Environment, Uncategorized

Fracking USA: A Post about the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, Governor Tom Corbett, C. Alan Walker, the Marcellus Shale, Polluted Drinking Water, and the Movie Gasland

Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger

Republican governors in Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, New Jersey, and Florida have been getting a lot of media and press attention lately because of their proposals for drastic budget cuts, big tax breaks for corporations, or for their attacks on public sector workers and their unions. One newly elected Republic governor who has remained pretty much under the radar is Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania. A few weeks ago, a story about Corbett at ProPublica caught my attention. I thought it was a story worth investigating.

Last December, Governor Corbett announced his very first political appointee—a man named C. Alan Walker. Walker, an energy executive, was chosen to head the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development. What’s particularly interesting about this appointment is that Corbett also gave Walker supreme authority over environmental permitting in the state of Pennsylvania.

One might ask why Corbett gave Walker such far-reaching authority. Could it be because Pennsylvania is home to a large portion of a vast underground rock formation known as the Marcellus Shale? Do you know what can be extracted from the Marcellus Shale? Natural gas. Do you know how natural gas is extracted from the shale? Through a process known as hydraulic fracturing—or “fracking.”

The Marcellus Shale

Now, as Corbett stakes much of the state’s economy on Marcellus Shale gas drilling, a paragraph tucked into the 1,184-page budget gives Walker unprecedented authority to “expedite any permit or action pending in any agency where the creation of jobs may be impacted.” That includes, presumably, coal, oil, gas and trucking. (ProPublica) 

FYI: Hydraulic fracturing is a process used in nine out of ten natural gas wells in the United States, where millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals are pumped underground to break apart the rock and release the gas. Scientists are worried that the chemicals used in fracturing may pose a threat either underground or when waste fluids are handled and sometimes spilled on the surface. (ProPublica) 

And, according to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, that paragraph could enable Walker “to fast-track drilling permits if environmental regulators are balking.” The Inquirer article goes on to explain why Walker may be unsuited for his position as head of the Department of Community and Economic Development: “In 2002, he told the state he couldn’t afford to clean up polluted water flowing from 15 inactive mines that were operated by his companies. After the state won a court injunction, Walker agreed to a cleanup plan.” 

The authors of the ProPublica article say it remains unclear how Governor Corbett can bestow such authority on the Department of Community and Economic Development. They question how Pennsylvania would address any legal conflicts that might arise if Walker pushed for approval of permits that might conflict with the Clean Water Act or other federal laws.

A more recent ProPublica article reports that oil and gas inspectors who police the Marcellus Shale development in the state won’t be allowed to issue violations to drilling companies that they regulate any longer unless they get prior approval from top officials. Evidently, this has raised concerns that environmental inspectors in Pennsylvania won’t be able to act independently in the future—and that regulations could possibly be overridden by the governor.

Should people in Pennsylvania be concerned by what could happen in their state because of these recent developments? Well, the EPA is doing an investigation into whether fracking can have a detrimental effect on reservoirs—and some landowners have alleged that fracking is the cause of their polluted and flammable tap water and poisoned animals.

I’m posting some videos that will provide you with more information about what’s going on with hydraulic fracturing in Pennsylvania and other parts of this country. But first—I’d like to make note of a few things:

  • C. Alan Walker has donated $184,000 to Tom Corbett’s campaign efforts since 2004.
  • Business and industry representatives outnumber environmental advocates by more than 3 to 1 on Governor Corbett’s new 30-member Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission.
  • The Pennsylvania Office of Homeland Security has been tracking anti-gas drilling groups and their meetings — including a public screening of the film “Gasland,” a documentary about the environmental hazards of natural gas drilling. The office includes information about the groups in its weekly bulletins that are sent out to law enforcement agencies—and to companies that are drilling for gas in the Marcellus Shale.
  • Last November, the New York State Assembly voted to place a temporary moratorium on fracking in that state.

FRACKING 101

NEED TO KNOW | Actor Mark Ruffalo speaks out against fracking | PBS

Gov’t PA Homeland Security Monitors Fracking Victims

GASLAND Trailer 2010

Recommended Reading:

For those who care to learn more about drilling for natural gas in Pennsylvania, here’s a link to

Documents: Natural Gas’s Toxic Waste, which was published by the New York Times in February.

Quoting from NYT: Over the past nine months, The Times reviewed more than 30,000 pages of documents obtained through open records requests of state and federal agencies and by visiting various regional offices that oversee drilling in Pennsylvania. Some of the documents were leaked by state or federal officials. Here, the most significant documents are made available with annotations from The Times.

and

Pa. allows dumping of tainted waters from gas boom—an Associated Press article written by David B. Caruso. It was posted at the Marcellus Shale Protest website.

Sources

126 thoughts on “Fracking USA: A Post about the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, Governor Tom Corbett, C. Alan Walker, the Marcellus Shale, Polluted Drinking Water, and the Movie Gasland”

  1. Testimony shows Pa. regulators give little scrutiny to gas-drilling outfits
    By Michael Rubinkam
    Associated Press/Boston Globe
    April 14, 2011
    http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2011/04/14/testimony_shows_pa_regulators_give_little_scrutiny_to_gas_drilling_outfits/

    Excerpt:
    ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Pennsylvania environmental regulators say they spend as little as 35 minutes reviewing each of the thousands of applications for natural gas well permits they get each year from drillers intent on tapping the state’s lucrative and vast Marcellus Shale reserves.

    And the regulators say they do not give any additional scrutiny to requests to drill near high-quality streams and rivers even though the waterways are protected by state and federal law.

    Staffers in the state Department of Environmental Protection testified behind closed doors last month as part of a lawsuit filed by residents and environmental groups over a permit that the agency issued for an exploratory gas well in northeastern Pennsylvania, less than a half-mile from the Delaware River and about 300 feet from a pristine stream.

    Reporting by the Associated Press suggests that applications are rubber-stamped, rushed through with little scrutiny, and rarely rejected. The staffers’ statements indicate that the state regulators are overburdened — and possibly ignoring environmental laws — as they struggle to deal with an unprecedented drilling boom that has turned Pennsylvania into a major natural gas player and raised fears about polluted aquifers and air.

    The agency has denied few requests to drill in the Marcellus Shale formation, the world’s second-largest gas field. Of the 7,019 applications that the state has processed since 2005, only 31 have been rejected — less than one-half of 1 percent.

  2. Pingback: GASLAND « As My World Turns

  3. DEP Shuts Down Gas Wells after Water Contamination in Forest County
    Marcellus Shale Protest, 4/5/2011
    http://www.marcellusprotest.org/dep-shuts-down-wells-in-meadville

    Excerpt:
    MEADVILLE — The Department of Environmental Protection has issued a cease and desist order to Catalyst Energy Inc. that prohibits the company from conducting all drilling and hydro-fracturing operations for the 36 non-Marcellus wells within 2,500 feet of two homes in the Yellow Hammer area of Hickory Township, Forest County.

    The order was issued after a DEP investigation confirmed that private water supplies serving the two homes had been contaminated by natural gas and elevated levels of iron and manganese from Catalyst’s operations.

    DEP first received complaints about water quality – odor and a cloudy appearance – in January. Notices of violation were issued to Catalyst for groundwater contamination Feb. 10 and March 1 for the two affected homes.

    In late March, a follow-up investigation confirmed the presence of natural gas above the surface and dissolved in both water supplies.

    In 2010, DEP issued permits to Catalyst for 36 non-Marcellus wells in the Yellow Hammer neighborhood. According to DEP Northwest Regional Director Kelly Burch, Catalyst has drilled 22 of those wells in recent months.

    Burch explained that Catalyst must conduct the investigation to determine which well or wells may be responsible for the gas migration.

  5. PA Senate Confirms Controversial Job Czar Nominee
    by Nicholas Kusnetz
    ProPublica, April 13, 2011
    http://www.propublica.org/article/pa-senate-confirms-controversial-job-czar-nominee

    The controversial nominee to head Pennsylvania’s economic development agency was approved Tuesday night by the state Senate. C. Alan Walker, a former coal baron and prominent Republican donor, gained unanimous support to oversee the state’s Department of Community and Economic Development. In March, Gov. Tom Corbett also gave Walker’s department authority to intervene in any agency’s permitting process.

    Earlier this week, ProPublica detailed Walker’s long history of fighting regulation of his industry, including cases where his companies polluted the state’s waters.

  6. Great updates Elaine. How do people vote this kind of maniac into office in the first place? These Teapublican governors are evil.

  7. Meet the families whose lives have been ruined by gas drilling
    AlterNet: Families in Pennsylvania explain how the dash for gas in the US is affecting their way of life
    Nina Berman for AlterNet guardian.co.uk
    Tuesday 12 April 2011
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/12/families-gas-drilling

    Excerpt:
    Cassie Spencer said she nearly “had a cow” when she returned home one day and saw her yard sprinkled with little red flags, like land mine markers in a war zone. Her 5-year-old daughter was playing in the midst of them. The family property had become a methane field.

    Cassie believes Chesapeake gas wells 3,000 feet away that she never saw and doesn’t profit from had somehow been sending methane onto her property and into her water, and onto her neighbors’ properties on Paradise Road in Wyalusing, Pennsylvania. Testing by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) traced the methane to Chesapeake wells but the company has denied responsibility.

    The Spencers’ house, once valued at $150,000, is now worth $29,000. They have a methane monitor in their basement, a methane water filtration system in a backyard shed. They leave the door open when they take showers because with no bathroom windows they are afraid the house could blow up. Their neighbors were forced to evacuate once already because of high methane levels. In the middle of their yard, a shaft resembling a shrunken flagpole vents gas from their wellhead. Next to the doorway, a huge “water buffalo” storage container, a signature imprint of the collateral damage brought on by gas drilling, sits like a bloated child’s pool, filled with water, not fit for drinking.

    “We moved here because we love the woods. We wanted to stay here our whole lives,” Cassie said, speaking of her family, her husband Scott and their two small children. “We’re not asking for a lot and now they’re taking it all away. In a million years, I never would have thought that people could do this and get away with it.”

    All the damage occurred before the wells had even been “fracked,” which is set to happen later this year, and could make things even worse. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, involves injecting a slurry of toxic chemicals, water and sand underground to release gas.

    Pennsylvania’s Governor Tom Corbett, and most of the state’s politicians have embraced gas drilling and the tandem practice of fracking as a terrific boost for the economy and a “clean” alternative to foreign oil. Water well contamination, spills, truck diesel emissions, migrating methane, and radioactivity waste leaked into rivers, have generally been dismissed as minor concerns or isolated problems. There is pressure to keep the picture positive despite more than 750 violations issued by DEP last year alone. A new directive supported by the gas industry now requires inspectors to first get approval from Harrisburg before writing any violations, a move considered unprecedented in the agency’s history.

    Recent visits to Bradford County, the heart of the Marcellus Shale region, tells a different story of the widespread human impact from gas drilling, not to mention a colossal reshaping of the natural environment. And more information is emerging about the dangers of fracking. A new report about to be released from Cornell University contends that fracking contributes to global warming as much, or even more, than coal. The research undermines the gas industry’s long-standing claim that natural gas is a clean energy source. But people who live in gas-drilling areas already have concerns.

    Quiet roads and designated bicycle routes are now major thoroughfares for gas industry trucks. A blue haze can be seen between trees. Trucks routinely carry weight that exceeds limits leaving small rural roads busted and dangerous. Roads are sprayed with drilling waste as a cheap ice suppressant in the winter and dust control in the summer. The waste eventually makes its way back into streams. Accidents, overturned vehicles and speeding violations are everyday occurrences. At night the landscape is transformed as bright lights from drilling rigs appear like mini skyscrapers. Red lights from a long line of trucks, their engines running, pinpoint water intake centers, the lifeblood of the fracking industry. Across from a daycare center and down the road from Wyalusing High School, smoke from a fire at TranZ, a bulk material supply operation for the gas industry, spews filthy odors into the morning sky.

    Not far from Paradise Road, methane bubbles percolate from the riverbed, drifting down the Susquehanna River. Residents in the community known as Sugar Run set up an entrapment tarp last fall when the bubbles were discovered, clicked a lighter and then watched flames shoot up the riverbank.

  8. Gas drilling’s promise, perils rile townsfolk
    By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI and MICHAEL RUBINKAM
    Associated Press
    April 12, 2011
    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GAS_DRILLING_TORN_TOWNS?SITE=PASCR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

    Excerpt:
    Ron Hilliard came back from church one Sunday to find hundreds of plastic $5, $10, $20 and $100 bills hanging on his fence in Flower Mound, Texas, another message from townsfolk angry at him for signing a lucrative natural gas drilling lease for his suburban Dallas property.

    In Damascus, Pa., about 1,500 miles away, drilling advocate Marian Schweighofer awoke one morning to the word “LORAX” – from the Dr. Seuss book about environmental destruction – spray-painted on the road near her family’s 712-acre farm.

    Hilliard and Schweighofer have never met, yet both are living with the nastiness and rancor erupting in communities nationwide over the volatile issue of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

    This technique – used with horizontal drilling – allows rich stores of gas to be extracted from once out-of-reach, dense shale formations more than a mile underground. Intense drilling activity is under way in the Barnett Shale of Texas, the Marcellus Shale of Pennsylvania, and other producing shale regions around the country. As tens of thousands of Americans become energy magnates in their own backyards, tens of thousands more worry about environmental dangers. The industry insists the process is safe, for people and the environment.

    This energy boom has turned neighbor against neighbor, split towns and families in bitter disputes, and touched off sharp debates over the sudden emergence of gas companies and their 14-story drilling rigs, some rising in the middle of towns and neighborhoods.

    One side touts the jobs and prosperity drilling brings, allowing businesses to flourish and down-on-their-luck farmers to hang on to their land. Gas leases have made millionaires of some property owners. Regions long struggling economically are suddenly flush.

    On the other side are those who either won’t gain anything or fervently believe the wealth isn’t worth the risk. Alarmed by toxic spills, scattered drill site explosions and tainted drinking water, they fear a reduced quality of life and declining property values.

    “Those who own their mineral rights are happier than a pig in mud,” said Flower Mound resident Chris Tomlinson, who is making thousands of dollars a month from the gas wells drilled on his land. “Those who don’t, want it to go away.”

    Fracking opponents complain the industry has taken environmental and safety shortcuts in their zeal to reap the vast stores of gas once locked tight within the shale.

    The acrimony is not likely to subside anytime soon. Even with some 26,000 wells drilled in 16 states through the end of 2009 – more than half of those in Texas – the shale gas revolution is still relatively young .

    Most of the wells have been drilled in the past decade, particularly in Pennsylvania’s white-hot Marcellus Shale region and in the Barnett Shale of Texas, where the new extraction techniques were perfected and the boom began in earnest in 2006. Hundreds of thousands more wells could be drilled in coming decades, according to drilling companies and energy officials.

  9. International tax giveaway
    The Times-Tribune, 4/12/2011
    http://thetimes-tribune.com/opinion/international-tax-giveaway-1.1131072#axzz1JK7vnnn1

    Gov. Tom Corbett’s refusal to assess a fair tax on natural gas grows more preposterous in proportion to the growth of the gas industry.

    The same geologists who estimated the size of the Marcellus Shale natural gas field at an astounding 520 trillion cubic feet now say that deeper geological formations, the Utica and Upper Devonian shales, probably hold about that much extractable gas.

    The governor’s refusal to cut in state taxpayers on the wealth means that revenue that could be going to Harrisburg instead is going to Houston, Little Rock, Oklahoma City and other headquarters towns of drilling companies.

    Apparently, the governor is not content even to limit the giveaway to the United States. Many foreign-based drillers, including Shell, of the Netherlands, and Statoil, of Norway, already have bought into Marcellus drilling operations.

    And because of the sheer size of the Marcellus field and those beneath it, producers likely will export large amounts of gas abroad, especially to energy-hungry China.

    But according to a Corbett spokesman, that won’t shake the governor’s commitment to giving away the resource because it would be difficult to craft a tax based on where it is shipped.

    Well, true enough. That’s exactly why severance taxes are assessed at the wellhead. It doesn’t make any difference where the gas goes; the issue is its origin beneath Pennsylvania.

    Mr. Corbett should end his foolish resistance to a fair severance tax and move to ensure that the commonwealth realizes fair value for the resource.

  10. Buckeye,
    Welcome back!
    Would Pickens state under oath that his 3,000 fracking episodes have not harmed water sources in any way? I think not. Stewart should have hammered that guy.

  11. A Y

    Thanks, but no thanks. My blood pressure is now back to normal. 🙂

    No one offended me personally; I enjoyed everything here except too much over-the-top commentary. That’s the reason I left the previous blog.

    But if I see something, like this thread, that is important to me, and when I think I have something to offer, I’ll comment. Thanks.

  12. John Stewart for fracking if it doesn’t ‘liquify our pets’

    February 15, 2011 ι Abby Wisse Schachter

    T Boone Pickens recently visited John Stewart at “The Daily Show” to prostelytize for his ‘Pickens plan’ for energy independence. A major tenent of the plan is getting off OPEC oil and on to natural gas. Pickens wants all trucks to be modified to run on natural gas and says it can be done in seven years. Stewarts was receptive but skeptical, asking more than once about the alleged dangers of a type of natural gas drilling called hydraulic fracturing or fracking. Stewart joked that Pickens’ plan must have a catch like the fracking will “liquify our pets” and more seriously he told Pickens that everyone “has seen the scene of fire coming out of the taps” of those whose water has been poisoned by gas drilling. Pickens replied that he had personally “fracked” 3,000 wells and there is no problem with water contamination of any kind. Stewart’s response was that if it was a safe practice, he’d be all in for natural gas development.

    (end excerpt)

    http://www.nypost.com/p/blogs/capitol/john_stewart_for_fracking_if_it_SoP16wqMM6ggxPXhrHxIJK

    http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-january-27-2011/exclusive—t–boone-pickens-extended-interview

  14. Another great link Elaine. It is good to see a state take their time and do their due diligence before allowing the mining companies to do their damage.

  15. Fracking shale for gas brings wealth, concerns
    By MICHAEL RUBINKAM AND DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press
    Tue Apr 12, 2011
    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110412/ap_on_sc/us_gas_drilling_impact_2

    Excerpt:
    Hydraulic fracturing is a drilling process that blasts large amounts of water deep into the earth to fracture dense shale and allow natural gas to escape.

    The water — from a few hundred thousand to several million gallons — is mixed with sand and chemicals — some of them toxic or potentially carcinogenic. Some of that fracking liquid then gushes back to the surface, often with natural underground brine, in a brew that is intensely salty and often contains barium, strontium and sometimes radium from the earth.

    In Texas and other states, the liquids are disposed of in deep injection wells; Pennsylvania is the only major gas-producing state that routinely allows fracking wastewater to be partially treated and dumped into rivers and streams from which communities get their drinking water.

    Researchers have been examining whether the discharges might be dangerous to humans or wildlife.

    Industry officials, some scientists and Pennsylvania officials insist the practice is safe, if controlled properly, because the relatively small amounts of drilling wastewater discharged are diluted by the state’s rivers.

    They also argue that many of the most common pollutants in the waste aren’t very dangerous, even when ingested, and that people would need to drink large amounts over a very long period to become ill.

    Several studies are under way.

    At least 269 million gallons of wastewater went to treatment plants in Pennsylvania for river discharge in the 18 months ending Dec. 31, according to an Associated Press review of reports filed with the state’s Department of Environmental Protection. Millions more gallons of wastewater went unaccounted for because of weaknesses in the state’s tracking system.

    DEP records also show some public water utilities downstream from plants treating wastewater have struggled with unacceptable levels of trihalomethanes, carcinogens sometimes linked to drilling waste.

  16. New York Cautious in Embrace of Fracking
    Tuesday, April 12, 2011
    By Ilya Marritz
    From WNYC
    http://www.wnyc.org/articles/its-free-country/2011/apr/12/new-york-cautious-embrace-fracking/

    Excerpt:
    A Senate Committee is holding hearings Tuesday on the environmental and public health risks associated with natural gas drilling. Once an obscure issue, natural gas has recently become a major cause of concern. That’s because of a procedure known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” It has been linked with water contamination and a host of other problems. It’s also a powerful tool for tapping America’s gas reserves, and the gas industry says it can be done safely.

    While other states like Pennsylvania and Texas have taken a ‘drill now, investigate later’ approach, Albany is doing the opposite: There’s an extensive environmental review of fracking underway, and legislators have proposed a host of bills to limit the practice.

    The Northeast’s big natural gas reserve is the Marcellus Shale, which stretches from New York’s Catskills, about 100 miles northeast of New York City, all the way to West Virginia. The shale is thought to contain up to 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, making it possibly the richest unconventional reserve in the United States. But geologists say only a small portion of the gas in the Marcellus will ever make it to the pipeline. By one estimate, 15 trillion cubic feet of Marcellus gas is “recoverable.” The Pennsylvania Cooperative Extension estimates the Marcellus could meet America’s total demand for natural gas for 15 years.

    The boom in Marcellus drilling was set off in 2004, a Texas company, Range Resources, drilled a test well outside of Pittsburgh. Range demonstrated that the Marcellus could be tapped successfully. How? Fracking, in combination with horizontal, or directional drilling, in which the drill bit makes a turn to the side after first achieving the desired depth. Since then, almost 3,000 Marcellus wells have been drilled in Pennsylvania, and nearly 7,000 permits have been issued.

    But there’s no Marcellus Shale drilling in New York. While most states have taken a frack-first, regulate-later approach, New York is doing the opposite. In July 2008, then-Governor David Paterson ordered a full review of existing drilling regulations. A year and a half later, the Department of Environmental Conservation put out a Draft Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement, almost 1,000 pages long. In late 2010, Governor Paterson ordered an extension to the review process, while also opening the door to some forms of low-volume fracking. A new draft review is due at the end of summer, 2011.

    The delay has not only frustrated energy companies, it’s also given opponents of fracking time to marshal their forces.

    In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg commissioned a study on the likely impact of drilling near the Catskill mountain reservoirs that are the source of most city drinking water, and concluded fracking poses an unacceptable risk. The state has since pledged to allow drilling within the watershed only under the strictest safety standards.

  17. Hey Ohio Pine Cone,

    Come on back…You are welcome to stay a while….Your presence has been missed…I promise not to offend you anymore…

    It has been decided that SL and I are going to Austin, Buddha providing the bail money…..SWMom….well… she did not rightfully say… Anyways stay…or at least visit once or twice a day…

  18. S M

    Yes, I’m enjoying DK very much. It’s so big with so many contributors which means it would be so much better if the search engine just worked. In that respect, a smaller number of contributors like here and at the first blog I participated in makes for a more engaging interaction – maybe I just haven’t found my niche yet.

    I hope you’re doing well, here.

  20. swarthmom

    my understanding is they lose between 2%and 6% of all natural gas into the atmosphere where is a potent greenhouse gas. i don’t know the total loss on transfers but the constant hookups for the smaller tanks can’t be good.

    i don’t know what the total loss would be by using the gas for power generation and driving electric cars.

    but the idea of a ford pinto with a natural gas tank…

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