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.

.................

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/

Burton tells state to halt 'fracking'

Burton Village Council called on state officials Monday to halt a gas-well drilling process that is just now making its way into Geauga County.

Council unanimously passed a resolution in support of a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finishes a study on the process.

The legislation was introduced in October and came up for a final reading Monday.

"The village of Burton, Ohio, calls on the governor and the Ohio state legislature to place a moratorium (or enact a ban) on hyrdraulic fracturing until an adequate environmental study is completed, showing that hydraulic fracturing can be done safely and without impacting local water supplies within the state," the resolution states.

Click to read more ...

Special Report: Gas Drilling Brings Stress, Social Ills

Speakers at a conference sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh on the health impacts of Marcellus Shale drilling included two sociologists who have studied how these phenomena are playing out in the region, which encompasses a swath of northern Appalachia from New York to Tennessee and west into Ohio.

We're in the Money

Simona Perry, PhD, an ethnographer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., said she has been interviewing residents of Bradford County in northeastern Pennsylvania.

One of the most rural counties in the state, Bradford has become its biggest center of drilling for shale gas, with 653 permits issued by state regulators so far this year.

Perry, who uses a deliberately unstructured technique that lets people tell their own stories in their own way, said the people she's interviewed almost universally cherish their rural way of life and the stable, predictable social networks that resulted from an almost complete lack of in-migration.

The Marcellus Shale boom has changed all that.

Click to read more ...

Habitat destruction should worry hunters

A while back, I wrote about the disappearing hunting lands and why we, as sportspeople, should be worried. The outfitters are leasing land, and out-of-staters also are eating up land. Developers arebuying farmlands and making subdivisions, and a new monster is looming: the Marcellus miners. These oil companies are leasing vast expanses of land to do shale drilling. I wonder just how this will affect hunting land. I do not think they will let people hunt where they are drilling just as the coal companies closed land in the past.

Will this spell the end of yet more of our sport?

I have a real concern about this. Hunting is the least of our worries. I did some research on the operations at the Natural ResourcesDefense Council website, and what I found is truly scary. Outdated regulations do not cover the new high-tech drillings, and some of the results were not pleasant. I read of exploding water wells and contaminated water supplies resulting in flammable water and human and animal illnesses. Imagine the impact on wildlife habitat.

The shale formation is along the southeastern part of Ohio in about 10 counties, not in Muskingum County, according to my research, but in Guernsey and Noble. The by-products of this fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, need to be disposed of in some way. Chemicals, water and sand are used under extremely high pressure to fracture the shale. The people who are doing this process say it is safe. Maybe it is, but some other research shows that fracking is suspected in polluted water tables. Once water is polluted, it is done.

All this being said, I submit when habitat is destroyed, animals are atrisk as well. Water, air and habitat destruction only can mean fewer animals and fewer leased lands means less land for us to hunt on in an already shrinking picture. In an area of Wyoming where fracking is allowed, the mule deer numbers declined by 30 percent. I think you can get my drift.

http://www.zanesvilletimesrecorder.com/article/20111211/SPORTS/112110340/Habitat-destruction-should-worry-hunters

DEP inspections show more shale well cement problems

But violations data released last week by the state Department of Environmental Protection show problems persist with the cemented strings of steel casing meant to protect groundwater from gas and fluids in Marcellus wells.

In August, DEP inspectors found defective or inadequate casing or cement at eight Marcellus wells, including Hess Corp.'s Davidson well in Scott Twp., Wayne County - the first casing violation found in the county where only a handful of Marcellus wells have been drilled.

Click to read more ...

Land grab sets up taxpayers for fracking fall-out

Home mortgage loans prohibit heavy industrial activity and hazardous materials on the property. Fracking brings both.

The mortgaged property needs to stay safe and uncontaminated because lenders sell 90 percent of all home mortgage loans to the secondary mortgage market in exchange for funds to make new home loans. Gas leases allow gas companies to truck in tankers with chemicals, transport flammable gas and toxic waste, operate heavy equipment 24/7 and store gas underground, for years, all in a person’s backyard

Click to read more ...

Science Lags as Health Problems Emerge Near Gas Fields

ProPublica examined government environmental reports and private lawsuits and interviewed scores of residents, physicians and toxicologists in four states—Colorado, Texas, Wyoming and Pennsylvania—that are drilling hot spots. Our review showed that cases like Wallace-Babb's go back a decade in parts of Colorado and Wyoming, where drilling has taken place for years. They are just beginning to emerge in Pennsylvania, where the Marcellus Shale drilling boom began in earnest in 2008.

Concern about such health complaints is longstanding—Congress held hearings on them in 2007 at which Wallace-Babb testified. But the extent and cause of the problems remains unknown. Neither states nor the federal government have systematically tracked reports from people like Wallace-Babb, or comprehensively investigated how drilling affects human health.

Click to read more ...