to say where it went. The state was unable to account for the disposal method for nearly 1.3 million barrels of wastewater, or about a fifth of the total reported in the 12 month period that ended June 30. At least some went to a facility that had not received permission from regulators.
Among large gas-producing states, Pennsylvania is the only one that allows substantial amounts of wastewater produced by gas drilling to be discharged into rivers. Other states don’t allow the practice because of environmental concerns. The preferred disposal method in most other places is to inject the well water into rock formations far underground, where it can’t contaminate surface water.
Liquid that comes out of the wells — first in a gush, and then gradually for the years and decades it is in operation — is ultra-salty and contaminated with substances like barium, strontium, radium, and other things that can be damaging to the environment.
Pennsylvania’s strategy for protecting the health of its rivers is based partly on knowing which waterways are getting the waste, and how much they are receiving.
Regulators monitor which rivers are being used as discharge points for treated well wastewater, and use reports filed by Seneca and other companies to help decide which waterways should be watched for signs that the rivers aren’t assimilating the waste stream. Even if Seneca’s data error had gone unnoticed — unlikely given the size of the blunder — it probably would not have had an effect on that effort, because it involved waste not sent to treatment plants for river disposal.
MARCH 10, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/AP846de77b9e4c41dbb94ddb76dca74dd6.html
Corbett’s DEP chief gets panel’s approval
Michael L. Krancer
HARRISBURG — Gov. Tom Corbett’s pick to head the state Department of Environmental Protection breezed through his Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, telling senators that he’s carefully reviewing recent reports raising questions about the safety of drinking water.
Michael L. Krancer, 53, of Bryn Mawr in Montgomery County was approved unanimously by the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee. He’s a former judge on the Environmental Hearing Board, one-time trial lawyer, former attorney at Excelon Corp. and Civil War re-enactor. Like other Cabinet nominees, he’s on the job now as acting secretary.
The nomination goes to the full Senate, which Republicans control. Also yesterday, the Senate Law and Justice Committee endorsed the nomination of Frank Noonan as commissioner of the state police.
Senators asked Krancer several questions about stories by The New York Times raising concerns about the safety of Pennsylvania’s drinking water as a result of the “fracking” process used in natural gas drilling. The stories said no testing has occurred at more than 65 drinking water intake sites since 2008 and that most have not been tested since 2005.
The newspaper cited levels of radioactivity in wastewater far above federal standards for drinking water. Most of the public sewage treatment facilities cannot remove enough of the radioactive material to meet federal drinking water standards before it is dumped into rivers, The Times found.
Asked by Sen. Mary Jo White, R-Venango, if the state is likely to see testing for radioactive materials in water, Krancer said, “It is one of the things like everything else we are considering, I am considering.”
He took issue with some points in the story. For example, he said, there are 78, not 31, inspectors for 2,615 Marcellus shale wells.
All inspections are “unannounced,” contrary to what The Times stated, Krancer added.
At least 70 percent of Pennsylvania’s wastewater is recycled, Krancer said.
Sen. Daylin Leach, D-Montgomery County, who represents Krancer’s district in the Senate, said he couldn’t be “happier” with Corbett’s nomination. He called Krancer a “man of integrity, honesty and intelligence.”
By Brad Bumsted
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, March 3, 2011
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/breaking/s_725421.html
DEP losing staff to gas drilling industry
The Marcellus Shale natural gas industry has jobs to offer in Pennsylvania and, in many cases, environmental regulators that once watched over the drillers are stepping in to fill the openings.
The state Department of Environmental Protection does not track where former employees work after they leave the agency or count how many have left for jobs with regulated businesses, but officials admit that competing with the booming – and well-paying – industry for employees has become an ongoing challenge.
“Losing good employees, for whatever reason, is always a problem,” former DEP Secretary John Hanger said before he left the state’s top environmental post with the change of administrations last week. “The turnover in staff is one of the hurdles that has to be overcome.”
On Wednesday, L.R. Kimball, an architecture and engineering firm, announced it hired J. Scott Roberts as an adviser to help the company expand its operations in the Marcellus Shale. Roberts, a 25-year DEP employee, retired as deputy secretary for mineral resources management in December. He was one of the department’s most knowledgeable leaders on Marcellus Shale issues and often testified along with, or in place of, Hanger at public hearings concerning the industry.
Prior to Roberts’ hiring, the highest profile departure from the department to the industry was Barbara Sexton, then the department’s second-highest ranking official, who left to become director of governmental affairs in the state for Chesapeake Energy last year.
Lower-profile senior staff members that offered the department decades of knowledge and experience also have found jobs with the industry.
Richard Adams, a 30-year veteran of the department who played an influential role when DEP began developing rules for treating the salty wastewater that comes from the deep shale wells, is now senior environmental adviser for Chief Oil and Gas.
Joe Umholtz, the former surface activities division chief in the department’s bureau of oil and gas, joined Colorado-based MWH in the environmental engineering firm’s oil and gas sector last year.
Gary Byron, who worked for the department for 33 years before retiring as assistant regional director in the Williamsport office in 2008, founded Dux Head Environmental Services, which specializes in environmental consulting for the natural gas industry. He is a frequent contractor with Carrizo Oil and Gas.
And Helen Humphreys, a seven-year spokeswoman for the department’s Pittsburgh office who served as the agency’s communications director for five months last year, has been senior corporate communications specialist at Williams, a natural gas production and transportation company, since November.
At a time when DEP is building its staff of oil and gas regulators, the industry has also attracted employees from among those ranks, although a complete list has never been compiled.
Range Resources, Chesapeake Energy and Atlas Energy have together hired at least four former well-site inspectors to work in environmental compliance and other aspects of their Marcellus Shale operations.
The competition has not hampered the department’s ability to build its oil and gas program from 88 to 202 employees since 2008, Hanger said.
“In this period of time when we have very high unemployment, we’ve been able to recruit people to these positions by and large,” he said.
“Retaining them has been a second challenge.”
The retention problem is not unique to employees whose experience is desired by the gas industry. The department has trouble retaining employees in information technology and engineering, as well as those who work in positions, like mine inspectors, whose equivalent jobs are paid more by federal agencies, Hanger said.
“This is a clear demonstration that state wage rates and salary rates are not competitive with the private sector in many cases,” he said.
“The truth is, in many cases, the private sector is paying much more.”
Department officials are careful not to imply that the movement from the agency to the Marcellus Shale industry has been a stampede for the door.
Daniel Spadoni, a spokesman for DEP’s Williamsport office, said the department’s Eastern Region Oil and Gas Program began in the office with 17 people in 2008 and was increased to 50 people about a year ago. The program has filled 47 of the 50 positions, he said. “DEP does not formally track where people go when they leave our employment, but probably only two staff have left here for industry positions,” he said.
Some landowners at odds with the gas companies and the advocates that work with them have noted the departures and say they erode public trust in the state’s environmental oversight.
Jan Jarrett, president of the environmental organization PennFuture, said the departures sap experience from the agency “that it could really badly use,” but it does not indicate to her a lack of commitment among the former employees to the department or to environmental protection in general.
“With the uncertainty about what budget cuts will do to the agencies, you can’t blame these folks,” she said. “But it does weaken the department, and it diminishes its institutional memory.”
A reverse migration, however unlikely, would be more disturbing, she added.
“I’d be more concerned if it were gas industry people all of a sudden infiltrating the department.”
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer llegere@timesshamrock.com)
Published: January 24, 2011
http://republicanherald.com/news/dep-losing-staff-to-gas-drilling-industry-1.1094487
Departing DEP secretary says more rules needed for Marcellus Shale
http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/departing-dep-secretary-says-more-rules-needed-for-marcellus-shale-1.1091068#axzz1BD70q5Rd
Departing DEP secretary says more rules needed for Marcellus Shale
By Laura Legere (staff writer)
Published: January 16, 2011
The maximum fines that environmental regulators can issue to violators of the state’s oil and gas law are “way too low,” and the bonds drillers post to guarantee plugging of all their natural gas wells are “scandalously low,” the departing secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection said last week.
State law does not currently give regulators the right to ban gas drilling in floodplains nor has it mandated a large enough distance between gas wells and drinking water reservoirs, Secretary John Hanger said.
And state legislators need to amend sections of the oil and gas law to give regulators clear legal authority to deny permits to drillers that habitually cause significant environmental and safety problems.
“Right now the department really has very questionable authority to tell a company you operate so badly we’re not going to give you any more permits,” he said.
Hanger led the state’s environmental oversight agency during two-and-a-half years when Marcellus Shale drilling grew from an infant industry in Pennsylvania to an established one, and the department under his guidance made substantial updates to the Oil and Gas Act and other environmental laws to respond to that growth.
But in an interview last week with Times-Shamrock newspapers about the past and future of Marcellus Shale oversight, Hanger said many more changes are necessary to ensure proper regulation of the industry, and many of those changes must come from the Legislature.
Despite the prominence of Marcellus Shale drilling as an environmental issue during his tenure, Hanger put it in the context of other environmental threats facing the state, including air pollution from coal-fired power plants, climate change that is contributing to the warming of the state’s rivers and thousands of miles of streams that remain dead from acid mine pollution.
“Marcellus Shale is both an environmental threat and an environmental opportunity,” he said.
The state should tax the industry and use some of the money to clean up legacy environmental problems that otherwise do not receive enough funding, and it should transition to using natural gas in fleet vehicles and power plants, he said.
“The worst case for Pennsylvania would be to be the host of natural gas and not use more natural gas to make electricity and to replace dirty diesel buses and trucks,” he said.
The state also must work to avoid creating future environmental problems from shale drilling by increasing the blanket bond for natural gas wells to make sure they are properly plugged at the end of their lives.
Currently, a $25,000 bond covers as many wells as a company wants to develop. Plugging one Marcellus Shale well costs about four times that much, he said.
“During the Rendell administration, we spent $16 million of taxpayer money to plug 1,600 oil and gas wells that had been abandoned by companies in the past,” he said. “We have these abandoned oil and gas wells with no money to pay for them because we didn’t require the gas companies decades ago to post a reasonable bond.
“We’re in the process of repeating the same mistake.”
Gov.-elect Tom Corbett included increasing well bonds in the environmental position he outlined as a candidate, and State Rep. Phyllis Mundy, D-Kingston, plans to re-introduce legislation to restrict drilling within floodplains and prohibit hydraulically fractured or horizontally drilled wells from being drilled under or within 2,500 feet of a drinking water reservoir.
Hanger also offered advice to Environmental Hearing Board Judge Michael Krancer, who has been nominated for the DEP secretary post.
“The single most important thing” is for the agency to be a “professional, independent watchdog,” he said, and echoed the words Corbett used to describe the appropriate role of the department: a “cop.”
“Sometimes I hear some in the industry and some in business say DEP should be the partner of the gas industry, or should treat the gas industry as a customer or a client,” Hanger said. “That’s not correct. The gas industry companies have partners. They’re called investors.”
If the agency falls short of being an independent, professional watchdog “it doesn’t matter how much staff you have, and it doesn’t matter how tough or weak the words on the rule page are,” he said. “The regulatory role won’t work.”
llegere@timesshamrock.com
Pa. official defends rules on gas drilling waste
http://online.wsj.com/article/APf1a0b0069bef43808fc2f7cde2c1a7bb.html
JANUARY 4, 2011
Pa. official defends rules on gas drilling waste
Pennsylvania’s top environmental enforcement official said Tuesday that he is confident that wastewater discharged into rivers and streams by the booming natural gas industry hasn’t degraded the state’s drinking water.
At least 3.6 million barrels of the ultra-salty, chemically tainted wastewater produced by gas drilling operations were discharged into state waterways in the 12-month period that ended June 30, according to records reviewed by The Associated Press. Drinking water for hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians is drawn from those rivers and streams.
Those discharges have troubled some environmentalists. Most of the big drilling companies digging thousands of new wells in Pennsylvania have committed to curtailing or ending the practice.
John Hanger, the outgoing secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection, said he believes the new regulations are adequate to protect water supplies.
“The drinking water at the tap in Pennsylvania is safe. It has not been contaminated by drilling,” he said.
The state set new standards in August governing discharges by any new drilling waste treatment plants, but allowed existing operations to continue putting partially treated wastewater into rivers and streams, as long as the water body’s quality does not fall below federal drinking water standards.
Hanger said state officials have been using a network of sensors operated by his department and water supply companies to monitor for signs that rivers may have sustained a significant drop in water quality.
So far, he said, they haven’t found any.
Many researchers have been particularly concerned with how the high levels of salt and dissolved solids in drilling waste might affect rivers, especially those that have already picked up unhealthy amounts of pollution from other sources, including abandoned coal mines.
If a river’s total load of dissolved solids gets high enough, it can make the water taste bad, leave a film on dishes, corrode equipment and could give people diarrhea. Researchers, some of them working under the auspices of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, are still trying to determine if Pennsylvania’s river discharges, at their current levels, are dangerous to humans or wildlife.
Hanger said no river used for drinking water has exceeded the EPA standard for dissolved solids for an extended period, although there have been some instances of seasonal spikes that can last for a few days.
“We are watching it very closely,” he said.
Pennsylvania is rare among gas-producing states in that it allows the wastewater that flows out of natural gas wells to be disposed of in rivers.
In most states, drillers are required to send the liquid back down deep shafts so it can’t pollute surface water.
Drilling companies use about 2 million gallons of water a day in Pennsylvania to help get at the gas locked in its vast underground Marcellus Shale gas field. During a process called hydraulic fracturing, the water — mixed with sand and chemicals, some of them toxic — is forced into the wells at high pressure, shattering the shale and releasing trapped gas.
There has been a fierce debate over whether the wastewater that returns to the surface is hazardous.
It can contain high levels of some toxins, like barium, strontium and radium, but the treatment plants handling the bulk of Pennsylvania’s gas drilling waste remove most of those substances before discharging the water.
State officials and industry participants say the amount of waste put back into waterways, while significant, is also safely diluted by the massive volumes of water in the rivers, reducing both any residual toxins and the salt to safe levels.
An AP review of state records found that the state couldn’t account for the disposal method for 1.28 million barrels of drilling wastewater, about a fifth of its total, because of incomplete record keeping.
Hanger said the state is working to improve its methods for tracking wastewater, including making recent hires of additional staff.
“There’s always room for improvement,” he said.
It also found that in 2009 and part of 2010, about 44,000 barrels of drilling waste produced by the energy company Cabot Oil & Gas were improperly sent to a treatment facility in Hatfield Township, a Philadelphia suburb, despite regulations intended to keep the liquids out of the watershed. The liquids were then discharged through the town sewage plant into the Neshaminy Creek, which flows through Bucks and Montgomery counties on its way to the Delaware River. Customers in 17 municipalities get treated drinking water from that creek.
Water quality test results reviewed by the AP also showed that some public water utilities downstream from gas wastewater treatment plants have struggled to stay under the federal maximum for contaminants known as trihalomethanes, which can cause cancer if people drink tainted water for many years.
Trihalomethanes can be created during the water treatment process by dissolved solids in drilling waste, but other types of pollution are just as often to blame for the problem.
Hanger said those trihalomethane readings are “of concern,” but he couldn’t say definitively whether there was any link to gas drilling waste.
Faced with opposition to river dumping and tightening state regulations, all of the state’s biggest drillers say they are now recycling a majority of the wastewater produced by their wells in new fracturing jobs, rather than sending it to treatment plants.
Hanger said about 70 percent of the wastewater is now being recycled, which he credits to the tighter state regulations.
Still, with dozens more energy companies drawn to the Marcellus reserves — more than 2,400 wells have been drilled and work has started on 5,400 more — operators of the largest of the state’s 16 most commonly used treatment plants say they haven’t lost much business. In midwinter, records will be available to verify company claims of any major drop-off in river disposal.
Napoli Bern Ripka & Associates, LLP Views Cabot Oil’s Use of DEP Consent Order as Improper
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/napoli-bern-ripka–associates-llp-views-cabot-oils-use-of-dep-consent-order-as-improper-112236604.html
Napoli Bern Ripka & Associates, LLP Views Cabot Oil’s Use of DEP Consent Order as Improper
NEW YORK, Dec. 21, 2010 /PRNewswire/ — Attorneys of Napoli Bern Ripka & Associates, LLP, representing plaintiffs in Dimock, Pennsylvania who have sued Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation (Fiorentino v. Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., USDC-Middle District of PA., Docket No.: 3:09-CV-02284) for contamination of their drinking water announced today that Cabot and its attorneys have attempted to use a consent order entered with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to allegedly mislead their clients into waiving their rights to continue the litigation.
The Dimock plaintiffs have sued Cabot Oil over its use of hydraulic fracturing known as “fracking.” Natural gas drillers use fracking to get gas that is trapped in pores and fissures in the sub-surface rock. The method involves pumping a toxic stew of chemicals and water at very high pressures into the rock to “fracture” it thus allowing the gas to escape up into the well. Fracking causes groundwater contamination from surface releases, leaking well casings and the chemicals working their way up to potable water supplies.
The DEP determined that Cabot had failed to complete its obligations under an earlier consent order by failing, among other things, to “permanently restore and replace water supplies” and also failing to “completely eliminate the unpermitted discharge of natural gas into the waters of the Commonwealth” from its gas wells in the Dimock/Carter Road areas. As a result, the DEP entered a consent order with Cabot on December 15, 2010. The Order requires Cabot to do a number of things, including paying the greater of $50,000 or two times the assessed value of the [affected] property into nineteen escrow funds to “pay for or restore and/or replace the water supplies or to provide for ongoing operating or maintenance expense.” This money was to be paid without any obligation on the part of the property owner, a number of whom have been involved in civil litigation against Cabot in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania (December 15, 2010 Consent Order and Settlement Agreement).
Instead of simply notifying the attorneys for these plaintiffs, Cabot’s agent reportedly telephoned a number of the plaintiffs directly on December 17, 2010. Cabot’s attorneys opined in a December 20, 2010 letter to the Napoli office that the agent’s calls were not a violation of Rule 4.2 of the Pennsylvania Disciplinary Code for Attorneys, which precludes directly contacting an adversary, known to be represented by counsel, because the agent is not himself an attorney.
In addition to advising plaintiffs, all of whom are represented by legal counsel, that Cabot was required to test their water supply under the Consent Order, Cabot also reportedly told those plaintiffs that they would be required to sign releases of all of their claims against Cabot in the litigation to obtain the payment already due them under the Consent Order. Nothing in the Consent Order with DEP requires the plaintiffs to sign such releases and signing the release would have foreclosed the plaintiffs’ ability to continue to seek damages in their civil suit. The damages claimed against Cabot are far higher than the amounts Cabot is required to pay by the DEP consent order.
Said plaintiffs’ attorney Marc Jay Bern states, “Cabot’s attorneys claim they are not responsible for their client’s unethical and dishonest conduct in calling my clients and misleading them about the need to sign releases to obtain the money due them under the Consent Order. They knew Cabot (their client) was making these calls and they are just as responsible as Cabot and its General Counsel, himself an attorney who is bound by the Disciplinary Code to avoid contact with litigation adversaries who are represented by counsel.” Bern continued, “Cabot’s conduct violates every precept of fairness and honesty toward these people who neither signed on to the Consent Order nor were involved in negotiating its terms.”
Press Release Contact Information:
Marc Jay Bern
Senior Partner
Napoli Bern Ripka & Associates, LLP
(212) 267-3700
mjbern@napolibern.com
DEP orders Tamaqua to fix sewer discharge
http://republicanherald.com/news/dep-orders-tamaqua-to-fix-sewer-discharge-1.1080322
DEP orders Tamaqua to fix sewer discharge
BY BEN WOLFGANG (STAFF WRITER bwolfgang@republicanherald.com)
Published: December 21, 2010
TAMAQUA – The borough has a little more than eight months to identify and reroute all illegal sewer discharge into Wabash Creek, the state Department of Environmental Protection ordered last week.
“The borough’s failure to address the problem left us with no choice but to order them to comply,” DEP’s Northeast Regional Director Michael Bedrin said in a written statement Monday.
According to DEP, at least two locations have been illegally discharging sewage directly into the creek, and there are 39 other potential illegal discharge sites.
The Tamaqua Public Library, 30 S. Railroad St., is one of the two confirmed locations, according to DEP.
DEP conducted dye tests earlier this year confirming the illegal discharge. Complaints about the discharge have been ongoing for several years and efforts to fix the problems have been unsuccessful, DEP said.
The discharges violate Pennsylvania’s Clean Streams Law.
“We want this addressed as quickly as possible,” DEP spokesman Mark Carmon said Monday. “This isn’t something new. They should have been looking at this for a while.”
DEP has ordered the library to connect to the borough sewer system by May 31, 2011. The other sites have until Aug. 31 to comply.
“There are no excuses for these violations. The borough was responsible for dealing with this pollution, failed in that responsibility and allowed raw sewage to be discharged into the creek,” said Bedrin.
DEP has ordered the borough to:
– Take whatever steps necessary to require the library to connect to the Tamaqua wastewater system
– Take whatever steps are necessary to investigate the sources of the sewage, notify owners of the problem and order them to correct it
– Identify any and all pipes funneling sewage directly into Wabash Creek
– Submit a report to DEP by Sept. 30 documenting the results of borough investigations and outlining the steps taken to address the problem
– Submit quarterly written progress reports
Tamaqua Mayor Christian Morrison and solicitor Michael Greek had no comment and directed all questions to borough manager Kevin Steigerwalt, who did return calls Monday.
DEP-Cabot settlement gets Rendell’s approval
http://citizensvoice.com/news/drilling/dep-cabot-settlement-gets-rendell-s-approval-1.1078462
DEP-Cabot settlement gets Rendell’s approval
By Robert Swift (Harrisburg Bureau Chief)
Published: December 17, 2010
HARRISBURG – Gov. Ed Rendell gave his personal stamp of approval today to the settlement between the Department of Environmental Protection and Cabot Oil and Gas Corp. to address water contamination problems in Dimock Township.
“It’s a good settlement because they (Cabot) share the fiscal responsibility of making this right,” Rendell said.
Under the settlement, Cabot agrees to pay $4.1 million to residents affected by methane contamination attributed to faulty Cabot natural gas wells. In exchange, DEP has dropped its plan to build a 12.5-mile waterline from Montrose to Dimock Township to restore water supplies to 19 families affected by methane contamination in their water supplies.
Rendell said the settlement is due to the determination of DEP Secretary John Hanger to reach a solution to the township’s water woes.
State regulators will watch Cabot very carefully as the company resumes hydrofracking operations and drilling for natural gas pockets in the area next year as provided under the settlement, Rendell said.
rswift@timesshamrock.com
Dimock residents see “dirty tricks” in Cabot document
http://citizensvoice.com/news/dimock-residents-see-dirty-tricks-in-cabot-document-1.1079002
Dimock residents see “dirty tricks” in Cabot document
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: December 18, 2010
Legal releases delivered Thursday by the gas company deemed responsible for methane contamination in Dimock Twp. water wells have some township residents accusing the driller of using “dirty, dirty tricks” to try to free itself of a lawsuit pending in federal court.
Early on Thursday morning, attorneys for Cabot Oil and Gas Corp. delivered documents to 19 Dimock families who will split $4.1 million as part of a settlement announced 14 hours earlier between the Texas-based driller and the state Department of Environmental Protection.
Each family is entitled to a payment worth twice the value of its home as a remedy for methane in the drinking water that DEP linked to faulty Cabot gas wells. Under the agreement worked out between the company and the state, Cabot must put each family’s share of the money in escrow accounts that the residents can access after 30 days at the earliest.
DEP Secretary John Hanger emphasized when announcing the settlement that it carried “no requirement” for the families to drop the federal lawsuit that 11 of them have filed against Cabot alleging broader harm and damages to their health and property.
But the letter Cabot delivered Thursday offered a different deal: the families were asked to release the company from all legal claims against it in exchange for receiving the money.
Cabot spokesman George Stark said the offer was intended only as a way to speed up the payments.
“It is a way in which they can get their payment now, immediately, and we’ve heard from some that they’d like that to be an option,” he said. “The other option is to wait for the escrows to be fully funded, which would be about 30 days, and then they can draw their dollars down from there.”
“They are under no obligation one way or another to sign or not to sign,” he added.
The families’ attorney, Leslie Lewis, said the Cabot document contained no information that identified it as an optional offer to speed up the payments.
“It really doesn’t say that,” she said.
“It was an effort to acquire a waiver for all present and future claims in exchange for this money. They tried to slip something by.”
The families called the letter from Cabot a ploy meant to appeal to the poorest and most vulnerable among them.
“They’re sneaky,” resident Julie Sautner said.
“There may be people that are desperate but nobody is that desperate. We’re going to wait.”
llegere@timesshamrock.com