Source : ProPublica by Nicholas Kusnetz, Nov. 10, 2011

A federal energy panel issued a blunt warning to shale gas drillers and their regulators today, saying they need to step up efforts to protect public health and the environment or risk a backlash that stifles further development.

“Concerted and sustained action is needed to avoid excessive environmental impacts of shale gas production and the consequent risk of public opposition to its continuation and expansion,” said members of the Energy Department’s Shale Gas Subcommittee in a draft report released today.

The seven-member committee, appointed in January by Energy Secretary Steven Chu, provides a way for the Obama administration to weigh in on gas drilling, which is primarily overseen by state regulatory agencies.

In August, the panel issued a lengthy set of recommendations to state and federal agencies and the gas industry for making gas drilling safer.

Today’s report – acknowledging that progress on the panel’s suggestions has been slow – sets out who needs to do what in order to turn recommendations into reality. The panel also stressed the importance of shale gas to the nation’s energy policy, noting that it already makes up 30 percent of domestic gas production.

The report calls on the EPA to revise a proposed rule on air emissions to include limits on methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and criticizes recent moves by the agency that have hindered efforts to get better data from the oil and gas industry, a crucial step toward improving controls.

The report also concludes that joint federal and state efforts to ensure water quality are “not working smoothly” and urges the EPA to move unilaterally to improve oversight as it carries out a study on potential effects of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water.

The panel’s recommendations are not binding, but Amy Mall, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said they carry significant weight.

“We need more experts acknowledging publicly that there are real risks and they can be addressed,” she said. NRDC and other environmental organizations sent a letter to President Obama last week, urging him to issue an executive order directing federal agencies to carry out the panel’s recommendations.

Drilling companies have in the past resisted some policy changes that the panel is recommending, such more stringent federal limits on emissions. Reid Porter, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, would not comment on the specific recommendations, but said API members have begun to implement some of the panel’s recommendations, including working with state agencies to strengthen best practices on well design and minimizing water use.

The Energy Department’s advisory board will hold a public meeting on the draft report on Monday before finalizing it.

Correction (11/10): This story has been changed. An earlier version made it seem as if Reid Porter, an API spokesman, said that drillers have opposed some of the energy panel’s recommendations. Porter did not comment on that issue.

Source : ProPublica, Dec. 8, 2011, 8:18 p.m. by Abrahm Lustgarten and Nicholas Kusnetz

In a first, federal environment officials today scientifically linked underground water pollution with hydraulic fracturing, concluding that contaminants found in central Wyoming were likely caused by the gas drilling process.

The findings by the Environmental Protection Agency come partway through a separate national study by the agency to determine whether fracking presents a risk to water resources.

In the 121-page draft report released today, EPA officials said that the contamination near the town of Pavillion, Wyo., had most likely seeped up from gas wells and contained at least 10 compounds known to be used in frack fluids.

“The presence of synthetic compounds such as glycol ethers … and the assortment of other organic components is explained as the result of direct mixing of hydraulic fracturing fluids with ground water in the Pavillion gas field,” the draft report states. “Alternative explanations were carefully considered.”

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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.

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Water is not the only thing at risk.  Find below a tale of the AIR becoming polluted following the gas drilling boom.

Source : Associated Press

By MEAD GRUVER, Associated Press – Tue Mar 8, 4:48 pm ET

CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Wyoming, famous for its crisp mountain air and breathtaking, far-as-the-eye-can-see vistas, is looking a little bit like smoggy Los Angeles these days because of a boom in natural gas drilling.

Folks who live near the gas fields in the western part of this outdoorsy state are complaining of watery eyes, shortness of breath and bloody noses because of ozone levels that have exceeded what people in L.A. and other major cities wheeze through on their worst pollution days.

“It is scary to me personally. I never would have guessed in a million years you would have that kind of danger here,” Debbee Miller, a manager at a Pinedale snowmobile dealership, said Monday.

In many ways, it’s a haze of prosperity: Gas drilling is going strong again, and as a result, so is the Cowboy State’s economy. Wyoming enjoys one of the nation’s lowest unemployment rates, 6.4 percent. And while many other states are running up monumental deficits, lawmakers are projecting a budget surplus of more than $1 billion over the coming year in this state of a half-million people.

Still, in the Upper Green River Basin, where at least one daycare center called off outdoor recess and state officials have urged the elderly to avoid strenuous outdoor activity, some wonder if they’ve made a bargain with the devil. Two days last week, ozone levels in the gas-rich basin rose above the highest levels recorded in the biggest U.S. cities last year.

“They’re trading off health for profit. It’s outrageous. We’re not a Third World country,” said Elaine Crumpley, a retired science teacher who lives just outside Pinedale.

Preliminary data show ozone levels last Wednesday got as high as 124 parts per billion. That’s two-thirds higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum healthy limit of 75 parts per billion and above the worst day in Los Angeles all last year, 114 parts per billion, according to EPA records. Ozone levels in the basin reached 116 on March 1 and 104 on Saturday.

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Source : www.theintelligencer.net

Sheriff: Alien Labor Used Drilling contractors used illegal immigrant workers, Hoskins says

February 8, 2011 – By CASEY JUNKINS

NEW MARTINSVILLE – Studies show West Virginia’s natural gas drillers employed nearly 10,000 people in 2009. However, some of the workers may not have been legal residents of the United States.

“We have caught 13 undocumented workers in the last few years, several of whom were working for drilling contractors in the area,” said Wetzel County Sheriff James Hoskins.

On Friday, Hoskins testified before the West Virginia House Judiciary Committee regarding his experiences with Marcellus Shale natural gas drillers working in his county. The Legislature is considering some bills that would impose new regulations on the drillers and that could increase the cost for drilling permits.

Hoskins did not immediately recall which companies were employing the undocumented workers at the time of their arrests, but he emphasized though Wetzel County law enforcement has caught just 13, he is confident many more have so far evaded authorities.

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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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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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