FracTracker Alliance

A successful 2019 Community Sentinel Award Reception- a full summary

/by

There are many courageous and determined individuals to be grateful for within the environmental movement. At the 2019 Community Sentinel Awards for Environmental Stewardship, we were graced with the presence of many such leaders, and celebrated four in particular as this year’s award winners. From those fighting LNG export terminals on the West Coast, to those resisting fracking expansion in the Marcellus Shale and other formations, to those shutting down petrochemical expansion in the Gulf Coast – thank you, Sentinels.

 

2019 Community Sentinel Award Reception

The Program on October 22nd

The 2019 reception and ceremony coincided with the oil and gas industry’s three-day Shale Insight Conference. The fighters and victims of dirty energy and petrochemical development were recognized as we opposed the nearby perpetrators of these harms. The event featured the keynote speaker Andrey Rudomakha, Director of Environmental Watch on North Caucasus, and inspirational emcee David Braun of Rootskeeper.

You can watch the full 2019 Awards Reception here:

 

More About the Awardees

  • Ron Gulla
    Mr. Ron Gulla has been a pivotal voice in fighting unconventional oil and gas development in Pennsylvania and beyond. After natural gas development destroyed his property in Canonsburg, PA in 2005, Mr. Gulla became an outspoken advocate for citizens and landowners facing the many harms of fracking.

    Mr. Gulla knows the industry well, having worked as an equipment supplier for various oil and gas operations. Like so many, he believed the industry crusade that touted energy independence and its promise of becoming a “shalionaire.”

    Four unconventional gas wells were installed on Mr. Gulla’s property from 2005 to 2008. As a result, his water source and soil were contaminated, as well as a nearby stream and pond. He immediately began speaking out about his experiences and warning people of the potential dangers of fracking. Soon, people from all over the state were reaching out to him to share their stories.

    Mr. Gulla became a central figure in informing and connecting people who were desperately looking for help. He has documented individuals’ stories for health studies and appropriate regulatory agencies, testified in front of the PA Department of Health and other official bodies, and he was instrumental in organizing letter campaigns with other affected landowners addressed to local district attorneys. These efforts resulted in a statewide investigation into many of these cases. He also has coordinated with local, state, and national news agencies to expose these critical issues.

    Mr. Gulla proactively engaged the media and brought like-minded people together to tell their stories. Without his relentless efforts, much of the progress made in exposing the oil and gas industry in Pennsylvania would not have been possible.

  • Sharon Lavigne

    Ms. Sharon Lavigne lives in the epicenter of the oil, gas, and petrochemical facilities in Louisiana. She is the founder of RISE St. James, a faith-based environmental and social justice organization dedicated to protecting St. James Parish from these toxic, cancer- causing industries. Her work is a matter of life or death — the 20 acres of land that Ms. Lavigne inherited from her grandfather is dead center of what is known today as “Cancer Alley.”

    The 4th and 5th Districts of St. James Parish are majority Black neighborhoods, and they were the only districts to be covertly rezoned from residential to “residential/future industrial.” The environmental racism could not be more pronounced. Ms. Lavigne is fighting to protect the health of all residents living along the 85-mile long Cancer Alley, from those in New Orleans to those in Baton Rouge. Industry and elected officials are intent on wiping historic Black communities off the map, but with Ms. Lavigne’s leadership, residents are rising up to protect their health, their home, and their future.

    At the heart of Ms. Lavigne’s work with RISE St. James is the demand for a moratorium on oil, gas, and petrochemical industry in St. James Parish. The district where Sharon lives has 2,822 people and 12 petrochemical plants — one plant for every 235 residents. Despite these staggering ratios, Formosa Plastics is trying to build a 14-plant petrochemical complex less than two miles from Ms. Lavigne’s home.

    After working tirelessly over the last year to educate and mobilize other residents, Ms. Lavigne and RISE St. James members recently celebrated their biggest victory yet: blocking a $1.5B Wanhua petrochemical plant from moving into St. James Parish and operating within a mile of residents’ homes. In Ms. Lavigne’s words, “This is our land, this is our home, and we are standing up together to defend it. St. James is rising.”

  • Allie Rosenbluth

    Ms. Allie Rosenbluth is a dedicated community activist who has spent years coordinating a huge grassroots rural coalition opposing Pembina’s proposed Jordan Cove LNG export terminal and Pacific Connector fracked gas pipeline in southern Oregon. She also recently traveled to Poland as a COP 24 delegate with SustainUS, a youth-led justice and sustainability advocacy group.

    For over a decade, the Jordan Cove LNG project has been threatening southern Oregonians with the prospect of a 36-inch pipeline stretching across four rural counties, 229 miles, and over 180 state waterways, ending in a massive methane liquefaction and export terminal in Coos Bay. Ms. Rosenbluth has worked incredibly hard to ensure that all those opposed to the project gets a chance to speak with their elected representatives about the project and make their voice heard in local, state, and federal permitting processes. She has coordinated efforts to generate tens of thousands of comments in state and federal agency comment periods to review the various environmental impacts of the project. This turnout has surpassed public participation records in such permitting processes.

    Ms. Rosenbluth’s efforts helped lead to a May 2019 denial from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality on a Clean Water Act permit needed to build the project, underlining the importance of state authority to defend water quality under Section 401 of the Clean Water Act, which the Trump Administration was simultaneously trying to weaken. She also helped mobilize over 3,000 rural Oregonians to attend four public hearings on the State Lands review of the project. Ms. Rosenbluth’s masterful coalition-building has helped unify people of all political persuasions, races, and ethnicities across the state to unify their opposition to fracked gas infrastructure in Oregon.

  • Melissa Troutman
    Ms. Melissa Troutman is co-founder of the investigative news nonprofit Public Herald as well as a research and policy analyst for Earthworks. Her work as a film director and journalist has redefined the landscape and narrative around fracking w, and her community organizing has led to major wins against the industry.

    Ms. Troutman’s Public Herald publications have seen widespread coverage. Her work has been referenced in the books Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America by Eliza Griswald; Legal Rights for Rivers: Competition, Collaboration and Water Governance by Erin O’Donnell; and Sustainability and the Rights of Nature: An Introduction by Cameron La Follette and Chris Maser. Her work has been cited in over 20 academic studies to date. Furthermore, Ms. Troutman has produced three award-winning documentary films on fracking: Triple Divide (2013), TRIPLE DIVIDE [REDACTED] (2017), and INVISIBLE HAND (2019). Her films continue to play an important role in the narrative surrounding fracking and democracy.

    In 2017, Ms. Troutman uncovered that 9,442 complaints related to oil and gas operations were never made public by the state. Her analysis of drinking water complaints revealed official misconduct by state officials that left families without clean water for months, even years. Consequently, Public Herald called for a criminal and civil investigation of the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection. In 2018, Ms. Troutman’s reporting on an untested fracking wastewater treatment facility at the headwaters of the Allegheny River was used by the Seneca Nation of Indians to shut down the project.

    Ms. Troutman’s tireless efforts are an inspiration to the environmental movement in Pennsylvania, across the country, and beyond.

Check out the Community Sentinels in action | Reception slideshow

Watch Video

Legacy of Heroes Recognition

  • Bill Hughes

    On March 25, 2019, Bill Hughes of Wetzel County, West Virginia, passed away at age 74. Mr. Hughes, an environmental defender extraordinaire and former FracTracker colleague, served on the County solid waste authority, where he consistently pushed back on accepting the radioactive waste of the fracking industry. For nearly a decade, Mr. Hughes documented and disseminated photographic evidence of the activities and effects of shale gas development, and in turn educated thousands of people on the negative impacts of this industry. Mr. Hughes also shared information via gas field tours, PowerPoint presentations to groups in five states, op-ed pieces written for news media, and countless responses to questions and inquiries.

    His legacy lives through the multitude of lives he enriched – from students, to activists, to everyday people. Bill was an omnipresent force for good, always armed with facts and a pervasive smile.

  • April Pierson-Keating

    April Pierson-Keating of Buckhannon, West Virginia, passed away on September 28, 2019, at age 52. Mrs. Pierson-Keating was the founder and director of Mountain Lakes Preservation Alliance, and a founding member of Preserve Our Water Heritage and Rights (POWHR). She was a board member of the Buckhannon River Watershed Association, the cancer research group ICARE, and the WV Environmental Council, and she was also a member of the Sierra Club, the WV Highlands Conservancy, and Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC). When one met Mrs. Pierson-Keating, one could not help noticing and absorbing her passion for environmental preservation.

    Mrs. Pierson-Keating received the Buckhannon BEST Award on May 14, 2019 in recognition of her commitment. Mayor David McCauley stated: “Mrs. Keating is a supreme protector of our environment. She is a lobbyist for clean water at both our state and federal governments, a participant in Buckhannon’s Community Unity & Kindness Day, the Equality March, the Science March, and other awareness activities… April Keating has helped us all in our B-U community to be happier and healthier in many ways.”

  • Ricky Allen Roles

    Ricky Allen Roles passed away at age 61 at his ranch in Silt, Colorado, on November 22, 2018. Mr. Roles was an adamant anti-fracking activist and spent many years fighting for safer oil and gas drilling and fracking regulations. He tirelessly fought to protect our earth’s sacred water and soil for the health and wellness of all living creatures. He is featured in books such as Fractivism and Collateral Damage, and documentaries including the Emmy Award winning film Split Estate and Oscar-nominated and Emmy-Award winning Gasland. He also bravely testified before Colorado’s Congress on the dangers of fracking.

    Mr. Roles shared how his and his livestock’s health precipitously declined with the drilling of 19 wells on his property. He experienced respiratory, immune, and nervous system problems. Despite his health problems,
    he strove to create awareness of the harmful impacts of fracking in his community and beyond. With those publications, his voice, beliefs and legacy will be heard forever.

  • John A. Trallo Sr.

    John A. Trallo, Sr., 67, of Sonestown, Pennsylvania passed away on August 13, 2019. Mr. Trallo was a dedicated environmental activist who contributed to several groups working on pressing environmental issues such as hydraulic fracturing. He was a brilliant man who earned three college degrees and a teaching certificates in two states. He asked hard questions and was adamant in keeping government officials accountable. Some of the groups he was involved with were: Responsible Drilling Alliance (RDA), Shale Justice, The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), PA Community Rights Network, and Organizations United for the Environment. Mr. Trallo left this planet a better place for future generations, and we honor his spirit by continuously working towards his noble vision.

 

Sponsors and Partners

The Sentinels’ program and reception requires financial support—for monetary awards, awardee travel, and many

Michele Fetting of the Breathe Project and and FracTracker Board Member introducing 2019 Sentinel Award Winner Sharon Lavigne

other costs. As such, each year we call upon dedicated sponsors and partners for resources to enable this endeavor to continue. The daily, often-thankless jobs of Community Sentinels working to protecting our health and the environment deserve no less. Thank you to this year’s incredible award sponsors: The Heinz Endowments, 11th Hour Project, Center for Coalfield Justice, and Foundation for PA Watersheds.

We extend a big thank you to the following award partners: Viable Industries, Indigenous Environmental Network, Oxfam, Rootskeeper, Food & Water Watch, STAND.earth, Halt the Harm Network, Sierra Club, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, Choose Clean Water Coalition, Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community, Mountain Watershed Association, Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, Earthworks, and FracTracker Alliance.

 

Nominees

The following 18 people were nominated by their peers to receive this distinguished award:

  • Laurie Barr – Coudersport, PA

    2019 Sentinel Award Winner Melissa Troutman with introducer Leanne Leiter of Earthworks

  • Kim Bonfardine – Elk County, PA
  • Kim Fraczek – New York, NY
  • Lisa Graves – Marcucci Washington, DC
  • Ron Gulla – Canonsburg, PA*
  • Leatra Harper – Bowling Green, OH
  • Maury Johnson – Greenville, WV
  • Theresa Landrum – Detroit, MI
  • Sharon Lavigne – St. James, Louisiana*
  • Sara Loflin – Erie, CO
  • Ann Pinca – Lebanon, PA
  • Randi Pokladnik – Uhrichsville, OH
  • Patricia Popple – Chippewa Falls, WI
  • Bev Reed – Bridgeport, OH
  • Allie Rosenbluth – Medford, OR*
  • Bob Schmetzer – South Heights, PA
  • Yvonne Taylor – Watkins Glen, NY
  • Melissa Troutman – Pittsburgh, PA*

* Denotes 2018 award recipient

Judges

Many thanks to the following judges for giving their time to review all of the nominations.

  • Mariah Davis – Choose Clean Water Coalition
  • Brenda Jo McManama – Indigenous Environmental Network
  • Kathleen Brophy – Oxfam
  • Dr. Pamela Calla – New York University
  • Matt Krogh – STAND.earth

2019 Sentinel Award Winner Ron Gulla

 

Ethan Buckner of Earthworks introducing 2019 Sentinel Award Winner Sharon Lavigne

 

Keynote Speaker Andrey Rudomakha, Director of Environmental Watch on North Caucasus, with translator Kate Watters, Co-founder & Executive Director

 

Support this work

DONATE

Stay in the know

Intern FracTracker

How State Regulations Hold Us back and What Other Countries are doing about Fracking

/by

By Isabelle Weber, FracTracker Alliance Spring 2019 Intern 

Feature photo of oil and gas drilling in North Dakota, and is by by Nick Lund, NPCA, 2014

 

Although there are some federal regulations in place to protect the environment indirectly from fracking in the United States, the regulations that try to keep fracking in check are largely implemented at the state governing level. This has led to a patchwork of regulations that differ in strictness from state to state. This leads to the concern that there will be a race to the bottom where states lower the strictness of their regulations in order to draw in more fracking. While it might be tempting to welcome an industry that often creates a temporary economic spike, the costs of mitigating the environmental damage from fracking far out-weighs the profit gained. Germany, Scotland, and France are examples of countries that have taken more appropriate regulatory measures to protect their populations from the risks involved in unconventional oil and gas development.

The Shortfalls of State by State Regulations

For a detailed overview of how fracking regulation differs between states, check out the Resources for the Future report, The State of State Shale Gas Regulation, which analyzes 25 regulatory elements and how they differ between states. Two of their maps that attest to this vast difference in regulation are the “Fracturing Fluid Disclosure Requirements” map as well as the “Venting Regulations” map.

The “Fracturing Fluid Disclosure Requirements” map shows regulatory differences between states regarding whether or not the chemical mixture used to break up rock formations must be made known to the public. “Disclosure” means that the chemical mixture is made known to the public and “No Regulation” means that there is nothing that obligates companies to share this information, which usually implies this information is not available.

Fig 1. Map of fracking fluid disclosure requirements by state, from Resources for the Future’s report, “The State of State Shale Gas Regulation.” Original data from US Energy Information Administration.

 

Note from the editor: There are several exemptions that allow states to limit the scope of reporting chemicals used in underground fluid injection for fracking. For example, all states that require chemical disclosure are entitled to exemptions for chemicals that are considered trade secrets.  

Concealing the identity of chemicals increases the risk of harm from chemical exposure for people and the environment. Emergency first responders are especially at risk, as they may have to act quickly to put out a fracking-induced fire without knowing the safety measures necessary to avoid exposure to dangerous chemicals. The population at large is at risk of exposure though several pathways such as leaks, spills, and air emissions. Partnership for Policy Integrity, along with data analysis by FracTracker, investigated the implications of keeping the identity of certain fracking chemicals secret in two states, Ohio and Pennsylvania. These reports point to evidence that exposure to concealed fracking chemicals could have serious health effects including blood toxicity, developmental toxicity, liver toxicity and neurotoxicity.

 

The second map, “Venting Regulations,” shows which states have regulations that limit or ban venting and which do not. Venting is the direct release of methane from the well site into the atmosphere. Methane has 30 times the green-house gas effect as carbon dioxide. Given methane’s severe impact on the environment, no venting whatsoever should be allowed at well sites.

Fig 2. Map of fracking venting regulations by state, from Resources for the Future’s report, “The State of State Shale Gas Regulation.” Original data from US Energy Information Administration.

Having overarching federal regulatory infrastructure to regulate fracking would help to avoid risks such as toxic chemical exposure and accelerated climate change. Although leaving regulation development to states allows for more specialized laws, there are certain aspects of environmental protection that apply to every area in the United States and are necessary as standard protection against the effects of fracking.

How do other countries regulate fracking?

Stronger federal regulation of fracking has worked well in the past and can be seen in several other countries.

Germany

In 2017, Germany passed new legislation that largely banned unconventional hydraulic fracking. The ban on unconventional fracking excludes four experimental wells per state that will be commissioned by the German government to an independent expert commission to identify knowledge gaps and risks with regards to fracking. Conventional fracking also received tighter regulations including a ban on fracking near drinking water sources. In 2021, the ban will be reevaluated, taking into account research results, public perception, long term damage to residents and the environment, and technological advances. This is a perfect example of how a country can use overarching federal regulation to make informed decisions about industry action.

Scotland

In 2015, Scotland placed a moratorium into effect that halted all fracking in the country. Since 2017, the government has held that the moratorium will stand indefinitely as an effective ban on fracking in the country, but the country is still working on the legislature that will officially ban fracking. Meanwhile, the Scottish government conducted one of the most far-reaching investigations into unconventional oil and gas development, which included a four-month public consultation period. This public consultation garnered 65,000 responses, 65% of which were from former coal mining communities targeted by the fracking industry. Of those responses, 99% of responses opposed fracking.

The Scottish people should be applauded for holding their federal government accountable in fulfilling its responsibility to protect its people and its environment against the effects of fracking.

France

In December 2017, France passed a law that bans exploration and production of all oil and natural gas by the year 2040. This applies to mainland France as well as all French territories. Although France has limited natural gas resources, it is hoped that the ban will be contagious and spread to other countries. This is a prime example of a country making a decision to protect their environment through regulation.

Although France’s banning of fracking was largely symbolic and may not result in a considerable reduction of greenhouse gases related to natural gas exploration, the country is sending a message to the world that we need to facilitate the end of the fossil fuel era and a move toward renewables.

Back to the US, the world’s leading producer of natural gas

Federal regulation on fracking should be holding the oil and gas industry in check by requiring states to meet basic measures to protect people and the environment. States could then develop more stringent regulations as they see fit. It is important that we come to a national consensus on the environmental and health hazards of fracking, and consequently, to adopt appropriate federal regulations.


By Isabelle Weber, FracTracker Alliance Spring 2019 Intern

Support this work

DONATE

Stay in the know

Karen Edelstein

Want Not, Waste Not? Fossil Fuel Extraction’s Waste Disposal Challenges

/by

Pennsylvania’s fracking industry is producing record amounts of toxic waste — where does it all go?

Drilling for methane and other fossil fuels is an energy-intensive process with many associated environmental costs. In addition to the gas that is produced through high volume hydraulic fracturing (“unconventional drilling,” or “fracking”), the process generates a great deal of waste at the drill site. These waste products may include several dozen tons of drill cutting at every well that is directionally drilled, in addition to liner materials, contaminated soil, fracking fluid, and other substances that must be removed from the site.

In 2018, Pennsylvania’s oil and gas industry (including both unconventional and conventional wells) produced over 2.9 billion gallons (nearly 69 million barrels) of liquid waste, and 1,442,465 tons of solid waste. In this article, we take a look at where this waste (and its toxic components) end up and how waste values have changed in recent years. We also explore how New York State, despite its reputation for being anti-fracking, isn’t exempt from the toxic legacy of this industry.

Waste that comes back to haunt us

According to a study by Physicians, Scientists and Engineers, over 80% of all waste from oil and gas drilling stays within the state of Pennsylvania. But once drilling wastes are sent to landfills, is that the end of them? Absolutely not!

Drilling waste also gets into the environment through secondary means. According to a recent report by investigative journalists at Public Herald, on average, 800,000 tons of fracking waste from Pennsylvania is sent to Pennsylvania landfills. When this waste is sent to landfills, radioactivity and other chemicals can percolate through the landfill, and are collected as leachate, which is then shipped to treatment plants.

Public Herald documented how fourteen sewage treatment plants in Pennsylvania have been permitted by Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP) to process and discharge radioactive wastes into more than a dozen Pennsylvania waterways.

Public Herald’s article includes an in-depth analysis of the issue. Their work is supported by a map of the discharge sites, created by FracTracker.

Trends over time

Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection maintains a rich database of oil and gas waste and production records associated with their Oil and Gas Reporting Website. The changes in waste disposal from Pennsylvania’s unconventional drilling reveal a number of interesting stories.

Let’s look first at overall unconventional drilling waste.

According to data from the federal Energy Information Administration, gas production in Pennsylvania began a steep increase around 2010, with the implementation of high volume hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale (see Figure 1). The long lateral drilling techniques allowed industry to exploit exponentially more of the tight shale via single well than was ever before possible with conventional, vertical drilling.

Figure 1. Data summary from FracTracker.org, based on EIA data.

The more recently an individual well is drilled, the more robust the production. We see an overall increase in gas production over time in Pennsylvania over the past decade. Paradoxically, the actual number of new wells drilled each year in the past 4-5 years are less than half of the number drilled in 2011 (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Data summary from FracTracker.org, based on PA DEP data

Why is this? The longer laterals —some approaching 3 miles or more—associated with new wells allow for more gas to be extracted per site.

With this uptick in gas production values from the Marcellus and Utica Formations come more waste products, including copious amounts drilling waste, “produced water,” and other byproducts of intensive industrial operations across PA’s Northern Tier and southwestern counties.

Comparing apples and oranges?

When we look at the available gas production data compared with data on waste products from the extraction process, some trends emerge. First of all, it’s readily apparent that waste production does not track directly with gas production in a way one would expect.

Recall that dry gas production has increased annually since 2006 (see Figure 1). However, the reported waste quantities from industry have not followed that same trend.

In the following charts, we’ve split out waste from unconventional drilling by solid waste in tons (Figure 3) and liquid waste, in barrels (Figure 4).

Figure 3: Annual tonnage of solid waste from the unconventional oil and gas industry, organized by the state it is disposed in. Data source: PA DEP, processed by FracTracker Alliance

Figure 4: Annual volume of liquid waste from the unconventional oil and gas development, organized by state it is disposed in. One barrel is equivalent to 42 gallons. Data source: PA DEP, processed by FracTracker Alliance

Note the striking difference in disposal information for solid waste, compared with liquid waste, coming from Pennsylvania.

“Disposal Location Unknown”

Until just the last year, often more than 50% of the known liquid waste generated in PA was disposed of at unknown locations. The PA DEP waste report lists waste quantity and method for these unknown sites, depending on the year: “Reuse without processing at a permitted facility,” “Reuse for hydraulic fracturing,” “Reuse for diagnostic purposes,” “Reuse for drilling or recovery,” “Reuse for enhanced recovery,” and exclusively in more recent years (2014-2016), “Reuse other than road-spreading.”

In 2011, of the 20.5 million barrels of liquid waste generated from unconventional drilling, about 56% was allegedly reused on other drilling sites. However, over 9 million barrels—or 44% of all liquid waste—were not identified with a final destination or disposal method. Identified liquid waste disposal locations included “Centralized treatment plant for recycle,” which received about a third of the non-solid waste products.

In 2012, the quantity of the unaccounted-for fracking fluid waste dropped to about 40%. By 2013, the percentage of unaccounted waste coming from fracking fluid dropped to just over 21%, with nearly 75% coming from produced fluid, which is briny, but containing fewer “proprietary”—typically undisclosed—chemicals.

By 2017, accounting had tightened up further. PA DEP data show that 99% of all waste delivered to undisclosed locations was produced fluid shipped to locations outside of Pennsylvania. By 2018, all waste disposal was fully accounted for, according to DEP’s records.

In looking more closely at the data, we see that:

  1. Prior to 2018, well drillers did not consistently report the locations at which produced water was disposed of or reused. Between 2012 and 2016, a greater volume of unconventional liquid waste went unaccounted for than was listed for disposal in all other locations, combined.
  2. In Ohio, injection wells, where liquid waste is injected into underground porous rock formations, accounted for the majority of the increase in waste accepted there: 2.9 million barrels in 2017, and 5.7 million barrels in 2018 (a jump of 97%).
  3. West Virginia’s acceptance of liquid waste increased  significantly in 2018 over 2017 levels, a jump of over a million barrels, up from only 55,000. This was almost entirely due to unreported reuse at well pads.
  4. In 2018, reporting, in general, appears to be more thorough than it was in previous years. For example, in 2017, nearly 692,000 barrels of waste were reused at well pads outside PA, but those locations were not disclosed. Almost 7000 more barrels were also disposed of at unknown locations. In 2018, there were no such ambiguities.

A closer look at Pennsylvania’s fracking waste shipped to New York State

Despite a reputation for being resistant to the fracking industry, for most of this decade, the state of New York has been accepting considerable amounts of fracking waste from Pennsylvania. The greatest percentage shipped to New York State is in the form of drilling waste solids that go to a variety of landfills throughout Central and Western New York.

Looking closely at the bar charts above, it’s easy to notice that the biggest recipients of Pennsylvania’s unconventional liquid drilling waste are Pennsylvania itself, Ohio, as well as a significant quantity of unaccounted-for barrels between 2011 and 2016 (“Disposal location unknown”). The data for disposal of solid waste in New York tells a different story, however. In this case, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York State all play a role. We’ll take a look specifically at the story of New York, and illustrate the data in the interactive map that follows.

In this map, source locations in Pennsylvania are symbolized with the same color marker as the facility in New York that received the waste from the originating well pad. In the “Full Screen” view, use the “Layers” drop down menu to turn on and off data from separate years.

View map full screen | How FracTracker maps work

Solid waste transported to New York State

From the early days of unconventional drilling in Pennsylvania, New York State’s landfills provided convenient disposal sites due to their proximity to the unconventional drilling occurring in Pennsylvania’s Northern tier of counties. Pennsylvania and Ohio took the majority of solid wastes from unconventional drilling waste from Pennsylvania. New York State, particularly between 2011-2015, was impacted far more heavily than all other states, combined (Figure 5, below).

Figure 5: Known disposal locations (excluding PA and OH) of Pennsylvania’s solid waste. Data source: PA DEP, processed by FracTracker Alliance

Here’s the breakdown of locations in New York to where waste was sent. Solid waste disposal into New York’s landfills also dropped by half, following the state’s ban on unconventional drilling in 2014. Most of the waste after 2012 went to the Chemung County Landfill in Lowman, New York, 10 miles southeast of Elmira.

Figure 6: Solid waste from unconventional drilling, sent to facilities in NYS. Data source: PA DEP, processed by FracTracker Alliance

Is waste immobilized once it’s landfilled?

The fate of New York State’s landfill leachate that originates from unconventional drilling waste is a core concern, since landfill waste is not inert. If drilling waste contains radioactivity, fracking chemicals, and heavy metals that percolate through the landfill, and the resulting leachate is sent to municipal wastewater treatment plants, will traditional water treatment methods remove those wastes? If not, what will be the impact on public and environmental health in the water body that receives the “treated” wastewater? In Pennsylvania, for example, a case is currently under investigation relating to pollution discharges into the Monongahela River near Pittsburgh. “That water was contaminated with diesel fuels, it’s alleged, carcinogens and other pollutants,” said Rich Bower, Fayette County District Attorney.

Currently, a controversial expansion of the Hakes Landfill in Painted Post, New York is in the news. Sierra Club and others were concerned about oversight of radium and radon in the landfill’s leachate and air emissions, presumably stemming from years of receiving drill cuttings. The leachate from the landfill is sent to the Bath Wastewater Treatment plant, which is not equipped to remove radioactivity. “Treated” wastewater from the plant is then discharged into the Cohocton River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. In April 2019, these environmental groups filed a law suit against Hakes C&D Landfill and the Town of Campbell, New York, in an effort to block the expansion.

Similar levels of radioactivity in leachate have also been noted in leachate produced at the Chemung County Landfill, according to Gary McCaslin, President of People for a Healthy Environment, Inc.

In recent years, much of the solid unconventional waste arriving in New York State has gone to the Chemung County Landfill (see Figure 6, above). Over the course of several years, this site requested permission to expand significantly from 180,000 tons per year to 417,000 tons per year. However, by 2016, the expansion was deemed unnecessary, and according, the plans were put on hold, in part “…because of a decline in the amount of waste being generated due to a slower economy and more recycling than when the expansion was first planned years ago.” The data in Figure 5 above also parallel this story, with unconventional drilling waste disposed in New York State dropping from over 200,000 tons in 2011 to just over 20,000 tons in 2018.

Liquid waste transported to New York State

The story about liquid unconventional drilling waste exported from Pennsylvania to states other than Ohio is not completely clear (see Figure 7, below). Note that the data indicate more than a 2000% increase in waste liquids going from Pennsylvania to West Virginia after 2017. While it has not been officially documented, FracTracker has been anecdotally informed that a great deal of waste was already going to West Virginia, but that the record-keeping prior to 2018 was simply not strongly enforced.

Figure 7: Known disposal locations (excluding Pennsylvania and Ohio) of Pennsylvania’s liquid waste. Data source: PA DEP, processed by FracTracker Alliance

Beginning in the very early years of the Pennsylvania unconventional fracking boom, a variety of landfills in New York State have also accepted liquid wastes originating in Pennsylvania, including produced water and flowback fluids (see Figure 8, below).

Figure 8: Liquid waste from unconventional drilling, sent to facilities in New York State. Data source: PA DEP, processed by FracTracker Alliance

In addition, while this information doesn’t even appear in the PA DEP records (which are publicly available back to 2010), numerous wastewater treatment plants did accept some quantity, despite being fully unequipped to process the highly saline waste before it was discharged back into the environment.

One such facility was the wastewater treatment plant in Cayuga Heights, Tompkins County, which accepted more than 3 million gallons in 2008. Another was the wastewater treatment plant in Auburn, Cayuga County, where the practice of accepting drilling wastewater was initially banned in July 2011, but the decision was reversed in March 2012 to accept vertical drilling waste, despite strong public dissent. Another wastewater treatment plant in Watertown, Jefferson County, accepted 35,000 gallons in 2009.

Fortunately, most New York State wastewater treatment plant operators were wise enough to not even consider adding a brew of unknown and/or proprietary chemicals to their wastewater treatment stream. Numerous municipalities and several counties banned fracking waste, and once the ban on fracking in New York State was instituted in 2014, nearly all importation of liquid unconventional drilling waste into the state ceased.

Nevertheless, conventional, or vertical well drilling also generates briny produced water, which the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) permits communities in New York to accept for ice and dust control on largely rural roads. These so-called “beneficial use determinations” (BUDs) of liquid drilling waste have changed significantly over the past several years. During the height of the Marcellus drilling in around 2011, all sorts of liquid waste was permitted into New York State (see FracTracker’s map of affected areas) and was spread on roads. As a result, the chemicals—many of them proprietary, of unknown constituents, or radioactive—were indirectly discharged into surface waters via roadspreading.

Overall, in the years after the ban in 2014 on high volume hydraulic fracturing was implemented, restrictions on Marcellus waste coming into New York have strengthened. Very little liquid waste entered New York’s landfills after 2013, and what did come in was sent to a holding facility owned by Environmental Services of Vermont. This facility is located outside Syracuse, New York.

New York State says “no” to this toxic legacy

Fortunately, not long after these issues of fracking fluid disposal at wastewater treatment facilities in New York State came to light, the practice was terminated on a local level. The 2014 ban on fracking in New York State officially prevented the disposal of Marcellus fluids in municipal wastewater treatment facilities and required extra permits if it were to be road-spread.

In New York State, the State Senate—after 8 years of deadlock—in early May 2019, passed key legislation that would close a loophole that had previously allowed dangerous oil and gas waste to bypass hazardous waste regulation. Read the press release from Senator Rachel May’s office here. However, despite strong support from both the Senate, and the Assembly, as well as many key environmental groups, the Legislature adjourned for the 2019 session without bringing the law to a final vote. Said Elizabeth Moran, of the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), “I want to believe it was primarily a question of timing… Sadly, a dangerous practice is now going to continue for at least another year.”

 

See Earthworks’ recent three part in-depth reporting on national, New York, and Pennsylvania oil and gas waste, with mapping support by FracTracker Alliance.

All part of the big picture

As long as hydrocarbon extraction continues, the issues of waste disposal—in addition to carbon increases in the atmosphere from combustion and leakage—will result in impacts on human and environmental health. Communities downstream and downwind will bear the brunt of landfill expansions, water contamination, and air pollution. Impacts of climate chaos will be felt globally, with the greatest impacts at low latitudes and in the Arctic.

Transitioning to net-zero carbon emissions cannot be a gradual endeavor. Science has shown that in order to stay under the 1.5 °C warming targets, it must happen now, and it requires the governmental buy-in to the Paris Climate Agreement by every economic power in the world.

No exceptions. Life on our planet requires it.

We have, at most, 12 years to make a difference for generations to come.

By Karen Edelstein, Eastern Program Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance

Support this work

DONATE

Stay in the know

Guest Author

Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services

/by

Guest Blog by Josh Eisenfeld, Director of Marketing with Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services

 

Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services looks maps the origin of their intake calls and reflects on their geographic distribution as it relates to areas with heavy environmental burdens.

 

Over the last five years, Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services has worked in Ohio and Pennsylvania to promote environmental justice by providing legal services at income-based rates. Our service area has a long history of extraction, from timbering, conventional drilling for oil, multiple forms of mining, and unconventional drilling for natural gas. Because of our proximity to these resources, we also have a long history of industrial manufacturing, which can be evidenced by the many oil refineries, steel production facilities, power plants, cement factories, factory farms, and chemical production facilities. Fair Shake offers counsel and representation in environmental law with accessible, sliding scale fees, and we receive a continuous stream of phone calls from those on the front lines. We were curious to see if our intake calls correlated with geographic areas with heavy environmental burdens in order to allocate our limited resources to those regions most efficiently.

With the help of Ted Auch from FracTracker Alliance we collected zip codes from nearly 600 of intake calls received by Fair Shake and placed them on the map below.

 

View map fullscreen | How FracTracker maps work

In general, our intakes in Pennsylvania mirror the Marcellus Shale formation. Over the last decade and a half, technical advancements in drilling have transformed the Marcellus Shale formation from a nonproducing region to the largest producing natural gas formation by volume in the world. Entering 2005, only 13 “unconventional” wells had been drilled in the Marcellus Shale region of Pennsylvania, where today there are roughly 12,000 wells according to FracTracker’s PA Shale Viewer Map. Reduced regulations for unconventional drilling and infrastructure have facilitated this rush for production, resulting in an influx of compressor stations, gathering lines, pump stations, processing plants, wastewater impoundments, wastewater treatment facilities, wastewater injection wells, and more.

We believe that this map indicates that these 12,000 wells place a significant burden on residents living within this region. Speaking broadly, reduced regulation has left loopholes in major environmental laws that have to get justice when their rights have been violated and, even more concerning, when harm has occurred.

One of the most prominent manifestations of this burden is the contamination of private drinking water sources near drilling and wastewater sites. Our region’s history of extraction and industrial enterprise and the pollution associated with these industries makes it extremely difficult to prove, in court, that drilling activity is the sole cause of damage to private wells. The fact is that our groundwater (and therefore private drinking wells) has been contaminated over and over again. Polluters use this to their advantage, leaning on the uncertainty of what caused the contaminants in question to get there. Simply put, water contamination is not a question of whether contaminants exist (they do) it’s a question of how can you prove that it was a given industry when there are many other possible culprits.

One thing we do know is that the number of reports for well contamination has increased in conjunction with the increase in drilling activity. The graph below, created by FracTracker and The Public Herald, shows the correlation of wells drilled, complaints to the Department of Environmental Protection, and complaints specifically about water.

 

 

Upon closer examination of the intake map, we saw a higher density of cases in more populated areas of Allegheny County, which actually has very little fracking activity (less than 170 drilled wells). But Allegheny is also one of the most polluted counties in America. The American Lung Association gave the county all F’s on its air quality and ranked it as 7th worst air quality in the nation according to the association’s state of the air. Allegheny County is also home to two of the most polluted rivers in our country: the Monongahela and the Ohio. Over a century of industrial activity and coal mining have impaired the water but most recently sewer overflows from the city of Pittsburgh have sent dangerous levels of raw sewage into the surrounding waterways.

The population density combined with the very poor air and water quality could be the explanation for the anomaly. Furthermore, Allegheny County is also where our Pittsburgh office is located, which is perhaps the reason that we see so many cases in this region and not in other regions of high population density such as Philadelphia, Harrisburg, or Scranton.

When we started this project, we thought we would discover a correlation between intakes and regions with the heaviest environmental burdens. This could allow us to allocate our limited resources to those regions most efficiently. Unfortunately, the problem is not so simple.

As evidenced by the intake map, resource extraction in Ohio and Pennsylvania is spread over a very large area. That is troubling because the bigger the problem geographically the harder it becomes to deal with. We need to devote far more resources to protecting individuals who face spills, emissions, erosion, impacts to wetland, etc. By speaking more openly about how pervasive these environmental risks are, and how that risk plays into the bigger picture of the climate emergency, we hope we can incite folks to give their time, effort, and resources to defending their health and environment.


By Josh Eisenfeld, Marketing Director at Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services

Support this work

DONATE

Stay in the know