Recently, individuals
and companies with a financial stake in natural gas
production have been engaged in an effort to re-brand
natural gas as an 'alternative' fuel. Since in English
the word 'alternative' describes any option that isn't the
standard or default, and natural gas is not the standard
fuel for, say, cars and trucks, no one can write them a
ticket for their highly elastic use of the word and concept.
However, by the definition of the term as it has been used
for decades, natural gas is not an alternative fuel.
"Alternative fuels, also known as non-conventional
fuels, are any
materials or
substances that can be used as a
fuel, other than conventional fuels. Conventional
fuels include:
fossil fuels (petroleum
(oil),
coal,
propane, and
natural gas), and nuclear materials such as
uranium. Some well known alternative
fuels include
biodiesel,
bioalcohol (methanol,
ethanol,
butanol), chemically stored
electricity (batteries and
fuel cells),
hydrogen, non-fossil
methane, non-fossil
natural gas,
vegetable oil and other
biomass sources." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_fuel
In fact, natural gas
is just another highly polluting hydrocarbon and conventional -
that is, non-alternative - fuel like oil, to which it
is closely related and with which it is frequently found.
Further, extracting natural gas and transporting it to
markets takes huge amounts of, you guessed it, (imported)
oil.
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Must-read report on the
Marcellus Shale
from the Oil & Gas Accountability Project
what's hydraulic
fracturing?
Hydraulic fracturing,
as used for natural gas extraction, is the process by
which water, frequently mixed with proppants and chemicals,
is forced down a well bore at extremely high pressure in
order to create or expand fractures to release gas from the
rock formation in which it is trapped.
Proppants
are small particles such as sand or synthetic beads, that hold
open the newly-created fractures so that released gas can
flow towards the well. The process is also known as fracking, hydrofracking, or any of several other variants.
With the creation or
restoration of fractures, the surface area of the formation
exposed to the borehole is increased and the fracture
provides a conductive path connecting the now-freed gas to
the well. Thus, hydraulic fracturing effectively
increases the rate that fluids can be produced from the
reservoir formations.
This process has made
it economically viable to extract natural gas from
formations in which the gas is trapped so tightly in very
small bubbles or pores that very little would naturally flow
to the well. "In order to retrieve gas at a commercially
profitable rate, most tight-gas reservoirs need to be
fractured."
The main industrial
use of hydraulic fracturing, and the purpose for which the
technique was developed, is in stimulating production from
oil and gas wells.[1][2][3]
Hydraulic fracturing is also applied to stimulating
groundwater wells,[4]
preconditioning rock for caving or inducing rock to cave in
mining,[5]
as a means of enhancing waste remediation processes (usually
hydrocarbon waste or spills), to dispose of waste by
injection into suitable deep rock formations, and as a
method to measure the stress in the earth.
Various forms of
hydraulic fracturing have been developed for differing
circumstances. The one now causing intense concern
here in New York is known as 'high-volume hydraulic
fracturing' (HVHF), and 'slick water fracturing.' In
this method, millions of gallons of initially clean water
per well are intentionally contaminated with the addition of
a wide range and large volume of very toxic chemical
additives. This technique combines "water with a
friction-reducing chemical additive which allows the water
to be pumped faster into the formation. Water fracs don't
use any polymers to thicken and the amount of proppant used
is significantly less than that of gels. Slick water fracs
work very well in low-permeability reservoirs, and they have
been the primary instrument that has opened up
unconventional plays like the Texas Barnett Shale. In
addition to the cost advantage, water fracs require less
cleanup and provide longer fractures...In order to
effectively select the right combination and concentrations
of frac fluid and propping agents, geologists must know a
lot about a reservoir. To create the right approach to a
frac job, geologists gather information from well logs about
a variety of factors such as porosity, permeability,
saturation levels, pressure and temperature gradients. Using
this information, geologists run scenarios through 2D or 3D
reservoir models to predict the outcomes of various
approaches." -
http://www.enermaxinc.com/hydraulic-fracturing/
Despite these
precautions, the process doesn't always go according to
intention. Regarding a subsurface trespass case before
the Supreme Court of Texas, the Fort Worth Business Press
reported the following: "The problem is, however, that
fracture stimulation isn't a precise science...in some ways,
cracking the shale [predictably] could be thought of as
trying to hammer a dinner plate into equal pieces...'You may
plan a fracture that will go 1,000 feet and it might go
2,000 feet or 400 feet, ' said John S. Lowe, a professor of
energy law at Southern Methodist University's Dedman School
of Law."...'How do you prove any fracing was correct or
incorrect in an area that is not precise to begin with?'
asked [John] Holden [a partner at Dallas-based Jackson
Walker LLP]...'Either side has to prove what's going on down
below, and that's hard for both sides.'...Lowe said, 'You
can bring the scientific evidence, the scientific testing to
see whether or not a trespass has occurred but I'm not sure
you can rely on it 100 percent.'"
Fort Worth Business Press, July 7, 2008
This uncertainty about
how exactly to plan and carry out a fracturing job according
to the often obscure details about the site geology as well
as that of the surrounding area is one reason to be
skeptical about the appropriateness of the technique.
Not only do underground formations respectively contain or
separate 'good' and 'bad' groundwater, they also obviously
harbor many naturally-occurring toxic substances, such as
those routinely found in association with oil and gas.
In the US alone, there are thousands of instances of
groundwater contamination from hydraulic fracturing
operations over a wide range of geological and reservoir
conditions; to most of us, common sense suggests that any
technology that could exploit existing weaknesses in
formations or is known or theorized to have unpredictable
results, with demonstrable adverse consequences, should be
examined with a high degree of scientific skepticism.
what about
alternatives to water usage, such as fracturing with
propane?
"A few "eco-friendly" fracturing
schemes are out and about, but they all come with some
issues.
"Propane is a gas at ordinary
pressures, but can be fairly easily liquefied with pressure.
It is, of course, a fossil fuel itself. Using propane would
get around using millions of gallons of water, but would not
deal with some real technological challenges. First, in
order to suspend sand or other proppants, liquid propane
needs to be thickened, typically by foaming agents like
peroxide. Using peroxide requires the addition of even more
corrosion inhibitors than when water is used, and biocides
are still required to control microbe growth. (I've heard
misinformation that fracking with propane requires no
chemical additives; that's just not true.)
"The use of propane introduces
new problems with controlling a pressurized liquid that
quickly turns to a gas when the pressure is released. It's
not easy or cheap, and a lot of gas escapes into the
atmosphere. This is a greenhouse gas, though not as potent
as carbon dioxide (another [so-called] "green" fracking
fluid candidate) or methane.
"And none of these exotic
"fluids under pressure" help with the toxicity of the deep
brines that still flow out of gas well bores. These brines
continue to be among the greatest waste problems faced by
the industry." - Ron Bishop
The only benefit of
fracturing with propane and other gases would be the
apparent elimination of water usage for the
hydraulic fracturing phase of well development.
Water would still be
required for parts of the drilling phase.
Frequently, one of the
key problems caused by gas extraction, groundwater
contamination, takes place during the drilling
phase, prior to fracking. There are multiple
opportunities for groundwater contamination to occur
during the drilling phase, starting with the very
first stage, which necessarily takes place with no
casing in place yet, as lengths of casing can only
be inserted after sections of the borehole are
drilled out.
Regardless of the
method used to complete (or 'frack') a well, the
overall footprint of industrial impacts on the
landscape, and on future options for land use,
remain the same: the same number of pipeyards/chemical
storage sites, access roads, well pads, compressor
stations, pipelines, and gas processing units.
So merely reducing the
amount of water hauled to the site for fracturing would
leave in place most of the major problems associated
with petro-methane extraction.
US Department of Energy
how about horizontal drilling?
Horizontal drilling,
or directional drilling, is promoted as a way to avoid
intensive surface disturbance such as that which was common
in earlier hydrocarbon booms. (See picture at left.)
While this is a desirable goal, horizontal drilling is not
without its own impacts. These impacts are compounded
dramatically when horizontal drilling is combined with
hydraulic fracturing.
First, multiple wells drilled from a common pad, as is
expected with horizontal drilling, require a much larger
drill pad, as acknowledged in the
draft scope of the DEC's Supplemental Generic Environmental
Impact Statement
(dsSGEIS), section 2.1.4. Larger drill pads disturb
more contiguous surface area and result in more surface runoff
from one location.
Second, it is horizontal drilling in tight shale that at least in part
creates the distinction between conventional hydraulic
fracturing and high-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF)
because of the vastly greater quantities of water used to
drill and fracture the vastly greater length of very
resistant rock.
Though proponents
claim that horizontal drilling will reduce the number of
wells that must be drilled to access a given area in the
target formation, in fact, New York State regulations
continue to allow for wells to be spaced only 40 acres
apart, which translates to 16 wells per square mile.
Horizontal drilling
also makes it possible for drillers to remove gas from the
property of a landowner who does not want to sell her or his
gas reserves, even though the landowner denies the drillers
access to the surface of his property. This is done
through a DEC-mediated form of eminent domain called
"compulsory integration." (See below.)
From the
dsSGEIS, section 2.1.6:
"The number of wells that may exist per square mile is dictated by
reservoir geology and productivity, mineral rights
distribution, and statutory well spacing requirements set
forth in ECL Article 23, Title 5, as amended in 2008...The
statute provides three statewide spacing options for shale
wells: "Vertical wells –
Statewide spacing for vertical shale wells provides for one
well per 40-acre spacing unit. (A spacing unit is the
geographic area assigned to the well for the purposes of
sharing costs and production.) This is the spacing
requirement that has historically governed most gas well
drilling in the State, and as mentioned above, many square
miles of
Chautauqua, Seneca and Cayuga counties have been developed
on this spacing. One well per 40 acres equates to 16
wells per square mile (i.e., 640 acres). Infill
wells, resulting in more than one well per 40 acres, may be
drilled upon justification to the Department that they are
necessary to efficiently recover gas reserves. "Horizontal wells in single-well spacing units –
Statewide spacing for horizontal wells where only one well
will be drilled at the surface site provides for one well
per 40 acres, plus the necessary and sufficient acreage
to maintain a 330-foot setback between the wellbore in the
target formation and the spacing unit boundary. This
provision does not provide for infill wells, so the distance
between wellbores [ed. note: in this spacing situation] will always be at least 660 feet.
Surface locations may be slightly closer together because of
the need to begin turning the wellbore some distance above
the target formation. However, it is likely that this
scenario will result in fewer than 16 surface locations per
square mile. This conclusion is based on the fact that the
horizontal leg of each wellbore within the target formation
is likely to be longer than 1,320 feet, which is the
distance that would result in a 40-acre rectangular spacing
unit. Therefore, spacing units are likely to be larger than
40 acres, and fewer than 16 will fit within a square mile.
Although the wells are horizontal, [single-well] well pads
during both the drilling and production phases will be
similar in size to those for vertical wells. Hence,
horizontal shale drilling with one well per pad would not be
expected to result in a well density greater than that
contemplated when the GEIS and its Findings were finalized
in 1992. "Horizontal wells with multiple wells drilled from common
pads -
The third statewide spacing option for shale wells provides,
initially, for spacing units of up to 640 acres with all
the horizontal wells in the unit drilled from a common well
pad. While vertical infill wells may be drilled from
separate surface locations, with justification, a far
smaller proportion of vertical infill wells than 15 per
640-acre unit is expected. Therefore, fewer than 16 separate
locations within a square mile area will be affected.
Nevertheless, to accommodate multiple wells and wellheads,
the initial well pad from which multiple horizontal wells
will be drilled will be larger than is typical for
single-well pads. With respect to overall environmental
impact, however, the larger surface area of the well pad
will be offset by the need to construct a single access road
and gathering system to service wells on the pad. The size
of a multiple well pad will likely be substantially smaller
than the cumulative number of acres that would be necessary
to accommodate the same number of single-well pads within
the same area... "The statute provides for variances from statewide
spacing, with justification, which could result in a greater
well density."
Despite the bland but not legally binding language
and the vague reassurances about what is and is not "likely",
it's easy to envision the planned destruction to which the
DEC is an accessory and accomplice: the alteration of a
rural & agricultural landscape into an
industrial zone. If 640 acres sounds like plenty of
room for 16 wells, it is not: with 16 wells per square mile,
a driver traveling a 2-mile stretch of road could pass 64
gas wells at various stages from drilling through
production, and all the entrance roads that access them.
While not all of the 16 wells per square
mile would likely be visible on that one journey, many would
be, along with many wells further distant. At such
well densities, tanker and heavy construction equipment
traffic servicing well sites would be heavy, so our driver
would be trying to avoid collision with large vehicles ahead
of, following, and oncoming, while dodging the potholes on
the battered road. She would also be breathing diesel
fumes from the traffic as well as the exhaust from
compressors that pressurize the fracturing process and those
that drive gas down the pipelines.
According to the OGAP report Shale Gas: Focus on the
Marcellus Shale, (see sidebar) none of this is as
unlikely as we'd like to think:
Initially,
when a new natural gas field is developed, well
spacing depends on the state's regulations. It is
common for operators to be allowed one well per
section (640 acres) or drilling unit, unless they
can prove to state regulators that more wells are
required to extract as much of the gas resource as
possible.
According to the Oil and Gas Investor, “As plays
become further developed and the reservoir is better
understood, downspacing begins.”
This is starting to occur in the Barnett shale.
While many wells are spaced at 160 acres, Devon
Energy is starting to infill – as of March, 2008,
the company announced it had drilled 57 wells at
40-acre spacing (or, according to the company, 500
feet apart), and that it plans to drill pilot wells
at 20-acre spacing this year (according to the
company, that’s 250 feet apart). In 2006, Devon was
already drilling horizontal wells at 20-acre
spacing; presumably, the 2008 pilot wells are being
drilled in a different part of the Barnett shale.
Devon Energy is not the only company drilling wells
closer together. According to Denbury Resources,
“wells in the Barnett Shale were initially drilled
by spacing horizontal wells approximately 1,500'
apart and drilling 3,000' to 4,500' laterals. As our
development progressed we began testing wells at
various spacings of 750' and subsequently 500' along
with other operators in the Barnett. . .We have
recently begun testing well spacings less than 500’.
Perhaps a
landowner objects to having his neighborhood turned into an
industrial zone. Another doesn't want to risk the
safety of her water supply. A family with children is
unwilling to allow them to be subjected to heavy traffic
hazards or air pollution. A couple seeks to preserve
the quiet they hoped to retire to. A homeowner is
concerned about her property value declining in the presence
of industrial activity. A person afflicted with COPD
or other lung disorder fears the effects of VOC's or
particulate pollution on their already-compromised ability
to breathe. Someone on a fixed income sees that road
damage from drilling traffic has increased the property tax
burden in other areas. For any of these reasons and
more, landowners might decide to discourage gas drilling in
their neighborhood by refusing to sign a lease.
However, if other property owners in the spacing unit have
signed leases, compulsory integration is likely
to be employed. Compulsory integration is the eminent
domain process by which drillers are given access by the
state to the gas an owner does not wish to sell.
According to the DEC's dsSGEIS, referenced above,
"A spacing unit is the geographic area assigned to the well
for the purposes of sharing costs and production. ECL
§23-0501(2) requires that the applicant control the oil and
gas rights for 60% of the acreage in a spacing unit for a
permit to be issued. Uncontrolled acreage is addressed
through the compulsory integration process set forth in ECL
§23-0901(3)."
Through this compulsory integration process mediated by the
DEC, the state gives the drilling company the right to take
the unwilling seller's mineral resource, with some,
non-negotiable, compensation.
What this means is that
the DEC, maintained by public tax dollars, acts as the
strongarm for private industry. The effect is that
property owners who are threatened with the probability of
eminent domain proceedings are more likely to give in and
sign a lease against their will and to their detriment.
See
Is Your Unleased Property Facing Compulsory Integration?
Allowing compulsory
integration to proceed may still be the most financially
rewarding option for a landowner, and an experienced
attorney can help property owners decide which of
several compulsory integration options ("royalty owner",
"participating owner", or "non-participating owner") is best
for a given situation. Fundamentally, however, everything is
wrong when the state eagerly brokers a process by which one
party's private property rights are violated and manipulated
in favor of another (much bigger) party's financial
interests.
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They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the common,
But let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.
The
law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own,
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.
-- c. 1764
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water consumption & disposal
Estimates of the amount of clean, potable water to drill and
hydraulically fracture a single horizontal well in the
Marcellus Shale range from 1 to 5 million gallons.
This water is typically procured by drillers through surface
water withdrawals. In some areas of New York State,
surface water withdrawals are regulated by river basin
commissions such as the
Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) and
Susquehanna
River Basin Commission (SRBC). In other areas,
there is no regulating body that adequately addresses
surface water withdrawals. NYSDEC regulations only
prohibit the "draining" of surface waters, so in areas not
regulated by river basin commissions, drillers have used
public access points to make
repeated withdrawals from privately owned waters and
wetlands for which they did not have permission.
This is to say, if you and 3 neighbors share a lake outside
the jurisdiction of one of the RBCs and one of your
neighbors gives permission for - or perhaps simply
doesn't notice or object to - tanker truck water withdrawals
made from his property, all the owners will suffer a loss of
water volume that may have consequences ranging from damage
to aesthetic & recreational values, to reduction of water
available for home fire protection, to effects on fish and
wildlife. This constitutes theft of "the commons" - that is,
something that belongs to everyone - for the private use of
a single entity.
The SRBC is on record
that its job is "not to protect, but to manage, water" in
what it euphemistically terms a "balancing act." This
so-called "balancing act," in which the demand for polluting
and unsustainable amounts of hydrocarbon energy are assigned
extra importance and the extraordinary value of clean, drinkable
water that sustains communities, agriculture, and wildlife -
and for which there is no substitute - is simultaneously
accorded less gravity, is a compromise routinely made by
regulating bodies, all of whom are subjected to extreme
political pressure to yield to the force of money.
A representative of the DRBC said "Well, we need the energy"
as justification for their non-committal - at least as far
as water protection goes - position. There is some
evidence that river basin commissions have exaggerated the water usage of other
users and industries in an attempt to downplay the
significance of the volumes of water required for HD/HVHF.
River
basin commissions have huge jurisdictions and for awareness
of what withdrawals are being made, depend on drillers and
water services companies to apply for permits. In the story
linked in the first paragraph of this section, the Zunnos
didn't know about the SRBC, nor did the DEC inform the
Zunnos of the SRBC's jurisdiction over the protected
wetland.
Once at the site water
is used for both drilling the wellbore and subsequently
fracturing the target formation. For both drilling and
fracturing, a wide array of toxic chemicals are added to the
water. The chemicals used in the fracking process are
particularly suspect and have attracted scientific scrutiny
for their role in
endocrine disruption and carcinogenesis. Somewhere
between 20 and 40 percent of the millions of gallons of
contaminated water returns to the surface, leaving 60-80% in
the ground. Despite industry assurances to the
contrary, there is significant evidence that contaminated
frack water left in the ground may present a hazard to
groundwater in the fractured bedrock geology common in much
of the US. Perhaps the many documented incidents of
groundwater contamination related to hydraulic fracturing
activity can be attributed in part to pressure-induced
disturbance and exacerbation of naturally - occurring
fractures and pressurized movement of fluids through them.
The frack water that is returned to the surface is pumped
into a holding pond where it is hazardous in the short term:
Plastic liners tear or are punctured, impoundment walls may
give way, heavy rains may cause the fluids to overflow into
soils and nearby waterbodies. Even if no mishaps
occur, heavy tanker traffic is required to truck the water
away and in the meantime, volatile chemicals evaporate into
the air with adverse effects on air quality and human
health.
Once removed from the holding pond, frack water presents
insurmountable disposal problems in the long term.
Proposed solutions include trucking the waste water to
treatment facilities. However, in New York State, no
specialized treatment facilities exist, and drillers and
government agencies have sought to direct waste water to
municipal water treatment plants, which are not prepared to
remove and render harmless - as if any process could - the
lethal combination of powerfully toxic chemicals in the
water. Another proposed solution is underground
injection, also known as
Deep Injection Well Disposal. In this process, a
deep wellbore - perhaps an unproductive gas well - is used
as a reservoir into which millions upon millions of gallons
of poisoned water is pumped into the ground.
Underground injection is a process supported by big
industry, which lacks other ways to deal with large volume
of wastes, but despite the success of
industry efforts to co-opt government agencies so that
the method remains legal, it also
remains controversial and has been documented to cause
groundwater contamination and even
earthquakes.
In late 2008, water
waste from gas drilling operations in Pennsylvania which was
released into the Monongahela River from treatment plants
resulted in
high levels of total dissolved solids (TDS) in the river, which
was already stressed by drought. Apparently,
industrial water users such as power plants, not government
agencies, were the first to notice high levels of TDS, which
are destructive to equipment, in their intake water. While
the public was reassured that the water was safe to drink,
people were nonetheless encouraged to use bottled water
instead of municipal water supplies drawn from the river.
There are two
basic categories of toxic substances related to gas
drilling: first, chemicals intentionally introduced to the
process; second, materials that occur naturally in deep
strata (layers of rock and water), but do not constitute a
hazard to human or environmental health until they are
disturbed. A third category may result from the
potential for chemical reactions to form new compounds when
human-introduced and naturally-occurring substances come
into contact with each other due to the drilling and
fracking processes.
Chemicals used
intentionally for drilling and fracturing: Both the
drilling and fracking processes require chemical additives
that serve as friction reducers, biocides, surfactants and
scale inhibitors. The specific chemicals used are
determined by the process and the requirements of the job.
While hundreds of very dangerous chemicals have been
identified as components of fracking fluids in the western
part of the US, where the geology is different, the exact
chemicals that may be used in drilling and fracturing the
Marcellus Shale are unknown at this time.
However, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental
Protection provided a list of chemicals, known to them to be
used in hydraulic fracturing in Pennsylvania, to
The River Reporter, a newspaper based in Sullivan
County, New York.
The list was evaluated by The Endocrine Disruption Exchange.
Of the 54 chemicals listed, 21 are readily airborne, and 34
are soluble, meaning they travel through water. A
majority of the chemicals are known to have health effects
even as single ingredients. (It is well-established
that combinations of toxic chemicals are even more toxic
than their component single chemicals.) Heath effect
categories included gastrointestinal & liver, respiratory,
skin, eye and sensory organ, cardiovascular & blood, brain &
nervous system, kidney, immune,
developmental, reproductive, mutagen, endocrine disruptors,
cancer, & "other."
Naturally-occurring substances exposed during the
process: OGAP's Marcellus Shale report says:
Marcellus
shales are known, in some regions, to contain
acid-producing minerals such as pyrite and
sulfides.
The Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and
Natural Resources publishes a map that indicates
which formations are likely to contain
acid-forming minerals. The lower part of the
Marcellus formation is on the map.
In 2003, an exit ramp was being constructed to
the Mifflin County, PA, Industrial Park. The
roadcut exposed the Marcellus Formation. Shortly
after excavation, acidic, iron-rich water began
to flow out of the exposed Marcellus. Pyrite, an
iron sulfide formed under reducing (no oxygen)
conditions, was deemed to be the source of the
acid drainage.
When pyrite is exposed to air and water, it
breaks down and forms sulfuric acid and iron
hydroxide – a phenomenon well known in the
mining industry. The acid-producing reaction
occurs as long as the pyrite continues to be
exposed to air and water. If these conditions
persist, acid will be produced until all of the
sulfide in the rock is used up. At some mining
sites, it is predicted that acid will be
generated for hundreds or even thousands of
years from the sulfide mineral waste created
during the mining process.
While the amount of acid-generating rock
material removed during the drilling of the
Marcellus shale would be very minimal compared
to the amount of material exposed during a
mining operation, the drill cuttings may still
contain enough pyrite to cause problems. The
weathering of pyretic shales can result in “acid
generation, metal mobility, and salinization of
ground and surface water.”
Metal mobility is caused because the acidic
drainage can dissolve toxic metals (e.g.,
copper, aluminum, cadmium, arsenic, lead and
mercury) that are present in the surrounding
rock or soil. Black shales, like the Barnett,
Marcellus, Fayetteville, New Albany and others,
are often enriched in trace metals. The U.S.
Geological Survey has found high concentrations
of arsenic, cobalt, chromium, molybdenum,
nickel, vanadium and zinc in stream sediments
near outcrops of pyrite-rich Devonian black
shale.
If toxic metals are mobilized, the metals could
move through the soil and contaminate surface or
groundwater.
It is possible that the potential for some
Marcellus shale drill cuttings to generate acid
and mobilize metals in rock or soil may preclude
them from being buried on-site or land spread.
To address this, for example, according to the
Pennsylvania Code:
§ 78.63 (b) A person may not dispose of residual
waste, including contaminated drill cuttings, at
the well site unless the concentration of
contaminants in the leachate from the waste does
not exceed the maximum concentration stated in §
261.24 Table I (relating to characteristic of
toxicity).
Health is a
casualty on the fast track to gas drilling
Essay
- July 16, 2008
by Rebecca
Clarren
The 20 miles of interstate highway
between the small towns of Silt and
Parachute in western Colorado slice
through a landscape of sagebrush and
mesas. There are few exits through this
section of Garfield County, where the
local population of deer and elk rivals
the number of ranchers, retirees and
others who live here.
Susan Haire, 55 and a small-scale
rancher, lived on top of one of the
surrounding mesas for nearly a decade,
but she says that in the last year, the
landscape turned against her. When she
drove down this stretch of highway, her
nose bled, her eyes burned and her head
pounded. She began wearing a respirator
to clean the air in her car.
"I felt like an alien, like I didn't fit
into my own environment," says Haire.
"It's horrifying what's happening here.
The changes that have happened in the
past 18 months are so dramatic, it's
just a nightmare."
Haire's doctor blamed her ill health on
the changes that occurred around her: In
the last two years, gas companies have
drilled over 600 natural gas wells.
Every few feet, 150-foot-tall drill rigs
— all flying American flags — rise
upwards into the sky. Banks of
rectangular huts with five-foot diameter
fans sit back from the road, pumping and
moving the gas into underground
pipelines.
Haire's experience isn't unique. Veteran
oil and gas lawyer Lance Astrella of
Denver, who has built a career fighting
the industry on behalf of citizens, says
he has talked with dozens of people who
blame their health problems on the surge
of new gas wells. Between January and
March of this year, eight people called
the Garfield County oil and gas
department to complain about air
quality. They asked about black smoke
and strong chemical odors that they
worried could make them sick.
Critics say health hazards from the
wells don't stop with air pollution.
They point to a process called hydraulic
fracturing, whereby a gas company
injects into the ground a mix of water,
sand and chemicals that include
carcinogens such as benzene, arsenic and
lead. Developed by Halliburton,
hydraulic fracturing, commonly called "frac'ing,"
loosens the rock and maximizes the flow
of gas to the surface. But up to 40
percent of the fracturing fluids remains
in the formation, according to studies
conducted by the Environmental
Protection Agency and the oil and gas
industry. That means that toxic fluids
could seep into the surrounding soil,
groundwater and into water wells.
In Garfield County, there are at least 2
trillion cubic feet of natural gas in
the tight sand and coal bed formations
below, according to gas companies and
industry geologists. Over the next eight
years, over 10,000 additional wells are
slated for drilling in the county.
Today, federal and state agencies in
Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico are
issuing more permits to drill for gas
than ever before, and doing it as
quickly as possible, under orders from
Washington. The Bush administration says
finding energy at home is critical to
reducing foreign imports and ensuring
national security, and in the aftermath
of Hurricane Katrina, Congress has
pushed to increase energy sources beyond
the reach of the coastline.
Despite the potential for health
problems from unregulated pollution,
neither the Centers for Disease Control
nor the Environmental Protection Agency
is conducting long-term public health
studies connected to all this drilling.
So no one knows how natural gas
development may be polluting the air or
water or affecting human health.
In the meantime, Haire — who just moved
to Texas for her health — and the
neighbors she left behind, aren't lone
voices: In 2004, a group of 18 top
public health experts alerted the EPA
and Interior Department officials that
accelerated oil and gas drilling in the
West was taking place without adequate
regard for human health. The warning was
not heeded.
One agency staffer, who plans to
retire soon, speaks out bluntly: "It's a
catch-22: If the EPA doesn't study the
health impacts, then there's no proof
anything dangerous happening is
happening. That's irrational and
corrupt," says Wes Wilson, an
environmental engineer with the EPA's
Denver office for the past 32 years. He
calls his agency's position sad: "We
used to investigate mysteries and now
we're not. It's kind of like we're being
paid off with our generous salaries. The
American public would be shocked if they
knew we (at EPA) make six figures, and
we basically sit around and do nothing."
- High Country News
Rebecca Clarren is a contributor to
Writers on the Range, a service of
High Country News (hcn.org). She
writes about health and environmental
issues in Portland, Oregon.
Potential Exposure-Related Human Health Effects of Oil and
Gas Development
In September, 2008, experts at the University of Colorado
School of Public Health completed a review of data and
scientific articles about the health effects of oil and gas
drilling and production on neighboring communities. They
found that the chemicals being used and produced pose a
potential health risk to local residents, and recommended a
thorough health impact assessment before expansion of oil
and gas activities. Their findings are detailed in these two
papers.
In
considering the arguments in favor of protecting
New York City's water first, and the water of
others later, we should listen to what Ashok
Gadgil has to say about such schemes. Gadgil
invented an affordable Ultra-Violet light water
purification system, to provide locally owned
and controlled safe water supplies, for small
villages in the poor areas of developing
countries. With so many billions upon millions
in aid having gone to those countries, for the
construction of massive water systems, some
might wonder why such an invention would be
needed. Here's Gadgil's explanation:
"Historically, most of the funding provided by
aid institutions has gone to poor countries, but
provided water only to thepolitically powerful
and the economically powerful sectors in those
countries.
Once they
[the rich and the powerful] get their
safe drinking water, their passion for providing
safe drinking water for the rest of the country
declines substantially."
New York
City's Department of Environmental Protection is deeply
concerned about the effect of industrial scale gas drilling
in the watershed that supplies its reservoirs, as evidenced
by the following excerpts (emphasis ours):
Testimony of Acting
Commissioner Steven W. Lawitts
New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)
before the Council of the City of New York Committee on
Environmental Protection
concerning Oversight - Natural Gas Drilling Within the New
York City Watershed: Part 2
Hearing Room, 250 Broadway
December 12, 2008
...We are all here today because we believe there is nothing
more important than protecting New York City’s drinking
water, an irreplaceable resource for half the citizens of
New York State.
The Bloomberg Administration has consistently stated that
protection of the watershed and water supply infrastructure
is our highest priority. Former Commissioner Emily
Lloyd’s July 18 letter to New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation Commissioner Pete Grannis made
the following preliminary recommendations:a drilling
exclusion zone around infrastructure and reservoirs; a
formal structure for DEP involvement in well-permit reviews
and inspections in the watershed; and a technical working
group to develop regional conditions for the New York City
watershed.
...DEP looks forward to working closely with Commissioner
Grannis and his staff to ensure that the Supplemental
Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS), now in the
scoping phase, fully discloses any potential environmental
risks to our water supply system posed by natural gas
exploration and extraction in the Catskill and Delaware
Watersheds.
We have reviewed the draft Scope for the SGEIS and generated
comments, which we have submitted to the New York State
Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) this
morning... As you know, DEP operates and maintains tunnels,
aqueducts and shafts within and outside the watershed. These
tunnels often operate under high pressure which reduces the
likelihood of contamination from operations such as natural
gas drilling. However, inadvertent penetration or
contamination resulting from drilling operations could
significantly affect the City’s ability to provide high
quality drinking water.
As set forth in our comments, our primary water quality
concern stems from the use of drilling chemicals. The Scope
indicates that approximately 99% of the estimated two
million gallons needed to develop one well is pure water.
However, that equates to approximately 20,000 gallons of
unknown chemicals per well site. One of the common
chemicals associated with contamination from natural gas
drilling is benzene, for which the ambient groundwater
standard is one part per billion. We are therefore calling
for full identification of the chemicals used in drilling
and an assessment of their potential impacts.
... There are no applications for well drilling within the
watershed right now, but there are 835 active applications
State-wide to date in 2008 as opposed to 652 in 2007. Five
of the applications for drilling in the Marcellus shale are
in the Town of Hancock, a town outside of the New York City
Watershed but through which a portion of the City’s West
Delaware Tunnel passes. DEC has shared the locations of the
proposed wells with us and the nearest one is roughly seven
miles away from the tunnel - a distance that we currently
believe does not pose a threat to our water supply. However,
we intend to closely collaborate with DEC on those
applications and ensure, with support of our consulting
engineer, that any risks that these proposed wells may pose
are identified before the permitting process goes forward.
Natural gas extraction via hydraulic fracturing involves a
complicated set of activities that may pose great risks
to the ecology of the surrounding area and to the water
supply system operated by DEP, which provides
high-quality drinking water to approximately half of New
York State’s population, including eight million residents
of New York City. For example, to create the wellhead and
access roads the surface of the land has to be disturbed,
which creates a risk of soil runoff into the streams that
feed our reservoirs. The vehicles and equipment used to
extract or transport natural gas have to be fueled, possibly
through on-site storage, which also creates a risk of leaks
or spills. The fracturing fluid itself is composed of
hazardous compounds that, if released into the environment,
could pose a very grave threat to water quality. The waste
fluid pumped out of the wells after fracturing is often
stored on site in open waste pits that are also subject to
leaks and spills.
... As many of you know, the water from these watersheds,
both located in the Catskill Mountains, is of quality so
high that DEP has been granted a 10-year Filtration
Avoidance Determination from the United States Environmental
Protection Agency. However, if the economic incentive to
extract natural gas from the Catskill and Delaware
Watersheds is very great, the scale of road building, fuel
storage and waste handling could dramatically increase to
the point that the long term sustainability of a
high-quality water supply to the City of New York from the
Catskills may be jeopardized. These impacts must be
analyzed in the SGEIS.
In granting New York City an unprecedented ten-year
Filtration Avoidance Determination (FAD) for the Catskill
and Delaware Watersheds, the US Environmental Protection
Agency recognized the robustness of our Watershed Protection
Program, the cornerstone of which is land acquisition. Aside
from the environmental impacts from natural gas drilling,
newly available mineral resources could make it more
difficult to acquire watershed land. Land owners may be less
likely to sell if they can sell natural gas leases with the
potential for future royalties; potential for natural gas
could drive up appraisals and the cost of obtaining land
from owners who are willing to sell; and New York City may
want to avoid buying land or conservation easements on
properties that have a natural gas lease, further limiting
the real estate market.
For these reasons, the draft SGEIS should include evaluation
of the potential for natural gas drilling to disrupt the
programs, controls, protections and institutional
relationships that are required by the FAD and embodied in
the 1997 Watershed Memorandum of Agreement, to which DEC is
a signatory. The draft Scope states that the draft SGEIS
will evaluate impacts in the New York City watershed “with
consideration of the fact that New York City controls a
substantial amount of the acreage surrounding the reservoirs
through fee ownership or conservation easements so that
drilling would not occur on such acreage without the City’s
permission.” This misleadingly implies that the City can
control natural gas drilling in the watershed through its
land ownership or conservation easements. In fact, most land
in the watershed is privately owned, and controls for
watershed protection are achieved through a combination of
regulation, land acquisition, infrastructure investments,
and partnership programs with watershed communities.
Moreover, State enforcement is an important element of
natural gas drilling outside of the watershed, and the same
should be true within the City’s watershed. The nature of
property ownership should not alter the mandate of the State
to vigorously protect the State’s natural resources,
including its water resources. The final SGEIS must clarify
these relationships and constraints.
...In closing, thank you for the opportunity to testify on
natural gas extraction in New York City’s Watersheds in the
Catskill Mountains, an activity that DEP views with great
concern.
__________________
Prudent
observers may wonder, if New York City believes a minimum one-mile
buffer zone between drilling activity and their reservoir
system is necessary to protect their water supply, why similar protections for all other
residents of New York State are not under consideration.
Some environmental organizations have sought to
place special emphasis on preserving the integrity of New
York City's water supply, while devoting much less time and
focus to the protection of other watersheds across New York
State. While we acknowledge that various interested
entities may feel restricted to acting primarily or even
exclusively on behalf of their own constituencies, the position of
Chenango Delaware Otsego Gas is:
Chenango Delaware Otsego Gas Group Position on Selective Protections by the State of
New York:
CDOG opposes any New York State natural gas drilling
legislation or agency regulation that effectively provides separate and unequal environmental
protection, for different people, different
counties, or different watersheds within New York
State. A gas extraction industry process that is
considered too environmentally unsafe to be used
within a particular watershed (e.g. New York City's)
is not safe for use in any other watershed; and
therefore should not be permitted for use anywhere
within this state.
Pipeline rights-of-way take up a huge amount of
space and are often created through eminent domain
proceedings.
And once
pipelines are in place it becomes exceedingly
difficult to stop industrial-scale well development.
The
infrastructure is aging: For years Matt Simmons, the
only Peak Oil activist among the oil & gas industry
elite, has been warning about, besides peak oil, the
aging energy delivery infrastructure:
“If the world
wants to keep using energy from oil and gas, it will
have to rebuild the infrastructure and the cost of
doing this could rival the combined cost of the
World War II war machine, the post-war Marshall Plan
that rebuilt Europe, and the post-war buildout of
the U.S. interstate highway system.”
Simmons said
the costs could be enormous–in the $50- to $100
trillion range. Triage needs to happen immediately
to prioritize which links in the system are the
weakest and need to be repaired or replaced first.
Pipelines are old, some dating to World War II.
Matt Simmons: Rust Happens
Regardless of whether you
live in a rural area or in town, the answer is yes.
'Cost externalization' is a strategy that corporations use
to maximize profits. In this context, the term
describes how the injurious effects of the shale gas
extraction industry will be born by individuals and
communities rather than by the companies doing the
extraction. For instance, shale gas extraction has
documented and measurable destructive effects on air
quality. But when you or your children contract an
air-pollution-related disease such as asthma, it is not the
industry who will bear the costs - you will. Nor will
the industry bear the expense of the longer time you'll
spend in traffic or higher costs for your car repair &
maintenance from degraded road conditions. Likewise,
many other effects of shale gas drilling, including not only
health care costs but road maintenance and emergency
services expenses, will increase the financial burden on
local municipalities, and these costs will be born by
taxpayers.
For more details, see
also sections below: community &
infrastructure and what local
governments can do
- Larry Grimm, Supervisor,
Town of Mount Pleasant, PA
what local
governments can do to minimize the negative impacts of gas
drilling
Local government officials are only beginning to hear about
the unanticipated consequences of gas drilling on their
communities. These impacts will cost the local
government money and thus affect all of us whether we signed
a lease or own any land. Town government’s biggest budget item is its
road/highway department. Gas drilling affects town and
county roads because truck traffic carrying 800,000 to 4
million gallons of water per well and again per fracking
wears out roads. Air quality problems and noise from 24/7 drilling as
well as the noise from compressor stations will impact
on health when the drilling is near a school, hospital,
nursing home or village. County/town emergency and health care services will
experience increased demands. This can be due to the
increase in major on-the-job injuries which happen in gas
drilling ,or the naturally occurring radium-226 and 228 and
radon that concentrates on drilling equipment. Fire fighting needs from chemicals fires and gas
eruptions which require different kinds of responses
than brush and house fires. There is the additional use of schools for families of
drilling workers and the impact of increased demand for
rental housing which drives up the price for local
renters. And there is the impact on water systems, including
municipal water, underground aquifer, individual wells, as
well as our ponds, lakes and rivers. Those impacts
include both the sheer volume of water being pumped out of
current water sources to use in the drilling process and the
occasional damage to water systems (wells, aquifers, ground
water) when the drilling fluids get into those systems.
The safety and welfare of the general population are not
protected by the best-crafted leases, nor by higher levels
of government. Local government needs to act to
protect the general population. Federal laws exempt the gas
industry from The Clean Air Act, The Clean Water Act, and
The Safe Drinking Water Act. The State Department of
Environmental Conservation claims they are protecting us,
saying "Our regulations are as strong as the federal
government’s”. But that is saying zero. The DEC says that the Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Law
precludes the enforcement of local laws in the area of oil
and gas regulation except local roads and real property
taxes. (Environmental Conservation Law §23-0303(2).)
However, this fails to note that gas drilling has to follow
all the laws that aren’t specific to gas drilling. For
example, we are not precluded from enforcing speed limits,
negligent conduct and other legal rights. Moreover this law
has not faced legal challenge since 1992, when the scale of
gas drilling was much different. The DEC is trying to discourage local governments from
using moratoriums to delay the drilling until the Towns put
needed protections in place.
Several communities in Sullivan County have nevertheless
passed 6 month moratoriums. The gas companies had years to
make their business plans; local government should have a
year to make plans to prevent the hidden costs of drilling
from being borne by the community rather than the gas
companies.
Some lawyers say that a moratorium probably won’t be upheld
if the gas companies challenge them. These lawyers often
represent landowners or gas companies in negotiating leases.
Their interest is to have the drilling happen as soon as
possible so they get their fees sooner. But the fact is that
municipal lawyers use moratoriums regularly to allow their
communities to study, investigate and determine whether new
laws are needed to minimize the negative impact of some
development. A moratorium does not prevent the gas drilling
indefinitely. It only pauses it for a reasonable time while
the local government considers what, if any, rules, bonding
requirements, etc. need to be put in place. ECL §23-0303(2) also doesn’t mean we can’t delay the gas
drilling until we do pass local laws that are allowed such
as on roads and taxes. Just because we cannot stop it
from happening does not mean we have to sit idly by while
our safety and health take a back seat to the gas industry’s
profit margins.
What should
local governments do before the gas drilling starts?
Officials: don't be the 'monkey in the middle'
Develop a land and water inventory guide by collecting
baseline data. Other communities with experience in
hosting gas drilling say that is crucial because you
will not be able to prove damages to water, air, etc if
you cannot show what the status was before the drilling.
Implement community impact fees for schools and roads,
e.g. assess taxes of number of trucks/day and weight.
Require bonding for pits and reservoirs. The chemicals
used in the fracking solution will either be trucked out
or left to evaporate in reservoirs. There should be a
special license to handle hazardous waste. Require steel
linings rather than plastic linings for the open pits
that hold drilling water which contains various
chemicals, biocides and fracking fluids.
Require reclamation bonds. Bonding to plug abandoned
wells, which costs $15,000-$20,000 if there is no
contamination. More than $100,000 if there is
spill/contamination.
Require emission monitoring of road dust and ozone from
flaring.
Implement a "reverse 911" system
where there is a way to
call/alert people of a chemical spill or fire.
Define mandatory set backs from schools, houses, roads
and streams as we would from porn shops, rock concerts
or any (other) pollution-emitting industry.
Enact stormwater rules. Weeds and herbicides have
presented problems in other states where gas drilling
occurs. Since the federal government has exempted gas
drilling from stormwater runoff regulations, local
governments have to enact their own stormwater rules.
Prepare plans to deal with impacts arising from changing
property values.
Pass Municipal watershed ordinances. The taking of water
for drilling is not a one-shot deal. The industry will
have 3 to 10 fracturing episodes to fully exploit each
well.
The sad truth
is that New York State's Department of Environmental
Conservation is a cheerleader for the gas drilling industry
and
works much more closely with it than it does with
citizens. DEC in fact, is mandated by
Article 23 of the NYS Environmental Conservation Law to
maximize the efficiency with which oil and gas are
extracted. Contemplate the irony: if you wanted
to put up a wind turbine on your property, you'd be
responsible for preparing your own Environmental Impact
Statement. But if you're the oil & gas industry, the
DEC - funded by taxpayer dollars - will prepare a blanket
('generic') EIS (GEIS) for you, as it is currently
doing in preparing a Supplemental Generic Environmental
Impact Statement that will cover every drilling permit in
the state going forward. Not once, not ever, would you
as a driller seeking a permit to drill and complete
a well have to undergo the cost and inconvenience of going
through the EIS process yourself, like everyone else does.
Sweet, eh?
State agencies find it essentially impossible to resist gas
industry lobbying in the best of times. But budgetary crises provide an excuse: NY State's
governor, David Paterson, at a
'town hall' meeting in Binghamton on February 11, 2009,
said that drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale
will help bring jobs and money into the state, helping
mitigate its record deficit.
Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no
evil
In
response to a FOIL request submitted by
Earthjustice, the New York State
Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC)
admitted that it does not require ground or
surface water quality testing by the gas
drilling industry and that the agency does not
compile a record of drilling problems requiring
follow-up. Ignorance of the facts is not the
same as a clean bill of environmental health.
Since 1992, DEC has NEVER asked any gas driller
to prepare an environmental impact statement ("EIS")
for a proposed well permit. In DEC's view, no
well ever presented a potentially significant
adverse impact not covered in its 15-year-old
generic EIS (GEIS). DEC does not know of any
environmental problems from hydrofracking,
because it has never seriously analyzed the
evidence.
From the
Office of General Counsel, NYSDEC in response to
Earthjustice's FOIL request: "I'm unaware of an instance where an EIS was prepared.
And...the Department does not require private water testing
or surface water testing as a condition of a permit.
"It is possible that DEC would have a few records of this
nature but only if an operator submitted them voluntarily or
if there was a problem noted that required follow up by DEC.
Here again, the Department does not maintain
documents in a format that would facilitate a search. It
would be better to identify either a well name or operator
to narrow the search. Otherwise, staff will have to rely
on their memory to recall whether any water testing data was
made available."
Likewise,
a FOIL request to the DEC from Environmental Working Group,
asking for tests and test results for hydraulic fracturing
chemicals in New York State waters during the past 50 years
resulted in the following
DEC
response: "The Division of Mineral Resources
does not maintain any records which are responsive to your
request." See EWG press release
here.
Are there
recorded instances of groundwater contamination from
hydraulic fracturing in New York State that the DEC could
avail itself of if it was interested in the evidence?
Is there scientific acknowledgment of the process by which
that contamination has occurred? To both questions, YES. See
Chautauqua County Dept of Health & US Interior Department
Geo Survey Letters.tif
(File opens with any fax
viewer, such as Windows Picture and Fax Viewer)
It is
clear that horizontal gas drilling will impact our roads,
our water, noise levels, air quality, among other things.
Communities that
have already experienced horizontal gas drilling say that
unless we act before it happens, the social costs will fall
on local communities. Municipal officials have a
responsibility to see that those social costs are not
foisted off on taxpayers. A moratorium is way to pause the
drilling while we study the impact and resources affected.
There are
conflicting opinions on whether Counties or Towns can do a
moratorium.
In part, this is a
result of how moratorium law developed. In the US and in NY
some laws are spelled out in statutory form but also some
law, just as valid, is called common law. The legal
principles of common law have developed over time and are
found in the decisions of Judges. An example is negligence
law. If you create a dangerous situation, such as driving
recklessly and you cause an accident that results in someone
else being injured, that person can sue you for negligence.
It isn’t written up in a specific statute but it is just as
enforceable in a Court of Law. The same is true of the law
of moratoria. Its rules and principles are not found in
statute, they are found in the common law.
Courts tell us
that a moratorium is a common device that municipalities use
to put a temporary hold on an activity – often a residential
or industrial development – so that the public safety,
health and well being, including the social costs of
development,can be considered. In the case of a town
moratorium, a court described a moratorium in the following
way: “The moratorium . . .is a valid stopgap or interim
measure, reasonably designed to temporarily halt development
while the Town considered updates to its master plan and
comprehensive changes to its Zoning Ordinance.” Laurel
Realty LLC v. Planning Board of Town of Kent 40 A.D. 3d 857
(2d Dept 2007)
The time frame for
the moratorium must be reasonable and extensions have been
upheld when it was shown they were needed. The municipality
can do a reasonable investigation into what, if any, actions
it should take before the resumption of the development
project.
Careful,
comprehensive planning is one of the fundamental objectives
underpinning all land use regulation and it therefore
follows that municipalities should have the ability to slow
down the growth process in order to ensure that their
policies are well thought out and not determined in an ad
hoc, de facto basis, so that changes are not rendered moot
by immediate development. (Matter of Home Depot USA, Inc. v.
Village of Rockville Centre, 295 A.D. 2d 426 (2d Dept
2002)). A moratorium enacted solely because of public
opposition to a project will not withstand court challenge.
(Matter of Cellular Tower v. Village of Tarrytown, 209 A.D.
2d 57 (2dDep 1995)) On the other hand a moratorium has been
upheld where it was rationally related to a legitimate
governmental purpose [such as] preserving a town’s aesthetic
character. (Ecogen, LLC v. Town of Italy, 438 F. Supp.2d 149
(WDNY 2006))
One
misunderstanding, which is promoted by those who want gas
drilling to happen as soon as possible, is that A MORATORIUM
IS A REGULATION OF GAS DRILLING. We cannot deny that under
present law ONLY THE DEC CAN REGULATE GAS DRILLING. A
moratorium is NOT a regulation of gas drilling. A moratorium
is a stopgap measure, a pause. It does not say how tall
drilling rigs can be or other things that regulate gas
drilling.
Can a county have
a moratorium? Legal research showed several examples of
county moratoria. Leeandy Development v. Town of Woodbury,
134 F. Supp. 2d 537 (SDNY 2001) discussed an Orange County
Moratorium of 1996 on new sewer connections without county
approval. The moratorium was not challenged in the lawsuit.
Johnson v. Wing, 12 F. Supp. 2d 311 (SDNY 1998) mentions
Westchester County extended its moratorium on evictions for
nonpayment to all homeless recipients. Hudson Valley
Properties & Rentals v. Ursuline Provincialate, 221 A.D.2d
507 (2d Dept 1995), refers to Dutchess County’s Department
of Health moratorium on all subdivisions in the City of
Beacon in excess of 4 or 5 lots.
RM Investors Corp.
v. Maggi, 104 Misc 2d 41 (County Ct of NY, Trial & Spec.
Term Rockland County, 1980) refers to Rockland County’s 5
year moratorium on sale of property purchased for delinquent
taxes. None of these moratoria were invalidated in these
cases.
So, a county can
have a moratorium. During the interim period of the
moratorium the community will have time to study the impacts
and consequences of gas drilling and perhaps pass laws and
rules that a county government is responsible for. Such as:
1. County roads
and property taxes seem to be the most obvious since the
Environmental Conservation Law explicitly acknowledges
municipal responsibility for those. ECL §23-0303(2).
2. County Law
Article 5 also gives a county responsibility for water
quality management (§220-a), flood control & soil
conservation (§223), EMS training (§223-b). The lawyer from
the Oil and Gas Accountability Project said that gas
drilling is an industrial activity and there will be
industrial scale injuries and accidents. Emergency response
teams will have to handle a whole new range of emergencies
including chemical and gas fires (which are not put out with
water) and industrial injuries from burns, torn limbs, etc.
Also counties are responsible for solid waste management:
resource recovery (§226-b).
3. Under Municipal
Home Rule Law, which applies to counties, counties also have
power to protect and enhance their physical and visual
environment (Article 2, §10 (a)(11), safety, health and
well-being of persons or property therein. (a)(12). Counties
also specifically have responsibility for control of floods
or the conservation of soil (§10) (b) (8), the regulation or
prohibition of the dumping of garbage . . . or other waste
material in or adjacent to creeks or streams in watershed
areas improved under any flood control or soil erosion
program. (§10 (b) (11)).
Remember that the
attorneys representing people with leases want drilling to
happen as quickly as possible. They are representing their
clients when they try to discourage legislators from
enacting a moratorium that will delay the payment of
royalties. But the gas isn’t going anywhere while we
consider the need to implement increased bonding for roads,
or rules to deal with the dumping of solid waste or waste
water. DEC permit review process doesn’t include what will
be done with waste water. That may be the county’s
responsibility. Slowing down the development until we know
more will benefit everyone. Because even those who have
signed gas drilling leases expect their elected officials to
act for the general benefit of the population and property
in their county or town. We municipal officials have a
responsibility to protect health and well-being of our
people and their property.
Visit
The Organizers' Page.
Get informed. Talk to friends
and neighbors. Write letters to the editor. Attend town
board meetings. Connect with local grassroots groups.
Boycott or reduce your use of natural gas.
Look for ways to use less electricity.
Organize a fundraiser.
Help with
GasWatch.
must-read report:
Energy Self-Reliant States
what to do
without using natural gas?
some places are
already doing it
" I’ve never seen
this side of MIT’s 51-year- old Henry Dreyfus Professor
of Energy. But I’ve known he’s a rock star. For several
years, Nocera has been the sleeper hit at environmental
conferences thanks to his clear—and
startling—illumination of our vast energy issues.
Planet Earth now uses 15
terawatts of energy a year; by 2050, scientists
estimate, we’ll need 30. How are we gonna get
there? First, Nocera says, we could cut down all the
plants in the world (except those needed for food) to
make biofuel: That would yield seven terawatts. We could
build a new billion-watt nuclear plant every 1.6 days
until 2050: eight terawatts. We could cover every inch
of land on earth with wind turbines: two terawatts.
Or, he says, we could just use the
sun, which beams 800 terawatts onto the earth’s
surface—as much every hour as the entire planet uses in
a year. 'My idea is a simple one,' Nocera has
said. 'If I take that sunlight and I take water, I can
solve the entire energy problem.' "
"Give
It Up for the Sun King" by
Elizabeth
Hightower, writing in Outside Magazine
energy independence
When energy companies extol the benefits of natural gas as
a domestically-produced fuel, they're selling an
illusion: While trying
to convince us that we should sacrifice our air and water in exchange for
a greater domestic supply of fuel, they're simultaneously making
plans to export natural gas
extracted here to countries overseas -
to whichever regional market pays the most.*
What that means is that as soon as plants are built that
allow natural gas to be liquified for transport overseas,
we'll have to pay world market prices just to buy our own
natural gas. Did you know the
the US exports oil? - 1.8 million barrels of oil a day in
May 2008? That is to say, just because it was
extracted here
doesn't mean it stays here. And because
hydrocarbon fuels are a commodity traded in the world
market, there's no
separate tank that allows us to buy domestically produced
oil or natural gas at a lower price. The Department of
Energy's Annual Energy Outlook 2007, prepared by the Energy Information Administration, an independent
statistical and analytical agency within DOE, found drilling
in Florida: "…would
not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and
natural gas production or prices before 2030... Because oil
prices are determined on the international market, however,
any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be
insignificant." [Department of Energy's Annual Energy
Outlook 2007, 2/07].
There's another facet
to
energy independence:
Just as someone who has maxed out 10 credit cards doesn't
need another one, we don't need more energy at any
cost to our quality of life. We need to learn to live
within our energy means - and much of the reason we have so
much trouble with that is due to the close relationship
between government and the energy industry. Did you know
that for the years 2002-2006
Chesapeake Energy had an average tax rate of 3/10ths of a
percent? If energy exploration companies didn't receive
such staggering tax breaks, and their fair share was
invested in real energy independence options, we would have
viable options each day for living within our energy means.
We might have solar panels along Route 17, the way the
Autobahn in Germany does. We might have small wind turbines
on our buildings. We might be riding light rail to work &
shopping. It's the hydrocarbon industry, and the auto
industry - which now asks to be bailed out at yet more
taxpayer expense - who decades ago persuaded our government
to use our tax dollars to increase their control and
profits, and decrease our choices. It was their lobbying
that destroyed early mass transit in the US. We'd
be foolish to accept the false choice that we need to sacrifice
even a little bit of our environment, let alone as much as
the destructive process of HD/HVHF for natural gas will cost
us, for a few years' worth of yet another polluting,
global-warming-worsening, hydrocarbon energy source.
And what about true energy
independence? While it would be a great good to
reduce our imports of oil and natural gas - and in this
regard we can make significant progress through conservation
alone - it would be even better to declare our independence
from greedy energy corporations who co-opt (that's a polite
word for 'steal') our tax dollars, who monopolize the market
& manipulate prices by inducing artificial shortages, and
who keep trying to convince us that we have no other choices
besides their hydrocarbon fuels that pollute at every step:
production, transport, and use.
*Aubrey K.
McClendon, in Chesapeake Energy's 2008 2nd quarter earnings
call: "Now,
we will look at investing in L&G export facilities and we
are studying that right now. We’ve got to figure out a way
to get some linkage to the world market and we are dedicated
to trying to find a way to achieve that linkage...we read
the papers and see that gas around the world goes for twice
what it goes for here. So, my view is we make a great widget
here and that widget is valued at x here and 2x around the
world so we’re trying to figure out a way to get it on a
boat and get it to some overseas markets as well. So, the
addition of a potential linkage to world prices as well as
to work natural gas in to the transportation network, I
think really creates two huge value added out year markets
for the industry and I’m doing all I can on both fronts."