City Council acts to ban ‘fracking’ in water supply area

Athens City Council made several moves on Monday to further expressing its opposition to oil and gas drilling in sensitive areas, specifically the city's wellhead protection zone and the Wayne National Forest.

In a unanimous vote, City Council passed a resolution making certain amendments to the city's wellhead protection plan, including provisions banning the controversial horizontal hydraulic fracturing drilling technique in that area.

The likelihood of any company starting a "fracking" operation in the city are relatively small, but City Council members decided to include to take a stand anyway.

In any event, Ohio Revised Code relegates all oil and gas drilling and wastewater disposal regulatory authority to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources' Division of Mineral Resources Management.

The ODNR has said that it does not take municipal law into consideration when deciding whether to grant drilling permits, though it can exercise stricter regulations to protect water and other resources in urban areas.

In council's revisions, the first provision bans "drilling, mining, exploration and extraction operations, including but not limited to, petroleum gas and minerals," while the second bans "the storage and/or disposal of wastewater and other byproducts associated with drilling, mining, exploration and extraction operations."

Athens Law Director Pat Lang has said that as an adviser to the body, he has let members know that the language has the potential to be problematic.

Meanwhile, the body also moved forward with a resolution requesting Wayne National Forest to conduct an environmental impact statement prior to the release of any forest lands to the Bureau of Land Management for oil and gas leasing.

City Council stated that an environmental impact study is the only way that the city's water, air and economy can be assured of protection from potential harmful effects stemming from damage to Wayne lands as a result of drilling.

"The city of Athens calls upon the Wayne National Forest to complete an environmental impact statement process prior to the release of any surface or subsurface rights for oil and gas leasing under its jurisdiction," the resolution states. "The city recognizes that Wayne National Forest is legally obligated under the National Environmental Policy Act to consider regional impacts of significant activities on any and all Wayne National Forrest lands. Furthermore, Wayne National Forest is under legal obligation to consider how leases on its land add cumulatively to total impacts that will be experienced in our region."

http://www.athensnews.com/ohio/article-36853-city-council-acts-to-ban-lsfrackingrs-in-water-supply-area.html

Couple denied mortgage because of gas drilling

WASHINGTON COUNTY, Pa. - 

Brian and Amy Smith seem to be the first example in western Pennsylvania of a homeowner being denied a mortgage because of gas drilling on a next-door neighbor's property.

The drilling goes on day and night at a new Marcellus Shale well in Daisytown, Washington County, and Brian Smith told Channel 4 Action News investigator Jim Parsons that he has no complaints -- except one.

"As far as drilling and the noise and the lights in the window? No," he said. "But when it affected the value of my home? Absolutely."

The Smiths live across the street from the new gas well. They applied for a new mortgage on their $230,000 home and hobby farm, and Quicken Loans congratulated them on their conditional approval.

"They said all the paperwork will be done by the end of the week and we'll be able to close," Brian Smith said. "Somewhere in there, they called us and said, 'Your loan got denied.' "

In an email, Quicken Loans told the Smiths, "Unfortunately, we are unable to move forward with this loan. It is located across the street from a gas drilling site." Two other national lenders also turned down Brian Smith's application.

Quicken Loans emailed the following statement to Channel 4 Action News: "While Quicken Loans makes every effort to help its clients reach their homeownership goals, like every lender, we are ultimately bound by very specific underwriting guidelines. In some cases conditions exist, such as gas wells and other structures in nearby lots, that can significantly degrade a property's value. In these cases, we are unable to extend financing due to the unknown future marketability of the property."

Clean Water Action said that in other parts of the country, when shale gas drilling has arrived, mortgages at nearby properties sometimes get denied. This is the first case they've heard in Pennsylvania.

"The banks aren't stupid," said Myron Arnowitt, director of Clean Water Action in Pennsylvania. "They're going to look at that and be more cautious in terms of what they are willing to mortgage."

"If I can't refinance, could somebody get a loan to purchase my house? And that would be my concern. That's definitely a worry," Brian Smith said.

Homeowners who are denied by national lenders because of gas drilling could try local banks. First Federal in Washington, Pa., said it does not deny mortgage applications based solely on nearby drilling.

http://www.wtae.com/news/local/investigations/Couple-denied-mortgage-because-of-gas-drilling/-/12023024/12865512/-/ohf26fz/-/index.html#.T6mu842bM44.facebook

Local fracking control often lacking

Limited control

Local governments' ability to stop oil and gas development is murky at best, but they can make a driller's margins smaller, said Nathan Johnson, staff attorney for the Buckeye Forest Council, an environmental advocate.

Cities can levy their own fees and taxes on drillers operating within their boundaries, he said. They can refuse to accept brine, which is different from fracking fluid and sometimes used to treat dusty or icy roads, thereby forcing the company to store it or inject at their expense.

"Cities can pass their own severance taxes if they wanted," Johnson said, referring to the levy paid for removing a natural resource, such as oil or timber. "Another thing they can do, municipalities can take fines (for violating a regulation) and increase them."

Steve Strauss, a county commissioner in Muskingum County, said local government wants to be involved in the process and wants to be heard by the multi-billion dollar energy companies operating down the street.

Muskingum County has a notification system that keeps every official from the township level up abreast of activity.

As for control, Strauss said it may not be codified, but they have influence. He points to a stop sign on at the intersection of an access road for the well and Paisley Road near The Wilds.

Strauss said the county felt it was a safety issue to have these big trucks merging onto the main road without stopping first. Anadarko Petroleum Corp., the well's owner, agreed and a stop sign was put in.

"They want to be good neighbors," Strauss said.

Water impact

Devon Energy, an Oklahoma City firm, plans to pull 3 million gallons from the Licking River over the course of a week.

The water will be mixed with sand and chemicals and blasted underground at high pressure to break open the shale and allow natural gas, liquids and oil to escape.

Devon spokesman Chip Minty said they had considered buying water from landowners with ponds or drilling a well for water, but decided on the Licking River as the best option. They are following the state's protocol on water withdrawals, he said.

For every inch of rain over a square mile area, abo

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Reporting of fracking and drilling violations weak

WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. (CNNMoney) -- For Pennsylvanians with natural gas wells on their land, chances are they won't know if a safety violation occurs on their property.

That's because the state agency charged with regulating the wells -- the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) -- does not have to notify landowners if a violation is discovered. Even if landowners inquire about safety violations, DEP records are often too technical for the average person and incomplete.

While some landowners would like more transparency around safety issues, as a group they are not pushing for stronger regulations. Landowners, who are paid royalties by the companies that drill on their property, generally want the drilling to proceed.

Violations: In February, CNNMoney spoke with four families in Lycoming County, Pa., about violations issued against natural gas wells on or near their property.

The families have a total of 26 natural gas wells among them. They've received royalties from the wells, ranging from the low hundreds to hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last few years.

How fracking works

Yet none said they had ever been notified by the DEP or any of the well operators that wells near their homes had been cited for what DEP's website said were 62 safety violations over four years.

"We had no idea that there were any violations," said Dan Bower, who lives next door to his mother, Jane, and her five wells.

"We should have been contacted or something," echoed Neil Barto, another well owner.

DEP says that in cases in which violations pose risk to human health, they "certainly notify landowners."

The violations range from simple things such as improper signage toserious infractions such as subpar cementing -- which according to DEP can allow gas to seep out of a well and in some cases "has the potential to cause a fire or explosion."

While the violations are posted online, the digital records are short on specifics -- most importantly whether a violation poses a health risk.

A time consuming process: If landowners want to inquire about all violations on their property, DEP says they should do an in-person file review of the state regulator's documents relating to each well.

The agency declined multiple interview requests, but assured CNNMoney that an in-person review would contain records of any communication with landowners about violations. CNNMoney conducted a file review in late March.

The process required a visit to the regional DEP office, which had to be scheduled weeks in advance. 

But even then, the details discovered were largely in legal and technical language.

In approximately 1,000 pages of documents for the 26 permitted wells, there was only one record of any communication DEP had with a landowner about a violation.

A letter was sent to indicate that a spill of fluid used for drilling on Jane Bower's property had been cleaned up, but the recipient's name was redacted.

Both Jane and Dan say they never received such a letter, even though DEP fined Chief Oil and Gas, the operator of the well at the time, $2,100 for the five barrel spill. There were no details of this spill on the DEP website.

The file review revealed there was also a spill of 294 gallons of 'frac fluid' at the same Bower well. The fluid is what is used in hydraulic fracturing, a process where water, sand and a small amount of chemicals, are injected into shale deep underground to fracture the rock and release gas.

There was no mention of this spill in DEP's online records, and the paper records did not clearly indicate whether the ground water was tested after the spill.

It is not clear from the physical records whether these spills, or any other violations reviewed, ever posed a threat to human health.

Obama tightens oil and gas drilling regulations

The well operator at the time, Chief, said it did not.

But David Yoxtheimer, a hydrogeologist at Penn State's Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research, said there's not enough information to say for certain.

He said that if the Bower spills had gotten into surface or ground water then they "could have a water quality impact of low to moderate severity," but that such a risk would depend on site-specific factors not available in the files.

Landowner apathy: Despite the violations, it's not clear that the landowners are doing all in their power to check for violations on their property. 

Neither the Bowers nor the Bartos have a computer to check for violations, and neither plans on changing that.

"I sure as hell am not gonna buy one to check DEP," Neil Barto said.

All four families continue to support the drilling and note it has been aboon to the local economy. The Bartos, who have six wells on their property, say they have made about $150,000 in royalties off of the wells on their property in the last three years.

Plus, increased regulation is not a priority for them. That's a fairly common viewpoint among landowners.

"In our experience, landowner groups have been focused on advancing expanded drilling to maximize royalty payment opportunities, and have generally been opposed to increased regulation," said Kate Sinding at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

And that, says the NRDC, could be delaying further regulation for the industry, or taking pressure off regulators to report violations more clearly.

"Advocacy for those kinds of protections would undoubtedly carry more weight were they to come from landowners themselves, as opposed to the environmental community," Sinding said.

-- with additional reporting by CNN's Poppy Harlow 

First Published: May 1, 2012: 5:24 AM ET

http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/01/news/economy/fracking-violations/index.htm

Rules on drilling in parks got more lenient

A year ago, state officials considered creating rules for oil and gas drilling rigs in state parks that were much more stringent than the rules they now have proposed.

The rigs would have had to have been placed at least 1,500 feet from campgrounds; 1,200 feet from lakes, streams and drinking-water wells; and 900 feet from trails, picnic areas and sites of historic value, under rules discussed in May, according to documents released yesterday.

Two weeks ago, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources released proposed rules that would keep the rigs at least 300 feet from most of those areas.

Information about the previous discussions comes from emails and documents that were shared among agency officials drafting mineral-rights leases and drilling guidelines for parks and other state lands.

Other emails contained a list of state parks, forests and wildlife areas in eastern Ohio that could have been offered to drilling companies as early as January. That never happened.

Officials also shared copies of draft leases and drilling guidelines with an Ohio-based oil and gas company — Chagrin Falls-based Reserve Energy Exploration Co. — in November.

“We look forward to hearing your thoughts and suggestions,” wrote Gene Wells, the agency’s real-estate administrator, in a Nov. 4, 2011, email to Joseph W. Haas of Reserve Energy. The Sierra Club’s Ohio chapter had asked to see the same leases in October. The environmental advocacy group then filed a lawsuit on April 9 demanding to see the public records.The Dispatch asked to see them this spring. “These emails confirm my earlier suspicion that ODNR has been consulting with the oil and gas industry on their rules all along,” said Jed Thorp, manager of the Sierra Club’s Ohio chapter.

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Opposition to Fracking in Virginia

Many Virginians support a ban on the controversial practice of hydrofracking in the George Washington National Forest.

Hydrofracking, more commonly known as just fracking, is a process of horizontally drilling for natural gas by pumping chemicals, sand and water to separate the gas from the rock.

The National Forest Service has been weighing whether or not to allow the practice in the George Washington National Forest as it weighs a new management plan for the land.

The Forest Service had a public comment period to solicit input and received 6,700 comments from Virginians.

The Shenandoah Valley Network and the Land, Air Water Stewardship Action Group analyzed the comments and say 70% of the comments support a ban on the drilling.

The Community Alliance for Preservation in Rockingham County also supports a ban on hydrofracking pointing to use of the national forest land for drinking water and recreation.

Executive Director Kim Sandum says "It's an inappropriate location. It's the source of our drinking water. It's the area where lots of recreation opportunities happen. Hunting, fishing, hiking. And those uses are incompatible with hydrofracking."

Sandum says she's not surprised by the number of Virginian's in opposition to fracking.

"It just shows how many people enjoy the National Forest and I'm not surprised that that many - I would think maybe even more - would be interested in having the ban because of the other uses that would be prohibited," Sandum said.

Of the nearly million acres that are in the George Washington National Forest, nearly half of them are on the Marcellus shale formation, which is a very large deposit of natural gas.

http://www.whsv.com/news/headlines/Opposition_to_Fracking_in_Virginia__148675355.html

Fracking-Linked Quakes Spurring Regulations

With scientific evidence emerging that wastewater from oil and gas drilling is the possible cause of earthquakes, states are adding new requirements for disposal wells.

Researchers think an increase in wastewater injected into the ground by drilling operators may be the cause of a sixfold increase in the number of earthquakes that have shaken the central part of the U.S. from 2000 to 2011, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study. The demand for underground disposal wells has increased with the proliferation of shale-gas drilling, a technique that produces millions of gallons of wastewater a well.

Links between disposal wells and earthquakes in Arkansas, Ohio and other states has raised public concern, according to Scott Anderson, senior policy adviser for the Environmental Defense Fund in Austin, Texas. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which sets standards for wells under the Safe Drinking Water Act, said it is working with states to develop guidelines to manage seismic risk.

“Basically, people need to be told not to locate their disposal wells in active seismic areas,” Anderson said in an interview. “But the total percentage of wells that would be impacted by those restrictions almost certainly would be small.”

U.S. Geological Survey researchers found that, for three decades prior to 2000, seismic events in the nation’s midsection averaged 21 a year. They jumped to 50 in 2009, 87 in 2010 and 134 in 2011, according to the study, which was presented April 18 at the annual meeting of the Seismological Society of America.

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