by S. Tom Bond on May 23, 2013
Natural Gas Flame
Commentary by S. Tom Bond, Resident Farmer, Jane Lew, Lewis County, WV
America’s Natural Gas Alliance and Energize WV with Natural Gas held another of its Town Hall information meetings in Buckhannon Wednesday evening, May 22. The presentation and room decoration were similar to a one I attended at Bridgeport a year or so ago, perhaps a little less elaborate.
There was a talk by a good female speaker emphasizing the points the industry wishes the audience to accept: economic effect, fracking is not new technology, everything is done to avoid water contamination, they are thoroughly regulated by the Department of Environmental Protection, gas is the coming thing, and basically no one is harmed. Then a well prepared video give much the same points with pictures and (very few) graphics. The visual displays around the room were much more limited than the previous meeting I attended. But the obligatory sweet food bar was present.
A little over half the 100 or so seats available were occupied. Quite a few industry people present. They were office workers in casual clothes, heavy labor was conspicuously absent. The rest of the crowd was “civilians.”
After the presentation, the floor was opened for questions to a panel of four central West Virginia management employees. The first few questions were soft, but after the first hard question was asked a flood of more pointed questions came out. One involved the “Halliburton loophole,” another recent research in water contamination, and still another was “Isn’t our water being destroyed?” Property rights questions were popular, several coming from people who appeared to be having problems on property they own.
After the meeting there was a friendly conversation between the people in the panel and the woman who gave the first talk, on one hand, and people from the audience, on the other, all very polite and reasonable. Both the higher level of comprehension and questions by the audience and the conversations afterwards were in sharp contrast to the earlier meeting at Bridgeport.
I read about how land and minerals are being expropriated in many countries by governments for the benefit of foreign investors, simply kicking the previous owner-users out without recourse and without an alternative way to make a living. The civility of a meeting like this makes you glad to be in the United States. You may feel you and your heirs (in the broadest sense) are losing something valuable, but it is not being taken at gunpoint.
by Duane Nichols on May 22, 2013
Open Letter From the Society for Conservation Biology, February 28, 2013
The Society for Conservation Biology sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy, and Department of Interior requesting that those three agencies conduct research on the biodiversity-related impacts of unconventional natural gas exploration involving hydraulic fracturing technology as part of a larger federal effort to determine how best to regulate and manage this rapidly-growing industry.
Hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) is the process by which oil or natural gas is extracted from dense geologic formations through fractures created with pressurized fluid. The recent development of horizontal drilling technology has made it profitable to scale-up natural gas production in areas where it was previously uneconomical to develop natural gas. Projections estimate that natural gas production by this method will double in the next 30 years, with an additional 60,000 wells to be constructed in the Marcellus shale region of the eastern U.S. alone.
In response to this rapid development and general concerns about the possibility that fracking may contaminate freshwater supplies both above and below ground, the EPA, DOE, and DOI signed a Multi-Agency Collaboration on Unconventional Oil and Gas Research Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in April of 2012 to ensure “the prudent development of energy sources while protecting human health and the environment.” The MOU called for a prioritized research agenda that will identify critical knowledge gaps related to fracking impacts, as well as an explicit timeline for developing this document. Thus far, the three agencies have failed to meet the MOU’s mandate, which called for a draft research plan being published for public review and comment by October of 2012 and a final research plan being published by January of 2013.
Among the 1,261 peer-reviewed studies of fracking currently published, there appear to be only a few that directly focus on the impacts of fracking on biological diversity or ecosystem health. Because of the potential risks and scientific uncertainties surrounding unconventional fracking practices, SCB suggested research priorities to address biodiversity for the multi-agency research collaboration.
While fracking is exempted from meeting the regulatory requirements of some environmental laws, including the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Federal government still retains authority under other environmental protection laws to help prevent environmental contamination or other damage caused by fracking. Accordingly, SCB also recommended to the agencies interim policy measures that can help to ensure the health of the nation’s aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems by affording additional regulatory protection pending the completion of those studies. States also have the ability to control most of these risks but in many cases have not enacted such measures.
Read the full letter HERE.
