Dunkard Creek WV & PA

Horizontal Natural Gas Well Work Permit

Pursuant to West Virginia Code 22-6A-10(e), prior to filing an application for a permit for a horizontal well the applicant shall publish in the county in which the well is located or is proposed to be located a Class II legal advertisement.

Public Notice Date: 5/17/2013 & 5/24/2013

Paper: The Dominion Post, Greer Building, Morgantown, WV 26505

The following applicant intends to apply for a horizontal natural gas well work permit which disturbs three acres or more of surface excluding pipelines, gathering lines and roads or utilizes more than two hundred ten thousand gallons of water in any thirty day period.

Well Number: Statler 4H

Applicant: Northeast Natural Energy LLC

Address: 707 Virginia Street East, Suite 1200, Charleston, WV 25301

Business Conducted: Natural gas production

Location: State: West Virginia, County: Monongalia, District: Clay, Quadrangle: Blacksville, WV

UTM NAD83 Northing 4395639.5 and UTM NAD83 Easting 570451.4

Watershed: Dunkard Creek

Any interested person may submit written comments or request a copy of the proposed permit application by emailing dep.oogcomments@wv.gov, sending a letter to Permit Review, Office of Oil and Gas, 601 57^th Street, SE, Charleston, WV 25304, or calling 304-926-0450. Emailed or written comments must reference the county, well number, and operator and be received by June 23, 2013. (30 days from the date of the second publication of this ad).

Copies of the proposed permit application may be reviewed at the WV Department of Environmental Protection headquarters, located at 601 57^th Street, SE, Charleston, WV 25304 (304-926-0450).  Full copies or scans of the proposed permit application will cost $15.00, whether mailed or obtained at DEP headquarters.

For information related to horizontal drilling, and all horizontal well applications filed in this state, visit:  www.dep.wv.gov/oil-and-gas/pages/default.aspx

Jeff Bach at Ephrata Cloister

Pennsylvania Hermits in Preston County WV in the 1750s

Note:  Three of the Eckerlin Brothers, namely Samuel, Israel and Gabriel, crossed the Allegheny Mountains about 1750 and first settled at the mouth of Dunkard Creek (named for them).  French and Indian conflicts drove them up the Cheat River to Dunkard Bottom (now Camp Dawson), for a limited stay until Quebec Indians raided and captured two of them.  DGN

A guest lecture by Dr. Jeff Bach:

Thursday, April 18th: 125 Brooks Hall, Downtown Campus, West Virginia University @ 7:00pm

Friday, April 19th: The McGrew House, 111 E Main Street, Kingwood, WV @ 7:00pm

About the lecturer: Dr. Jeff Bach is Director of the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster PA. He is the leading expert on Ephrata Cloister and its impact on Protestant Christianity in the mid-Atlantic region in the colonial period. Dr. Bach holds a Ph.D. from Duke University and is the author of several books and numerous articles.

The speaker will discuss newly discovered letters from the Eckerlin brothers, three religious solitaries who moved to today’s Preston County, West Virginia, and maintained active ties to the Ephrata community in colonial Pennsylvania. The Eckerlins left Ephrata during conflict in the 1740s, but stayed in communication until two of the brothers were captured by a raiding party in 1757.

Free and open to the public!

Dunkard Creek Pollution

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Source: WV DEP: February 6, 2013
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The WV Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP) and M3 Appalachian have proposed a settlement of Administrative Consent Order No. 7746 which resolves violation(s) of the WV Water Pollution Control Act which occurred in Harrison, Marion and Monongalia County, WV. In accordance with the proposed Consent Order, 7746 has agreed to pay administrative penalties and to comply with the Act. Final settlement is subject to comments received during the thirty (30) day period ending March 10, 2013.

Further information about this Administrative Consent Order is available by contacting the Chief Inspector, WVDEP/Environmental Enforcement, 601 57th Street SE, Charleston, WV 25304, (304) 926-0470  See also the WV DEP web-site Settlement Document of 23 pages including a number of photographs of the three streams and the drilling mud that polluted them.

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From the article by David Beard, The Morgantown Dominion Post, 2-7-13

The WV Department of Environmental Protection announced a settlement with M3 Appalachia Gathering for drilling mud spills in the Monongahela River, Jakes Run and Dunkard Creek. Along with remediation actions outlined in the consent order, the proposed settlement includes a fine of $37,830.

M3 Appalachia Gathering is an affiliate of Texas-based Momentum Energy and operates a natural gas pipeline gathering system, called the Appalachia Gathering System (AGS) in Monongalia, Marion and Harrison counties, and Greene and Washington counties in Pennsylvania. Momentum has contracts to serve Chesapeake Appalachia and Statoil.  The proposed settlement won’t be final until a 30-day comment period concludes March 10.

According to the WV-DEP documents:

>> DEP received notice of a drilling mud spill into the Monongahela River in Marion County on May 1, 2012. Momentum received a Notice of Violation and began remediation actions.

>> During a June 5 inspection, DEP observed drilling mud in Jakes Run and issued another violation notice. Momentum again began corrective actions.

>> On June 9, inspectors observed mud in Tevebaugh Creek in Marion County and issued another violation. Momentum began corrective actions.

>> On Aug. 31, DEP received notice of a drilling mud release into Dunkard Creek. It issued a violation and corrective actions began.

>> On Oct. 2, DEP responded to another mud release into Dunkard Creek, with the same consequences.

>> Within 20 days of the effective date of the consent order, Momentum must submit a full corrective plan and timeline.

Jim Roberts, Momentum vice president, said everything was corrected before a November meeting at the WV-DEP’s Charleston office. Everything is now stabilized and they are monitoring it to make sure everything is back to normal. Roberts said that in some instances, a contractor’s failure to follow procedures led to the incident. Momentum doesn’t like it when these accidents happen, but they have responded accordingly.  “We do feel like we’re a very responsible company,” Roberts said. “We do take responsibility and correct things and want to do things right.”

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Note: Northeast Natural Energy to Add New Horizontal Well at the Statler Pad in Monongalia County

The WV – DEP announced February 6th that it has approved the application from Northeast Natural Energy for a new horizontal Marcellus gas well at its Blacksville well pad near Dunkard Creek. Northeast already has two wells in production at the site.  The well is called Statler 6H. The public comment period ended February 2nd and DEP’s Office of Oil and Gas records show no comments were filed.  Northeast previously told The Dominion Post it hasn’t determined a drilling date yet — several factors have to be evaluated.

Dunkard Creek Mussels

The Pittsburgh Post Gazette published an article on the Dunkard fish kill on July 17^th, summarized below:

The stench of death is always a signal that something has gone terribly wrong, and it became overpowering as artist Ann Payne approached Dunkard Creek in 2009. An art exhibition, brimming with wonder but underscored by sorrow, is testimony by 90 artists to what she saw.

“Reflections: Homage to Dunkard Creek” commemorates the thousands of living things that died when coal mine wastewater changed the chemistry of the waterway, producing a golden algae bloom. All gill-breathing organisms — fish, rare populations of mussels, amphibians — suffocated.

The exhibition of 90 “portraits” of a variety of creatures in a variety of media is at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, Downtown, through Saturday. It will next travel to Maryland and West Virginia.

Over its 43-mile length, Dunkard Creek wends several times across the Mason-Dixon Line separating Pennsylvania and West Virginia before emptying into the Monongahela River near Point Marion. Ms. Payne, a scientific illustrator who lives in Morgantown, was made aware of the fish kill by a friend who lives on the stream.

“As we walked down to the creek, we noticed a disturbance to the left and saw a strange grouping of birds including usually shy wading birds like green herons. They were picking at fish bodies that had washed up on the shore.”

Wearing borrowed waders, Ms. Payne entered the water.

“It was horrible. Everything was dead. There were big fish, little fish, every kind, floating slowly in the low water. You could see how they struggled. Their mouths were open as though they had been gasping. Their gills were bleeding.

“I grew up in West Virginia and my best friends were salamanders. They’re very shy, ugly. They died trying to crawl out of the creek. They would never do that. Little fish were trying to get up into the little seeps along the shore, but there wasn’t enough water. They tried until they died. “I was just stunned. I didn’t believe what I was seeing,” Ms. Payne said.

Ms. Payne considered an appropriate response and, being an artist, she began to depict each of the species that had died, a kind of visual litany.

“The inception of this [project] was my amazement at how something this catastrophic can happen right here and yet people weren’t owing it. You have to be a witness to something. Most people are kind-hearted. You have to get their attention. Then I think people’s hearts would be open.”

By the end of 2010, she had made about 10 paintings. “At age 70, I realized it would take me a lifetime to finish.” That’s when she began recruiting artists.

She received support from the Appalachia Program division of The Mountain Institute, a global nonprofit that, according to its website, “empowers communities in the world’s great mountain systems through education, conservation and sustainable development.” The institute also funded a 25-page full color catalog that illustrates each artwork and provides background on Dunkard Creek. The catalogs are free to exhibition visitors.

Ms. Payne wasn’t sure about how to recruit artists, or even which to approach. One qualification was that they had to have a tie to the Monongahela Watershed. “We live here, work here, grew up here, study here, and/or vacation here. The watershed is literally a part of each one of us,” she wrote for the catalog introduction.

Ms. Payne’s entry is the Fowler’s toad (Anaxyrus fowleri), its depiction reflecting her training in and years of experience as a scientific illustrator:

Did she have a special attachment to the toad? “Well, when we were growing up we had a toad living under our porch.”

But Ms. Payne is clearly attached to all of these creatures, from Mr. Donoughe’s Variegate darter, a fish, to Pittsburgher Sharon Arffa’s Pistol grip, a mussel proposed as endangered in Pennsylvania, to the tiny Green stonefly by Nancy Maunz of Clarksburg, W.Va. Media includes paint, graphite, pieced wood, fiber and pencil shavings.

Each artist researched his or her own animal, and they all learned by it. For example, several mussels have developed specialized relationships with fish to complete their life cycles. The Snuffbox mimics the rocks that darters, sculpins and log perch root in when feeding. When the fish approaches, the mussel clamps down on its “nose” and holds it while injecting larvae into the host’s gills.

The exhibition is “a modern-day cautionary tale for Appalachia’s waters,” Appalachia Program director Brent Bailey wrote in the catalog, “told through the images of 90 species who once called the creek their home. This heartbreaking and true story of a collision between the energy industry and natural resources is also about ‘us’ — all of us who have a stake in our water.”

In what must be a nightmarish replay for all of the project participants, the lower 5 miles of Dunkard Creek have again been polluted with high levels of total dissolved solids, the Post-Gazette’s Don Hopey reported Saturday. The TDS concentrations were caused by a combination of low stream flow due to drought conditions, abandoned mine discharges and the discharges from Dana Mining’s Steele Shaft treatment plants, he reported. The Department of Environmental Protection prognosis is that the levels will worsen before they improve.

“Reflections” continues at 420 Blvd. of the Allies, Downtown, through Saturday. Admission is free. Hours are 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. today and Thursday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.

The exhibition will travel to the following venues: Aug. 1-22, Frostburg State University, Md.; Sept. 7-Oct. 5, Parkersburg Arts Center, W.Va. November dates to be announced, National Conservation Training Center, Shepherdstown, W.Va.; and Jan. 4-March 8, 2013, Carnegie Hall, Museum Gallery, Lewisburg, W.Va.

See also the home web-site for the “Reflections”  art project.

The Dunkard Creek Restoration Plan of the WV Division of Natural Resources can be found here.

Dunkard Creek in WV and PA