Natural Gas Industry Gets Water Permits for Fracking While Science and Public Get Ignored

As the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) conducts its quarterly business meeting today, a coalition of organizations strongly criticized the agency for prohibiting public comment at the event and continuing to issue water permits for the natural gas industry without taking measures to prevent negative impacts across the Basin.

In a March 9 letter to SRBC, the groups said that full public participation at all meetings is necessary for the Commission to receive valuable public and expert input, have current information to consider in its permit reviews, and, as a public agency, to maintain transparent decision-making. (The full text of the letter is available by clicking here.)

The Commissioners represent Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania, as well as the federal government through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But at a recent hearing on 40 water withdrawal permits to support the natural gas industry, only the Commission chair (from Pennsylvania) was present and comment was taken by a hearing officer.

This highlighted growing concern that SRBC is violating its mandate to operate on the basis of equal, joint involvement by all member states. SRBC continues to approve permits and will soon put in place weak regulations to promote shale gas development in Pennsylvania—even though the other two members, Maryland and New York, haven’t decided whether to even allow it to occur. And by not conducting any studies to determine the effects of the industry across the Basin over time, SRBC is ignoring its legal requirement for long-term planning. (These points are detailed in a document available here.)

“As drilling explodes across the Basin, communities and the environment are being harmed. It’s no wonder that residents are speaking out, taking a closer look at the work of the SRBC, and turning out for meetings like never before,” says Nadia Steinzor, Marcellus regional organizer for Earthworks’ Oil and Gas Accountability Project. “SRBC should face this new reality and do what it takes to support productive public participation and protect the water resources with which they’re entrusted.”

“The Commissioners should take the time to consider and respond to citizen comments. The public has invested time and expense in coming before the Commission to speak and the public should be heard,” said Thomas Au, conservation chair of Pennsylvania Sierra Club.

“The SRBC needs to stop the premature authorization of growth-inducing actions like the shale gas-related water withdrawals on March 15th’s docket,” said Guy Alsentzer, staff attorney for Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper. “The Commission must first take the initiative to study shale gas development’s impacts on water resources and water resources management on a Basin-wide scale and incorporate those findings into its decision-making. Only by doing so can it fulfill its Compact and regulatory duties to preserve water quantity and quality for present and future generations.”

“SRBC should stop rushing to judgment on these huge water withdrawal permit applications. These proposed withdrawals are not happening in isolation,” said Myron Arnowitt, Pennsylvania State director for Clean Water Action. “SRBC needs to stop approving individual permits and conduct a study on the cumulative impact of full scale gas extraction on the entire Susquehanna watershed. These decisions affect residents in three states and should not be made without conducting real, science-based study.”

“The routine approval of water withdrawals for drilling and fracking in the Susquehanna River Watershed by the SRBC is resulting in water and air pollution and community degradation, and yet the SRBC is not addressing the outcomes from their decisions. They cannot bury their heads in the sand while the air and water of the Basin are polluted and people are getting sick,” said Maya van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper. “The SRBC should not approve the proposed water withdrawals and instead enact a moratorium while they address the damaging fallout from gas extraction and put in place a plan to protect and restore the Susquehanna River Watershed. The degradation from gas in the Susquehanna affects us all and it’s time to stop it.”

http://ecowatch.org/2012/natural-gas-industry-gets-water-permits-while-science-and-public-get-ignored/

Ohio couples say fracking has polluted their water

Two Medina County couples say Landmark 4 LLC's drilling operation contaminated their private water wells, their houses and land with hazardous gases, chemicals and industrial wastes. The couples want the federal court to require periodic testing for them.

 The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports:

The Mangans and Boggses said Landmark didn't have sufficient cement casing on its wells and was negligent in training staff. In separate lawsuits filed against the company this week, the couples said their homes have lost value, they "live in constant fear of future physical illness," and they pay for water samples and water from outside sources.

"These acts and omissions allowed Defendant (Landmark) to save millions of dollars in costs they should have expended to properly contain and control the substances emanating from their facility," the lawsuits said. Neither couple would comment for this story.

http://shale.sites.post-gazette.com/index.php/news/archives/24386-ohio-couples-say-fracking-has-polluted-their-water

Gov. Hickenlooper's Fracking Ads For Colorado Oil And Gas Industry Draw Heat From Environmentalists

At first blush a fairly innocuous ad: everyone involved gets a pat on the back, especially the fiercely opposed conservation and gas industries.

But environmentalists have been quick to call shenanigans. Thirteen advocacy groups have sincesent Hickenlooper a letter highlighting the danger "accidental spills, corroded tanks and pipelines, and leaking containment pits" pose to Colorado's groundwater in addition to the dangers of fracking itself. Indeed, the Denver Post reports that since 2000 there have been more than 3,900 such spills.

An Executive Order signed in the midst of this has done little to quell the controversy. The order creates a commission to clarify the power local governments have in regulating oil and gas operations. "Once one county wants their own regulations, every county's going to want their own regulations, and that's going to force the oil and gas industry out of Colorado," Hickenlooper explained to Fox31.

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Fracking Democracy: Why Pennsylvania's Act 13 May Be the Nation's Worst Corporate Giveaway

Pennsylvania, where the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution were signed and where the U.S. coal, oil and nuclear industries began, has adopted what may be the most anti-democratic, anti-environmental law in the country, giving gas companies the right to drill anywhere, overturn local zoning laws, seize private property and muzzle physicians from disclosing specific health impacts from drilling fluids on patients. 

The draconian new law, known as Act 13, revises the state’s oil and gas statutes, to allow oil companies to drill for natural gas using the controversial process known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking, where large volumes of water and toxic chemicals are pumped into vertical wells with lateral bores to shatter the rock and release the hydrocarbons. The law strips rights from communities and individuals while imposing new statewide drilling rules.

 

“It’s absolutely crushing of local self-government,” said Ben Price, project director for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, which has helped a handful of local communities—including the city of Pittsburgh—adopt community rights ordinances that elevate the rights of nature and people to block the drilling. “The state has surrendered over 2,000 municipalities to the industry. It’s a complete capitulation of the rights of the people and their right to self-government. They are handing it over to the industry to let them govern us. It is the corporate state. That is how we look at it.”

 

“Now I know what it feels like to live in Nigeria,” said recently retired Pittsburgh City Council President Doug Shields. “You’re basically a resource colony for multi-national corporations to take your natural resources, take them back to wherever they are at, add value to them, and then sell them back to you.”

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Faulty Wells, Not Fracking, Blamed for Water Pollution

Some energy companies, state regulators, academics and environmentalists are reaching consensus that natural-gas drilling has led to several incidents of water pollution—but not because of fracking.

The energy officials and some environmentalists agree that poorly built wells are to blame for some cases of water contamination. In those cases, they say, wells weren't properly sealed with subterranean cement, which allowed contaminants to travel up the well bore from deep underground into shallow aquifers that provide drinking water.

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Judge's ruling limits shale developer's drilling rights

Nunner said while Chesapeake can vertically extract gas and oil from underneath the hunt club's 187 acres of woods and fields, the energy company can't use the land to drill sideways to get at reserves from adjacent land.

He ordered Chesapeake, a dominant player in Ohio's shale production, to stop horizontal drilling that extends beyond Jewett's property line unless it gets the club's permission to go ahead.

Extracting natural gas and oil from shale formations depends on lateral drilling to carry millions of gallons of water under intense pressure to fracture surrounding rock. Horizontal bores can extend up to 10,000 feet, or almost two miles, from the drill hole. Chesapeake already had poured a 12-acre concrete pad for rigs but has sunk no wells.

"They don't have a right to come in and destroy our surface without fair compensation," said Jewett club president John Harris.

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Hickenlooper May Be in Bed With the Oil Industry, But Coloradans Have His Wake-up Call

Governor Hickenlooper had a few particularly cozy days with the oil and gas industry the other week. First, he appeared in industry-funded ads in newspapers and on radio stations across the state, proclaiming that no water in Colorado had been contaminated by fracking. After being forced to issue a weak mea culpa amid cries of ethics violations over his unabashed hawking of the oil and gas industry, Hickenlooper then claimed that fracking fluids are edible: "You can eat this -- the CEO of Halliburton took a big swig of this thing. And not to be outdone, I took a swig of it myself."

Then, the governor issued an Executive Order to create an industry-dominated task force that will examine how to take local control away from communities across the state that don't want drill rigs near homes or their children's schools.

And now, satisfied with a job well done, Governor Hickenlooper jetted to Houston, Texas, to be the keynote speaker of an industry conference touting fracking.

If these antics have you thinking that Governor Hickenlooper no longer represents the people of Colorado and works full-time for the oil and gas industry, you're not off base: Governor Hickenlooper took over $75,000 from the oil and gas industry for his gubernatorial campaign.

Even so, the grassroots movement that opposes fracking in Colorado is starting to win. Up and down the Front Range -- from Colorado Springs to El Paso County, from Erie to Longmont to Boulder County -- communities are standing up to pass moratoria on fracking. Why? Because their air quality is 10 times worse than Houston, Texas, as a result of oil and gas drilling. Or because there is a fracking well being planned 350 feet from their children's elementary school. Or because their home values have plummeted due to proposed fracking in their neighborhood.

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