NYPIRG joins bipartisan lawmakers asking Cuomo to scrap fracking regs

The New York Public Interest Research Group last week joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers in calling on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to withdraw the Department of Environmental Conservation's revised draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement on hydraulic fracturing, or "hydrofracking."

Hydrofracking, the blasting of a mixture of water, chemicals and sand into the ground to break up rock formations and release natural gas deposits, emerged a contentious issue last summer upon the governor's proposal to lift a state moratorium on the process. Proponents have argued the drilling process would be a job creator, with opponents pointing to the potential for negative environmental impacts from hydrofracking.

The DEC is in the midst of reviewing the more than 60,000 public comments received in regard to the revised draft, which was released last September. 

"Not only is this a dangerous and dirty industrial activity, but the state's review is completely inadequate and fatally flawed," said Brendan Woodruff, NYPIRG hydrofracking campaign organizer. "The state did not conduct an assessment of the potential impact that fracking could have on public health, they have no plan to dispose of the millions of gallons of toxic wastewater and they have failed to address the financial impact this will have on local governments, including damage to roads and increased costs for emergency services."

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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

ALEC and ExxonMobil Push Loopholes in Fracking Chemical Disclosure Rules

One of the key controversies about fracking is the chemical makeup of the fluid that is pumped deep into the ground to break apart rock and release natural gas. Some companies have been reluctant to disclose what's in their fracking fluid. Scientists and environmental advocates argue that, without knowing its precise composition, they can't thoroughly investigate complaints of contamination.

Disclosure requirements vary considerably from state to state, as ProPublica recently charted. In many cases, the rules have been limited by a "trade secrets" provision under which companies can claim that a proprietary chemical doesn't have to be disclosed to regulators or the public.

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Rules on drilling in parks got more lenient

A year ago, state officials considered creating rules for oil and gas drilling rigs in state parks that were much more stringent than the rules they now have proposed.

The rigs would have had to have been placed at least 1,500 feet from campgrounds; 1,200 feet from lakes, streams and drinking-water wells; and 900 feet from trails, picnic areas and sites of historic value, under rules discussed in May, according to documents released yesterday.

Two weeks ago, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources released proposed rules that would keep the rigs at least 300 feet from most of those areas.

Information about the previous discussions comes from emails and documents that were shared among agency officials drafting mineral-rights leases and drilling guidelines for parks and other state lands.

Other emails contained a list of state parks, forests and wildlife areas in eastern Ohio that could have been offered to drilling companies as early as January. That never happened.

Officials also shared copies of draft leases and drilling guidelines with an Ohio-based oil and gas company — Chagrin Falls-based Reserve Energy Exploration Co. — in November.

“We look forward to hearing your thoughts and suggestions,” wrote Gene Wells, the agency’s real-estate administrator, in a Nov. 4, 2011, email to Joseph W. Haas of Reserve Energy. The Sierra Club’s Ohio chapter had asked to see the same leases in October. The environmental advocacy group then filed a lawsuit on April 9 demanding to see the public records.The Dispatch asked to see them this spring. “These emails confirm my earlier suspicion that ODNR has been consulting with the oil and gas industry on their rules all along,” said Jed Thorp, manager of the Sierra Club’s Ohio chapter.

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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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Waterless Fracking Method Could Sidestep NY Gas Drilling Ban

A plan to extract shale gas and oil from 135,000 acres in Tioga County, N.Y., could break through the state's hydraulic fracturing moratorium, because the wells would be fracked not with water but with liquefied petroleum gas, or LPG, a mixture of mostly propane.

A relatively new technology, LPG fracking doesn't fall under New York's current hydraulic fracturing moratorium. Instead it could be permitted under the New York Department of Environmental Conservation's 1992 Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement, according to Emily DeSantis, the DEC's director of public information.

DeSantis said LPG fracking would also require an additional assessment under the state'sEnvironmental Quality Review Act, or even a separate environmental impact statement "if the proposed activity may result in significant adverse environmental impacts not previously or adequately addressed."

New York placed a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in 2010, after environmentalists and some residents began worrying that hydraulic fracturing might contaminate the watershed that supplies water to New York City and other parts of the East Coast.

The moratorium won't be lifted until a new Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement is complete. The DEC expects to finish the work on that document by the end of the year.

The Tioga County Landowners Association announced in March that the 2,000 families it represents will lease 135,000 acres to Houston-based eCorp International. The fracking will be done by Calgary-based GasFrac Energy Services, which pioneered the LPG process.

InsideClimate News and the Albany Times Union reported in November that while LPG fracking still faces skepticism and comes with its own risks, it has several environmental benefits. By forgoing the use of water, it eliminates an entire waste stream—the toxic "flowback" water. GasFrac also claims that LPG requires 75 percent fewer truck trips and a smaller well-pad than hydraulic fracturing.

Details of the Tioga County contract are still being worked out, but under the tentative plan the landowners will form a Limited Liability Company and will essentially be given stock in the venture, in addition to royalty payments of 12.5 percent of the value of the oil or gas that is retrieved. eCorp will provide financing and GasFrac will frack the wells, which could extract natural gas from the Marcellus Shale and also oil from the less-explored Utica Shale. eCorp estimates that each well will be about three to five acres large and will drill under roughly 3,200 acres of surrounding land.

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