FracTracker in the news and press releases

Matt Kelso, BA

Abandoned Well Suspected in McKean County Explosion

/by

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) thinks this February 28, 2011 gas explosion might have been caused by one of three abandoned gas wells in the vicinity. Photo by Jay Braddish

Luckily, Thomas Federspiel of Bradford Township in McKean County Pennsylvania was outside of his home when it suddenly exploded on February 28, 2011. He was able to rescue his dogs, too, but his house didn’t fare as well, taking an estimated $250,000 in damages, according to the Erie Times-News.

This fire, combined with a similar incident on December 12, 2010 have gotten the attention of U.S. Senator Bob Casey, who urged federal input into the investigation, which he suspected might be due to recent gas drilling operations:

While investigations are ongoing, the initial determinations are that these harrowing incidents were not caused by any gas utility issue. Rather, it appears that the gas may have migrated from deep underground during periods of high barometric pressure coupled with seismic activity and extensive new deep drilling activities.

The DEP recently suggested that the issue might be related to abandoned wells in the area, rather than new gas drilling activities. Three nearby uncapped abandoned wells were discovered, all of which are at least 90 years old. The well that the DEP considers to be a suspect in the February explosion, Rogers 9, was drilled in 1881.

Wells are considered to be abandoned if they have been out of production for twelve months.

FracTracker Alliance

Dr. Volz presented potential impacts of shale gas extraction at EPA hearings

/by

As part of the U.S. EPA’s investigation into the safety of hydraulic fracturing, a process used to extract natural gas from underground, CHEC’s director Conrad Dan Volz, DrPH, MPH presented at the U.S. EPA’s Hydraulic Fracturing Study Technical Workshop 3, Fate and Transport on March 28 and 29, 2011. Extended Abstract | Presentation

FracTracker Alliance

PA environment chief now must approve any shale-drilling citations

/by

Repost from Philadelphia Inquirer

In an unprecedented policy shift, inspectors in Pennsylvania have been ordered to stop issuing violations against drillers without prior approval from Gov. Corbett’s new environmental chief.The change, ordered last week in response to complaints by the drilling industry and its supporters in the Pennsylvania legislature, dismayed ground-level staff in the Department of Environmental Protection and drew a chorus of outrage from environmental advocates. Read more.

May 3, 2011 Update: The DEP has completely rolled back the need for the chief’s approval prior to citing violations. Read more.

Matt Kelso, BA

SRBC Water Withdrawal Permits and Water Quality Monitoring

/by

March 2011 SRBC Water Withdrawals (small)
Susquehanna River Basin Commission water withdrawal permits issued on March 10, 2011. Please click the image for a larger, more dynamic view.

Water Withdrawals

On March 24th, the Susquehanna River Basin Commission released notes about the public portion of their quarterly Commission meeting, which included a variety of water withdrawal permits. Specific locations were not included in the report, so the geographic information available on our DataTool is approximate.


March 2011 SRBC Water Withdrawals by Source Type. Please click the information tool (“i” button) then a map feature for more information. Please click on the gray compass rose and double carat (^) to hide those menus.


Water permits issued by the Susquehanna River Basin Commission at their March 2011 quarterly meeting by water source type, in millions of gallons per day.


March 2011 SRBC Water Withdrawals by Industry Type. Please click the information tool (“i” button) then a map feature for more information. Please click on the gray compass rose and double carat (^) to hide those menus.


Water permits issued by the Susquehanna River Basin Commission at their March 2011 quarterly meeting by applicant’s industry type, in millions of gallons per day.

The financial sector in the chart above is represented by Peoples Financial Services. Their own company website is almost completely useless, but the New York Times explains that they are a commercial and retail bank, primarily active in Susquehanna and Wyoming counties. There is no reason to think that a regional bank would go through a million gallons of water a day, so their permit request seems likely to be on behalf of one of their clients.

The total permitted amount approved on March 10, 2011 is 15.695 million gallons per day. According to the American Water Works Association, the average daily per capita residential water usage is 69.3 gallons, meaning that the water permits approved in the Susquehanna River Basin this month is the equivalent to the water usage of 226,479 people.

Remote Water Quality Monitoring Network

While we are discussing the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, they have an interesting tool called the Remote Water Quality Monitoring Network, which is a collection of solar powered water monitoring stations, and provides real time data for pH, conductance, dissolved oxygen, and turbidity. In browsing this for a moment or two, the pH level for Canacadea Creek near Almond, NY stuck out. It’s value of 3.87 is acidic enough to kill most fish and macroinvertebrates. The tool also has historic data, which shows that a month and a half ago, the pH from the same location was up at 8.79 pH units.

While I certainly hope that the SRBC and other authorities in New York figure out what’s going on in Canacadea Creek, I applaud the transparency that the Remote Water Quality Monitoring Network brings to the table. In the 21st Century, residents should have access to tools of this nature to alert them to real-time environmental challenges in their own communities.

Matt Kelso, BA

Greene County Man Charged with Wastewater Dumping

/by
Archived

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

 

The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office released a statement yesterday, saying that criminal charges have been filed against Robert Allen Shipman from Green County and his company, Allen’s Waste Water Services, Inc., for allegedly dumping millions of gallons of waste, including gas drilling waste, in six southwestern Pennsylvania counties between 2003 and 2009. There are 98 charges against him personally, and an addtional 77 counts against his company.

The grand jury and Acting Pennsylvania Attorney General William H. Ryan, Jr. allege that Mr. Shipman’s company operated in the following manner:

  • Drivers were instructed to mix several waste types, obscuring the actual contents, allowing for easier disposal
  • Destroying original manifests with forged ones, in order to overcharge customers
  • Leaving valves open on trucks at gas wells after dark or in rainy periods, in order to illegally dump wastewater onto the ground
  • Dumping into a drain at a Allan’s Waste Water Services facility, which drains directly into a stream

According to the Post Gazette, Mr. Shipman has posted a $50,000 bond, and Allan’s Waste Water Services is open for business.

If convicted, Mr. Shipman could face jail time and fines up to $1.5 million and another $1.2 million for his company. According to the Post-Gazette article, Mr. Shipman’s operation earned him up to $7 million per year.

A preliminary hearing has been set for March 25th in Greene County.

Matt Kelso, BA

Quebec Bans Hydraulic Fracturing for Oil and Gas

/by

According to the Montreal Gazette, Quebec’s Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE) has banned the hydraulic fracturing technique of stimulating oil and gas wells throughout the province.

Details are not yet posted on the English section of the BAPE website. According to the article, the ban is in place immediately, but does not affect the 31 wells which have already been drilled. Additionally, hydraulic fracturing can be conducted if it is determined by a panel of experts to be for scientific purposes.

Matt Kelso, BA

Two Tales of Radioactivity

/by

There’s a disagreement brewing about whether or not there are radioactive materials in the Marcellus Shale wastewater. On February 26, 2011, Ian Urbina’s New York Times article reported:

Of more than 179 wells producing wastewater with high levels of radiation, at least 116 reported levels of radium or other radioactive materials 100 times as high as the levels set by federal drinking-water standards. At least 15 wells produced wastewater carrying more than 1,000 times the amount of radioactive elements considered acceptable.



Gross Alpha Particles. This map is based on the Pennsylvania wells which were reported to have high levels of radiation by the New York Times on February 26, 2011.  Please click the “i” icon and then one of the wells above for more information.  Please click the gray compass rose and double carat (^) to hide those menus.

On March 7, 2011, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued a statement that would appear to contradict the New York Times data.  According to Acting DEP Secretary Michael Krancer, the situation is as follows:

We deal in facts based on sound science. Here are the facts: all samples were at or below background levels of radioactivity; and all samples showed levels below the federal drinking water standard for Radium 226 and 228.

Can Both Claims Be True?

Of the apparent discrepancy, the Marcellus Drilling News had this blunt proclamation:

It seems that The New York Times’ contention that Pennsylvania is poisoning waterways with radioactivity from Marcellus Shale wastewater was fiction and not science, as is now proven by test results from the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

But sound-byte media wars aside, there isn’t necessarily any discrepancy at all. As is usually the case, the devil is in the details.

First of all, it is important to understand that the two organizations are referencing entirely different datasets. More to the point, while the New York Times data is about the produced water itself, the DEP report tested river water. What’s more, in a follow-up article on March 7th, Mr. Urbina wrote:

The Times found that samples taken by the state in the Monongahela River — a source of drinking water for parts of Pittsburgh — came from a point upstream from the two sewage treatment plants on that river. The state has said those plants are still accepting significant quantities of drilling waste.

Because that sampling site is upstream, the discharges from those two plants are not captured by the state’s monitoring plans.

With this perspective, the Marcellus Drilling News’ harsh words come across as misguided. While the DEP statement seems to have been carefully worded to give the illusion of countering the claims raised by Mr. Urbina’s article, in fact, it does no such thing.

CHEC’s Perspective

In Mr. Urbina’s March 7th article, Center for Healthy Environments and Communities (CHEC)(1) Director Conrad Volz, DrPH, MPH said:

As long as we are going to allow oil and gas wastewater to enter these streams, there needs to be monitoring weekly at least for a whole host of contaminants, including radium, barium, strontium.

According to Mr. Urbina’s March 7th Times article, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) seems to agree with this cautionary approach, requiring tests for radioactivity at water intake plants, as well as a call to check for compliance at the facilities that are handling the wastewater.

This seems like a prudent approach. If the DEP has legitimate issues with the February 26th New York Times data, it was not effectively countered by their March 7th statement. The best way to settle this dispute is through targeted data collection, which in this case means setting up an effective water quality testing strategy.

And isn’t that the sort of work that the Department of Environmental Protection and the Environmental Protection Agency should be doing anyway?

  1. CHEC manages the content for FracTracker, including this site, https://www.fractracker.org, and http://data.fractracker.org/
FracTracker Alliance

Hitting Close to Home – Gas Pad Fire in Avella, PA

/by

By Samantha Malone, MPH, CPH – Communications Specialist, Center for Healthy Environments and Communities (CHEC), University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH); Doctoral Student, GSPH

Shale Gas Violations near Avella, PA (small)
Natural gas industry violations since 2007.
Avella, PA can be found by clicking on the image
and then zooming in on the patch of violations
in the center of the map.
Map created using FracTracker’s DataTool.

On February 23, 2011 a section of a natural gas drilling site in Avella, PA caught fire. Luckily only three workers were injured, but the issue still hits close to home – literally. Avella is my hometown. This quiet, farming area is located roughly 35 miles southwest of Pittsburgh in Washington County, PA. (See the map to the right.) It has a large school district geographically, with a tiny population. Known primarily for its rolling hills, farmland, and a historic landsite called Meadowcroft, Avella very rarely makes the headlines in Pittsburgh. That very fact is what peaked my concern when a TV news program mentioned that an incident had occurred on a Chesapeake Energy well site there.

The PA Department of Environmental Protection is currently investigating the fire. Initial reports indicate that volatile vapors that escaped while workers were flow-testing (part of which involves separating the flowback fluid from the natural gas), ignited and then caught nearby tanks on fire.  Volatile vapors can include a number of constituents, such as propane and benzene, which is a known human carcinogen. While there is little evidence to suggest that water contamination occurred as a result of the accident (like the 2009 spill near Cross Creek lake), air quality was most definitely affected. The smell of chemicals burning during the fire was even reported by some nearby residents. Thankfully, based on witness and on-site reports, the cooperation between the various emergency responders meant that the fire only burned for about three hours.

On a side note, I find it interesting that Chesapeake immediately refuted reports that hydraulic fracturing was the cause of the fire. Hydraulic fracturing, a process that breaks apart the shale layer under the ground to release the gas, had apparently been completed on the site. However, the volatile vapors originated from condensate, a result of hydraulic fracturing. Semantics.

Video Update: 3/1/11

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

When Messages are in Opposition, Risk Communication Difficult

/by

By Samantha Malone, MPH, CPH – Communications Specialist, Center for Healthy Environments and Communities of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH); Doctoral Student, GSPH

Two reports were issued yesterday by credible sources regarding the safety of natural gas drilling in shale formations. The one was issued by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP) on the air emissions from natural gas operations. The other by the House Energy Commerce Committee focused on the use of diesel fuel in hydraulic fracturing fluid. While these reports do not contradict one another, they certainly do not contribute to an overall consensus on the public safety of shale gas extraction.

Report 1 – PA Department of Environmental Protection

The PA DEP’s report was based on a four-week air quality study that they conducted in northeastern PA near Marcellus Shale natural gas operations. This report states that the emission levels they surveyed would not constitute a health concern for nearby residents, acknowledging that the study’s purpose was not to address the cumulative impacts that could result from long term exposure.

Report 2 – House Energy and Commerce Committee

The Energy and Commerce Committee within the House of Representatives sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Administrator, Lisa Jackson, stating that between ’05 and ’09 oil and gas companies injected over 32 million gallons of diesel fuel or hydraulic fracturing fluids containing diesel fuel in wells in 19 states. This letter noted that at no point in time were these companies officially permitted to use diesel fuel in the hydraulic fracturing process – citing the behavior as a violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The Message

The intention for this post is not to debate whether air contamination is worse than ground or water pollution, whether one report is right/wrong, or to discuss how difficult it is to accurately measure air emissions when companies know when and where you are testing. The true intention of writing this is to stress that the opposing reports only stand to ‘muddy the water’ on America’s viewpoint of the issue. Risk communication is hard enough to do properly without such inconsistency. The fact that these – and many other credible sources – cannot agree on whether natural gas drilling poses an environmental or public health threat further demonstrates that additional, unbiased research should be conducted.