Attached is a copy of the proposed emergency oil and gas rules.  The Advisory Board hearing is 1:30 September 22 at WVDEP in Kanawha City.  The DEP will have staff there to answer questions about the proposed rule, but the questions have to come from the Board. The public is entitled to attend. It is an open meeting.

Proposed emergency oil and gas rule : WVSOS-Notice-of-an-Emergency-Rule-082211

Kristin A. Boggs, Esquire General Counsel West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection 601 57th Street Charleston, West Virginia  25304 (304) 926-0440 (304) 926-0447 (facsimile) (304) 941-8017 (cellular)

We the undersigned unanimously agree that the Executive Order issued by acting Governor Earl Ray Tomblin is inadequate and leaves communities vulnerable, while continuing to let the gas industry run roughshod over West Virginia.

The Senate should not be using the Executive Order as an excuse for stalling.  Instead, the Senate should impose a moratorium on permits until a comprehensive bill becomes effective.

Many people, including Senate members of the Select Committee on Marcellus Shale, are under the illusion that the Executive Order and the resulting emergency rules are adequate enough to ensure safe, responsible development of the Marcellus Shale.

However, a number of important issues remain unaddressed.

• Nothing in the Executive Order addresses protection from air pollution, noise, truck traffic destroying roads, radiation, or the cumulative impact of multiple wells in a community.
• While the Executive Order does require public notice of well permits inside a municipality, it does not provide an opportunity for the public to comment on such permits and influence the permit conditions, nor does it require public notice and comment for well permits in rural areas.
• Surface owners remain at risk from unilateral decisions by the gas companies. There is no requirement for drillers to negotiate with surface owners on the location of well sites and access roads or that drillers accommodate surface owners’ concerns, plans for or uses of their property.

Other items missing from the Executive Order include:

• Protection for karst (limestone) areas.
• Protection for parks or other public lands.
• A TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) standard for water.
• Elimination of the industry-influenced Oil and Gas Inspectors Examining Board in favor of a civil service type of hiring procedure.
• Protective/adequate distances between large drill sites and homes, schools, hospitals and other sensitive places.
• Expanded water well testing requirements.
• Improvements to bonding requirements.
• Disposal of toxic waste from well sites restricted to landfills designed to accept hazardous waste.

Additionally, regulations are only as good as their enforcement and with only 15 inspectors for 59,000 active gas wells, we remain concerned about the DEP’s ability to  adequately protect citizens and the environment from the threats Marcellus development poses to human health and our land, air and water. Unfortunately, the emergency rules filed as a result of the Executive Order will not raise permit fees and will not provide money for more inspectors to enforce even those emergency rules.

DEP has already permitted 1,602 Marcellus wells in West Virginia. Of those, 942 of those are completed and producing and the agency is on track to issue another 400 permits this year.

We believe it is irresponsible for the acting Governor and the Legislature to allow the DEP to continue to issue new permits without having a comprehensive regulatory structure in place and without having enough inspectors on staff to ensure adequate enforcement.  We appreciate that acting Governor Tomblin has recognized that there are problems, but the Executive Order does not go far enough.

It remains imperative for the Legislature to act.

Until that time there should be a moratorium on new permits.

In conclusion, acting Governor Tomblin’s Executive Order and the resulting emergency rules should not be construed as a solution to the many problems related to Marcellus Shale and other gas well drilling.

Far from it.

The Select Committee assigned to craft meaningful legislation, especially the Senators, need to step up to address these problems, and they must do so quickly — next year is unacceptable. Although the draft legislation the committee is using as a starting point is also deficient in terms of addressing several issues of concern, a number of strengthening amendments were offered and adopted when the committee met earlier this month.  We want to see the committee reconvene to continue its work and make the needed improvements to the bill.

Greenbrier River Watershed Association

Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition

Sierra Club West Virginia Chapter

West Virginia Citizens Action Group

West Virginia Highlands Conservancy

West Virginia Surface Owners Rights Organization

SavetheWaterTable.org

Source : Alternet

April 12, 2011

“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.”

Editor’s Note: Go here to see award-winning photographer Nina Berman’s arresting images of the dirty business of gas drilling.

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.

The cause: two 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.

Read more >>

Source : Coudy News

After McKean County house explosions, Casey sends letter to Department of Energy asking for help and coordination with local and state officials.

March 28, 2011

WASHINGTON, DC — U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) today wrote U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu concerning gas migration-related incidents in Northwestern Pennsylvania. After the most recent house explosions in McKean County, Senator Casey called for federal help investigating the explosions and in coordinating with local and state officials to protect public health and safety.

“I am deeply alarmed to learn of yet another gas-migration-related explosion in Pennsylvania,” said Senator Casey. “According to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP) Emergency Response Program, there have been dozens of gas migration incidents in northwestern Pennsylvania recently.”

Senator Casey continued, “I urge you to coordinate with local, state, and other federal entities to ensure that appropriate actions to protect public health are implemented.”

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Loyal supporters of clean water,

We are at a very important crossroads, ladies and gentlemen of Monroe County and neighboring areas.  Gordy Oil has filed for an application do drill and ultimately, hydro-frack in Monroe County.  The site is off Boyd Road in Wayside.  This is all publicly known information.

The site is less than a mile from two different caves and Salt Peter Cave is not much farther away.  North of the site and south of the site are known karst regions.  There are residents local to the area that claim to know of a sinkhole that has been covered in within the immediate vicinity of the site.

The site sits in a field below a mountain ridge.  Water drains downhill, and downhill from the drill site is karst riddled topography – land perforated with sinkholes.  Functionally, that is no different than drilling directly in karst from a vulnerability perspective.

The Salt Peter Cave offers housing to the Indiana bat, an animal on the federal endangered species list, of which only SEVEN were observed in 2010.  The operation in that area could directly or indirectly impact the health of those bats.  There are nearby wild trout streams as well that could be impacted.

Current law only requires the drilling company to test and monitor water in a 1000 foot radius from the well site, yet water can travel for miles underground in our county.

There has not been a comprehensive study completed to consider the possible impacts of hydraulic fracturing on human or animal life in general, let alone in this particular area.

The EPA is conducting such a study (on fracking in general), and their initial results are expected in 2012.

In Charleston, the work continues to revise a new set of regulations for natural gas drillers that may (or may not) be voted into law before March 12th – but currently, those regulations are not in place, meaning we are operating under old, outdated, and insufficient regulations.

An approved permit now would mean the drilling company would be “grandfathered in” even if new regulations do pass.  For a period of two years, they could operate under existing, broken law.

Randy Huffman, a boss over at the DEP, has noted publicly that we do not have enough inspectors to cover the workload in this state.

There are 17 inspectors in the state and 55K active wells, and some 12K inactive wells (thousands of which must be capped and have not yet been).  Based on recent information, there are some 1500 new wells already permitted.  We cannot handle the current, active workload and yet we are still permitting new wells.  Why!?!

Let’s just take the 55K currently active wells.

That means in WV, we have 0.00030909 INSPECTORS PER ACTIVE WELL.

Even with good regulations (which we do not have), it is not possible to enforce regulations anyway because we don’t have the manpower to do so.  The DEP admits this, and is working on finding additional funding for more inspectors.  That funding and the resultant new inspectors do not currently exist.

The site is VERY close to sensitive and vulnerable karst; new regulations are still not in place; there are not sufficient DEP inspectors.

>> Please contact the permitting officers of the DEP Office of Oil & Gas and tell them SAY NO TO THE BOYD ROAD PERMIT!

Laura.L.Adkins@wv.gov

Bernardo.Garcia@wv.gov

Kay.K.Holtsclaw@wv.gov

James.A.Martin@wv.gov

Michael.F.Moore@wv.gov

James.A.Peterson@wv.gov

Gene.C.Smith@wv.gov

Office of Oil & Gas : Contact Page

>> Please contact the US Fish & Wildlife Service and tell them your concerns as well!

Bat specialist : barbara_douglas@fws.gov 304.636.6586 x19

Director : deb_carter@fws.gov 304.636.6586 x12

BUFFALO BANS FRACKING IN GROUNDBREAKING VOTE FIRST BAN ON FRACKING IN NEW YORK; LEGISLATION ALSO TARGETS WASTEWATER

(BUFFALO, NY)—Citizens and clean water advocates heralded the Buffalo Common Council’s move to become the first city in New York State—and the second major city nationwide—to ban hydraulic fracturing for natural gas. The Common Council passed “Buffalo’s Community Protection from Natural Gas Extraction Ordinance” today by a 9-0 vote, following months of citizen lobbying by Frack Action Buffalo, a local grassroots group.

At a a press conference following the vote, victims of fracking in New York joined Buffalo Common Coucilmembers and former New York State Senator Antoine Thompson in praising the ban. Thompson was the sponsor of the statewide moratorium on fracking passed in August.

Buffalo, which sits atop areas of the Marcellus and Utica Shale formations, follows in the footsteps of Pittsburgh, PA, which passed a similar ban in November 2010. The Buffalo law prohibits drillers from fracking for gas in Buffalo, and bars the disposal of drilling wastewater or other production wastes within city limits.

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Source : www.theintelligencer.net

DEP Chief Wants To Double Oil & Gas Staff State agency has its own proposal in the Legislature

February 9, 2011 – By CASEY JUNKINS | Staff Writer

WHEELING – Randy Huffman knows West Virginia is not properly equipped to regulate the expanding Marcellus Shale natural gas rush, so he wants to double the size of the state’s Office of Oil and Gas.

Acting state Senate President Jeff Kessler, D-Marshall, and Sen. Orphy Klempa, D-Ohio, are among the sponsors of a new piece of legislation crafted by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection designed to regulate horizontal natural gas drilling, hydraulic fracturing and other drilling aspects.

The bill differs slightly from the “Hydraulic Fracturing and Horizontal Drilling Gas Act,” introduced to both the House and Senate last week. The new legislation is working its way through both chambers as Senate Bill 424 and House Bill 3042.

“We are going to compare the two bills, and draw out the best parts of each,” said Kessler, who is also a sponsor of the older bill. “Both are going to be debated and discussed at length. We will look to both bills to make sure we can do what we need to do to protect our air and water.”

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