Plain Township residents want total ban on Fracking

About 70 residents urged Plain trustees to declare a complete ban on horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing within the township.

Ohio legislators are forcing residents to accept heavy industry in their backyards, said Susan Garver, who lives in the Sherwood Village allotment.

“I think this is the right time to act. We can’t drag our feet any more,” Garver said, urging trustees to ban horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.

Residents commended trustees for banning “horizontal slick water hydraulic fracturing” on township property, but  want the procedure stopped throughout the township.

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Drilling Wastewater Disposal Options in N.Y. Report Have Problems of Their Own

New York's Department of Environmental Conservation took a stab at addressing the wastewater problem in the draft environmental impact statement (EIS) on gas drilling it released in September. The report said the DEC won't issue drilling permits until companies prove they can dispose of the water. The report also listed three disposal options: Injecting it into underground storage wells, trucking it to specialized treatment plants in nearby states, or having it processed at sewage plants in New York.

But ProPublica has found that none of these methods are realistic.

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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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Is New York’s Marcellus Shale Too Hot to Handle

As New York gears up for a massive expansion of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, state officials have made a potentially troubling discovery about the wastewater created by the process: It's radioactive. And they have yet to say how they'll deal with it.

The information comes from New York's Department of Environmental Conservation, which analyzed 13 samples of wastewater brought thousands of feet to the surface from drilling and found that they contain levels of radium-226, a derivative of uranium, as high as 267 times the limit safe for discharge into the environment and thousands of times the limit safe for people to drink.

The findings, if backed up with more tests, have several implications: The energy industry would likely face stiffer regulations and expenses, and have more trouble finding treatment plants to accept its waste -- if any would at all. Companies would need to license their waste handlers and test their workers for radioactive exposure, and possibly ship waste across the country. And the state would have to sort out how its laws for radioactive waste might apply to drilling and how the waste could impact water supplies and the environment.

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Air Pollution Found at Five Natural-Gas Sites in North Texas

Five natural-gas sites in Fort Worth, Texas, last year produced air pollution that exceeded state regulations, according to a study on the effects of drilling and production in the city.

Eastern Research Group Inc., a consultant hired by the Fort Worth City Council, also found visible emissions at 296 of 388 gas well sites it examined. The study was posted on the city’s website today.

The city requested the study in response to resident concerns that gas drilling, fracturing, compression and collection in the area’s Barnett Shale gas field may have an adverse effect on air quality.

The study may have implications in other onshore fields, such as the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and New York, the Haynesville Shale in Louisiana and the Fayetteville Shale in Arkansas, Jason Lamers, a city spokesman, said in an interview. It’s the first study to test for emissions during all phases of gas development, including drilling, hydraulic fracturing, well completion, pipeline operations and compression, Lamers said.

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Farmers speak out about natural gas drilling via hydrofracking

The Tompkins County Council of Governments (TCCOG) held a public hearing on natural gas last Thursday, drawing a crowd of about 1,000 people and approximately 100 commenters. During the 4-hour hearing, only 1 comment supported natural gas drilling.  The rest of the comments were either critical of the draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (dSGEIS) or hydrofracking itself.  Currently at least 37% of land in Tompkins County is leased to gas companies, and it is owned by about 6% of the adult population.

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How Marcellus Shale Gas Drilling Will DEPRESS Your Property Values

Imagine this: You lease your land to a gas drilling company, then, before or after drilling,you decide that you want to sell your land. You find plenty of prospective buyers---the problemis that none of them can find a bank to finance a mortgage, because most banks andinsurance companies consider gas-leased land to be an unacceptable risk.Where does this leave you? Most likely stuck. And what does it do to the value of yourproperty? Most likely depreciate it, and the value of neighboring properties, too.

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