Source : PressConnects

Much has been written, and will continue to be written, about the Marcellus shale; on one side about how much money and jobs it will bring, and on the other, about how much environmental damage may result. But this battle of words, being waged by gas development’s proponents and opponents, is mostly speculative. There is probably some truth as well as exaggeration coming from both sides, but the argument may be missing the point. Here in Susquehanna County we are beginning to experience the reality – and the reality is very disheartening.

If you own land to which you are not particularly attached, or which represents only an investment – something to log, or quarry, or exploit in some other way – the Marcellus is just another opportunity. But if you live in the country because you love the rural aesthetic, because you seek solitude, or the joy of experiencing the natural world, you are in for a very unpleasant surprise.  You are going to be living in the middle of an industrial zone.

In Dimock over the past year, gas well pads have been installed or are being planned at a rate of one for every 80 acres or so, meaning roughly eight gas well pads per square mile. You will inevitably be within eyesight and ear shot of at least one gas well, and will have numerous well sites in and around your community. Each well pad is a prominent graveled work yard of three to five gated acres, including large pits, tanks, pipes, valves, generators and exhaust stacks. Each has a heavy-duty gravel access road, and each has a 30- to 40-foot-wide pipeline swathe going to the next well pad in a continuous network across the countryside. Your rural landscape will be transformed by bulldozers into an industrial complex. Everywhere you look you will see their handiwork.

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Presentation to The Office of Oil and Gas | DEP Charleston Headquarters | 601 57th Street S.E. | Charleston, WV 25304 | Coopers Rock Training Room | July 28, 2010

I am Ba Rea, a resident of Monroe County.  I am speaking for the Indian Creek Watershed Association, SavetheWaterTable.org, and many individual Monroe County citizens. We are concerned about planned drilling in our county for gas from the Marcellus Shale formation.

Monroe County is a beautiful rural area in southeastern West Virginia. Much of it rests on karst formation.

The Greenbrier limestone formation dominates the landscape lying over the Marcellus Shale in Monroe County. It accounts for over 70 square miles in the center of Monroe County including Union, Pickaway, Sinks Grove, and parts of Greenville and Wolf Creek.  Swopes Knobs is a remnant of the Bluefield formation comprised of red and green shale with a few thin limestone lenses.  It rests on top of the Greenbrier formation, draining onto the Greenbrier karstland to the north, east and west.

Monroe County karstland is one of the world’s densest sinkhole plains, with an average of 18 sinkholes per square kilometer. This limestone also hosts the largest, deepest, and most complex caves, the largest karst basins, the largest number of caves, and one of the largest karst springs in West Virginia.

The 1925 West Virginia Geological Survey listed 49 caves in Monroe County. Hundreds are known today, including the extensive Scott Hollow cave system found in 1985.  Scott Hollow drains an area of at least a fourteen square miles and possibly much more. Mystic River, the underground river flowing through the Scott Hollow cave system, stretches five miles from deep under the Knobs to within two miles of the Greenbrier River. Twenty-eight miles of cave passages have been mapped so far in Scott Hollow.

Modern day Monroe County was shaped by the Appalachian Orogeny roughly 270 to 225 million years ago. This area was uplifted, deposition of sediments ceased, and erosion began taking place. Marcellus shale outcrops can be found along the southeastern boundary of the county as a result of folding. In front of modern day Peters Mountain, older rock overrides the limestone and shale that dominates the rest of the county.  Erosion from this ancient uplift ultimately exposed the Greenbrier formation and also cracked and rippled it creating synclines, anticlines and lineaments as well as many smaller fractures.  This structure, in addition to erosion makes the underground paths of our water even harder to predict. In addition to caves, our karst formation also has many cracks tunnels and fissures, some dramatic.  The monitor lineament is an easily spotted straight line across the Monroe county landscape.  On close observation it is a six-mile long string of sinkholes, likely caused by water flowing along an ancient fracture and slowly dissolving the limestone, causing it to collapse.  Cavers doing dye testing and expecting that water would follow the Monitor lineament were surprised to find the dyes had crossed the lineament and ended up in Second Creek.

Monroe County is a rural community. Though public water is available in Union, Greenville and Peterstown, most of the county depends on springs and wells for water. Since Monroe County does not have streams with the capacity to provide for public water supply sources, almost all residents rely on groundwater for their water consumption needs.  The public supplies available, which provide for about half of the county usage, primarily rely on springs or wells for their intake.

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• The karst forming unit in Monroe is the Lower Carboniferous Greenbrier Limestone which covers about 70 square miles centered around Union, Pickaway and Sinks Grove, with smaller patches around Greenville and Wolf Creek.
• A count of 168 large sinkholes was determined from the central zone giving a density of four per square mile.
• No surface streams occur over much of the karst except near the margins where the flow can be shown to be underground during dryer seasons, confirming that underground flow occurs most of the time.  This is true of Indian Creek and its tributaries, Laurel Creek and Hans Creek around Greenville.
• The Greenbrier Limestone has low porosity so polluted water entering the cave system would not benefit from the natural filtration effects of the groundwater table, but would pass directly into wells and beyond into the Greenbrier and New Rivers.
• The Greenbrier karst phenomenon is limited to Monroe, and adjacent Greenbrier Counties and to a smaller extent, Pocahontas County.  (Caves are present in the folded rocks of the Valley and Ridge Province of the Appalachians but are mostly limited to the much older Cambro-Ordovician formations which are not subject to deep drilling.)
• Surface exposures of the Greenbrier Limestone are riddled with fissures so the general picture is of an anastomosing meshwork of large and small caves which continue to be discovered and mapped but have not been fully tested with die tracers to determine flow patterns.
• The conclusion is that the Greenbrier Limestone poses a major challenge to proposed gas drilling.
• Questions arising are:
  • How could wells be adequately cased in such a formation?
  • How could failures of the highly pressurized “fracking” process be avoided?
  • How will the containment ponds be designed to avoid rupture?
  • How will trucking accidents be avoided on the narrow, switch-back roads typical of Monroe County?

Fred Ziegler | Geologist | Professor Emeritus, The University of Chicago

Since Monroe County does not have streams with the capacity to provide for public water supply sources, almost all residents rely on groundwater for their water consumption needs.  The public supplies available, which provide for about half of the county usage, primarily rely on springs or wells for their intake.

Due to the karst topography which underlies much of the county, underground streams, as indicated by numerous dye tracing activities conducted over the years, may travel for several miles.  Further, unlike in other subsurface environments such as sandstone wherein natural filtration takes place, karst aquifers do not receive this benefit.  This lack of filtration and substantial migration is, in the opinions of most authorities, the primary reason that about half of the water samples taken by the Monroe County Health Department over the last decade have been found unsatisfactory due to bacteriological contamination.  Thus a localized contamination event, such as might occur from a drilling error, has the potential to effect a hundred or more wells over a large area.

Although, as mentioned above, a number of dye tests have been undertaken at various locales throughout the county, there is still a substantial lack of information related to our underground aquifer system.  Much more testing and cataloging of results into a coordinated framework is needed to establish flow patterns and contamination potentials before we may understand the full potential of a contamination event.

Dale McCutcheon | Registered Sanitarian, Masters Degree-Environmental Science | Monroe County Health Department

Source : Aspen Institute

America’s drinking water and wastewater systems face increasing challenges in maintaining and replacing their pipes, treatment plants, and other critical infrastructure. Prolonging and renewing the nation’s high-quality water services requires a clear sense of what is a sustainable water infrastructure, the amount of investment needed to create and preserve it, where investments should be made, and by whom. In 2008 and 2009 the Aspen Institute convened a multi-stakeholder dialogue to help provide clarity and promote leadership on these issues.

. . .

For more information on the Dialogue on Sustainable Water Infrastructure in the United States, or to request a printed copy of the report, contact Regan Nelson, Project Manager, at regan.nelson@aspeninstitute.org or (202) 736-2916.

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Source : EPA.gov

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Aug. 20, 2010

WASHINGTON  – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is inviting the public to comment on the agency’s draft strategy to protect and restore our nation’s lakes, streams and coastal waters. The strategy, “Coming Together for Clean Water: EPA’s Strategy for Achieving Clean Water,” is designed to chart EPA’s path in furthering EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson’s key priority of protecting America’s waters.

The strategy was developed by considering the input and ideas generated at the April “Coming Together for Clean Water” forum as well as comments received through the online discussion forum.  Participants shared their perspectives on how to advance the EPA’s clean water agenda focusing on the agency’s two priority areas: healthy watersheds and sustainable communities. EPA is now inviting the public to consider and provide their comments on the approaches outlined in the strategy.

Public comments on the draft strategy should be submitted by September 17. EPA will review all comments and post a final strategy later in the year.

More information on the draft strategy and to comment: http://blog.epa.gov/waterforum/

CONTACT: Jalil Isa | isa.jalil@epa.gov | 202.564.3226 | 202.564.4355

I have been thinking for the last few weeks about real-time water quality monitoring conducted by private “watchdog” citizens in an area surrounding drilling. This wouldnt prevent catastrophe, but it would provide an early warning system. It seems to me the least complicated & cheapest method would be to monitor the conductivity of the water. Higher conductivity means more dissolved solids in the water.

I am thinking if we can get the cost of these things down to 200-300, who wouldn’t put one in their well for Their own peace of mind .

In my research, I came across this interesting piece of equipment.

TDS/conductivity meter: (I am posting This from my phone and I can’t make it an active link using my phone)

http://www.jencostore.com/jenco-3010k-conductivity-salinity-tds-temp-portable-meter-kit.html?gclid=CIyby5_-y6MCFeQD5Qod-HYMsw

The only question as yet unanswered: does it alarm when TDS crosses a threshold.

Abrahm Lustgarten of ProPublica takes FLYP readers on a journey through Sublette County, Wyo. to take a tour of the wells and hear the voices of residents and experts on the issue.

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Source : Billings Gazette

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Four out of five people who have returned health surveys report respiratory problems in a central Wyoming community where some residents say gas drilling has polluted their water wells, an environmental group said Wednesday.

Respondents also reported headaches, nausea, itchy skin, dizziness and other ailments, according to the Earthworks Oil and Gas Accountability Project.

Wilma Subra, a Louisiana chemist and environmentalist who has investigated oil and gas industry pollution worldwide, is conducting the survey. She said survey forms from the first 16 people — more are coming in — show a need for public health officials to investigate.

“It’s critical to identify the health impacts and track them over time,” Subra said.

A spokesman for Encana Oil & Gas, the company that’s been developing gas in the Pavillion area, pointed out that the survey isn’t comprehensive.

“It is a survey, not really a study,” Doug Hock said. “Sixteen people, total.”

Earthworks suggested in a news release that the respiratory ailments result from exposure while people shower or wash dishes with contaminated water. Subra said in her report that the various ailments residents reported are associated with contaminants the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified in Pavillion well water.

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Source : The Times Leader

SCRANTON – U.S. Sen. Robert Casey  returned to his hometown Thursday to extol the economic benefits of a present-day “gas rush” and, recalling the devastating effects of coal mining on the environment, called for more safeguards and federal oversight of natural gas drilling to prevent a “repeat of the mistakes of the past.”

The Democrat from Scranton joined five other panelists at a forum convened at Marywood University to discuss the opportunities and challenges presented by development of the Marcellus Shale.

Noting that nearly 600,000 Pennsylvanians are unemployed and 70 percent of the workers employed at Marcellus Shale drilling sites are not state residents, Casey said his Marcellus Shale On-the-Job Training Act would fund training programs to help ensure gas drilling jobs go to Pennsylvanians instead of out-of-state workers.

Recalling a well blowout in Clearfield County in June, Casey said a proper emergency response plan was not in place. His Faster Action Safety Team Emergency Response Act would authorize additional regulations to enhance response procedures as gas and oil wells, he said.

His Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act, Casey said, would repeal some exemptions for the oil and gas industry and require disclosure of all chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing – the process of injecting millions of gallons of water with sand and chemicals added into a well bore to stimulate the release of natural gas.

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