Submit Your Protest Against Relaxation Of Fracking Rules!

Send your letter to to minerals@dnr.state.oh.us by Dec. 23 

By Bernhard Debatin

As detailed in the previous post, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources iscalling for comments on proposed changes to the regulations about fracking. If implemented, the changes will make things considerably easier for the fracking industry without sufficient regard for people’s health, safety, and well-being, and without sufficient protection of the environment.

Here are the four most serious changes in the draft document for the amendments to the Ohio Administrative Code:

Unconventional disposal (dumping) of wastewater In Wetzel County, WV

1. Wastewater Disposal.Fracking companies no longer need to declare how, where, and with whom they’ll dispose their wastewater. This means that there’s no sufficient oversight by ODNR; there isn’t any closed and monitored chain of accountability between the production of the wastewater and its disposal.

2. Property Value. Fracking companies no longer need to provide an independent appraisal or the county auditor’s assessment of all real estate above the twenty-thousand dollar value. Under these rules, it will be up to landowners to obtain costly appraisals. This is an undue cost-shifting onto the landowners and makes it harder for individuals to claim damages to their property value during and after fracking.

3. Saftey Distances. Tanks, fire heaters, and mechanical separators no longer need to be set at a defined safety distance to wells, roads, and inhabited buildings. Given the industry’s record of explosions and fires, this change would be extremely detrimental. Removing the minimal distance is also a complete relinquishment of the very idea of reasonable regulatory action.

4. Time Limits. Most existing limitations (usually 12 months) on permit expiration, operation commencement, and well plugging are lifted or extended, particularly in rural areas. This may result in a reality where people’s health and quality of life are less protected in non-urban areas than in urban ones. Are people in rural areas less important than those in urban areas?

It is appalling that ODNR is relaxing, rather than improving the regulations on fracking.

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If you’ do not agree with the proposed changes, send your comments by Dec. 23 to the Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management. Please feel free to use the above language to formulate your comments. You may also use and modify a longer draft letter that specifically addresses the changes in detail, which you can download as a Word Document from this site.

Send your letter via email to minerals@dnr.state.oh.us or mail it to this address:

Mineral Resources Management
2045 Morse Rd.
Building H-3
Columbus, OH 43229-6693

http://slowdownfracking.wordpress.com/2011/12/17/relaxation-of-fracking-rules/

Stark County's Uniontown first 'fracking' target

UNIONTOWN -- Ohio's oil and gas energy rush is taking off and one Stark County community with a dark industrial history is listed to be one of the first fracking sites in our area.

Where the well is going and who is drilling it may surprise you.

WKYC Photojournalist Carl Bachtel brings you the story.

Uniontown is a small community nestled between Akron and Canton in Stark County.

It's also the location of the federally monitored toxic waste site, the Industrial Excess Landfill.

Soon the property across busy Cleveland Avenue from the EPA Superfund site could have drilling.

Hydrofracture drilling is on its way and some residents who know the area's environmental history are fearful.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resourcesalready approved the permit to allow Ohio Valley Energy System to drill right under the homes along Route 619.

Ohio Valley Energy has a history of residential drilling, most notably in Bainbridge Township in Geauga County. In December 2007, the results there were contaminated well water and exploding homes.

Industry videos posted on YouTube tout the safety and environmentally friendly aspects of gas drilling.

But one resident thinks the poor economy is clouding people's judgement.

Shale Gas Industry Insider: We Are Losing the Messaging War on Fracking

The shale gas industry has had its collective ass kicked, and kicked hard, by Gasland and others opposed to hydraulic fracturing and needs to redefine its core messages to defuse a burgeoning negative public perception of the controversial drilling technique, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association (COGA) said today.

“What we’ve seen in the last few years, and I hope it’s peaking, is a completely heightened public awareness around hydraulic fracturing and an increase in active opposition,” Tisha Conoly-Schuller said this afternoon. “I hate to credit the movie Gasland, but it’s really changed the conversation.”

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Geologists Sharply Cut Estimate of Shale Gas

Federal geologists published new estimates this week for the amount of natural gas that exists in a giant rock formation known as the Marcellus Shale, which stretches from New York to Virginia.

The shale formation has about 84 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas, according to the report from the United States Geological Survey. This is drastically lower than the 410 trillion cubic feet that was published earlier this year by the federal Energy Information Administration.

As a result, the Energy Information Administration, which is responsible for quantifying oil and gas supplies, has said it will slash its official estimate for the Marcellus Shale by nearly 80 percent, a move that is likely to generate new questions about how the agency calculates its estimates and why it was so far off in its projections.

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Exxon Hid Radiation Risk to Workers, Witness Says

Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Exxon Mobil Corp., the largest U.S. energy company, “knew or should have known” that drilling pipes it sent to a Louisiana pipe yard were contaminated with dangerous radioactive material, a trial witness testified.

Paul Templet, a former secretary of Louisiana’s Department of Environmental Quality, told jurors yesterday in a lawsuit trial in state court in Gretna, Louisiana, that internal Exxon memos showed the company had information beginning in the 1930s about cancer-causing radium in the residue, or “scale,” that built up inside its pipes.

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Banning Hydrofracking Is Not A “Taking” of Property

As the public sentiment grows for a ban on High Volume Hydrofracking (HVHF), 
lawyers and others who speak for corporate profit-making opportunities in 
natural gas say that laws banning or limiting gas drilling is a “taking” of 
property.  Even some who seem to be on our side make the same claim.  This claim 
is groundless and misguided.  It is a scare tactic to prevent public pressure on 
our elected officials against HVHF. 

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Land Application of Hydrofracturing Fluids Damages a Deciduous Forest Stand in West Virginia

In June 2008, 303,000 L of hydrofracturing fluid from a natural gas well were applied to a 0.20-ha area of mixed hardwood forest on the Fernow Experimental Forest, West Virginia. During application, severe damage and mortality of ground vegetation was observed, followed about 10 d later by premature leaf drop by the overstory trees. Two years after fluid application, 56% of the trees within the fluid application area were dead.

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