Committee OKs county fracking resolution - SSNL

DOWNTOWN AKRON — A Summit County Council committee recommended Council adopt a resolution asking state officials to enact “reasonable regulations” for high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

During the April 23 Public Works Committee meeting, chair Sandra Kurt (D-at large) and members Frank Comunale (D-District 4), Jerry Feeman (D-District 6) and Nick Kostandaras (D-District 1) voted in favor of the resolution, while member Tim Crawford (D-District 7) abstained. Committee members Gloria Rodgers (R-District 3) and Bill Roemer (R-at large) voted against the measure.

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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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Sand County, the Sequel

Crystalline silica causes cancer. More specifically, crystalline silica dust is listed by both the World Health Organization and the U.S. National Toxicology Program as a known human lung carcinogen. Unlike tobacco smoke, silica dust does not provoke tumors via genetic mutations. Instead, its method of injury is to trigger inflammation and suppress immune functioning. It also causes silicosis, a disabling and sometimes fatal condition in which fibrous nodules fill the spongy pulmonary chambers, prompting infections and heart failure. For both reasons, crystalline silica is regulated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. There are legal limits to how much silica dust a person operating a sandblaster can inhale.

Before midwestern sand counties were turned inside out—and towering, windblown dunes of powdery silica began appearing within view of people’s kitchen windows—the general public was not thought to suffer appreciable exposures. There are thus no standards for us. No research program has ever addressed the possible impact of silica dust on, say, pregnancy outcome or the lung development of children. Lack of study on public health effects means that the occupational carcinogen crystalline silica is not regulated as a hazardous air pollutant. At least not in Wisconsin and not at this writing.

A SAND COUNTY ALMANAC was published in 1949. In the same year, an oil-field service company called Halliburton fracked its first commercial well and so ushered in a new method for extracting oil and gas by using pressure, water, chemicals, and sand to blow up shale. The function of the sand is to hold the stone doors ajar so that the hydrocarbons can flow out and up.

But the shale boom didn’t really take off until 2005, the year that fracking received exemptions from most major federal environmental regulations (the now-famous “Halliburton loophole”). By 2008, Wisconsin sand had become a highly prized quarry. The Samson of silica, its grains were the ideal size, shape, and strength for propping open cracks a mile or more below the earth’s surface. And that’s how the nation’s Devonian bedrock became the new destination spot for Sand County. That’s how Aldo Leopold’s farm in central Wisconsin could end up fracking Rachel Carson’s childhood home on the Marcellus shale of western Pennsylvania.

In 2009, the last year for which data are available, 6.5 million tons of U.S. sand were mined, washed, processed, loaded onto trucks and trains, carried to wellheads, and shot into the center of the earth. Six and a half million tons is the approximate weight of the Great Pyramid of Giza. According to commodities analysts, that figure probably doubled in 2010 and likely doubled again last year.

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6811

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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City Council amendment would ban oil-gas activity in water-protection area

Measure introduced despite state law that reserves oil and gas regulation to the ODNR

By David DeWitt

In an act of defiance of state law for the sake of protecting the city's drinking water, Athens City Council introduced an ordinance Monday night that bans oil and gas drilling within its wellhead protection zone.

The likelihood of companies attempting to bring the controversial horizontal hydraulic fracturing drilling technique to the wellhead protection zone is slim. Nevertheless, 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.

In introducing revisions to its wellhead protection plan in the form of an ordinance Monday night, City Council chose to include provisions banning fracking in that area anyway.

The ordinance was originally introduced with two provisions banning oil and gas drilling in the protection zone. They were then struck out. During the meeting, Third Ward member Michele Papai moved to once again include that language. It was seconded by Second Ward member Jeff Risner.

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."

At-large member Chris Knisely said that she has spoken to several citizens who expressed concerns about adding the provisions back in.

"It's a difficult situation, but I also know that we have a ruling from our law director from the city, who has stated that the Ohio Department of Natural Resources has the jurisdiction in this area," she said.

Lang said Monday that local government has no bigger responsibility as far as he concerned than working to do everything in its power to protect the drinking water.

"That said, the position of law director is not a policy-making position; I'm an adviser, and it is you, the members of council, that have the legislative authority vested in you," he said. "It is not the duty of a law director to tell you what you can or can not do. But I do feel it is appropriate to make sure that you are aware of the relevant laws, and I feel I've done everything I can to do that."

He distributed a copy of Ohio Revised Code to council members with the relevant passages highlighted, reading from that the division "has the sole and exclusive authority to regulate the permitting, location and spacing of oil and gas production operations in the state."

When questioned about whether the language in the ordinance is "not defensible," Lang said he wouldn't use those words, simply because he'd be obliged to defend the language if push came to shove.

"I will say that I think that certain portions of the wellhead protection ordinance are more problematic, potentially, than others," he said.

Fourth Ward member Christine Fahl expressed concern that if the questionable provisions are put forth, and a court case results, that other aspects of the ordinance will be held under injunction until the court proceedings come to a conclusion, thereby making the wellhead protection area vulnerable during that time.

The city has requested an opinion from the ODNR on whether they would ever approve a drilling request within a municipality's wellhead protection area in the first place, but Athens Mayor Paul Wiehl said Monday that the city has not yet heard back from them.

Risner said that he does not see the ODNR taking the city of Athens to court if this ordinance is passed.

"It's more likely if a company came to town and decided, 'I want to put a well here,' and they read the ordinance, then they would take us to court," he said. "The problem I would have is that if I were a company looking to drill a well, I would want to make money. Lawsuits cost money. They take time. Two-year injunctions means for two years I can't do anything. I'm injuncted, too."

He said that it doesn't seem worthwhile for a company to pursue that avenue.

"I think if we put this tool in our toolbox it's just something else that will prevent someone from coming in and (drilling)," he said. "If we don't do it, then there's really nothing."

At-large member Elahu Gosney said that his view is that the state law contradicts the city's responsibility to protect the city's water supply.

"If this is passed, the amendments may be difficult to defend it in court, but it may not," he said. "But that being said, my opinion is that we have to do an all-of-the-above when protecting our water supply."

The motion to re-include the language banning drilling activity passed 5-2 with Fahl and Knisely casting the dissenting votes.

Recent state geology reports suggest that Athens County may not see a big boom in oil and gas drilling.

http://blog.cleveland.com/letters/2012/04/dont_stifle_ohio_energy_produc.html

Towns Fight States on Drilling

States hoping to capitalize on their energy booms are running into resistance from local officials who want to be able to police the noise and industrialization that accompany oil-and-gas drilling.

The municipalities are fighting laws that bar them from regulating drilling, enacted by state lawmakers who feared towns would stunt job-creation and a stream of tax revenue.

Getty Images

Cabot Oil & Gas workers develop a fracking site in South Montrose, Pa.

Last Thursday, seven towns collectively sued Pennsylvania in state court to overturn a law passed in February that prevents them from using their zoning authority to regulate oil-and-gas development. The day before, an Ohio state senator introduced legislation to grant local officials more control over where companies can drill.

Also late last week, an energy company and a landowner appealed rulings in New York state courts that towns can use their zoning power to ban gas-drilling, despite a state law that prevents them from regulating the industry. The state has temporarily blocked companies from drilling in the Marcellus Shale while regulators weigh the environmental impact.

The balance between local land-use regulation and energy development has been hard to strike in Pennsylvania, which is carved up into more than 1,000 townships, some of which worry about how drilling would affect traffic, property values and public health.

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Western Pennsylvania municipalities file suit against state over new gas laws

Seven municipalities in three counties are suing the state and several state agencies in the first challenge to new oil and gas laws, according to a filing this afternoon in Commonwealth Court in Harrisburg.

South Fayette, Peters, Cecil, Mt. Pleasant and Robinson, Washington County, are joined by two municipalities from Bucks County in challenging the state's new restrictions on local land-use laws for drilling.

The municipalities — mostly growing suburbs — want to retain their rights to say where drilling can happen in their towns and under what circumstances, powers affirmed by the courts before state lawmakers voted in February to restrict those powers.

State lawmakers do not have the right to supersede the state's Municipal Planning Code, the state constitution's tool for authorizing local property rules, they claim in the suit. Several legal experts have been skeptical of that claim and the chance the suit has at overturning the new laws.

"Act 13's broad brush approach and failure to account for the health, safety, and welfare of citizens, the value of properties, adequate open spaces, traffic, congestion, the preservation of the character of residential neighborhoods and beneficial and compatible land uses, results in an improper use of the Commonwealth's police power and is therefore unconstitutional," the lawsuit states.

"By crafting a single set of statewide zoning rules applicable to oil and gas drilling throughout the Commonwealth, the Pennsylvania General Assembly provided much sought-after predictability for the oil and gas development industry.

"However, it did so at the expense of the predictability afforded to Petitioners and the citizens of Pennsylvania whose health, safety and welfare, community development objectives, zoning districts and concerns regarding property values were pushed aside to elevate the interests of out-of-state oil and gas companies and the owners of hydrocarbons underlying each property, who are frequently not the surface owners," according to the lawsuit, a copy of which the Tribune-Review obtained from lawyers in the case.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/breaking/s_788949.html