Contaminated Water from Dimock, PA

In ‘David vs. Goliath’ Fracking Case, Families Handed Major Win

From an Article by Deidre Fulton, Common Dreams, March 10, 2016

The 10-person jury in court on Thursday handed down a $4.2 million verdict — and vindication — to two Pennsylvania families who refused to settle in a case pitting homeowners in the village of Dimock against a Houston-based fossil fuels company.

After a two-week trial at the U.S. District Court in Scranton, the federal jury found that Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., one of the largest natural gas drillers in Pennsylvania, had polluted the families’ well water.

As Common Dreams reported last month, neighbors Scott Ely and his wife, Monica Marta-Ely, and Ray and Victoria Hubert were the only remaining litigants in a lawsuit that began in 2009 with more than 40 plaintiffs—most of whom settled in 2012.

According to news outlets, the Elys were awarded $2.6 million and their three children $50,000 each. The Huberts were awarded $1.4 million, with another family member awarded $50,000.

The verdict drew praise from anti-fracking activists including filmmaker Josh Fox, who featured Dimock’s brown, odorous, and flammable water in his documentary Gasland and told Greenwire that he was “overjoyed” by the news. “People say this was like David and Goliath,” he said. “Well, we just got a reminder of how that story ends.”

Still, the problem with fracking is much bigger than two families or one small town, said anti-fracking advocate and biologist Sandra Steingraber, science advisor for Americans Against Fracking. “$4.2 million will not bring back drinkable well water to the long-suffering families of Dimock, Pennsylvania,” she told EcoWatch.

“No amount of money can do that,” Steingraber said. “Once groundwater is polluted, it’s polluted forevermore. But what this important jury decision does do is strip away the mirage of omnipotence that Cabot and other gas companies operate behind. Fracking poisons water. That’s what the science shows. The frackers will be held responsible. That’s what this court decision shows.”

Cabot Oil & Gas said Thursday it would appeal the ruling, accusing the jury of ignoring “overwhelming scientific and factual evidence that Cabot acted as a prudent operator in conducting its operations.”

But as EcoWatch reported, an NPR StateImpact report prior to the trial revealed that Cabot Oil & Gas had already accumulated more than 130 drilling violations at its Dimock wells, yet insisted that methane migration in Dimock’s water is naturally occurring. The company is currently banned from drilling in a 9-mile area of Dimock but is trying to lift the ban.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Other Large Diesel Trucks on Country Roads

Truck overturns, spills drilling wastewater that taints reservoir

From an Article by Laura Arenschield, Columbus Dispatch, March 9, 2016

A truck hauling drilling wastewater overturned in eastern Ohio early this morning, sending thousands of gallons of toxic water into a nearby creek and contaminating a reservoir in Barnesville in Belmont County.

The truck crashed along a curve just after 3 a.m. today, said Barnesville Fire Chief Bob Smith. The driver, Hiley Wogan of Chesterhill, Ohio, was flown by helicopter to a hospital in Columbus, Smith said.

About 5,000 gallons of drilling wastewater spilled into a field, then a creek and finally into one of Barnesville’s three reservoirs.

Smith said the reservoir is closed while the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency tests the water. James Lee, an EPA spokesman, said the agency is investigating the spill.

Smith said the truck is owned by ECM, a brine hauling company with a location in Cambridge, Ohio, not far from Barnesville.

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Injections of wastewater rise in Ohio despite lull in fracking

From an Article by Laura Arenschield, The Columbus Dispatch, March 7, 2016

The amount of fracking wastewater pumped underground in Ohio increased by more than 15 percent last year, even as shale drilling has slowed nationwide, according to new numbers from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

Ohio took in nearly 29 million barrels of fracking wastewater in 2015, according to a Dispatch analysis of department data. That is about 4 million more barrels than in 2014.

Fracking involves pumping a mixture of water, sand and chemicals at high pressure into deep wells to fracture shale formations and free oil and natural gas trapped underground.

The water can be recycled for reuse but eventually must be dumped somewhere. Ohio, which is situated to accept wastewater from states that don’t allow injection waste wells, has more than 200 injection wells. Fewer than 10 have been approved in Pennsylvania, where much of the fracking boom in this part of the country has taken place. West Virginia has about 60.

That means about 13 million barrels a year comes from Pennsylvania and West Virginia, according to the Natural Resources data.

Ohio typically takes more fracking wastewater from outside Ohio than inside. But last year, about 55 percent of the fracking wastewater that ended up in Ohio injection wells came from Ohio, the Dispatch analysis shows.

Wastewater generally travels in tanker trucks on Ohio’s highways until it reaches injection well sites, which are primarily in eastern and southeastern Ohio.

Athens County, for example, took more than 4 million barrels of fracking wastewater in 2015, an increase of 1.1 million barrels, or nearly 40 percent. Most of that wastewater was injected into wells in the eastern part of the county, near the village of Coolville and the unincorporated area of Torch.

Residents there, worried about drinking-water contamination and earthquakes associated with injection wells, have fought unsuccessfully to keep wastewater out.

“Something’s got to give,” said Teresa Mills, program director for the Buckeye Forest Council, an environmental-advocacy group. “Athens County, Coshocton, Guernsey (counties) — these are environmental-justice communities, and we have to stop burdening them.”

Exact numbers about drilling patterns and oil and gas production in Ohio in 2015 are not yet available. Companies were required to report that information to Natural Resources by Feb. 14, said Matt Eiselstein, an agency spokesman. The department will not make the numbers public until it reviews them, he said.

Industry trends nationwide show that drilling slowed in 2015, hampered by low gas and oil prices. A weekly drilling report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration released Feb. 25 showed that the nation’s number of natural-gas rigs was its fewest since 1987.

Jackie Stewart, a spokeswoman for Energy In Depth, an advocacy group for the oil and gas industry, said that even though drilling is down, production per well could be increasing. Drillers also are probably drilling longer horizontal cuts to access oil and gas, she said. That would require more water, which would in turn produce more wastewater.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Real Issues Confronting Industry & EPA

NOTICE – See “Gaswork” in Buckhannon on November 5th

From April Keating, Mountain Lakes Preservation Association, October 27, 2015

In case you haven’t seen it on social media yet, “Gaswork: The Fight for CJ’s Law” will be shown on Thursday, November 5 at 7 p.m. at Lascaux Micro-Theater in Buckhannon, WV. Thanks to Bryson Van Nostrand for making his theatre space available. Members of the Bevins family will be speaking, and there will be a Q & A afterward. Come out and learn what you can do to support safer drilling practices!

See also this video: https://vimeo.com/141045811

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Buckhannon, WV – Press Release: For Immediate Release, October 27, 2015

On Thursday, November 5, at 7 p.m., there will be a free showing of “Gaswork” at Lascaux MicroTheatre in Buckhannon, WV, located in Traders’ Alley behind Fat Tire Cycle on Main St. The film describes dangerous worker conditions in the oil and gas field. Numerous injuries and deaths result from poor safety practices on rigs all over the country. The oil and gas field has a higher death rate than all other industries.

“Gaswork” opens with the story of CJ Bevins, a Buckhannon native who died on an unsafe rig in New York, then goes on to investigate worker safety and chemical risk in the industry. Many workers who were interviewed have been asked to engage in unsafe practices, such as cleaning drill sites, transporting radioactive and carcinogenic chemicals, and steam cleaning the inside of condensate tanks which contain harmful chemicals, often without safety equipment.

A member of the Bevins family will be present to speak about that family’s experience and answer questions after the showing.

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Impacted Landowners Demand EPA Revise Flawed Fracking Study

From an Article by Winonah Hauter, EcoWatch.com, October 30, 2015
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Scientific Advisory Board met this week to review the agency’s draft assessment of the impact of fracking on drinking water resources, but the largely academic exercise got a dose of reality from residents of Dimock, Pennsylvania; Pavillion, Wyoming; and Parker County, Texas who have fought for years to get U.S. EPA to act.

Inexplicably, their cases of contamination were excluded in the thousands of pages that make up the EPA’s assessment. Given only five minutes each, the residents demanded that the EPA stop ignoring their cases.

Fracking-affected residents came to Washington, DC this week to confront the U.S. EPA over its failed fracking report. From left to right: Ray Kemble, an affected landowner and former gas industry worker from Dimock, Pennsylvania; Steve Lipsky, an affected homeowner from Weatherford, Texas; and John Fenton, a rancher and affected landowner from Pavillion, Wyoming. Photo credit: Craig Stevens

Ray Kemble, an affected landowner and former gas industry worker, testified, “In 2008, gas drilling caused my water to become poisoned. The Pennsylvania DEP and the EPA confirmed this contamination, but abandoned us in 2012 and did not even include us in their long-term study. I am here today to demand that EPA recognize us, include our case in this study, and reopen the investigation.”

John Fenton, a rancher and affected landowner in Pavillion also spoke out. “When EPA launched its national study of fracking’s drinking water impacts, we thought they’d look first here in Pavillion where they’d already found pollution. But instead they ignored us without explanation. Science means taking the facts as they are. But EPA seems to be intent on finding the facts to support the conclusion they’ve already reached—‘fracking is safe.’”

Steve Lipsky, an affected homeowner in Weatherford, Texas added that “EPA omitted my case from their national drinking water study,” and then asked, “Is that science? Whose side is EPA on?”

“We have tried for years now to get the EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy to meet with impacted residents across the country to hear their stories and to come up with ways that the agency can help those being harmed,” said Craig Stevens, 6th generation landowner and member of Pennsylvania Patriots from the Marcellus Shale. “This has still not happened and we deserve better.”

“While the EPA spent years conducting this study only to claim in their press releases that water contamination from fracking ‘is not widespread or systemic,’ I have been receiving calls on a regular basis from people across the state of Pennsylvania whose water and air has been polluted by this industry and who are paying the price with their health,” said Ron Gulla, an impacted resident from Hickory, Pennsylvania. “I have been trying to help people who are being poisoned by this industry for years, while our federal agencies who are tasked with protecting these people has failed them.”

It was vital that the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board hear these voices from the front lines, from people who have to deal with their water being poisoned. Not only has the agency been unresponsive, and failed to uphold its own basic mission to protect human health and the environment, the EPA—or perhaps more accurately the Obama Administration—misrepresented its own study when it claimed that “hydraulic fracturing activities have not led to widespread, systemic impacts to drinking water resources and identifies important vulnerabilities to drinking water resources.”

Some of the Scientific Advisory Board members are listening, with one member describing the EPA’s topline finding as “out of left field” and a “non sequitur relative to the body of the report.” But at the same time, the oil and gas industry is well represented on the board—several repeatedly used “we” and “industry” interchangeably as they chimed in in defense of fracking.

The EPA has been unresponsive and is failing to uphold its own basic mission to protect human health and the environment. It’s time for the agency to finally step up and serve the people, not the oil and gas industry. They could start by having a face-to-face with Administrator Gina McCarthy and affected individuals, rather than pretending they don’t exist. And the Obama administration must stop greenwashing fracking and acknowledge that it’s a dirty, polluting source of energy that harms our water, our climate, and our communities.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Dr. Vincent Post

Vast freshwater reserves found beneath the oceans

Article by Marketing and Communications at Flinders University, December 6th, 2013

Scientists have discovered huge reserves of freshwater beneath the oceans kilometres out to sea, providing new opportunities to stave off a looming global water crisis.

A new study, published December 5 in the international scientific journal Nature, reveals that an estimated half a million cubic kilometres of low-salinity water are buried beneath the seabed on continental shelves around the world.

The water, which could perhaps be used to eke out supplies to the world’s burgeoning coastal cities, has been located off Australia, China, North America and South Africa.

“The volume of this water resource is a hundred times greater than the amount we’ve extracted from the Earth’s sub-surface in the past century since 1900,” says lead author Dr Vincent Post (pictured) of the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT) and the School of the Environment at Flinders University.

“Knowing about these reserves is great news because this volume of water could sustain some regions for decades.”

Dr Post says that groundwater scientists knew of freshwater under the seafloor, but thought it only occurred under rare and special conditions.

“Our research shows that fresh and brackish aquifers below the seabed are actually quite a common phenomenon,” he says.

These reserves were formed over the past hundreds of thousands of years when on average the sea level was much lower than it is today, and when the coastline was further out, Dr Post explains.

“So when it rained, the water would infiltrate into the ground and fill up the water table in areas that are nowadays under the sea.

“It happened all around the world, and when the sea level rose when ice caps started melting some 20,000 years ago, these areas were covered by the ocean.

“Many aquifers were – and are still – protected from seawater by layers of clay and sediment that sit on top of them.”

The aquifers are similar to the ones below land, which much of the world relies on for drinking water, and their salinity is low enough for them to be turned into potable water, Dr Post says.

“There are two ways to access this water – build a platform out at sea and drill into the seabed, or drill from the mainland or islands close to the aquifers.”

While offshore drilling can be very costly, Dr Post says this source of freshwater should be assessed and considered in terms of cost, sustainability and environmental impact against other water sources such as desalination, or even building large new dams on land.

“Freshwater under the seabed is much less salty than seawater,” Dr Post says. “This means it can be converted to drinking water with less energy than seawater desalination, and it would also leave us with a lot less hyper-saline water.

“Freshwater on our planet is increasingly under stress and strain so the discovery of significant new stores off the coast is very exciting. It means that more options can be considered to help reduce the impact of droughts and continental water shortages.”

But while nations may now have new reserves of freshwater offshore, Dr Post says they will need to take care in how they manage the seabed: “For example, where low-salinity groundwater below the sea is likely to exist, we should take care to not contaminate it.

“Sometimes boreholes are drilled into the aquifers for oil and gas exploration or production, or aquifers are targeted for carbon dioxide disposal. These activities can threaten the quality of the water.”

Dr Post also warns that these water reserves are non-renewable: “We should use them carefully – once gone, they won’t be replenished until the sea level drops again, which is not likely to happen for a very long time.”

The study “Offshore fresh groundwater reserves as a global phenomenon” by Vincent E.A. Post, Jacobus Groen, Henk Kooi, Mark Person, Shemin Ge and W. Mike Edmunds is published in the latest issue of Nature.

The National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training is an Australian Government initiative, supported by the Australian Research Council and the National Water Commission.

Arbitration Possible for Hydrofracking Dispute