Paper trail for Pa. shale waste leads to ex-IBM site in NY Official dismisses DEP record of cuttings shipped upstate

A delivery arrives in the village of Endicott, NY last summer
Photo: NY Friends of Clean Air and Water

ENDICOTT, NY -- An issue over what – exactly -- is arriving in tanker trucks for disposal at a manufacturing plant in Endicott, New York is a recent and vivid example of the fear and uncertainty over the endpoint of waste produced by the shale gas industry, and the lack of regulatory wherewithal to track it.

It’s a matter of record with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation that the tanker trucks in question are importing more than 80,000 gallons of waste a day to the plant in the heart of the village. That sum includes 30,000 gallons of leachate from the Seneca Meadow’s landfill, and 50,000 gallons from the Broome County landfill. But there is much that is not on the record, and I will get to that in a moment. First, some background.

Leachate is the soluable and suspended matter that percolates through landfills with (in this area) 30 inches of rain each year, plus whatever moisture is in the landfill itself. This drainage includes essentially anything that goes into the landfill that can be flushed out with water. Put another way, Leachate consists of landfill dregs.

Municipal sewage treatment plants are generally not equipped to handle landfill leachate, so it’s shipped to commercial plants designed to treat industrial waste. The sprawling manufacturing campus in Endicott, in the middle of a heavily populated retail and residential area of the village, was once home to IBM Corp’s micro electronic division .The industrial park, now owned by Huron Real Estate, includes a plant that has been treating waste produced from onsite operations for decades.

The most recent imports are a new source of income for the current operators, i3 Electronics. They began arriving conspicuously last year from Seneca Meadows landfill in 18-wheel tanker trucks rolling through the village. At that time, the business was owned by EIT, which eventually fell to bankruptcy. Along with the tanker trucks came suspicion and fear that former and current operators of the business are trying to offset steady manufacturing losses and job declines over the years with revenue from waste imports.

The suspicion is not without justification. As far as state regulators are concerned, the plant is processing this new source of landfill waste, without a permit, as part of a pilot study. But no time frame has been allocated, and no public comment period or public notification has been declared. According to Mary Jane Peachey, a regulator with the state Department of Environmental Conservation, the DEC has not monitored the input or output of the plant in at least five years.

And here is another critical piece of background: The i3 Electronics site and the surrounding residential and retail district is a Class 2 state Super Fund site, meaning existing pollution there poses a “significant threat to public health or the environment.” Since 1979, IBM Corp. has been pumping toxic solvents from the ground that have seeped from the micro-electronics plant into the community, affecting more than 470 homes. There have been multiple spills since.

It is no surprise that Endicott residents are generally concerned about becoming a waste destination, and specifically concerned about waste from shale gas development, which have been banned in New York pending a health review.

Much of the controversy over fracking waste involves the chemical solution that goes into shale gas wells to stimulate production, and the liquid mix of brine, chemicals and metals that comes out. But liquid waste – called flowback – is just one part of a broader metric. Shale gas development also involves a viscous solution called drilling mud, and solid waste, including drill cuttings tinged with varying degrees of metals, solvents, and naturally occurring radio active material (NORM) from deep in the ground. It’s a matter for record that drilling cuttings from the Marcellus Shale tend to be radioactive, and the New York State Department of Health has advised officials from the DEC to devise a testing protocol to ensure hot drilling waste is handled and disposed of properly .

Drill cuttings, like flowback, are also exempt from federal hazardous waste handling laws, and they often end up in landfills, like Seneca Meadows.

And that’s how shale gas dregs can end up Endicott, or countless other places where landfill leachate is treated. The shipping of leachate to private plants is not, in itself, sinister, or even especially newsworthy. It’s the exemptions, loopholes, and lack of disclosure about its contents that makes it a problem and rightly invites the attention of activists and media watchdogs.

According to records filed with the state Department of Environmental Protection, the Seneca Lake Meadows landfill was the final destination for Marcellus Shale drill cuttings from 196 wells drilled in Pennsylvania during 2010 and 2011. After tracking this bit of information down on their own, some Endicott residents and area activists wanted to know if this potentially radio active drilling waste stream ended in Endicott via the importation of Seneca Meadows leachaete. If so, were state regulators aware of it?

And that brings us to the part of the story where the record gets muddy.

A citizens group called the Western Broome Environmental Stakeholders Coalition met with the DEC’s Peachey in February to get to the heart of the matter. (A video of the meeting, filmed by activist Bill Huston, is available here.) Early in the meeting, the question came up as to whether the Seneca Meadows leachate arriving in Endicott was tested for radioactivity – a simple question that apparently invited a very confusing answer.

Peachey said that step is unnecessary, unless agency personal “are aware” that the waste comes from a suspected radioactive source. “When we are aware that someone is taking a waste stream that would have those elements we would require them to do appropriate sampling and monitoring for that,” she explained.

When a resident pointed out that Seneca Meadows takes Marcellus drill cuttings, Peachey challenged the source of that information. “If they were taking fracking waste now I think we would know it,” she said. When told that the information came directly from the Pennsylvania DEP database, Peachy replied: “I would question that ... I would like to substantiate that more with what’s currently going on there.”

DEP records show that Peachey is technically correct. Seneca Meadows is not currently taking waste from shale gas wells. But she failed to tell the group – in a meeting that was purportedly intended to inform the public and set the record straight – that the Pennsylvania record also shows the landfill did accept cuttings from nearly 200 wells over a two-year period. In bureaucratic form, Peachey fixated on timing and semantics while ignoring the essence of the matter.

While Peachey’s response could be explained as an attempt to disarm a source of PR headaches for the agency, it did nothing to address the issue at hand: drill cuttings in the Seneca Meadows landfill and their influence on the leachate. And it circumvented the original question – is the leachate from that landfill being checked for radioactivity as it rolls into Endicott?

The answer (as eventually revealed – sort of) is no, and perhaps there is a good reason that it is not. (Addressing a later question from the audience, Peachey explained that it is up to landfill operators to check for radio-activity.) But Peachey’s failure to acknowledge, much less explain, the record of shipments of cuttings from Pennsylvania gas wells to Seneca Meadows does not inspire trust. The error of omission could be a misguided attempt for damage control. Or it might be evidence that the department is out of the loop in what she pointed out was a “transaction between one private company to another private company.”

Another possibility, no more reassuring, is that the Pennsylvania records are untrustworthy. Before gaining access to the DEP website, visitors must agree to this disclaimer that notes that the data is self-reported, unchecked, unverified, and possibly incomplete:

DEP makes no claims, promises or guarantees regarding the accuracy, completeness or timeliness of the operators’ data that DEP is required to post. DEP expressly disclaims any liability for errors or omissions related to the production data contained within these reports. No warranty of any kind is given by DEP with respect to the production data contained within these reports posted on its website.

All of this uncertainty points to an overarching problem: the industry’s exemption from federal laws that mandate a clear tracking and specific kind of handling of hazardous waste. States are left with that job, and more often than not, state officials – citing a lack of resources -- defer to the industry to get the job done.

The issue of where the waste goes, which I have written about in several posts, is especially pressing these days, as tens of thousands of shale gas wells come on line in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and tens of thousands more elsewhere in the country.In the absence of federal hazardous waste laws and lack of regional planning, placing the waste becomes a process of default as various states consider legislation to ban it. (New Jersey legislators are crafting a second attempt at a ban after the first was vetoed by Gov. Chris Christie, and the issue is also being considered in New York and Connecticut.) Hence, rather than guided by a master plan, the waste is following the path of least social and political resistance. Much of what comes from the Marcellus, as far as we can tell from industry’s self policing records, goes to injection wells in Ohio, and various landfills and private treatment plants in Pennsylvania and New York.

In addition to Seneca Meadows, DEP records show that New York destinations for waste from the Marcellus Shale include 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.

Communities like Niagara Falls (and notably Love Canal) tied to a history of toxic waste disposal are especially sensitive to the possibility of a future tied to more of the same. Even though the Buffalo area does not sit over a viable shale reserve, I have found during book signings there that community members are keenly attuned to the issues of shale gas development and, specifically, the lack of assurances about its waste stream.

Endicott is also one of those places. People in the village are angry that they were not notified about waste imports to the i3 Electronics plant. Matters were made worse last year when a corroded tank holding the contents of a Seneca Meadows shipment failed and at least 6,000 gallons of leachate spilled out, much if it soaking into the ground. Residents were not informed of the shipments or the spill. They were left piecing together information until a year later, when John Okesson, Peachey’s colleague at the DEC, explained details at the February meeting after sustained community pressure for the agency to account for it.

Rick White, a community member and labor advocate, summed up feelings at the end of the meeting. He referred to decades of spills, a pattern of secrecy, and a resulting legacy of environmental problems that, in his words, “stack up.” He continued:

This whole community is very sensitive to the idea that if there is additional toxic fluid, whether it is fracking waste or landfill waste or whatever it might be, and it’s coming into the village of Endicott for whatever the reason, whether it’s to make money or to enrich somebody’s pockets or it its simply to do a good service to the community, the negatives outweigh the positives. And this is why we are asking these questions.

His comments were met with applause from the 50 or so people in attendance.

Ruling allows Scroggins back on Cabot-leased land Fracking activist will fight buffer zone in May trial

Update, April 30 2104: Scroggins V. Cabot trial, set for May 1 in Montrose, Pa., postpomed until July 2.

***

A ruling Friday by a Pennsylvania judge to allow activist Vera Scroggins back on land leased by Cabot Oil & Gas is a “big win” according to her legal team, but the fight will continue in a trial scheduled for May 1.

An order, drafted by Cabot attorneys and handed down by Judge Kenneth Seamans in October, barred Scroggins from setting foot on land owned or leased by Cabot, “including but not limited to” well sites, well pads, and access roads. That language kept Scroggins from approximately 200,000 acres -- nearly 40 percent -- of Susquehanna County where Scroggins lives, including property of friends, neighbors, stores, parks, schools and health care providers.

After a hearing Monday, Judge Seamans modified the injunction to restrict Scroggins only from work areas designated by no-trespassing signs and a 100-foot buffer zone. The new order, issued on Friday, allows Vera to enter other land leased by Cabot, including markets, public spaces, physicians offices, and hospitals. It also allows her to use public roads that go by work sites, but the ruling stipulates that she cannot stop or linger at the entrances to access roads.

In an interview Friday with Associated Press reporter Michael Rubinkam, Scroggins’ attorney Scott Michelman characterized the revised order as “a big win,” but he added that the 100-foot buffer could pose unjustified restrictions. Scroggins said the revised order was “a step in the right direction. ” She told me today that she and her legal team will fight the buffer zone at a trial scheduled for May 1.

Scroggins’ vantage point was mostly from public roads by drilling sites, although Cabot claims that she also trespassed onto private land under lease by the Texas drilling company, posing a safety risk to herself and others. In a statement Friday, Cabot officials said they were "satisfied” with the ruling to maintain an injunction against Scroggins that “protects Cabot and its employees, contractors and others” and “keeps landowners from being exposed to liability that could arise from Scroggins' actions."

One of the main questions to be resolved: Is a buffer zone, which does not apply to other citizens, necessary to protect the health and safety of Scroggins and others, as Cabot claims, or is it being used by Cabot to discourage anti-fracking activists from filming or viewing Cabot operations from legitimate vantage points, as Scroggins claims.

Scroggins has taped and posted hundreds of video files on You Tube showing drilling operations in Susquehanna County since 2009, including spills, clean-ups, and discharges. The videos cast operations in a way that runs counter to the industry’s portrayal as clean and safe. Scroggins has also lead tours for political action groups, academics, journalists, and other interested parties visiting the area to learn more about drilling and the controversial practice of high volume hydraulic fracturing to stimulate the gas wells.

Cabot Oil and Gas v. Vera Scroggins

Coming soon: Audit to grade DEP’s oversight of drillers Water testing protocol remains center of transparency flap

Is the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection a lion or a lamb when it comes to regulating and policing shale gas operations?

One qualified and independent source will soon provide an answer. Im May, the office of Auditor General Eugene DePasquale is due to release a detailed investigation into the practice and protocol of the state's regulation of the drilling industry, a source from his office told me this week.

DePasquale announced the review in January, 2013, in the wake of a controversy over whether state investigators obscure or alter the outcome of investigations into drilling’s impact on water supplies by disclosing an incomplete suite of chemical tests. The intention of the probe, according to a letter from DePasquale, is to determine the "adequacy and effectiveness of DEP's monitoring of water quality as potentially impacted by shale gas development activities, including but not limited to systems and procedures for testing, screening, reporting and response to adverse impact such as contamination."

In other words, the probe will get to a question at the crux of the fracking debate: whether and to what degree the DEP is safeguarding water supplies from drilling.

The DEP’s testing protocol for wells potentially affected by drilling operations entered the public spotlight with a case by Loren Kiskadden seeking damages for pollution against the agency and Range Resources. The case, now pending in the Court of Common Pleas, claims that the department withheld full results of tests of Kiskadden’s water in June 2011 and January 2012. The ensuing “suite code” controversy came to light in September 2012 with the deposition of Taru Upadhyay, the DEP Bureau of Laboratories technical director, at a Environmental Board Hearing. Upadhyay testified that results for some metals, including copper, nickel, zinc and titanium, were not included in Kiskadden’s final report. This was not unusual, she said, because the lab only verifies concentrations of compounds ordered by the investigator from the oil and gas division, even if the samples were tested for a broader range.

DEP officials have since confirmed that the testing protocol for markers of contamination from Marcellus Shale production – including what and how many chemicals  are included in the final analysis -- falls to the discretion of individual investigators because they are best able to judge what chemicals are relevant to the investigation.

Watchdog agencies have characterized the DEP’s approach as random, incomplete, and a violation of public trust. Steve Hvozdovich, Marcellus Shale Policy Associate for Clean Water Action, said residents and watchdog agencies took it on faith that the department was following accepted protocol outlined by the federal Environmental Protection Agency in Method 200.7 – which requires testing for at least 24 different chemicals.

“This comes down to a lack of trust and a lack of transparency,” he said. “Nobody outside of the DEP offices knew this – that they were not quality controlling and quality assuring for the full 24 chemicals. It took a law-suit to bring that out … We need to have comprehensive testing, especially in a case where it originates from a residential complaint.”

Clean Water Action was one of a dozen agencies that signed a letter to the DEP on January 25, 2013 with concerns that the agency's testing methods “lack transparency; result in the withholding of vital data from affected households and the public; force residents to potentially undergo prolonged exposure to contaminants that impact health; and delay action necessary to correct pollution of drinking water supplies.”

But concerns of environmental activists are not shared by all. The DEP’s approach to regulation and enforcement under drilling supporter Governor Tom Corbett has a lot to do with the boss’s political values of how much government should be overseeing private business. The oil and gas industry – provider of cheap abundant energy that we all demand – has been the long-time beneficiary of regulatory passes. For starters, the entire problem of determining what, how, and if chemicals affect water is prodigiously complicated by the fact that the industry is exempt from federal laws that require disclosure and regulations of chemicals injected into the ground, and also laws governing hazardous waste coming out. Corbett, who won election in 2010 partially on a platform to limit state regulations on the industry, has been praised by industry supporters who defend the DEP oversight as sufficient and responsible.

No matter what it says, DePasquale’s report, coming in May, will likely be controversial due to the political volatility of the subject matter. In addition to the water-testing issue, the probe will “determine the adequacy and effectiveness of DEP’s monitoring of the handling, treatment and disposal of waste connected with shale gas development activity, including but not limited to systems and procedures for testing, tracking, treating, disposal, data collection and analysis, reuse and recycling, reporting, and response to adverse impact such as contamination.”

It’s sure to add a new wrinkle to the shale gas debate as the election year heats up, beginning with primaries among gubernatorial candidates who will likely have something to say about it. Those include John Hanger, a Democrat, who served as DEP Secretary under the Ed Rendell administration. Hanger is a gas supporter, but he is also in the pro-regulatory camp. As DEP chief he has been critical of – and sometimes at odds with -- certain companies he characterized as rogues. He has called on the DEP to reform its protocol to ensure a comprehensive data set of water test results gets to people who are potentially affected by drilling. The degree Hanger's message resonates with primary voters will be one of many tests of how much weight regulatory reform carries in the larger political equation.

Pa. regulators seek public comment on shale development Seven years into the play, hearings intended to shape regs

We will soon know how passion and reason of stakeholders and the general public might shape regulations of shale gas development in Pennsylvania.

The state Department of Environmental Protection is holding a series of public meetings on provisions of Act 13, a bill intended to upgrade the state’s Oil & Gas law to accommodate unconventional gas extraction. The DEP is charged with taking into account public sentiment as it draws up specifics to implement the bill, which Governor Tom Corbett signed into law last year. Issues range from impacts on parks and wildlife areas to managing waste disposal and spills. The draft rulemaking also includes standards affecting the construction of pits, gathering lines, and temporary pipelines, provisions for identifying and monitoring abandoned wells (and related hazards of drilling through them) and the industry practice of spreading brine, which can include radio-active material and other well waste, on roads.

These and other highlights are summarized on the DEP website. But the overview does not mention key elements of Act 13 that have spawned controversy and law suits, and which are bound to also come up at the hearings. One is a provision regulating physicians who treat patients suffering from exposure to drilling and fracking chemicals. Commonly known as “the gag rule,” the regulation prohibits doctors’ access to information about chemicals in exposure cases. To get this information, physicians must sign a legal contract that prevents them from sharing it with anybody, including other health care providers.  In October, a U.S. District Court threw out a doctor's claim that the rule violates First Amendment rights. The ruling was made only because the doctor, Alfonso Rodriguez, brought the case before the court as a hypothetical situation, and therefore did not have standing. It did, however, leave the door open for claims based on actual events. (More on that here.)

Another touchy provision of Act 13 limits the power of municipalities to influence or ban development within their borders, while allowing drill rigs, waste pits, and pipelines in residential districts. The matter is now before Pennsylvania’s high court after municipalities -- including South Fayette in Allegheny County; and Peters, Cecil, Mt. Pleasant and Robinson in Washington County – successfully argued before the Commonwealth Court that the law was unconstitutional.

UPDATE: On Dec. 19th, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that part of Act 13 restricting local jurisdiction over gas wells was unconstitutional.

The Oil and Gas industry is exempt from both local and national regulations that apply to other business, ranging from zoning to the handling and disposal of hazardous waste. The justification for this (as I discuss in previous posts): cheap fossil fuel cannot be pulled from the earth with an overabundance of nit–picking inspectors and onerous regulatory burdens.

The degree to which shale gas operations should be regulated, and under which jurisdiction, is one thing. Banning them altogether is something different. The Environmental Quality Board, chaired by the Secretary of DEP, is responsible for adopting regulations and considering petitions to change them, and it will be interesting to see how much of a platform the hearings will become for stakeholders who want no regulation, some regulation, or an outright ban.

A 60-day comment period on the rule-making process began Sunday. The first of seven public hearings across the state is scheduled for Jan. 7 in Wyoming County. Officials have also scheduled informational webinars on Dec. 19, from 2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., and Friday, Jan. 3, from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. For information about schedules and how to submit testimony, click here.

Since the Marcellus drilling boom began in 2006, more than 6,500 shale wells have been drilled in Pennsylvania – making the Marcellus the number one natural gas play in the country. With the encouragement of pro-drilling governors, first Ed Rendell and now Tom Corbett, the DEP approach has been regulate-as-you-go. That’s a striking contrast to New York state, where officials suspended permitting for high volume hydraulic fracturing in 2008 pending an environmental review and policy overhaul, now in its sixth year and still absent resolution to questions about health impacts. As I have written in Under the Surface, contrasting political cultures and histories in New York and Pennsylvania have shaped the states’ respective approaches to shale gas development. The delay in New York has encouraged anti-fracking activists – bolstered by governor Andrew Cuomo’s liberal base advocating renewable energy - to organize campaigns against the industry, and use public meetings to showcase their opposition.

Will the forthcoming hearings in Pennsylvania also become a showcase for anti-frackers? Perhaps, but it is unlikely they will follow the pattern in New York. The organizational challenge to tip the balance away from the status quo is daunting, especially in this late stage of the game. For anti-frackers to simply show up is part of it, but influencing the process requires comments that are on point and informed. This is a strong suit for industry professionals, who make a living out of mastering policy and related practical, legal, economic, and regulatory intricacies.  And there are thousands of these details with far-reaching consequences encompassing a spectrum of issues, ranging from exemptions to burden of proof to liability to enforcement to bonding to well construction standards to impact fees and taxes… Etc, etc.

Doug Shields, an outspoken industry critic who was instrumental in passing a fracking ban when he was a Pittsburgh councilman in 2010, was later featured in Josh Fox’s Gasland II as a person on the front line of the anti-fracking movement in Pennsylvania. He told me that he expects activists to attend the DEP hearings to exert political pressure, but it will take more than that to significantly alter the course of fracking in Pennsylvania. “A big turnout sends a message to the elected,” he said. “But the meat and potatoes on regulations will be on the technical points.”  He added that he also expected some of the large environmental NGOs to take the lead in assessing and critiquing chapter and verse of the state’s proposal. ‘We will need to get some technical expertise to look at the proposed regulations and determine where the weaknesses are.”

In New York, the anti-fracking movement was able to draw on active chapters of groups such as the Sierra Club and the National Resources Defense Council, combined with  decisive technical help from figures such as Sandra Steingraber and Walter Hang, who each led sophisticated and ultimately effective critiques of New York’s draft guidelines and regulations. Advancing grass roots opposition early in the process on technical rather than ideological grounds, Hang marshaled letter writing campaigns and list serves to educate followers on the nuts and bolts of proposed permitting guidelines – called the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement -- and to guide responses that favored the movement. Steingraber adopted a similar approach – an online guide called the 30-Days of Fracking Regs – to encourage technically relevant comments first on fracking regulations and later on infrastructure projects. The efforts of both Hang and Steingraber have encouraged a flood comments that stalled the process.

Hang and Steingraber are among activists intent on blocking, rather than regulating the industry. Compared to Pennsylvania, the political ethos and history of New York has favored land preservation more than mineral extraction. Geology is also undoubtedly a factor. Pennsylvania’s extemporaneous approach to establishing rules for the shale gas industry (more than five years into the play) reflects a political tolerance tied to a storied history of extraction, including coal, oil and natural gas, in the state for better and worse. The forthcoming hearings and public comment period on Act 13 will be a grass roots test of how moved the electorate is to change the status quo of carbon dependency. A small response will reflect a willingness to defer to regulators and the state, while the opposite will provide critics with potentially potent raw material for change.

10% or 90% - How much fracking waste is recycled? Loose definitions give industry lots of leeway

Shale wastewater released from a treatment plant in Josephine, Pa.
PHOTO CREDIT REID FRAZIER

Bloomberg reporters David Wethe and Peter Ward recently shed a little light on a critical aspect of the shale gas boom – wastewater disposal. Their article last week explains how recycling – once pitched as a market-based panacea for dealing with 21-billion barrels of brine, solvents, metals, and radioactive elements produced annually from domestic oil and gas production – is less of a hit with investors than anticipated. The reason: technological limits.

The article, Fracking Bonanza Eludes Wastewater Recycling Investors, frames the issue in a quote by Mark Kidder, head of an oilfield unit for Schlumberger: “We’ve spent millions and millions of dollars evaluating virtually every available and reasonable-looking technology out there, always hoping we’d find the silver bullet … At this point, we found nothing.”

News outlets looking for accessible material are not likely to find much, either, in the way of simplicity in the fracking waste story. It’s an area clouded by confusion, noise, and lack of baseline reporting standards and enforcement. There is no easy measure to gauge the problem’s impact -- a hallmark of good journalism and one of the first calculations reporters tend to make in considering a subject. But there are still ways to get at this story, and the financially oriented Bloomberg uses an approach that carries the most weight with its readers – economic analysis. Wethe and Ward cite these benchmarks:

Of the $31 billion spent each year on managing water resources in U.S. and Canadian oilfields, $2.8 billion, or less than 10 percent, is spent on recycling, according to PacWest Consulting Partners LLC... 

In Pennsylvania last year, operators cleaned and reused 85 percent of fracking and produced water because state rules, as well as geology, makes water disposal more expensive there. In most other regions, where disposal wells are more plentiful, recycling amounts to 10 percent or less, according to PacWest estimates.

Interesting, to be sure. But the article does not explain the vast discrepancies in other reports attempting to quantify the extent of frack water recycling in the oil patch, or why the PacWest estimates are any truer than other numbers cited by experts, media, and interested parties. Several notable examples come to mind:

The Wall Street Journal, citing figures from the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, reported that 14 percent of frack water in central Pennsylvania was recycled as of November, 2012.

A report in October of this year by San Jose State University and Earthworks, an environmental group, found that about one third of Pennsylvania fracking waste is “reused” and about half is discharged into rivers and streams either through brine/industrial waste treatment plants or municipal sewage treatment plants. The report also found that only about 8 percent of injected fracking solution water is reclaimed from wells in Pennsylvania to begin with, which suggests that many production wells become long-term repositories for unrecovered waste.

Energy In Depth, the industry public relations arm, claims that the industry “reused” or “recycled” 90 percent of flowback water in the last half of 2013.

Adding to this confusion is the problem of definition. “Recycled,” much like “all natural,” is one of those marketing idioms that invites abuse by those seeking to paint something green. Colleen Connolly, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, explained to me this week that the agency in fact does not make a distinction between “reuse” and “recycling” and that “recycling” generally applies to fracking waste that undergoes some sort of treatment. The “recycled” label therefore applies to flowback from shale gas production wells that has been treated and discharged into a river, even if it contains unscreened or unrecovered hazards, such as total dissolved solids, solvents, metals, and radionuclides. Lacking a good-faith statutory definition, the “recycled” label suggests a certain environmental stewardship while in fact allowing the industry convenient options for waste disposal – whether actually reusing it, discharging it, or injecting it in the ground.

As with much of the industry (which is exempt from both federal Safe Drinking Water Act and hazardous waste disposal laws) the fracking-waste reporting “system,” varying in form and rigor from state to state, offers the illusion of transparency while obscuring actual practices. Operators in Pennsylvania and other states are required to report their waste production and disposal on a database that is available on the Internet. But there is little or no oversight, let alone enforcement. Perhaps the biggest telltale sign of a problem is a disclaimer on the DEP website that visitors must agree to before viewing the agency’s files. The DEP notes that the data is self-reported, unchecked, unverified, and possibly incomplete.

DEP makes no claims, promises or guarantees regarding the accuracy, completeness or timeliness of the operators’ data that DEP is required to post. 

DEP expressly disclaims any liability for errors or omissions related to the production data contained within these reports. No warranty of any kind is given by DEP with respect to the production data contained within these reports posted on its website.

Are we expected to trust this data, even when the DEP clearly doesn’t?

The shale gas boom is taking shape in an age where free market interests are strong and the will to regulate is relatively weak. Rather than looking to government reporting data that is inconsistent, unreliable, or non-existent, the Bloomberg report tackles the recycling analysis in a way that hits home with investors – by gauging economic feasibility rather than regulatory compliance. That’s fair and good, yet there are additional ways to get at this story, and many of them are taking shape in the Ivory Tower rather than the newsroom.

A research team led by Sheila Olmstead of the University of Texas measured water quality changes at thousands of points downstream from waste treatment plants and drilling sites for more than a decade. In a paper published in the National Academy of Sciences early this year, the team found a trend of elevated chlorine concentrations – a marker of fracking pollution -- downstream of waste water treatment facilities, but not downstream of drilling sites. As New York Times blogger Andrew Revkin notes in Dot Earth, the findings suggest that spills and leaks at specific sites are not statistically visible, but impacts of poorly processed wastewater are. In other words, we should be aware of the “cumulative impacts,” or the toll taken in water quality over time as shale gas development becomes more commonplace, even in areas previously untouched by mineral extraction.

Salts are a telltale marker of waste -- known as “flowback” – that is regurgitated from natural gas wells after they are stimulated with hydraulic fracturing fluids. Studies, including one by the USGS in 2011, show that radioactive levels tend to correspond with total dissolved solids (TDS). TDS is a measure of concentration of salts and other impurities dissolved in water that tends to fluctuate depending on operators' production and disposal schedules. They are not visible to the naked eye, and they are flags for water problems, including radioactivity.

SU grad student Sunshyne Hummel works on groundwater study
PHOTO JAMES PITARRESI  

The Olmstead team is one example of a burgeoning field of study focused on fracking and water quality. (There are many others, including one featured in this report I wrote for Syracuse University Magazine.) Yet the subject could use much more reporting than it gets in the mainstream press. The problem is, it requires a level of commitment and investigative wherewithal beyond the reach of many beat reporters working in an age where resources are scarce, staffs are small and growing smaller, and deadlines are more pressing as ever due to Internet immediacy. Instances that do make it to mainstream media outlets often originate with press-releases from NGOs, universities, or government agencies regarding events that are too conspicuous to ignore, including the following examples from Pennsylvania:

Waste Treatment Corp., a plant on the Allegheny River in Warren County, Pa. has been operating under a state permit that sets no limit on the amount of total dissolved solids and chlorides it can send to the river from oil and gas and other waste streams. Late last month, the DEP negotiated an order with the company that allows the plant to send a monthly average of 176,000 pounds per day of total dissolved solids into the river on an interim basis for two more years. The company has until January 2016 to trim the salt discharge to a monthly average of 888 pounds per day of total dissolved solids. As part of the proposed agreement with the state, the company agreed to a $25,000 fine.  Waste Treatment Corp. still faces a law suit filed by Clean Water Action, an environmental group, in U.S. District Court. The group claims that the plant is illegally discharging fracking wastewater containing high levels of salts, heavy metals and radioactive compounds into the Allegheny River.

Samples collected in Blacklick Creek downstream from discharges from the Josephine Brine Treatment Facility, in Indiana County, found radium levels 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,” according to a peer reviewed study by Duke University scholars studying the impact for shale waste.

Last summer, the DEP revoked the permit of Aquatic Synthesis Unlimited after numerous spills and violations at the plant, built on an old rodeo site about 40 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. The plant had problems from the beginning, when it started construction in December 2011 without first getting a permit from the DEP. As the demand for wastewater treatment grew, the DEP issued a conditional permit in April 2012 that allowed the plant to accept flowback, but soon the facility was inundated. It treated some of the wastewater it had on site in July and August last year, but in September it was cited by the DEP for moving wastewater off-site for injection into deep wells, in violation of its permit.

One of the most mysterious and troubling frack-water-treatment messes involves one of the highest-profile and promising plants. Minuteman, a service company in Milton Pa. that handles fracking waste, was heralded by Governor Tom Corbett as “an American success story.” Corbett made a personal visit to showcase the plant as part of a pitch to promote job-creation incentives in February, 2012. Owner Brian Bolus (who happened to be a $10,000 contributor to Corbett’s campaign) began the company in 1991 and built it into a $5 million operation with 200 trucks and 158 employees. In what remains an unexplained turn of events, the FBI, accompanied by agents from the DEP, the IRS, and various local agencies including the Milton Sewer Authority raided the plant in May. Federal agents bound some Minuteman workers in plastic cuffs, also handcuffed Bolus' wife Karen in front of their son, interviewed incoming waste truckers and left with a huge haul of boxes of documents.

Minuteman issued a statement that characterized the probe as "baseless," and a result of unfounded complaints from "disgruntled" employees speaking to the AG's office. There have been no follow-up reports since the event late last spring. Dennis Fisher, a spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office, refused to comment on the status of the investigation or address any of my questions about it.

Of course, there are hundreds of treatment plants profitably treating or “recycling” frack wastewater throughout the Commonwealth without undue attention or incident. (You can view a video of one here by Kirsi Jansa, a Finnish journalist, who takes viewers on a tour of Reserved Environmental Services.)  Many, undoubtedly, follow “best practices” – a term that refers to standards set and policed by industry rather than government. But in the absence of clearly defined federal standards, enforcement, or even a more precise definition of “recycling,” it’s hard to know where the bar is set and who is actually meeting it.

What are the prospects for New York’s shale reserves? Sociology, ideology weigh heavy in debate over geology

The value of a given shale gas reserve depends on the physical characteristics of the rock. How deep? How thick? How much wet gas? How much dry gas? But as with many aspects of the shale gas debate, there’s more to it. Community attitudes, politics, special interests, markets, and ideological conviction all influence the social and monetary push to get things moving.

Things are not moving in New York, where for years shale gas has been pitched as an economic gift – a windfall for the taking -- by industry public relations campaigns, lobbiest, and landowners seeking lucrative contracts with drillers. Now, fracking critics are drawing on industry’s own data to build a case that the New York’s shale prospects amount to a stillborn promise.

Chip Northrup, a former oil and gas investor from Texas, led a team of professionals who made this case Wednesday night at Cornell University. Presenters also included Lou Allstadt, a retired Mobil vice president, Brian Brock, a geologist, and Jerry Acton, a retired systems engineer for Lockheed Martin. The team, moderated by Cornell engineering professor Tony Ingraffea, spoke at a 200-seat lecture hall brimming   with a supportive anti-fracking crowd that laughed and applauded in response to occasional quips and deadpans by Northrup. (Example: “In Texas, they know better than to spread radio-active flowback on roads…. They use it to induce earthquakes by injecting underground.”)

In a presentation that lasted close to two and a half hours, Northrup and his colleagues drew on data from a handful of exploratory wells in New York and extrapolations from thousands of production wells in Pennsylvania, along with prevailing social factors. Their conclusion: Viable shale reserves in New York are too limited and social resistance too great to produce major development at current prices. Rather than blossoming into the mega-billion dollar industry, as promised, the play is more likely to attract highly speculative exploration around the fringes by wildcatters, storage facilities and pipelines to get Pennsylvania gas to market, and geology that is uniquely suited for the injection of fracking waste from out-of-state operations – factors that Northup likens to “a hangover without the benefit of the night on the town.”

For years, the anti-frackers have waged their war against shale gas development predominantly on environmental grounds with arguments that it’s unsustainable and acutely and chronically damaging to the ecosystem. Wednesday’s presentation shifted the fight to economic grounds, at a time when the industry is sensitive to talk that can discourage investors. Natural gas prices are expected to remain at historic lows for the foreseeable future, cooling enthusiasm to sink capital into exploration and production efforts in new and unproven areas.  (In many ways, the industry is victim to it’s own prolific success in Pennsylvania. Landowners are anticipating the market glut will soon exceed storage capacity, portending even further suppression of prices or a scale back in production. For a recent assessment of the market glut from the view of landowner's forum, click here.)

Economic prospects in New York, meanwhile, are further weakened by regulatory uncertainty. After more than five years of an environmental review, state officials are yet to finalize permitting policy pending questions about public health, and Governor Andrew Cuomo’s lack of commitment is grounded in coordinated opposition from both grass roots and institutional campaigns that represent a significant part of his political base.  (Significantly, Northup and Allstadt are among leaders of their own political action campaign to ban fracking near their homes in Cooperstown. Their fight to put shale gas development in the hands of local town leaders rather than state officials boils down to the outcome of a landmark case now before the Court of Appeals.)

Just as gas proponents were using the promise of wealth to urge state government to begin permitting gas wells when prices were high and interest was booming, critics are now presenting evidence of a flat-out bust as all the more reason to hold back.

Acton's analysis shows colored dots representing viable shale zones 

At Wednesday’s presentation, Brock provided a geological assessment that explained what is widely known about the Marcellus: Production is most viable in the thickest, richest sections at a certain depth, which tapper exponentially from an area just south of New York’s border with Pennsylvania. Acton supported Brock’s characterization with a separate analysis, now circulating on the Internet. Acton used production figures from Pennsylvania wells to assess yields corresponding with certain physical parameters of Marcellus geology, including depth, thickness, and thermal maturity, and then extrapolated the Pennsylvania data to model New York’s production. His conclusion: Reserves under the Empire State remain mostly unviable, with the exception of an area extending slightly into the Southern Tier, just north of the most lucrative part of the reserve in Susquehanna County Pennsylvania.

As with many arguments over shale gas, this one is not so much about the data, but how the data is framed in a broader campaign for or against development. Much of Thursday’s presentation amounted to casting old information in the context of current market conditions. Acton’s map, in fact, was similar to a map created by Terry Engelder, a Penn State geologist and shale authority who has prominently argued in favor of the economic benefits of drilling. Allstadt later used Engelder’s map to support the theme of the Cornell presentation: The New York shale gas cup is far more empty than full.

A map by Engelder used by Allstadt shows conflicting interpretations

Northrup pointed out that while the shale gas footprint in New York is vast, it’s functionally limited by geology, market restrictions, myriad moving parts of corporate portfolios and lease holds, complications and uncertainties posed by unresolved state policy, no drill zones proposed by the state, and bans by municipalities. I’ve heard both shale gas critics and proponents refer to this set of factors as strangulation by regulation. It’s a point that industry lawyer and lobbiest Tom West frequently makes at public talks: given the social resistance it faces in New York, the shale gas industry will simply move on to less restrictive and more productive territory.

Allstadt presented evidence that major companies have tested both the Utica and Marcellus shales in New York and found them unworthy. He cited a handful of test wells with underwhelming results drilled by companies such as Chevron, Gulf, Anschutz, Chesapeake and others prior to the shale gas boom. His point is worth noting, but also in need of context. These test wells were small in number and scattered over a large area. They were vertical wells that used low volumes of fracking solutions, prior to refinements and breakthroughs to adapt the process to Devonian shale. And they don’t correspond with leasing trends that took shape with a better geological understanding of the play that came after 2008. (XTO Energy, later bought by Exxon Mobil, paid $110 million dollars for leases on 50,000 acres spanning parts of Broome and Delaware County in the spring of 2008 after wells were proven in northeastern Pennsylvania.)

By the account presented by Northrup and his group, New York is missing or has already missed the shale gas party. As for what Northrup characterizes as the hangover: New York remains an attractive disposal option for Pennsylvania producers because New York regulations, which haven’t been updated since the late 20th century, allow flow-back to be spread on roads and drill cuttings to be disposed of as conventional waste. Additionally, conventional wells in New York that were drilled and depleted decades ago make, by industry standards, suitable repositories for shale gas waste. From a geographical standpoint, New York is a strategic spot for infrastructure projects to store and transport gas to major northeast markets, and some of these projects are already well underway, including various pipelines and a controversial project to convert old salt mines on the shores of Seneca Lake to natural gas and propane vaults.

Given all these factors, what does New York’s future look like? Allstadt, who has both ample industry experience and a stake in development as an Upsate resident, said a drilling boom is unlikely, but expect some intensive drilling by maverick   companies in communities bordering Pennsylvania.  “There’s always somebody who has to take a shot somewhere, and instead of going to a casino they will drill,” he said. “These are the least reliable outfits. They will drill the wells as cheaply as possible.”

Predictably, the presentation drew admiration from anti-fracking activists and criticism from industry supporters. And while it was an academic exercise that will not alter the geology and arguably has little baring on markets or regulations, it represents a piece to a much larger rhetorical tug-of-war for the hearts and minds of policy makers and politicians. Science can be found on both ends of the rope. Bruce Selleck is a geologist at Colgate University who has identified the prospective area for shale gas development – or “fairway” -- in New York to extend well into upstate New York, west to Chemung County, east to Sullivan County and north to Oneida County. The Marcellus shale alone is capable of producing 5 trillion to 10 trillion cubic feet of gas in New York, by Selleck’s estimate. His take on the presentation at Cornell? “All the blah-blah-blah rhetoric in this 'finding' makes it clear that the folks involved don't want to see gas development in New York - not surprising given the 'experts' involved.” He offered his assessment in a recent email, along with this elaboration:

That companies are dropping leases simply means they are not planning to drill the properties anytime soon, indicating their estimation of the value of the recoverable gas at current prices makes development in these frontier areas non-economic, in the near term.  The dry gas market is flush right now, and will likely remain that way for 3-5 years. The lack of permitting of HVHF in NY is of course an additional factor.

Even if the Marcellus reserve is in the 5 TCF range in NY, development could prove attractively economic down the road when gas prices are higher.  Five TCF of gas would require 2500-4000 wells to ultimately recover that resource. That scale of development would still bring significant royalties to landowners, along with other economic benefits, and all the negative impacts, as well. 

The Utica is even more of an unknown in NY, so any statements made about its potential are based on very little data.  I expect a few of the companies in NE PA will try the Utica at some point soon. 

Policy is made at the crossroads of science and politics. The argument that Upstate New York’s celebrated shale reserves have already been passed over by major players challenges proponents painting the industry as economic salvation for upstate New York, and their corresponding push for legislators and the governor to create a policy infrastructure that enables it. But it’s hard to know exactly where it will lead. The assessment by critics that reserves are economically viable only in a small part of the Southern Tier may give Cuomo political cover to proceed with a plan he has already proposed: Begin issuing permits for wells in areas along the Southern Tier where local officials feel their communities stand to benefit, and see what happens.

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.

Cabot demolishes home central to Dimock water dispute Methane problems persist in 9-square mile no-drilling zone

The Sautner home became focus of the antifracking movement
PHOTO JAMES PITARRESI 

Cabot Oil & Gas executives may have ongoing problems with operations in Dimock Pennsylvania, but the status of water quality at 1101 Carter Road is no longer one of them.

After years of controversy, Cabot last year paid an undisclosed amount to owners of that property, Craig and Julie Sautner, to settle claims that drilling contaminated their water well. As part of the deal, Cabot acquired the 3.6-acre property, the status of which remained a matter of speculation until last week when flatbeds unloaded a demolition excavator and multiple dumpsters in the driveway of the vacant home.

The arrival of the demolition crew marked a concluding chapter of a conflict that began in September, 2008, when the Sautner’s water suddenly went bad after Cabot crews drilled a nearby gas well into the Marcellus Shale. Under oversight by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Cabot attempted to restore the Sautner’s water with a system of filters and tanks, which took up a substantial part of the basement. The system proved ineffective, and the company began delivering bottled water to the house.

Since then, the three bedroom ranch, sitting tidy and plumb under a canopy of maple trees off the bucolic dirt road, has become a symbol of the anti-fracking movement in the heart of Cabot’s most prolific well field.

EPA investigation begins at Sautner home in Jan. 2012
PHOTO JAMES PITARRESI 

As drilling intensified in the area, Cabot began dealing with similar water complaints at dozens of other homes in the Carter Road area. After investigating the complaints, the DEP held Cabot drilling operations into the Marcellus Shale responsible for methane contamination in 18 water wells, and eventually ordered the company to install an $11 million pipeline to deliver water to the homes. Cabot resisted, and the DEP’s order caused a political fracas that split the community. A group of residents, including those receiving royalty payments and other compensation from the company, sided with the industry and characterized those demanding the water line as malcontents. Plans for the water line were dropped after Tom Corbett, a gas drilling proponent, was elected governor in 2010. But the DEP continued to enforce a ban on drilling in a 9-square mile area around Carter Road where problems persisted.  The primary constituents affecting the wells – methane, arsenic, barium and other metals -- are naturally occurring, and also a product of drilling.

My coverage of this story for the Press & Sun-Bulletin, and later in writing Under the Surface and posts for this blog, brought me into the Saunter’s home on several occasions. The house, with three bathrooms and a finished basement, was fairly new and well kept. A barn-star adorned unblemished vinyl siding next to the garage entrance, and America the Beautiful was inscribed in a silvery stencil on the wall opposite the entrance in the main foyer. The interior decor reflected the Sautner’s fondness for wall art and country nick knacks, carefully arranged, along with framed photos of the Sautner’s teenage children – Cody and Kelly -- and their various pets, including Emmi, an overprotective Chihuahua that had to be contained when visitors arrived.

Cabot contractors demolish the former Sautner property
PHOTO TOM WILBER

The home drew national media attention in 2012, when the federal Environmental Protection Agency, assessing data compiled by Cabot and the DEP, determined that the aquifer feeding the Sautner’s well and other homes in the area showed hazardous levels of pollution. Richard Fetzer, the EPA’s site coordinator, summed it up this way in an internal memo on Jan. 19, 2012: “What is clear is that this data strongly suggests that hazardous substances have been released and are present in some home wells at levels that may present a public health concern.”

The federal agency began it’s own series of tests, and found arsenic, barium, manganese, chromium, and methane in five of 61 wells at levels “that could propose a health concern.” The agency determined no follow up was necessary, however, because residents of affected homes had been notified and polluted wells were taken off line or equipped with filters. The contamination -- in roughly 8 percent of the wells tested -- was from naturally occurring compounds that are also used in or associated with drilling operations, which can exacerbate existing problems or introduce new ones.

Frustrated that Cabot avoided accountability for the problem, the Sautners emerged as dedicated and nationally visible critics of the industry with a degree of animosity that grew with each passing year. They filled their yard and garden with anti-fracking posters, and jugs of brown water. They appeared on television and radio shows and were featured at anti-fracking rallies and concerts, typically carrying the water jugs that became something of a trademark of the movement. Notably, the Sautner’s story was featured in Gasland, the Emmy-award winning film by Josh Fox that premiered on HBO in 2010, and which was largely responsible for inspiring the anti-fracking movement.

The Sautner’s approach -- blunt, antagonistic, and sustained – was eventually met by counter attacks from Cabot and gas supporters, both locally and nationally, determined to discredit their claims. While Josh Fox portrayed the Sautners as victims-turned-activists in Gasland, filmmaker Phelim McAleer, from Ireland, depicted them in his film Frack Nation as self-serving and exploitive phonies. (My reviews of both films can be found here.)

A new message at 1101 Carter Road
PHOTO TOM WILBER

The story is complicated by water quality tests that show different things at different times to different parties, and a settlement with Cabot that forbids parties to talk about the case. We know that, while the Sautner home apparently passed spec when the EPA took samples in January, 2012, it had a documented history of pollution prior to that. We also know that the EPA confirmed water problems at five homes. And we know that, in addition to whatever other terms the Sautners settled with Cabot, they received  $167,500 for their property; and it struck me as newsworthy when I heard that contractors working for Cabot had arrived last week to demolish the home.

I placed a call to Cabot spokesman George Stark, who told me that the company had a potential buyer for the land and that it was more marketable without the house.  Stark said he did not know if the land would be developed, and could not offer other details.

An obvious line of thinking, reflected on anti-fracking list serves, is this: With no home, there is no well, and with no well, there is no liability related to water pollution, at least at 1101 Carter Road. But water pollution at other homes continues to plague the company. Regulators are now focusing on methane pollution in three water wells about a mile south of the Sautner home, where Carter Road tees into State Route 3023. The DEP has indentified Cabot’s Costello gas well at this location as the primary suspect.

Stark said that a service rig, which has been at the site for months, allows crews to “monitor” the casing of the gas well, which appears sound.

DEP officials explained it differently. They have not pinpointed a source, according to a recent report in the Scranton Times Tribune quoting DEP spokeswoman Colleen Connolly. But they have determined that the suspect gas well is "unviable" and will have to be plugged. In an email response to my query, Connolly reported that Cabot is ”continuing remedial efforts” at the Costello gas well and “evaluating the effectiveness” of the work.  Methane levels are fluctuating, she said. Additionally, tests have shown levels of iron and manganese that were elevated but within standards in some water samples. Elevated levels of these elements is “not uncommon during gas migration,” she reported.

New and substantial research shows that methane migration from shale gas development is not an isolated problem. A recent study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that methane concentrations to be, on average, six times higher for homes with water supplies a kilometer or less from Marcellus Shale gas wells. Ethane, another component of natural gas, averaged 23 times higher for homes within a kilometer from natural gas wells.

The Sautners were not on hand to see the demolition of their former home. After the settlement last year, they moved away – first to Ithaca New York, and later to Tennessee. The new owner, not surprisingly, had removed all the anti-fracking signs in the yard and replaced them with a single blue placard that read “Dimock Proud! Where the water IS clean and the people are friendly.”

The excavator raised its boom and swung it toward the side of the garage. It came to an abrupt stop just before impact. The operator then raised the talons of the bucket to the top of the garage, and guided them in a slow arch, peeling back a swath of roof. The machine began biting into the asphalt tiles, roof boards and rafters. Within an hour, the two-car garage was mostly gone, and the machine continued chewing apart the house and packing wads of siding, insulation, wiring and splintered timber into dumpsters. By the end of the next day, all traces of the house were gone, except the foundation, which was filled in shortly thereafter.

The Sautners are bound by the non-disclosure clause from discussing the Cabot settlement or the water issue. But Craig Sautner did offer this about the demolition: “Their (Cabot’s) actions speak louder than words. There is nothing that I can say that tells the story any better than what they did.”

Time will tell whether 1101 Carter Road remains an uninhabited part of Cabot’s oil patch. The company, meanwhile, is staking much of its future on the gas field in northern Pennsylvania. According to Richard Zeits, reporting for the financial website Seeking Alpha, Cabot officials anticipate at least 3,000 future drilling sites on several hundred thousand acres in Susquehanna County. Yet at the heart of this area, where it all began, the future of the nine-square mile no-drill zone remains awkwardly bound to its legacy of water issues.

Note: This video of the demolition was taken by Vera Scroggins, an anti-fracking activist who lives in Susquehanna County.

Obama’s NY/Pa tour raises profile of Dem’s and fracking Cuomo’s cautious approach contrasts president’s action

Governor. Cuomo and President Obama
PHOTO GETTY

This week President Obama will travel across upstate New York and Pennsylvania with a message of support for the working class. His shirt-sleeves bus tour takes him across contested territory – the Marcellus and the Utica shales – two of the world’s largest shale gas reserves, which extend under both states.

Obama is scheduled to visit Buffalo, Syracuse, and Binghamton before heading into Pennsylvania as he pitches his vision for rust belt revival. While energy development is not billed as a focus of the trip, it’s implicit in many of the political issues the president faces, ranging from foreign affairs to jobs to environmental preservation and public health. Obama will tour a region that has been split by the controversy over the role of fossil fuel development and fracking in particular in all of these issues. The splits, locally and regionally, tend to travel along ideological lines, and the differences between New York and Pennsylvania represent high-profile examples.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, a Republican, has enthusiastically embraced shale gas. Accordingly, Pennsylvania has been held up as an icon by both supporters and critics of all that is good and all that is bad with a shale gas boom. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, is not so enthusiastic. His Department of Environmental Conservation is yet to complete a policy overhaul necessary for high volume fracking to begin in New York. Lacking this document, Cuomo has effectively extended a moratorium for permitting shale gas wells – now entering its sixth year -- while his administration considers whether the health and environmental risks outweigh the rewards. This moratorium has become a showpiece for the anti-fracking movement, and those who believe that the pause is just what is needed for the nation to begin shifting to renewable sources.

Obama supports shale gas development as a means of energy independence and, according to his line of politics, jobs for the working class, and his policy decisions reflect this. In sharp contrast to Cuomo’s cautious approach, Obama’s EPA has recently dropped investigations in Pavillion Wyoming and Dimock, Pennsylvania (which is not on the president’s list of stops). In both locations, the EPA staff had documented ground water pollution from chemicals associated with nearby shale gas development, but aborted plans to trace the pollution to its source. Obama’s administration has also begun to permit natural gas export facilities, which will increase markets and encourage more exploration and development of domestic shale gas reserves.

Cuomo is widely cited as a potential standard bearer for Democratic party’s future. The New York governor’s differences with the president over fracking as a fundamental tool for economic revival are worth paying attention to this week. The president’s detailed itinerary is yet to be released. We know that the governor is scheduled to greet the president when he arrives in Buffalo, but has no plans to accompany him further.  While it is tempting to read much into that, the shale gas issue is surely one of a legion of factors that come into play here.

Meantime, protestors have been busily organizing to make their presence known at the presidential stops. Those on either side of the issue see this rare confluence of national and state agendas on local ground as opportunity to push their own visions. And isn’t that American politics at its best?

Records add context to EPA’s aborted Dimock mission Letter from federal hazmat chief shows focus on Cabot

EPA officials begin investigation in Dimock in January 2012
PHOTO BY JAMES PITARRESI

More records are coming to light that show the EPA ended its investigation last year into the impact on fracking on Dimock water wells in the face of political pressure.

After finding arsenic, barium, manganese, chromium, and methane in wells at levels “that could propose a health concern” the agency declared no follow up was required because residents of affected homes had been notified and polluted wells were taken off line or equipped with filters. The contamination -- in roughly 8 percent of 61 wells tested -- was from naturally occurring compounds that are also used in or associated with drilling operations, which can exacerbate existing problems or introduce new ones.

The issue – one of national policy (or not) -- is recently getting the attention it deserves. Last month Neela Barnerjee of the LA Times reported that an internal EPA power point presentation showed that agency staff warned that methane pollution in Dimock was a likely result of shale gas operations that can cause long-term damage to aquifers. On this blog, I have reported that the EPA quietly turned the results of its investigation over to a sister agency called the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, where the outcome faces an uncertain fate. The ATSDR lacks the enforcement muscle of the EPA, has a relatively small budget and staff, and is notoriously slow.

But there’s more to it, and much of the back-story can be found in a series of internal correspondence and documentation uncovered through a freedom of information request by Laura Legere, of the Scranton Times Union. These memos and others now available on line show EPA officials were urgently concerned about pollution documented in Cabot’s own testing of the water, as well as files kept by Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. This was the starting point of the EPA investigation, which intended to “characterize” conditions that were causing disconcerting test results.

A memo dated Dec. 7. 2011 (date corrected from original post) from Jon Capacasa, director of the EPA’s Water Protection Division, captures the urgency of the EPA’s request to the ATSDR to evaluate the health risk of chemicals already documented by Cabot and the DEP.

We believe that the private wells in and around the Dimock area have been negatively impacted by the Cabot natural gas drilling process as evidenced by the presence of methane, butane, propane, ethane, ethene, etc., related gas compounds and also the presence of high concentrations of secondary contaminants like aluminum, iron, manganese, etc. 

We have recently received additional data identifying additional organic chemicals Butyl benzyl phthalate, Triethylene Glycol and 2 Methoxyethanol among others....

This is an urgent matter to the Agency so completion of your review within the next two months is requested.

While EPA staff found the matter urgent, they also noted that test results were not produced by the agency itself. To get their own data, staffers were mindful about overstepping the agency’s jurisdictional boundaries, which are limited due to fracking industry’s exemptions from the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. In justifying the Dimock investigation, the EPA recognized the issue to be “nationally significant and precedent setting” under the federal Superfund law, as detailed in this Jan. 19, 2012 scoping memo from site coordinater Richard Fetzer.

EPA routinely acts under CERCLA [superfund] to protect public health first while it acts to further define contamination. …

Because the action appears to be nationally significant and/or precedent-setting, the Region will continue to coordinate closely with Headquarters. EPA also will maintain coordination and communications with the PADEP. In taking this action, EPA is aware of and has considered the potential applicability of the natural gas exclusion under CERCLA, the Bensten Amendment under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and the exclusion to the definition of the “underground injection” under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). EPA has concluded that this action is appropriate under CERCLA at this time.

The original scope of work, which was later dropped, included determining the source of pollution. In a letter dated Jan. 6, 2012 notifying Cabot attorney Kevin Cunningham of the investigation and a request for records, EPA’s hazardous cleanup director Ronald Borsellino stated the agency was “investigating the source, extent and nature of a release or threatened release of hazardous substances” related to the company’s operations.

Fetzer’s Jan. 29 internal memo sumed it up this way:

What is clear is that this data strongly suggests that hazardous substances have been released and are present in some home well at levels that may present a public health concern. 

Current data does show arsenic and manganese at higher levels than may be typically found in post drilling samples.  Since arsenic and manganese are naturally occurring substances, EPA’s assessment will include comparison of background concentrations present. 

All this qualification, of course, was partly the product of due diligence by the EPA to make its investigation withstand the expected pushback from the state and the industry and to make a case for involvement under Superfund.

States generally are protective of their jurisdiction over shale gas, and this is a critical piece of context. The EPA was conducting a similar investigation in Pavillion, Wyoming, where it found evidence that shale gas development polluted water wells of homes on the Wind River Reservation. Predictably, the agency faced a hostile reception by Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead, a shale gas proponent who characterized the federal action as an example of regulatory overreach. (The EPA recently aborted its plans for a peer reviewed study of its work in Pavillion and turned the investigation over to the state.) The EPA faced a similar reaction from Pennsylvania state officials.

On Jan 5, 2012, (then) Pennsylvania DEP director Michael Krancer wrote to EPA Regional Administrator Shawn Gravin, citing Wyoming Governor Mead’s criticism of the EPA’s investigation in Pavillion. In Krancer’s words, that criticism involved:

the technical, scientific and cooperation shortcomings of EPA’s activities with respect to that state regarding Pavilion and there is no need here to catalogue those in his [Mead's] letter. Suffice it to say that we hope the EPA’s efforts here not be marked by the same rush to conclusions and other deficiencies here as it was and continues to be in respect to the Pavilion matter. . I ask that your efforts be guided by sound science and law rather than emotion and publicity.

Krancer copied a group of Pennsylvania legislators on his letter.

All this correspondence shows how the EPA was in a defensive position from the get go, even though its tests later affirmed a persistent problem with arsenic and methane in some wells. In one well, EPA tests found arsenic at nine times the federal safety standards, prompting the agency to call for an alternative source of water  because the levels posed “significant threat to the residents health,” according to an internal memo from Dennis Carney of EPA’s region 3 to his colleagues. (The name of the well's owner was redacted in the file.)

But there is still a missing piece: Why did the agency suddenly drop its investigation without accounting for the source of pollution in Dimock or characterizing the broader groundwater conditions, as it set out to do? The answer has something to do with jurisdictional limits due to the exemptions from federal law. But an overriding element involves Obama’s campaign platform for a second term, when the president was publically and enthusiastically pitching the merits of shale gas and portraying himself as an industry ally. As the campaign heated up in 2012, the EPA investigation could have backfired if held up in the hands of his opponents as evidence that the president is a regulatory zealot. In fact, Cabot Oil & Gas president Dan Dinges wasted no time exploiting this angle in an open letter -- shortly after the company was put on notice by the EPA – which was promptly featured in a report by Mark Drajem for Bloomberg:

EPA’s actions in Dimock appear to undercut the president’s stated commitment to this important resource,” Chief Executive Officer Dan Dinges wrote today in a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. “EPA’s approach has caused confusion that undermines important policy goals of the United States to ensure safe, reliable, secure and clean energy sources from domestic natural gas.

The EPA said Jan. 19 that it would deliver water to four families in Dimock, where residents say their water has been contaminated during hydraulic fracturing by Cabot. The EPA will also test water at 60 homes to assess whether any residents are being exposed to hazardous substances, the agency said.

Dinges, who also is Cabot’s chairman, said today that the company provided more than 10,000 pages of data to the EPA and there is “no credible evidence” that the water needs further analysis by the federal agency. 

“It appears as though the EPA’s decision is politically motivated and not based on a legitimate desire to address environmental concerns,” the company said in a statement issued with Dinges’s letter.

Dinges was clearly hitting effective buttons. In the world we live in, politics in addition to science is an element of policy making. And here is an example where the direction of science was driven by political forces and interpretations.