Guest Author

Citizen Experiences with Shale Gas Drilling

/by

 

Sharing the experiences of citizens in the Marcellus Shale field
New! Op-ed in the Erie-Times News

Letter sent to CHEC’s director, Conrad Dan Volz, DrPH, MPH:
Dear Dr Volz,

 

I am a resident of Susquehanna CO PA, ground zero for natural gas extraction using hydraulic fracturing. Oil and Gas were exempt during the Bush/Cheney administration from all environmental federal regulations for Clean Air, Water, the Chemical Disclosure Act, Superfund Act etc….via the HALLIBURTON Loophole. Halliburton developed fracking technology, and are one of the main drillers and also produce the chemicals used in the process. The industry does not have to reveal what toxic chemicals they are injecting into our ground through our aquifers… it is proprietary. I urge you to watch Josh Fox’s Sundance Winning documentary “GASLAND” if you have not already seen it.
We have no rights to clean drinking water; the industry is counting on getting eminent domain to extract the natural resources from under our ground and criss cross our land with pipelines they will not inspect: we are Class 1 areas and our lives per Federal and State regs are not worthy of a safety or even a routine pipeline inspection plan as we are in rural sparsely populated areas. These natural gas transmission and gathering lines will not serve PA residents, but will export natural gas out of our county and country and sold on the open market for the highest profit margin. We have been invaded by multinational natural gas corporations who are contaminating our drinking water, polluting our air, making us sick, and the state is on their side. No one….not even the lawyers ultimately… have stood up for Dimock residents’ right to a source of clean drinking water. The bottom line is profit, not our health, our water, our lives. Cabot Oil and Gas contaminated the Dimock aquifer and got away with it. Tomorrow is a panel discussion in La Port, PA featuring Anthony Ingraffea, PhD in Rock Fracture Technology, Cornell Univ., and Terry Engelder, PhD from Penn State, who holds a PhD from Texas A&M in Geosciences. Dr Engelder stated publicly that Dimock was a “necessary sactifice” for progress, Penn State has done a lot of research funded by the Oil and Gas industry. Dr Ingraffea, has spoken the truth about the dangers of shale gas extraction using “fracking” techniques… injecting millions of gallons of fresh water with thousands of pounds of chemicals like benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene under high pressure 8000 feet underground to fracture the marcellus shale and capture escaping gases. We need your expertise and voice on the insight you may offer about the longterm cumulative health and environmental impacts to help us get a handle on the war being waged on our communities.

What Oil and Gas is doing in PA, WY, CO, WV, they have done for decades in third world countries: driven the indigenous people off natural resources they wanted access to . Well, my county has been invaded by corporations who are treating us like indigenous natives: we are the new native americans to be cleared from the land; drill rig workers have told us we are in the way. Seismic testing companies have started working on land where no gas leases were signed and when confronted they said we are oil and gas and we will do what we want. We are a third world country to Cabot, Halliburton, Chesapeake etc. PA Homeland Security with the FBI’s consent hired an Israeli surveillance firm, ITRR (Institute for Terrorism Research and Response) to spy on anti-natural gas drillers, “those fomenting dissent”, and shared the information with the natural gas industry. The Marcellus Industry Coalition hired former PA Governor, former Head of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, to do PR and lobby for them. They have portrayed the development of natural gas as a national security issue, and anyone who dissents is a terror threat. That means citizens trying to save their drinking water from contamination, citizens trying to educate their communities about the public health risks of drilling are terrorists. I attached a billboard we put up in our county that ended up analyzed in the Intelligence Bulletins. I am so sorry to ramble, but we need hope.

As a Pennsylvanian, if I litter on a state highway, e.g. throw a biodegradable banana peel on the road, I can be fined hundreds of dollars, yet the Halliburtons of the world…oil and gas….are polluting my air and water legally, and my state does not recognize my right to clean drinking water. We only have our own voices… we do not have millions of dollars to spend on lobbying so I am reaching out to you. Those of us living over marcellus shale, are the new native americans to be driven from their homes. We are the new third world population. The Susquehanna Watershed, the poor rural cousin to the wealthier more politically powerful Delaware Watershed, was allowed to be the guinea pig for marcellus shale extraction. But as the DRBC (Delaware River Basin Commission) has unveiled its owns set of rules and regulation for drilling, it seems they are readying to lift the moratorium in the Delaware Watershed before the EPA concludes its new comprehensive environmental impact study of marcellus shale extraction. The last one done in 2004 under Bush/Cheney…concluded shale gas extraction posed no threat at all to the environment. If you be willing to be on a panel discussion about marcellus shale, please let me know. Perhaps Iris Bloom of Protecting Our Water, based in Philly, could interview you on her new radio show FRACTURED DEMOCRACY…which is to be aired on a new truly grassroots public radio station WFTE in Scranton PA. I will send you her pilot program. Thanks, and I hope to hear from you.

Sincerely,
Rebecca Roter
Dual resident Bucks/Susquehanna CO’s PA

Videos by another local citizen:

 


“Dogs became ill after drinking water near a previous gas well site”

“Chemicals used on well site”

 


“During Steckman Ridge Compressor Station accidental emergency release in 2009″
Thanks to Sandra McDaniel for sending these videos to us!
FracTracker Alliance

Get Trained Online to Use FracTracker: Webinar Series Kickoff!

/by

This article is out of date. Please contact us for more information about being trained to use FracTracker’s system: info@fractracker.org

So you have checked out FracTracker’s blog and DataTool, but you’re still not quite sure how to get the most out of this system and you don’t have time to attend one of our in-person training sessions. Then you’re in luck!

Sam Malone, CHEC’s Communication’s Specialist, will be kicking off a series of 10 online training sessions to give you that boost you need. Audience participation is encouraged!

These sessions are scheduled to occur about every two weeks between February 21 – June 29, 2011. They are free, but registration is required. (The online registration form can be found at the end of this post.)

Webinar Schedule

Date Time Topic Recording
2/21/11 12-1pm EST Webinar #1 – Introduction to the FracTracker System Listen
3/9/11 5-6pm EST Webinar #2 – The DataTool – Registration & Exploration Listen
3/21/11 12-1pm EST Webinar #3 – The DataTool – Visualizing Data onto Snapshots Listen
4/4/11 5-6pm EST Webinar #4 – The DataTool – Importing Data Part 1 with Matthew Kelso Listen
4/18/11 12-1pm EST Webinar #5 – The DataTool – Importing Data Part 2 with Matthew Kelso Listen
5/4/11 5-6pm EST Webinar #6 – The DataTool – Sharing Snapshots Listen
5/16/11 12-1pm EST Webinar #7 – The Blog – Projects, Data Index, & Changes Listen
6/1/11 12-1pm EST Webinar #8 – Alternative Ways to Contribute Data & Stories Listen
6/13/11 12-1pm EST Webinar #9 – Wrapping Up – Additional Features &Questions Not recorded
6/29/11 5-6pm EST Webinar #10 – The Future of FracTracker w/Dr. Christen Not recorded

Scroll down this page to register for a particular session!

Don’t fret if you cannot participate in the live webinar; we plan to record and post the links to each of the webinars we conduct. Check back to this page to access the archived webinar recordings in the table above.

Not ready for a webinar training? All of CHEC’s upcoming events and in-person FracTracker training sessions can be found on our calendar.


Registration Details:
Upon completing the form above, we will store your email discretely until the online link to the webinar is ready for distribution. At that time you will receive an email from Sam (malone@fractracker.org) reminding you about the webinar and providing you with a link and login information to participate.

FracTracker Partners:

Still have questions? Contact us:  malone@fractracker.org  |  412-624-9379  |  Email preferred
Guest Author

Total Petroleum Systems in the Appalachian Basin; Definitions, Datasets and Snapshots

/by

 

Stakeholder Awareness and Knowledge are Prerequisites for Informed Decision-Making Regarding Oil and Gas Extraction

By Conrad Dan Volz, DrPH, MPH

Our New York consultant, Karen Edelstein, has recently put onto FracTracker’s DataTool a number ofdatasets regarding other potential oil and gas source rocks and formations in the AppalachianBasin. Most of the formations on which she has posted data are not being actively drilled andexploited; they, therefore, only represent future areas of interest for oil and gas companies.However, the Utica-Lower Paleozoic Total Petroleum System, (FracTracker Snapshot 1below), which is more extensive and thicker than the Marcellus and underlies the extentof the Marcellus Shale by 1800 ft in western New York State and 5000 ft in south-centralPennsylvania, has already shown an ability to support commercial production.
Since capitaland human infrastructure are already in place for the Marcellus shale extraction, such as pipelines, arrangements for water withdrawals for fracturing, lease agreements, drilling and fracture capacity, and arrangements for wastewater disposal and trucking, the Utica has infrastructure advantages that may allow its exploitation sooner than other Appalachian petroleum basins.Even areas of the Utica beyond the Marcellus, particularly in eastern Ohio and Ontario, Canada,have been drilled and assessed and appear capable of producing natural gas in commerciallyviable quantities.

Utica Shale-Lower Paleozoic TPS, Applachian Basin (small)
Fractracker Snapshot 1. The Utica Shale
Click on the image for a better view.

The Appalachian Basin covers New York,Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, West Virginia, western Maryland, eastern Kentucky, westernVirginia, eastern Tennessee, northwestern Georgia, and northeastern Alabama (USGS). Appalachian landowners, mineral rights owners, citizens, communities, environmental organizations, and state and local government units should becomefamiliar with the geographic boundaries of Assessment Units making up Total PetroleumSystems (TPS). Horizontal drilling and hydrofracturing advances may open more of these petroleumsystems to commercial exploitation. Stakeholder awareness and information is critical to assurethat knowledge and thus power is equally distributed between industry, government, andcitizens for balanced decision-making concerning questions related to: whether the resource shouldbe tapped, how the resource will be extracted, and what economic and environmental policiesshould guide resource use.

The Total Petroleum System is used by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in itsNational Assessment Project; an Assessment unit is the fundamental geologic unit for theevaluation of undiscovered oil and gas resources. The TPS is defined as thegeographic boundary of a known or postulated oil and or gas accumulation, which includes thesource rocks or formations, as well as a geologic interpretation of the essential elements andprocesses within the system that account for its source, generation, migration, accumulation,and trapping. The province geologist was required to defend the geologic boundaries andgeologic history of each TPS in a formal petroleum system review meeting.

The TPS within province 067, the Appalachian Basin, are listed below by TPS number and name. Each snapshot contains a more thorough description of the TPS once you click on it. FracTracker contains datasets for more assessment units within each TPS. Check back for additional articles on separate assessment units and maps.

Click on the images below for a better view.

Conasauga-Rome/Conasauga TPS, Applachian Basin (small)
506701 – Conasauga-
Rome/Conasauga
Sevier-Knox/Trenton Total Petroleum System (small)
506702 – Sevier-Knox/
Trenton
Carboniferous Coal Bed Gas Deposits (small)
506705 – Carboniferous Coal Bed
Gas Deposits
Pottsville Coal-Bed gas deposits, Appalachian Basin (small)
506706 – Pottsville Coal-Bed
Gas – More Info
Utica Shale-Lower Paleozoic TPS, Applachian Basin (small)
506703 – Utica Shale-Lower
Paleozoic
Devonian Shale, Middle/Upper Paleozoic, Total Petroleum System, Appalachian Basin (small)
506704 – Devonian Shale,
Middle/Upper Paleozoic

The Devonian Shale-Middle and Upper Paleozoic TPS (shown above) includes the Marcellus Shale as well as other assessment units:

  • Northwestern Ohio Shale (NWOS) AU
  • Greater Big Sandy (GBS) AU
  • Siltstone And Shale (DSS) AU
  • Marcellus Shale AU
  • Catskill Sandstones and Siltstones AU
  • Berea Sandstone AU

This TPS is well described here.

The snapshot below shows the geographical extent of all Total Petroleum Basins in the Appalachian Basin and more in-depth information on the Devonian Shales. Click on the various buttons in the gray toolbar below the image to zoom and inspect this snapshot in closer detail:

FracTracker Alliance

Upcoming Event: "Building Bridges – Healing Connections in a Broken World"

/by

Hosted by The Episcopal Urban Caucus National Assembly
February 23-26, 2011
Doubletree Hotel – Pittsburgh, PA

Reverence ~ Justice ~ Beauty. Focusing on social justice, creation care, and peace, we will explore in plenary sessions, workshops, and site visits the way so many issues are inter-connected. “The cry of the earth and the cry of the poor are one.” An awareness of the links between environmental degradation and urban poverty will help us move forward in effective advocacy, strategy, and action for a more just and peaceful world, as agents of hope – motivated by faith – not fear. More Info | Registration Form | Agenda

Special DISCOUNT rate of $70 for college students and young adult leaders are available (though this does not include meals.) Limited number of such scholarships are available. Contact Carol Gonzalez to request the discount.

One of the Eight Workshops Available:

Friday, February 25 at 2:00 pm – Holy Water, Sacred Breath: Eco-Justice & Creation Care: “Do unto those downstream what you wish those upstream had done to you”

Dr. Conrad Dan Volz and Mark Dixon will present and host a conversation on issues around water (the new oil) and Marcellus Shale drilling, an urgent regional issue with links to national & global energy, economic, and environmental issues. The concerns surrounding gas and oil extraction and related water contamination are directly related to both intra- and inter-state political problems and open conflict around the world, making this a serious issue for faith groups interested in environmental justice and peace. Climate change, Transition Town, and other related topics will be included as we connect the dots in our search for sustainability.

Facilitators:

Mark Dixon, Co-Founder of YERT, Your Environmental Road Trip. Mark left a career in Silicon Valley to visit all 50 states and film the weird, wild, and wonderful world of environmental sustainability throughout the country. Now working on a feature film based on that project, Mark is a Pittsburgh resident with an eye on the nation’s environmental movement. (www.yert.com)

Dr. Conrad Dan Volz is Director of the Center for Healthy Environments & Communities at the Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH), Univ. of Pittsburgh where Dr. Volz is also an Asst. Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at GSPH. With over thirty years experience in occupational-environmental health and having worked in twenty-fours countries, Dr. Volz’ research has primarily been focused on how industrial and municipal toxins and carcinogens move through the air, water, soil, and groundwater to reach people and how to block this movement. Serving on several advisory boards, the author of numerous publications, and a frequent presenter, Dr. Volz is a passionate advocate for the environment. (www.chec.pitt.edu)

Mike Schut, Environmental Affairs Officer at the Episcopal Church Center, will be Final Plenary Speaker on Saturday, February 26 – 9:00 am.

Eco-Justice & Green Faith

The Episcopal Church recently launched a collaboration with Green Faith’s Green Certification Program, a comprehensive, holistic two-year program to express creation-care throughout parish life and ministry, including an emphasis on environmental justice and community outreach. This interactive presentation will describe this exciting opportunity and briefly introduce the eco-justice work of The Episcopal Church.  More Info | Registration Form | Agenda

Guest Author

Oil, Natural Gas, and Natural Gas Fluids Drilling and Production in the Inland United States Waters of the Great Lakes?

/by

 

By: C. D. Volz, DrPH, MPH
Director and Principal Investigator of the Center for Healthy Environments and Communities

Is it possible that there will, in the future, be offshore oil and gas platforms in the Great Lakes regions of the United States? The answer is that it has already occurred in Lake Michigan and certainly could be radically expanded with new advances in directional drilling and hydrofracturing of unconventional oil and gas reserves. Oil and gas drilling in the Great Lakes was allowed by the State of Michigan but new drilling was subsequently banned by the state legislature. The issuance of new permits for new drilling in the Great Lakes was banned by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (P.L. 109- 58, §386). Canadian law though permits onshore oil and gas drilling under the Great Lakes and offshore gas drilling in the Great Lakes (see Congressional Research Service Document, Drilling in the Great Lakes: Background and Issues, 2006.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) completed an assessment of the undiscovered oil and gas potential of the U.S. portions of the Appalachian Basin and the Michigan Basin in 2002 and 2004, respectively The USGS has done an assessment of oil and gas reserves under US portions of the Great Lakes and reports mean levels of recoverable oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids at 311.71 million barrels of oil (MMBO), 5,228.71 billion cubic feet of gas (BCFG) (equal to 5.228 trillion cubic feet of gas), and 121.68 million barrels of natural gas liquids (M MBNGL), respectively. There have been 8-eight petroleum systems identified underlying United States portions of the Great Lakes. These are the;

  1. Precambrian Nonesuch TPS
  2. Ordovi¬cian Foster TPS
  3. [Ordovician] Utica-Lower Paleozoic TPS
  4. Ordovician to Devonian Composite TPS
  5. Silurian Niagara/Salina TPS
  6. Devonian Antrim TPS
  7. Devonian Shale-Middle and Upper Paleozoic TPS
  8. Pennsylvanian Saginaw TPS.

Each of the above systems is named for the source rock(s) of that system and there is only one source rock for each of the listed systems except the Ordovician to Devonian Composite TPS, which is a composite petroleum system. The Ordovician to Devonian Composite TPS is made up of one or a combination of the following source rocks; the Ordovician Collingwood Shale, Devonian Detroit River Group, and the Devonian Antrim Shale. For more information, see the complete USGS fact sheet, Undiscovered Oil and Gas Resources Underlying the U.S. Portions of the Great Lakes, 2005, Fact Sheet 2006–3049, April 2006.


Extent of the Utica Shale Formation. Click on the gray compass rose to hide the legend.

This FracTracker snapshot of the extent of the Utica Shale shows that it underlays the major extent of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario in both United States and Canada territorial waters.

Guest Author

GASP Position on DEP Air Studies

/by

What We Can Learn From Pennsylvania DEP’s Marcellus Air Monitoring Studies

By Joe Osborne, Legal Director, Group Against Smog and Pollution

Last week the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection released a study of air quality around Marcellus Shale operations in northeastern Pennsylvania. Here are some typical headlines from articles on the study: “Pa. DEP study finds Marcellus air emissions OK,” “DEP Says Air Near Marcellus Drilling Sites Is Safe,” or even “DEP finds no health threat from Marcellus air emissions.”

If those headlines are accurate, why do GASP and other environmental organizations keep going on and on and on and on about the massive quantities of air pollution that result from natural gas production? Both can’t be true, right? So what explains the discrepancy?

Limitations of the DEP Studies

First, as DEP acknowledges, the data collected during this study simply is not sufficient to support the bold, sweeping claims found in headlines like those I listed above. This study, as well as a similar study from southwestern Pennsylvania.

DEP released last fall, selected a few sites where natural gas activity was occurring and conducted air monitoring at each of these sites for no more than 5 days. The goal was to determine if any of 44 specific pollutants DEP selected were present in the atmosphere in sufficient concentrations that breathing that air for a short period (generally somewhere between 1 hour and 24 hours) would pose a threat to human health. So already some of the studies’ limitations are clear: between these two studies DEP has conducted monitoring at only 8 natural gas sites, never monitored at any one site for more than 5 days, and ignored the risks of long-term exposure to these pollutants. Are these studies useful? Absolutely, but they don’t justify a sweeping conclusion that natural gas operations pose no risk to our air.

In fairness to the journalists who reported on the DEP’s study, I should also note that the majority of news stories on the DEP’s studies also mention these limitations, but you have to make it most of the way through the typical article before they’re mentioned. And while I’m being fair, I should also mention that DEP acknowledges these limitations in the executive summaries to both of these studies (though press releases and public statements are another matter, which I’ll get to in a moment):

“Due to the limited scope and duration of the sampling and the limited number of sources and facilities sampled, the findings only represent conditions at the time of the sampling and do not represent a comprehensive study of emissions. While this short-term sampling effort does not address the cumulative impact of air emissions from natural gas operations . . . the sampling results do provide basic information on the type of pollutants emitted to the atmosphere during selected phases of gas extraction operations in the Marcellus Shale formation.”

There are also problems with these studies that DEP does not acknowledge… Read more by GASP

Additional Resources

Matt Kelso, BA

EPA Releases Draft of Hydraulic Fracturing Study Plan

/by

The Environmental Protection Agency has submitted a draft of its Hydraulic Fracturing Study Plan, which is to be reviewed by the Science Advisory Board (SAB), a group of independent scientists that works with the agency.  According to the EPA’s news release, the focus of the study will be the lifespan of the water, from extraction to disposal of the waste water.

The 140 page draft has been made to the public. The SAB is scheduled to review the plan March 7th and 8th, and the plan will likely be edited based on their input.

Initial results of this study are expected by 2012, with an additional report due by 2014.

FracTracker Alliance

Do you like the new design of the blog?

/by

We would love your feedback about the new blog layout and design. Tell us what you think using the comment link.

FracTracker Alliance

Marcellus a Focus of the PA Progressive Summit

/by

January 22-23, 2011 marked the weekend for the PA Progressive Summit hosted in Pittsburgh, PA. Of the many speakers and topics, discussing the potential impacts of drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale was of high importance. In case you missed the conference, below are the various Marcellus presentations:

Conrad Volz |  Erika Staaf |  Steve Hvozdovich |  Jannette Barth

Guest Author

Salt mining and gas production: how are they related?

/by
Archived

This article has been archived and is provided for reference purposes only.

By Karen Edelstein, New York State FracTracker Liaison

One of New York State’s important industries has been the production of salt. Thick, uniform layers of salt were laid down hundreds of millions of years ago when ancient seas covered our region. When the seas receded or dried up, these salt beds were left behind. Beginning in 1812, salt production began along the shores of Onondaga Lake in Syracuse, New York, “The Salt City.” By the mid- to late-1800s, large-scale salt mining operations sprang up across the state; salt was discovered in the strata below Watkins Glen, NY in 1882. Using the process of solution mining, salt was brought to the surface by drilling wells into the Devonian rock strata. Hot water was pumped into the hole, and the resulting brine was brought to the surface to be evaporated. Over time, each bore hole enlarged into a cavern as more of the solid salt layer was dissolved and pumped out. Over time, over 600 brine solution wells have been drilled in New York State.By Karen Edelstein, New York State FracTracker Liaison


Today, salt is mined through more modern-style solution mining that uses sonar and other technologies to predict the inner dimensions and stability of the caverns created by the solution mining. In addition, salt is extracted from the ground as solid halite (primarily for road salt) at the Cargill Salt facility in Lansing, NY, along the shores of Cayuga Lake. The Cargill mine in Lansing is the deepest rock salt mine in North America, with more than 40 miles of horizontal tunnels all 2300 feet beneath Cayuga Lake. 2.5 million tons of rock salt is mined from this facility each year.

In and around Watkins Glen, NY, there are several salt mining operations, all of which are removing salt as brine. The combined layers of nearly pure salt beneath Watkins Glen are about 450 feet thick, and occur between 1500 and 1900 feet below the surface. The large plant at the south end of Seneca Lake is owned by Cargill. Further up the west side of the lake is the US Salt facility. Along this part of the Seneca Lake shore there are 62 brine wells, all but 6 of which are plugged and abandoned. Some of these abandoned wells date from prior to 1900.

But how is salt production tied to gas production? Brine wells have an additional use beyond the production of salt. They are also used for the storage of liquid petroleum gas. Because in its gaseous state, hydrocarbon fuel takes up a lot more space than it does as a liquid, the gas is pressurized for storage, and held underground until it’s ready to be used.

The proposed LP gas storage site, owned by the Kansas City-based company Inergy, is less than 3 miles north of Watkins Glen (population 2200), and will hold up to 2.1 million barrels of LP gas, pressurized at about 1000 psi. The property is in close proximity to existing gas and hazardous liquid pipeline infrastructure.

Soultion Brine Wells North of Watkins Glen, NY. Click on the blue “i” icon and then on one of the map features for more information.

Depending on demand, brine in the well will be drawn down to make room for the additional storage need, and pumped back down during the months of less demand. Critics of the project are strongly concerned about the construction of the impoundment that will contain the brine. Currently, the planned 92-million-gallon (2.19 million barrel) storage lagoon—1000 feet long, 382-608 feet wide and 32 feet deep, will be perched on a steep slope above Seneca Lake, the largest and deepest of the Finger Lakes. A 50-foot high wall on the downward sloping (8-12% grade) hillside will contain the brine.

A recent public information meeting on the project was held in Ithaca, NY on January 27, with presentations by Peter Mantius, a locally-based investigative journalist, and Thomas Shelley, a retired chemical safety and hazardous materials specialist. Mantius, a 3-time Pulitzer Prize nominee, lives in the Town of Burdett, just across Seneca Lake from the proposed LP gas storage facility. Finger Lakes LPG Storage, LLC proposes to construct and operate a new underground liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) facility there for the storage and distribution of propane and butane. The 576-acre site is located on NYS Routes 14 and 14A west of Seneca Lake in the Town of Reading, New York.

Mantius, who published his findings in October 2010 in the online blog DCbureau.org, noted that while LP gas is commonly stored underground, “…salt caverns have been more prone to catastrophic accidents than the other more common types of underground storage for natural gas or liquified petroleum gas, or LPG. A 2008 report by the British Geological Survey cited several salt cavern accidents, including an explosion caused by an LPG leak in Texas that registered 4 on the Richter Scale and killed three people.”

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation determined that a draft supplemental environmental impact statement (DSEIS) would be necessary for this project, and in advance of that process, published a draft scoping outline to guide the DSEIS on January 5, 2011. Interestingly, at least 2 individuals who own property adjacent to the proposed facility had only learned of the project within days of the January 27th meeting in Ithaca, barely affording them the opportunity to comment on the project within the allotted time window. The public comment period on the scoping document ended on January 31, 2011.

Clearly, there are concerns about catastrophic failures of both the brine pond impoundment, and the stability of the pressurized cavern itself. Education about the project has been strikingly slow to permeate the surrounding rural community and nearby Village of Watkins Glen. We’ll keep following this issue as it develops.