Duke study finds radioactive hot spots in PA tributaries Levels below shale discharge 200 X above background

Radioactive waste discharged into rivers from shale gas operations in Pennsylvania exceed regulatory thresholds and pose an environmental risk, according to a study released today by Duke University.

The peer-reviewed study, published in Environmental Science and Technology, found that radium levels of sediment samples collected in Blacklick Creek downstream from a treatment plant in Western Pennsylvania were 200 times greater than samples upstream and background sediments. The levels exceed thresholds for radioactive waste disposal and pose “potential environmental risks of radium bioaccumulation in localized areas of shale gas wastewater disposal.” The samples were collected downstream from discharges from the Josephine Brine Treatment Facility, in Indiana County, which treats wastewater from oil and gas drilling.

Waste from oil and gas drilling is exempt from both federal hazardous waste handling and disposal regulations and the Safe Drining Water Act. Oversight is left up to states, including New York and Pennsylvania, which have no standards or protocol to test drilling waste for radio-active material. The Duke study is sure to heat up a debate in both states over health risks from extracting shale gas through high volume hydraulic fracturing. Researchers attempting to clarify the issues face a tall task due to a lack of public records and disclosure about chemicals used and waste produced. The Duke study is one in a small but growing field attempting to quantifying environmental hazards of shale gas development -- a key requisite for gauging health risks. It will likely take years if not decades for answers that carry the weight of science, and even those will likely be debatable without mandatory disclosure requirements for the industry.

Currently, at least five landfills in upstate New York accept drilling waste from Pennsylvania drilling operators: Hyland in Angelica, the Hakes Landfill in Painted Post, the Chemung Landfill near Elmira, Seneca Meadows Landfill in Waterloo, and the Allied/BFI Waste Systems landfill in Niagara Falls. Landfill waste includes cuttings and mud from well drilling. Although it’s different from the effluent discharged into streams, it also tends to include high levels of radium.

The Pennsylvania DEP tested water downstream of some wastewater treatment plants in late 2010, and found levels to be at or below background. Tests by the Pittsburgh Water & Sewer Authority also showed no  excessive readings at intakes to its treatment plant on the Allegheny River near Aspinwall. But other studies, including one by the USGS, showed that radio-active levels tend to correspond with shale gas waste, and that tends to fluctuates depending on operators production and disposal schedules.

As a follow-up, the DEP announced earlier this year a plan to sample and analyze the naturally occurring radioactivity levels in flowback waters, treatment solids and drill cuttings, as well as associated matters such as the transportation, storage and disposal of drilling wastes “at dozens of sites.” DEP spokeswoman Colleen Connolly said today that results of the study, which is underway, will likely be available early next year.

The following is from a SGR post on Feb. 2, 2013, which is relevant in light of the Duke study:

Reports about radioactive production waste from the Marcellus Shale have been circulating for years, but in the absence of public oversight and testing protocols, they are hard to gauge. A report by the USGS in 2011 found that high radium levels correspond with saltiness and total dissolved solids (TDS), all of which are characteristic properties of waste from Devonian shales, including the Marcellus and Utica formations underlying parts of New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Maryland. TDS is a measure of concentration of salts and other impurities dissolved in water. They are not visible to the naked eye, and they are flags for water problems apart from radioactivity. 

Concerns over hot fracking waste are not new, and they are not limited to Pennsylvania. While reporting for Gannett, I uncovered a 2008 memo from the New York State Department of Health to the Department of Environmental Conservation warning of the dangers of radio-active flowback. The memo, unreleased to the public, referenced an analysis of wastewater samples by state health officials that found levels of radium-226, and related alpha and beta radiation up to 10,000 times higher than drinking water standards. Based on that finding, the Health Department urged the DEC to design a testing protocol to ensure hot drilling waste is handled and disposed of properly. "The issues raised are not trivial but are also not insurmountable," the memo concluded. "Many can be addressed using common engineering controls and industry best practices."

That is reassuring, to a degree. But what are “best practices,” exactly, and how effective are they if they are optional? For now, they are left to the discretion of operators who assure us that all is being handled properly, and to private waste plant operators who echo these reassurances.

NY fracking policy review expected “in a couple of weeks” DEC Chief’s 11th hour testimony puts onus on health dept.

The last piece to New York’s four and a half year policy review of fracking will be completed in “a couple of weeks,” the state’s top regulator told lawmakers this week. And then what?

Martens at hearing

DEC Commissioner Joseph Martens gave a few clues but no clear answers as he responded to questions in a legislative budget hearing Monday in Albany after delivering a 14-minute summary of the Department of Environmental Conseravation’s notable activities in 2012. Speaking in front of legislators and a gallery filled with hundreds of anti-fracking activists who drew repeated admonishments from finance committee Chair John DeFrancisco to pipe down or face a prolonged recess, Martens read a prepared statement covering issues ranging from restoring coastal frontage after hurricane Sandy to land acquisition and outdoor recreation. Remarkably, his statement lacked any reference to the most controversial environmental issue facing the state: whether, when, or how to allow shale gas development to proceed. Martens left it to lawmakers to bring that subject up during the question and answer period. Although Martens answers tended to be vague, nearly two hours of questioning yielded these informational nuggets:

• The Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS), the exhaustive policy overhaul aimed at regulating high volume hydraulic fracturing, cost “several million” dollars.

• Before finalizing the SGEIS, officials are awaiting an amendment from the Department of Health Commissioner Nirav Shah that assesses whether the DEC’s policy sufficiently covers health impacts. More information will be available after that piece is completed in “a couple of weeks,” Martens said.

• Martens said he has no idea what the Health Department amendment says, to what degree it will influence the final outcome of the DEC’s policy proposal, or whether the state will even proceed with the plan it has been working on for nearly five years.

• There are no funds in Cuomo's proposed budget for the fiscal year that starts in April to deal with fracking or the increased regulatory burden of permitting and overseeing shale gas wells.

• There has been broad anticipation that the state will release the SGEIS next week to meet a Feb. 27 deadline to finalize a set of regulations that are being developed concurrently with the SGEIS. Martens did not know whether the state would meet the deadline.

Protesters at hearing

This is where the sequence of events gets unwieldy. The regs cannot be finalized without the SGEIS. And the SGEIS cannot be complete without the health department’s assessment of the risks. The health review -- added to the overall process late last year on an ad-hoc basis in an attempt to satisfy criticism -- now takes on critical importance and political complexity.

If anything was clear in Martens testimony, it was the importance of the Department of Health in deciding the fate of New York’s fracking policy. Responding to questions about why nothing had been budgeted this year to oversee fracking, Martens again referred to the pending health department amendment: “It is really up in the air,” he said. “It was premature to include funds when we weren’t at the end of the process.” Other answers to other questions repeatedly lead him back to the health review “… It all depends on what the health review says. If it recommends additional measures, it will be difficult to get the regs finalized … We’ll have it in a few weeks and then decide where we’ll go from there ... I have to get the health report before we make any decisions about whether we move forward or not…”

But what exactly is the health review? It lacks a public scoping component, procedural outline, and any clear definition of its objective that has been publically vetted. This is a sore spot for activists. An hour and 45 minutes into the hearing, Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton complained that the scope and contents of the health study were being kept secret, and she inquired whether it would be open to public hearings before it was finalized with the SGEIS.

Lifton: .. Is the public going to have an opportunity for public comment and review..?

Martens: (smiling and repeating an earlier quip): I’m sure the public will comment on this...

Lifton: ... I’m asking you a serious question … Is there going to be legal, formal public comment on this document ..?

Martens: “I don’t know at this stage. I haven’t seen the report yet. The report could include a whole range of things. From one end of the spectrum, -- no we’re not convinced you’ve done enough [to mitigate health risks]. They could be convinced that you’ve done enough and conclude it shouldn’t happen in New York. That’s one possibility. Until I’ve seen that I’m not drawing any conclusions. There may be no need for public comment, depending on what Dr. Shah says.“

An audio file of this exchange, edited by Matt Richmond of WSKG Radio, is below.



Martens vagueness – along with his remarkable claim that he has no idea what the report might say after earlier testifying he has been working with the Department of Health on these questions for years – reflects a more general opaqueness from the Cuomo administration about the fate of fracking in New York. It is an approach that has frustrated and angered people on both sides of the issue, but anti-fracking activist have reacted most visibly.

That anger reached a boiling point just prior to Martens’ testimony. As hundreds of activists filed into the assembly hall, and officials, law makers, staffers, and media milled around the floor, Sandra Steingraber, an Ithaca College biologist, environmental health specialist, and high-profile leader of the anti-fracking movement, sought out Martens and began pressing him for information. Martens turned away and one of his staff stepped in, prompting Steingraber to raise her voice to an oratory pitch echoing through the auditorium. “We are going to open this process up because secrecy cannot protect public health. I have tried to have a conversation with you, but you don’t answer any letters, so I’m using my voice, in front of the people of New York to say we are not standing for a secret health study…” Steingraber’s continued her impromptu stumping for a full minute with no signs of stopping before she was cut short by a burly official who demanded she take a seat or be arrested. Steingraber stood her ground, continuing her castigation long enough to illustrate the organization, gumption, and leadership of a grass roots network that will surely be challenging the DEC if fracking is allowed. (Video, posted by Colleen Boland on You Tube, is embeded below)



Beyond that, anybody trying to pull any definitive information about fracking from this scene or the ensuing hearings had slim pickings. Where does this leave residents evenly divided for and against fracking (according to a recent poll), and the 20 percent who haven’t made up their mind?

First, it’s important to remember that the decision to proceed with fracking, or not, extends well beyond the bureaucratic mechanism of the review process. Ultimately, it will be made above Martens and Shah and probably by Cuomo himself, given the governor’s political stake in the game. I have written before about Cuomo’s ambivalence about fracking, and Monday’s hearing once again shows, if anything, his contimued lack of commitment.

Missing the Feb. 13 deadlines suggests the DEC will not be issuing the regs by the end of the month and the agency will have to reopen that process while enduring the groundswell of protests that go along with each hearing. But it’s critical to remember that the permitting process can begin once the SGEIS is finished, even without the regs finalized.

This gives Cuomo a lot of options. Depending on which way the political winds blow (and the status of natural gas prices) New York could release the SGEIS before or after Wednesday’s deadline. Because permitting can begin without regulations, the release of the SGEIS, whenever it comes, would technically open the path of shale gas development in New York, although it would be a rocky, narrow path along the northern Marcellus frontier. This path will be fraught with strident anti-drilling resistance, protests, legal challenges, and a bottleneck of applications handled by an understaffed agency. For established operators, it certainly would be a much less attractive route than the permitting boulevard that has accelerated drilling and fracking in Pennsylvania. But it very well could appeal to a certain breed of prospectors, speculators, innovators, and exploration companies working with relatively large swaths of unleased land and willing to take the chances to stake out and prove up new territory.

Cuomo can also hold off, given the low prices of natural gas, the lack of the political push from the pro-gassers to offset the uprising from the antis, split poles, etc. With the SGEIS pieces pretty much in place, his lack of commitment is hard to read. Certainly, as a politician, he is inclined to weigh monumental political issues against other monumental political issues, and looking at the state’s energy needs goes beyond fracking. In action and rhetoric, the governor has supported closing Indian Point and discouraging coal-burning plants. Can he place himself to the left of President Obama on energy and still maintain mainstream presidential aspirations?

At the end of Martens’ testimony Monday, the protesters stood and chanted "Not one well!" before heading to the Capitol for a rally with Steingraber and celebrities that included actor Mark Rufalo and film-maker Josh Fox. They were also joined by Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, who sign a "pledge of resistance" to fracking and is training protesters in civil disobedience if shale gas development is permitted.

That story is taking shape and we will soon know whether or how it will unfold.

As health panel reviews NY fracking policy, what’s next? Timing, scope, personnel signal Cuomo’s ambivalence

After being leaked to the press last week, the names of a blue-ribbon panel commissioned to evaluate the soundness of the state’s policy on shale gas are finally public. And with that, Governor Andrew Cuomo continues the appearance of moving his policy on fracking forward while remaining fundamentally uncommitted. (See previous post about his ambivalence here.)

At stake is exploitation of the Utica and Marcellus shales, world class carbon reserves extending under the Southern part of New York. Joe Martens, Commissioner of the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation, announced in mid-September that he was calling on the Department of Health to review public health risks associated with high volume hydraulic fracturing, in part to fend off possible law suits seeking to challenge the integrity of the state’s controversial policy development, now in its fifth year. The health review is headed by DOH Commissioner Nirav Shah, who is overseeing the work of an ad hoc panel of independent experts to advise the state.

The names and qualifications of the panel have been a matter of speculation since the review was announced in September until this past week, when an anonymous state official leaked the names to the Associated Press. Now we know panelists are John Adgate, chairman of the Environmental and Occupational Health Department at the Colorado School of Public Health; Lynn Goldman, dean of George Washington University’s School of Public Health and Health Services; and Richard Jackson, chairman of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of California Los Angeles’ Fielding School of Public Health.

The credentials and integrity of the group were lauded by fracking critics, fearful Cuomo would use the panel to rubber stamp questionable policy. Drilling proponents criticized the choices. That reaction, like the reaction of partisan parities to the appointment of a judge, in itself gives clues regarding the panel members’ professional predisposition and sympathies. More on that in a moment.

Who they are is important. But equally important is the task to which they have been assigned, the time they have been given to do it, and the influence they could bring to bear on the process. The governor’s office is sharing none of this publically, leaving reporters to piece together possible scenarios.

Technically, the state faces a November 29th deadline to finalize the regulatory framework for shale gas development in New York. If it misses the deadline, the rulemaking process will expire and officials will have to revamp proposals and reopen the public hearings that have become a lightening rod for well-organized public opposition. But it most certainly will take longer than 12 days to put New York’s regulatory house in order. How much longer depends on a collection of unresolved administrative and legislative issues. Economic pressures tied to the price of natural gas, now very low, may also come into play.

Here are some possible outcomes:

Meeting the Nov. 29 deadline: The state issues its regulations later this week or early the following week, narrowly sidestepping the mandate to restart the contentious and time-consuming public process. For this to happen, the advisory panel would have to fast-track a complicated and controversial review, exposing the administration to more criticism from activists that the panel was never intended as anything more than political window dressing. The state could also issue the new rules before the health review is complete without technically violating the law. That would come with a political cost to Cuomo because Martens has told influential environmental groups that the state would not proceed until health issues were taken into account.

Seeking an extension: The administration could file paperwork this week or early next week for a 90-day extension. That would require submitting updated drafts of the proposed rules and allowing 30-days for written public comment. This would open the door for more criticism and delays, but to a lesser degree than would public hearings. As reported by Jon Campbell of Gannett’s Albany Bureau, panelists expect their work to be finished in mid February, timing that would fit with a possible extension. Moreover, the extension would allow Cuomo to test the political water of the new Legislature. Control of the Senate still remains up in the air weeks after the election. Legislation that will influence shale gas policy in New York on issues ranging from moratoria to health studies to home rule depends on the outcome. Regardless, waiting for the Legislature to pick up the political hot potato may deflect some pressure from Cuomo. Or not.

Letting the proposed rules expire: This would essentially send the rank and file policy makers, who have already spent years attempting to evaluate and account for environmental risks of shale gas development, back to the drawing board. Updated policy would have to be re-introduced and subject to more public hearings, which have proven to be an effective tool for fracking opponents to derail or slow shale gas development. The process has already been delayed for years by 80,000 comments submitted in previous hearings and comment periods by critics on both sides of the issue.

Cuomo’s selection of panelists, when finally revealed last week, was met with approval from fracking critics and disapproval from supporters.

Energy in Depth, a gas-industry-funded group, questioned the integrity of previous work by Adgate, co-author of a Colorado School of Public Health study in March implicating shale gas development as a public health threat. As reported by Campbell: “It’s simply hard to imagine how a panel including the author of the most controversial health impact study in the nation ... will produce anything that resembles an objective review,” said Energy in Depth spokesman John Krohn. The Joint Landowners Coalition of New York, a pro-fracking group, issued a statement along similar lines: “We … are concerned that one member of the committee is the author of a Colorado study which has been widely criticized.”

Public health experts and anti-frackers, meanwhile, praised the panel’s qualifications. Sandra Steingraber, an ecologist and founder of New Yorkers Against Fracking, characterized panel members as “luminaries” in the field of public health, and well equipped to fully assess the risks of fracking. But, she added, the limited scope and timeframe of their charter does not appear to allow that. “The people are luminaries,” she said. “The process is a dismal fog. There is no transparency whatsoever.”

Lack of more detailed information about the scope and mechanics of the process also drew criticism from other quarters. On Thursday, more than 90 medical professionals publically called for a more independent thorough and transparent process. “New York’s community of medical professionals reiterate our call for an independent, comprehensive health impact assessment of these risks and their attendant costs,” Andrew Coates, a physician at Albany Medical College, said in a statement.

So we approach the holidays with state agencies spread thin with Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts, the shale gas dilemma far from resolved, political stakes higher than ever, and an important deadline looming.