Rally at Ohio Statehouse Disputes Proposed Shale Drilling Regulations

An anti-fracking rally on the West lawn of the Ohio Statehouse drew a diverse crowd of participants today. All were in support of exposing the inadequate proposed regulations in Gov. John Kasich’s S.B. 315, which had a hearing today in the Senate Energy and Utilities Committee.

Rally organizers released a new report,Ohio Oil and Gas Rules: A State Comparison of Selected Health and Safety Measures, which demonstrates that Ohio’s regulations are not at the forefront of state oil and gas rules.

Kari Matsko, director of the People’s Oil & Gas Collaborative – Ohio, said, “In the report, we see that Pennsylvania requires baseline water sampling from 1,000 feet to 2,500 feet from the drill site. Ohio requires such testing only in urban areas and only up to 300 feet from the drill site. SB 315 proposes to increase that only to 1,500 feet for unconventional shale drilling. In addition, Texas communities can establish local health and safety measures whereas in 2004 the Ohio legislature removed our ability to do so.”

Matsko, was appointed as a review team member for the State Review of Oil and Natural Gas Environmental Regulations (STRONGER) Ohio Hydraulic Fracturing State Review in January 2011.

Those at the rally also announced that Rep. Bob Hagan (D-Youngstown) will be introducing a new bill to removing the “sole and exclusive” authority of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) over oil and gas issues, resulting in the return of local control to communities as it was prior to 2004 (H.B. 278).

Speakers came from all over Ohio to speak out against the destruction that unconventional fracking has caused in their communities. Speakers included Rep. Bob Hagan, retired police officer Ed Harsburger, Bill Baker—a resident of Mansfield, Alison Auciello of Food and Water Watch and Teresa Mills of Center for Health, Environment & Justice.

“Kasich’s S.B. 315 chemical disclosure regulations are ineffective,” said Teresa Mill, Ohio organizer for Center for Health and Environmental Justice. “It would only mandate negligible chemical disclosure 60 days after completion of all well operations and there are no requirements that hazardous waste be tested before being landfilled or buried on site.”

“We want to take the wool off the public’s eyes and show how the proposed changes in Kasich’s energy plan to state shale gas drilling regulations would not protect our health and safety,” said Alison Auciello, Ohio organizer for Food & Water Watch. “Instead, we should be stopping fracking with the pieces of legislation that have been introduced, like the moratoria on fracking and fracking wastewater injection wells.”

“There are a number of pieces of legislation in the Ohio House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, like H.B. 351, that would provide real protections for public health and safety for Ohio citizens,” said Ellie Rauh, program coordinator at Buckeye Forest Council. “We need to ensure that the people have a chance to speak at the people’s house on these bills also, not just on the legislation that is being supported by the administration.”

The rally was organized by No Frack Ohio, a collaboration of more than 50 grassroots and conservation groups calling for a moratorium on horizontal hydraulic fracturing until further safeguards are put in place to protect human health and the environment. No Frack Ohio believes that public health and job security is more important than big industry’s immediate drilling demands.

The No Frack Ohio Campaign will continue to call on Ohio lawmakers to listen to Ohio citizens and scientific experts about the human and environmental damage caused by shale gas development.

http://ecowatch.org/2012/rally-at-ohio-statehouse-disputes-proposed-shale-drilling-regulations/

300-foot buffer proposed for Ohio park drilling

An Ohio natural resource agency's proposed guidelines for drilling in state parks would require natural gas and oil companies to stay at least 300 feet -- the length of a football field -- from campgrounds, certain waterways and sites deemed historically or archaeologically valuable.

Documents on proposed guidelines were released by the state Department of Natural Resources this week after the Ohio chapter of the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit claiming the agency ignored repeated requests by the group to review them.

The 89-page report lists the "best management practices" on site restoration and other topics, and guidelines for emergency and pollution incidents. Other proposals include state approval before companies could store drilling waste in pits and an agreement on the locations of all drilling equipment.

The agency also released proposals for drilling leases. They show possible arrangements for companies interested in drilling directly below or drilling horizontally from land adjacent to property with oil and gas deposits.

Agency spokesman Carlo LoParo, who said the 300-foot buffer proposal would be applied above ground, said there are no specific policy decisions yet on what state land will be put up for competitive bids for drilling. But he emphasized that hundreds of other state properties besides state parks would be considered. He said a five-member commission that will be appointed later this summer will select the properties and lease the mineral rights, though the state can move forward with plans before the commission is appointed.

Click to read more ...

Congressman Holden under attack from PACs

Already facing a test from within his own party, Pennsylvania's longest-tenured congressman has a new set of voices challenging his bid for an 11th term. And they're coming from far outside of the state.

Democrat Tim Holden, who is facing Lackawanna County attorney Matt Cartwright in the 17th District primary, is under attack from political action committees based in Texas and California.

The Campaign for Primary Accountability, a Dallas-based Super PAC, says it plans to spend six figures on "full spectrum warfare" again Holden. The PAC, which campaigns against incumbent congressmen on both sides of the aisle, aims to use radio, television, the Internet and direct mail to target Holden, spokesman Curtis Ellis said.

Holden, a conservative Democrat, is also facing scrutiny from Blue America, a smaller PAC created in 2005 by three liberal bloggers. Blue America launched a billboard campaign against Holden throughout the district, including a billboard on Route 33 nearPalmer Township.

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The new 17th District will cover part of Northampton County, including the Easton and Slate Belt regions as well as Nazareth,Bethlehem Township and a sliver of Bethlehem beginning in 2013. Some Democrats in the Easton area have already questioned whether Holden is liberal enough to represent the city.

With Holden trying to introduce himself to a district vastly changed under the state's new congressional map, the negative advertisements could hurt his image with new voters, said Thomas Baldino, a political science professor at Wilkes University.

Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., a Scranton native, will campaign in the city with colleague Holden this weekend.

Holden's campaign condemned the influence of Super PACs, political organizations that cannot make contributions to candidates, campaigns or parties and must spend contributions independently. Super PACs, which are allowed under a 2010 Supreme Court Decision, give corporations, unions and other organizations the ability to spend unlimited money in an effort to sway the outcome of elections.

"Tim Holden is firmly opposed to Super PACs and believes that voters are supposed to decide elections, not corporations from outside the 17th District," campaign manager Eric Nagy said.

The Campaign for Primary Accountability's television commercial airing in the Scranton and Wilkes Barre area denounces Holden for receiving campaign donations from '"Wall Street" and voting in 2000 to let corporations exclude foreign income from their gross income for tax purposes. It criticizes his past votes to increase congressional salaries and his vote in 2010 to extend former President George W. Bush's tax cuts.

Founded last year by conservative construction mogul Leo Linbeck III, officials running the Super PAC say congressional elections are rigged by strategically drawn boundaries that favor one party.

Holden's newly shaped district did become more Democratic, though it was drawn by a Republican majority in the state legislature. Laureen Cummings of Lackawanna County is the lone Republican running.

With one party disadvantaged by the district lines, opponents from the other party still have little chance of defeating incumbents in primary elections because of disparities in campaign finances, Ellis said. The Campaign for Primary Accountability, which had $1.6 million on hand at the end 2011, is meant to be an equalizer.

"We're not concerned with Democrats versus Republicans," Ellis said. "We're concerned about the Washington insiders versus the people."

Nagy dismissed the notion that Holden is a Washington insider, saying he returns to Schuylkill County on the weekends. Holden is from St. Clair, a small town near Pottsville, and was county sheriff before joining Congress.

The Campaign for Primary Accountability has already targeted two incumbents who were unseated in their primaries — Republicans Don Manzullo of Illinois and Jean Schmidt of Ohio. In Pennsylvania, the PAC is also campaigning against U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy, R-18th District.

Blue America, on the other hand, is spending money to campaign against only two incumbents — Holden and U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., treasurer Howie Klein said. The House recently passed a Ryan budget that would restructure the tax code and cut domestic programs.

The PAC reported $19,000 on hand in its latest Federal Election Commission report and had spent $12,000 in the first quarter of 2012. Its billboard, which says "Fracking's Got a Friend in Pennsylvania," refers to Holden's vote to remove some regulations on natural gas drilling. It's just one issue in which the PAC disagrees with Holden, who has also been criticized by liberals for voting against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Holden says he did so because the law costs too much.

Holden has defended his voting record, saying conservative votes were a reflection of his former district, which had a Republican majority. Holden has long been a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, a fiscally conservative group of House Democrats. He is anti-abortion and opposes gun control.

Though Cartwright has never held public office, he's campaigning as a member of the "Democratic wing of the Democratic party."

"If it were up to me, I would be having a diatribe on the billboard," said Klein, who regularly writes about Holden on his blog DownWithTyranny. "There are no other races in the country that are pitting a particularly bad Blue Dog against a real progressive."

Cartwright's campaign has distanced itself from the PACs.

"We see it more as a referendum against Tim Holden and not necessarily a campaign in support of Matt," campaign manager Shane Seaver said.

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/easton/mc-pa-17-holden-superpac-20120412,0,6123619.story

Fracking opponents push for protection

Auburn residents Linda Zmek and Traci Fee said it's time to institute protective measures against gas- and oil-well drilling in the township.

They said they are particularly concerned with drilling into deep shale deposits, where hydraulic fracturing, with water under pressure, is used to create fractures in the rock to release oil and gas deposits.

More companies are drilling down and then horizontally to reach shale deposits, they said, and there are concerns that ground water will be contaminated in the process.

Mrs. Zmek and Ms. Fee are members of the Network for Oil and Gas Accountability and Protection.

Last week, they asked Auburn Trustees to consider a resolution not to allow hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," in Auburn.

Mrs. Zmek said they hope Auburn will write a resolution opposing fracturing in drilling. "It would be on our books," she said.

Burton Village has written a moratorium on fracking, she said.

"When you inject in the ground, it has to come up," Mrs. Zmek said.

"The gas and oil companies are not keeping the gas locally," she added. They are shipping it overseas. So why should we allow it?

"Foreign-owned companies are taking our minerals and leaving the earth barren in Ohio with ugly wells, with the good possibility of destroying our aquifer," she said.

Livestock in the West has been damaged, and water coming from taps has caught fire, Mrs. Zmek said. "It's not something we're making up or over-reacting to."

Drillers are pumping millions of gallons of water and chemicals into the ground which is deadly to everyone's health, Mrs. Zmek said. "The water has to come up somewhere, and when it does, it runs into the streams and lakes and water reservoirs like La Due. And it goes into Lake Erie, which is a source of water for Cleveland," she said.

"They go through deep Marcellus and Utica shale and bore horizontally," Ms. Zmek said. "They could end up two miles away under someone else's property, and million of gallons of water are injected with chemicals. It's a danger to do that. It's not safe. I don't care what they say. They are endangering all of us by even wanting to drill."

The drilling companies force people into agreeing to mandatory pooling, when property owners join to provide the required acreage for a well, Mrs. Zmek said. "They promise you are going to get rich." Then they take whatever gas they can once the lease is signed, she said.

"What would it hurt to place a moratorium on drilling by the township?" Mrs. Zmek said. "If residents know of the pros and cons, no prudent person would want this. I want water to be drinkable for my great-grandchildren," she said.

"We're all doing this on our own money. We don't have money, but the oil and gas companies do," she said.

Mrs. Fee said, "This is horizontal, large-scale drilling, which is new to us. It's the large-scale fracking that we're concerned with. It's a mix of water and chemicals. There's a lot of concern for the air, water and property values."

Protective measures are needed, she said. "We're willing to work with Township Trustees to do something that protects our properties. We're offering to help on this," she said.

"Fracking is a threat to the water aquifer. We're on well water, and, if our water is affected, our homes are worthless," Ms. Fee said.

She also noted that property owners who sign leases for drilling could be in violation of their mortgage agreements.

The bigger concerns involve health, water, air and property values, Ms. Fee said.

"It is a complex issue," she said. "We want to continue to bring awareness to people," Ms. Fee said. "People should understand the magnitude of the risk. People really have to ask questions about the kind of wells being put in."

http://www.chagrinvalleytimes.com/NC/0/4099.html

Fracking Controversy Hits Medina County Homes

GRANGER TWP., Ohio — Mark Mangan held a metering device near his backyard well and listened to an alarm go off.

It registered one hundred percent “LEL,” or lower explosive level.

“That means, if we light a match right now,” Mangan said, “it’ll go boom.”

Mark and his wife, Sandy, have no idea how big or small such a possible explosion may be.

But they blame the drilling of two nearby oil and gas wells a few years ago.

“It’s a beautiful spot,” Mark said of his rural home, “but now, I just want to get the hell out of there.”

The two wells in question have since been “fracked” – that is, highly-pressurized chemicals have been injected into the ground to help with the recovery process.

But the Mangans blame the initial drilling for their problems, and say they quickly contacted the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) about the issue.

“We thought they were going to be an advocate for the people,” Sandy Mangan said.

ODNR declined to do an on-camera interview, but said in a statement that it had conducted “extensive testing” and has “conclusively determined” that the Mangans’ water problems are “not related to those (oil and gas) wells.”

Sources tell the Fox 8 I-Team that the Ohio Inspector General is looking into the issue.

Officially, Deputy Inspector General Carl Enslen said the office will neither confirm nor deny the existence of any inquiry.

In a report, ODNR indicated that a “drought” may have been a factor.

But a Cleveland State University expert, Dr. Philip DeGroot, said a drought would not cause the sudden drop in water pressure that the Mangans reported that they experienced.

Dr. DeGroot, who was hired by the Mangans and one other family to do a preliminary analysis, said such a drop is normally caused by a more traumatic event such as an earthquake.

“You could cause fracturing where fractures didn’t exist, so something like (an earthquake), something that would be a high-pressure underground activity.”

The Mangans said it wasn’t an earthquake, but oil drilling that caused the problem.

But, in a report, ODNR said it found no evidence of the chemicals used in oil drilling in the drinking well at the Mangans’ home.

And the operator of the oil and gas wells said the Mangans were having water issues before the drilling began.

The Mangans vehemently deny that, and say they don’t know what the future holds.

“We have no idea what we’ve been exposed to,” Mark said.

And they have no idea how much danger may be still lurking in their well.

http://fox8.com/2012/03/26/i-team-fracking-controversy-hits-medina-county-homes/

Fracking Fluid Soaks Ohio

The nationwide boom in hydraulic fracturing—aka fracking—means energy-extraction companies in the U.S. can produce thousands of barrels of oil and millions of cubic feet of natural gas from once-inaccessible places. They’re also producing something else: oceans of brine from drilling as well as fracking fluid, the chemical-laced water used to blast open cracks in buried rock where fossil fuel lurks. That wastewater has to go someplace. John Kasich, Ohio’s governor, isn’t sure he wants his state to be it.

The preferred way to dispose of the brine and fracking fluid—typically a stew of water and a long list of chemical additives, including rust inhibitors and antibacterial agents—is to pump it out of sight, out of mind into deep, cavernous wells built for the purpose. Ohio’s geological underbelly, composed of permeable rock formations, is ideally suited for such holding tanks. The state is home to 176 of them, operated by more than 80 companies, including an affiliate of Houston-based giant EnerVest and smaller outfits such as BT Energy in Fleming, Ohio. Compare that with just six active wells in neighboring Pennsylvania, where the geology makes drilling less practical. Over the past two decades, Ohio approved an average of four new storage wells a year. Last year, it jumped to 29.

All that underground space has made Ohio a leading importer of wastewater from other states. Last year, oil and gas companies injected 511 million gallons into Ohio’s wells, the most on record, according to the state’s Department of Natural Resources. More than half came from elsewhere. Of the 94.2 million gallons of drilling wastewater that Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale operators sent to disposal wells last year, 98 percent went to Ohio. Currently, well owners pay the state a fee of 5¢ per barrel for fluids originating within Ohio and 20¢ for out-of-state wastewater. Ohio collected $1.45 million in fees last year, according to Ohio Natural Resources.

Kasich isn’t thrilled with the idea of Ohio becoming known as a dumping ground for other states’ industrial waste, though there isn’t much he can do about it. The Republican governor is pushing for tough new regulations to protect the environment, among them rules requiring oil and gas companies to account precisely for the chemical makeup of the spent fluid.

He’s also proposed taxing oil and gas drillers in Ohio as much as 4 percent of the market value of what they pull out of the ground, saying he’ll use the money to reduce the state income tax. The oil and gas tax has not been warmly received by the industry or by Republicans in the state legislature, who say it will hurt smaller companies trying to get a foothold in a growing industry. “When something’s in its infancy, and you’re going to put an onerous tax on it, that’s going to have a definite effect,” says Jerry James, president of Marietta-based Artex Oil.

Kasich believes he’s struck the right balance between attracting business and looking out for the public. When Barack Obama visited the state this month, he and Kasich talked about fracking. “I told the president that all of the rules and the regulations that we’re putting together … could serve as a national model as to how to proceed to be environmentally sound and yet still create jobs,” Kasich said last week.

Oil and gas companies haven’t put up as much of a fight over the proposed regulations, perhaps because they were introduced in the aftermath of a series of bizarre earthquakes near Youngstown that have been linked to the underground wastewater. There had been no record of quakes in the area before D&L Energy, based in Youngstown, began injecting wastewater into a well about 9,200 feet underground in December 2010. Starting in March, there were 12 quakes within a mile of the well ranging from magnitude 2.1 to a 4.0 quake that hit on New Year’s Eve.

A March 9 state report concluded that “a number of coincidental circumstances appear to make a compelling argument for the recent Youngstown-area seismic events to have been induced.” The state said evidence suggested fluid from the Youngstown well “intersected an unmapped fault in a near-failure state of stress causing movement along that fault.” D&L Energy maintains the cause of the earthquakes has not been conclusively determined, and says it will pay for its own study. In a statement, the company says it “has always been an environmentally responsible and legally operating energy producer that voluntarily implements industry best practices that exceed current laws and regulations.”

Ohio’s Department of Natural Resources has proposed a ban on drilling into deep rock formations and wants geological reviews before new wells are approved. State Representative Robert Hagan, a Democrat who represents Youngstown, doesn’t think that goes far enough. He’s called for an indefinite moratorium on injection wells until their impact can be studied more closely. “Some people have accused me of screaming, ‘The sky is falling,’” Hagan says. “But when the earth is moving, we have an obligation to find out why.”

The bottom line: Oil and natural gas companies are storing millions of gallons of drilling and fracking wastewater in Ohio’s 176 underground storage wells.

Dimock, PA Fracking: EPA Water Samples Contained 'Dangerous' Levels Of Methane

When the Environmental Protection Agency announced last week that tests showed the water is safe to drink in Dimock, Penn., a national hot spot for concerns about fracking, it seemed to vindicate the energy industry's insistence that drilling had not caused pollution in the area.

But what the agency didn't say -- at least, not publicly -- is that the water samples contained dangerous quantities of methane gas, a finding that confirmed some of the agency's initial concerns and the complaints raised by Dimock residents since 2009.

The test results also showed the group of wells contained dozens of other contaminants, including low levels of chemicals known to cause cancer and heavy metals that exceed the agency's "trigger level" and could lead to illness if consumed over an extended period of time. The EPA's assurances suggest that the substances detected do not violate specific drinking water standards, but no such standards exist for some of the contaminants and some experts said the agency should have acknowledged that they were detected at all.

"Any suggestion that water from these wells is safe for domestic use would be preliminary or inappropriate," said Ron Bishop, a chemist at the State University of New York's College at Oneonta, who has spoken out about environmental concerns from drilling.

Dimock residents are struggling to reconcile the EPA's public account with the results they have been given in private.

"I'm sitting here looking at the values I have on my sheet -- I'm over the thresholds -- and yet they are telling me my water is drinkable," said Scott Ely, a Dimock resident whose water contains methane at three times the state limit, as well as lithium, a substance that can cause kidney and thyroid disorders. "I'm confused about the whole thing... I'm flabbergasted."

The water in Dimock first became the focus of international attention after residents there alleged in 2009 that natural gas drilling, and fracking, had led to widespread contamination. That April, ProPublica reported that a woman's drinking water well blew up. Pennsylvania officials eventuallydetermined that underground methane gas leaks had been caused by Cabot Oil and Gas, which was drilling wells nearby. Pennsylvania sanctioned Cabot, and for a short time the company provided drinking water to households in the Dimock area.

This January, the EPA announced it would take over the state's investigation, testing the water in more than 60 homes and agreeing to provide drinking water to several of families -- including the Elys -- in the meantime.

Then, last Thursday, the EPA released a brief statement saying that the first 11 samples to come back from the lab "did not show levels of contamination that could present a health concern." The agency noted that some metals, methane, salt and bacteria had been detected, but at low levels that did not exceed federal thresholds. It said that arsenic exceeding federal water standards was detected in two samples.

But Dimock residents say the agency's description didn't jibe with the material in test packets distributed to them, and they voiced concerns about why the EPA had passed judgment before seeing results from nearly 50 homes. Several shared raw data and materials they were given by the EPA with Josh Fox, the director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary "GasLand," who shared them with ProPublica.

EPA press secretary Betsaida Alcantara said the agency was trying to be forthcoming by giving the tests results to Dimock residents and is now considering whether to release more information to the public about the water samples. "We made a commitment to the residents that we would give them the information as soon as we had it," she said. "For the sake of transparency we felt it was the right thing to do."

However preliminary, the data is significant because it is the first EPA research into drilling-related concerned on the east coast, and the agency's first new information since it concluded that there was likely a link between fracking and water contamination in central Wyoming last December. The EPA is currently in the midst of a national investigation into the effects of fracking on groundwater, but that research is separate.

As the agency has elsewhere, the EPA began the testing in Dimock in search of methane and found it.

Methane is not considered poisonous to drink, and therefore is not a health threat in the same way as other pollutants. But the gas can collect in confined spaces and cause deadly explosions, or smother people if they breathe too much of it. Four of the five residential water results obtained by ProPublica show methane levels exceeding Pennsylvania standards; one as high as seven times the threshold and nearly twice the EPA's less stringent standard.

The methane detections were accompanied by ethane, another type of natural gas that experts say often signifies the methane came from deeply buried gas deposits similar to those being drilled for energy and not from natural sources near the surface.

Among the other substances detected at low levels in Dimock's water are a suite of chemicals known to come from some sort of hydrocarbon substance, such as diesel fuel or roofing tar. They include anthracene, fluoranthene, pyrene and benzo(a)pyrene -- all substances described by a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as cancer-causing even in very small amounts. Chromium, aluminum, lead and other metals were also detected, as were chlorides, salts, bromium and strontium, minerals that can occur naturally but are often associated with natural gas drilling.

It is unclear whether these contaminants have any connection to drilling activities near Dimock. The agency says it plans further testing and research.

Many of the compounds detected have not been evaluated for exposure risk by federal scientists or do not have an exposure limit assigned to them, making it difficult to know whether they present a risk to human health.

Inconsistencies in the EPA's sampling results also are raising concerns. EPA documents, for example, list two different thresholds for the detection of bromide, a naturally occurring substance sometimes used in drilling fluids, opening up the possibility that bromide may have been detected, but not reported, in some tests.

"The threshold that it is safe, that shouldn't be changing," said Susan Riha, director of the New York State Water Resources Group and a professor of earth sciences at Cornell University. "For some reason ... one was twice as sensitive as the other one."

The EPA did not respond to questions about the detection limits, or any other technical inquiries about the test data.

A spokesman for Cabot declined to comment on the water test results or their significance, saying that he had not yet seen the data.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/20/dimock-pa-fracking-epa-water_n_1368148.html?ref=green