WV-DEP inspectors perform a critical function for our State

From an Article by Jeff Jenkins, WV Metro News, March 11, 2021

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A new fee that could bring up to $500,000 annually to the state Department of Environmental Protection’s Office of Oil and Gas will next be considered by the full House of Delegates after approval by the House Energy Committee Thursday.

The measure, SB 404, would create a $2,500 fee that would be charged each time a drilling permit has to be modified.

Those obtaining permits for drilling for oil and natural gas currently pay a one time $10,000 permit fee but are not charged if the permit is modified. There were 200 modifications to existing permits last year.

State DEP Deputy Secretary for External Affairs Scott Mandirola told the committee Thursday the agency needs $2.4 million a year to run the Office of Oil and Gas with 25 inspectors. It currently has $1.1 million for next budget year. The new fee would provide $500,000 of the remaining $1.3 million needed.

The office currently only has 10 inspectors for thousands of wells.

“There are 75,000 wells including abandoned and orphaned,” Mandirola said.

WV-DEP well inspectors are currently funded through permit fees but drilling for natural gas has slowed down in West Virginia causing a significant reduction in fee revenue.

Mandirola said a modification fee is nothing new for the WV-DEP. He said permits for coal, water and air all have modification fees but there’s been no fee for drilling changes.

The bill, which now goes to the full House for consideration, has already passed the state Senate.

WV-DEP Does Not Regulate the Dust from Marcellus Well Pads

From the Article by Jeff Jenkins, WV MetroNews | October 21, 2013 

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Two years have made a difference for the state Department of Environmental Protection in its oversight of the Marcellus Shale drilling industry in West Virginia.

Horizontal drilling for natural gas accelerated in the Mountain State in 2010. In March 2011, state lawmakers failed to pass a proposed bill regulating the industry. A special legislative committee working with Acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin got a bill through later that year. [NOTE: This bill was weakened by the Governor compared with that developed by the Legislature.]

Tom Aluise of the WV-DEP told MetroNews that the Office of Oil and Gas has nearly doubled its staff in two years going from just 25 workers to 46. Thirty workers are now in the inspection and enforcement department with 27 of those out in the field.

“That helps us be more responsive to the public. Be more responsive to citizens’ complaints and be responsive to the industry as well as our efficiency at reviewing applications is improving,” Aluise said. The money from the additional staffing comes from that state law that significantly increased permit fees.

A change that’s expected to have a significant impact on the Marcellus Shale industry in West Virginia will come on line in the next few months. Aluise said an e-filing system for drilling permit applications will be a welcomed improvement.

Currently drilling permit applications are more than 1,000 pages long and if a company makes a mistake on that application the DEP has to return the paperwork for corrections. Aluise said the new e-filing system will not allow an application to be filed unless all of the information is included.

“We will be getting applications that are more complete. It’s going to create situations where we are able to more thoroughly and more quickly review these,” Aluise said.

DEP records show there are currently more than 1,000 horizontal wells in West Virginia. The agency has received more than 500 permit applications this year. Companies that are granted permits have two years to actually put a drilling site in place.

The top 5 counties for Marcellus Shale drilling since 2011 are Doddridge, Wetzel, Harrison, Marshall and Ritchie.

Two Reports are Late; Third Due in July; Quality vs. Speed

From the Article by Pam Kasey for the State Journal, February 21, 2013

Presentations of the status of two studies on horizontal drilling the Legislature expected from the WV Department of Environmental Protection about two months ago were made on February 21^st and offered little substance while promising to deliver much, soon.

When the Legislature passed the Natural Gas Horizontal Well Control Act in December 2011 for regulating the production of natural gas from horizontally drilled wells, lawmakers mandated follow-up studies in case further regulation was needed. One study was to investigate the safety of pits and impoundments and evaluate whether a special regulatory provision is needed for radioactivity or other toxins. Another was to explore whether the act’s setback distance — the center of a wellpad may not be located within 625 feet of an occupied dwelling — is sufficient given the noise, light, dust and volatile organic compounds generated by the drilling of horizontal wells.

A finding that existing regulations are inadequate would trigger the development and proposal of new rules by the DEP.

Those two studies were due at the end of 2012 and are not yet done; a third is due July 1. Huffman defended the lateness in the hearing in the House of Delegates chamber. “We have taken a lot of time with these studies to try to be as scientific and comprehensive as we could,” Huffman said.

“I know that pushes us well into the legislative session,” he said, acknowledging that the point of the deadlines was to allow time for legislators to consider emergency action that might be needed in this session. “But there are over 40 pages of rules being considered by the Legislature that may not be directly as a result of the studies we are working on but are a result of the comprehensive knowledge base we’ve accumulated over the past couple of years.”

In updating lawmakers on the status of the studies, two DEP presenters emphasized the challenging logistics of accomplishing in the one-year time frame everything that had to be done: agreeing with contractors at West Virginia University on what data needed to be gathered, assembling teams, identifying active well sites that met certain criteria, coordinating with operators and landowners, hauling equipment from site to site, gathering the data and compiling worthwhile reports.

Pits and impoundments

For the study on the safety of pits and impoundments, the contractors looked at the three large pits that were constructed after the new rule was in place. Because the sample was small, they added 12 more pits and impoundments from prior to the new rule, according to Mike Dorsey, chief of DEP’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Response.

The good news: None of them was in danger of failing, Dorsey said, including the worst structure DEP was aware of. The bad news: Much improvement is needed.

“The horizontal drilling, the Marcellus business in general is a huge change for people who work for our agency. There’s not been a bigger change in what we do since solid waste laws were changed in the late ’80s, early ’90s,” Dorsey said. He referred to problems discovered during the study with compaction, pit liners, seepage and other aspects.

DEP already put new training in place last fall for inspectors and for the industry, he said, and developed a standardized inspection checklist. The statute also asked DEP to look at radiation. Scant data has been gathered, Dorsey said, from Marcellus drill cuttings and from fluid that has returned from the formation.

Early data range from 0.01 millirem/hour, a measure of exposure, to 0.06 mrem/hour — levels he said would not expose people to the health-based standard of 5 rem/year. Asked by Delegate Tim Manchin, D-Marion, who chaired the hearing, whether regulation on radiation is going to be needed, Dorsey said, “I think the answer is probably going to be no, at least in the short term.”

The pits and impoundments study is in two parts. An engineering aspect was complete in December; the water study is in hand. Dorsey hopes to submit a complete report in two weeks.

Well setbacks and air quality

The study determining whether 625 feet from the center of a wellpad to an occupied dwelling is sufficient given the noise, light, dust and volatile organic compounds that are generated, due December 31, includes a literature review of best practices and a data gathering effort, explained Renu Chakrabarty, an engineer and air toxics coordinator for DEP’s Division of Air Quality.

The field work covered seven wellpads in three counties with three different operators, Chakrabarty said.

Samples for this study and for an air quality study due July 1 were taken by WVU air monitors that ringed the wellpads and by a Department of Energy mobile monitoring trailer, and they were taken at distinct stages of the process: wellpad construction, vertical drilling, horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing and well completion. She hopes the noise, light, dust and VOC study will be submitted by the end of March. The air study is not due until July 1.

The importance of timing

Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of the WVU Water Research Institute that has gathered some of the data, took a moment to make a point about the dataset. “What we’ve got is a body of data that’s unprecedented in this country on the air, the water and waste streams, and the impoundment security and safety,” Ziemkiewicz said. “We’ve got a very powerful body of work here.”

Delegate Mike Manypenny, D-Taylor, wanted to make an opposing point on the time it has taken. On the issue of volatile organic compounds — think gasoline or natural gas in the air, which can explode — Manypenny asked Huffman whether DEP rules could prevent accidents like the February 15 incident in which an employee of Central Environmental Services was killed in an explosion that appears to have been related to volatile organic compounds at the well site.

This “letter to the editor” of the Morgantown Dominion Post is by Larry Harris, as published on November 5^th:

 Rules of the game not being enforced …

The controversy over replacement NFL referees showed how important good regulators of the game’s rules are to that sport. A quick resolution came in the wake of widespread public objections to poor referees. I’m wondering why there’s not the same kind of outcry about a situation much more important to us than a game: Our health and safety. 

I speak of the poorly regulated gas industry that’s drilling an alarming number of wells in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. There is now adequate information indicating that air, water and land pollution is associated with the hydro-fracking industry. 

Cancer-causing chemicals are being used in this process and reports of illegal dumping of wastewater on roads and into streams are reported. 

In New York, the situation is markedly different. First, they put a moratorium on hydrofracking until it was certain regulations were in place that protected the environment. The city of New York utilizes reservoirs for its water supply and citizens there made such an outcry that a decision on fracking was postponed again. Why are citizens here so complacent about an industry that endangers their water supply, their air quality and the land rights they lose when a driller obtains their mineral lease? 

As an environmental appointee of the Department’s Environmental Protection’s Public Advisory Council, I observed the agency develop a reasonable set of rules only to have the Legislature defeat it. 
We eventually got regulations but Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s set of rules did not go far enough to protect us. We got a few more regulators to enforce the rules, but again not enough to adequately cover the number of wells being drilled. 

So we are in the same boat as having replacement referees: Even the regulations we have are not enforced. When a referee makes a bad call, the decision may affect that one game but the teams will play again. 

With fracking, a bad call is permanent, with long lasting environmental damage. We deserve better enforcement, better protection. Is not the health and safety of our families just as important as a football game?

>>>   Larry Harris is a member of the WV Department of Environmental Protection’s Public Advisory Council and a resident of Morgantown, WV. <<<

State Hiring Regulations Are Problematic Regarding Experience and Pay Rates

Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) said it’s on pace to hire more gas well inspectors following the passage of the Natural Gas Horizontal Well Control Act. But two hiring obstacles still remain: Low pay and an experience prerequisite. Higher permitting fees in the new legislation, DEP spokesman Tom Aluise said, were intended to generate money to hire 14 new Office of Oil and Gas (OOG) staffers — including four inspectors. So far, two inspector positions have been filled, with five left — which includes some previous vacancies. DEP expects to fill them within the next six months. “We knew it was going to take a while,” Aluise said.

They expected it to take about a year, though it might run a bit longer based on the six-month projection. When all the spots are filled, Aluise said, DEP will have 21 inspectors and two supervisors. The OOG staff list now shows 14 inspectors. Inspectors work certain areas — a single county or group of counties. A new hire is working the Brooke-Hancock-Ohio county region of the Northern Panhandle, while another is working Marshall County. Openings remain for Dodd, Tyler, Mingo-Wayne-Cabell, Lewis and Braxton counties. Inspectors have to meet certain qualifications and pass a test, Aluise said. Despite the new legislation intended to increase the candidate pool, “the application numbers haven’t been great,” Aluise said. The current applicant list has 12 qualified people.

The Horizontal Well Control Act raised starting pay to $35,000 for inspectors and $40,000 for supervisors, but it’s still not competitive with industry pay, Aluise said. During the months of negotiations on the Act, industry and DEP officials often said people with the same qualifications can start at $60,000 to $70,000 a year. Inspector qualifications were also subject to intense negotiations. The Act whittled it down from the previous six years’ industry experience to two — with one year credit for those with a bachelor’s degree in science or engineering, an associate degree in petroleum technology or relevant environmental experience.  Even one year of experience is still a hiring hurdle, Aluise said. Someone with a four-year degree can’t get a job. They have discussed asking the Legislature to lift that requirement. “We feel like we could train people,” Aluise said.

The Dominion Post asked OOG Chief Jim Martin if the new hires would be sufficient to monitor all the state’s gas wells — conventional and unconventional. Martin said the new hire numbers are specific to act requirements. Whether it’ll be adequate for the big picture is “something we’ll have to look at down the road.” They need to get them all on board and see how it pans out. “The activity level at the time is a critical component,” he said. 

During Joint Select Committee discussions of the legislation, some said there are too many wells for too few inspectors. Others said that while there are a lot of wells, not all of them need regular, or even annual, monitoring. According to OOG data, 50,586 active gas wells of all types are in the state — 952 of them Marcellus wells. It gets complicated, because not all horizontal wells are controlled by the Act, which covers wells that disturb three acres or more of land and use 210,000 gallons or more of water in a 30-day period.

In 2010, DEP issued 504 vertical well permits and 445 horizontal. In 2011, the numbers were 275 vertical, 542 horizontal.  So far this year, DEP issued 271 permits for horizontal wells covered by the Act — called 6A wells for the portion of the new legislation containing the Act: Section 22 Article 6A.

OOG charts the number 6A permits issued each month. The numbers were 0 in January and February, three each for March and April, 37, May; 56, June; 57, July; 60, August; 55, September. Aluise noted that doesn’t reflect all gas well permitting for the year. For instance, in January and February, DEP issued 32 total vertical permits and 92 total horizontal permits not covered under the Act. Aluise confirmed that the 0 6A permits in January and February stems from an adjustment period following the December 2011 legislation.

Ken Ward, Jr., in an article in the Charleston Gazette, sheds a new light on the Oil and Gas Inspector shortage faced by West Virginia in light of the Marcellus gas boom.  Certain public figures have tried to say that the current 18 inspectors are enough to regulate the entire state.  However, reports dating as far back as 1993 warn of a funding and staff shortage.  For two decades, West Virginia has been unable to meet regulatory recommendations for the oil and gas industry.  Read the full article here…

The Select Committee on Marcellus Shale has finished its revisions on its comprehensive bill, and will vote Wednesday November 16 on whether to send it on to the full legislature.  Read more in the Charleston Daily Mail…

The Joint Select Committee on Marcellus Shale is scheduled for meetings Monday at 8 a.m. and Thursday at 3 p.m. during the November interim sessions, according to Co-Chairs Tim Manchin (Delegate-Marion) and Douglas Facemire (Senator-Braxton). This committee is currently working on four amendments that still remain pending for proposed regulation of the industry.

According to the state legislative Web site, four amendments to the Marcellus shale legislation are still pending while more than 20 have already been adopted. The four amendments remaining for consideration are (a) inspector qualifications, (b) karst (limestone) formations, (c) permit considerations, and (d) surface owner issues.

After a long meeting at the Capitol on Thursday morning, only four matters remain for the committee, as shown below. Senator Facemire said he and Delegate Manchin hope to have all work wrapped up in a  final meeting in Clarksburg on October 22nd. Then they can forward a bill to acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin and the leadership of both houses, as reported yesterday. If a general consensus can be reached, the bill could be on the agenda for a special meeting in November, Facemire said.

 AMENDMENTS TO Senate Bill-424 
› Adopted – Acreage Reduction
› Adopted – Air Regulation
› Adopted – Air Study
› Adopted – Approval of Certification
› Adopted – Calender Days
› Adopted – Clarifying Reporting Requirements
› Adopted – Directional Drill Info
› Adopted – Eliminate Oil and Gas Ex Board
› Adopted – Highway Enforcement
› Adopted – Impoundments
› Adopted – Increase Bonding
› Adopted – Notice Requirements
› Adopted – Permit Fee
› Adopted – Property Owner Public Notice
› Adopted – Public Comment and Hearing
› Adopted – Public Website and E-Notification
› Adopted – Quality Test
› Adopted – Reports to Div of Labor
› Adopted – Reuse Frac Fluid
› Adopted – Single Pad Impoundments
› Adopted – Stronger Frac Review
› Adopted – Tax Reimbursement
› Pending – Casing Cement Requirements
› Pending – Protection of Water Supplies
› Pending – Surface Owners Agreement
› Pending – Well Location Restrictions

The  Joint Select Committee on Marcellus Shale this past week, worked on the following:

Expanded the buffer zones between Marcellus shale wells and homes, livestock and drinking water through provisions added Wednesday. These include one of 625 feet between the center of a well site and a residence or building that houses dairy cattle or poultry. The committee voted after hearing from Marion County resident Casey Griffith, who said the dream house he built with his wife has been ruined by a well site 200 or so feet away. Around-the-clock noise, dust churned up by well construction and waste gas burned off at the site are among his family’s concerns, he said.

The committee also agreed to allow the DEP secretary to increase this spacing if scientific evidence shows unacceptable health risks to residents of the nearby house. Delegate Barbara Evans Fleischauer proposed that amendment while also advocating without success for larger buffers.

Other provisions added Wednesday would keep wells 250 feet from drinking wells or springs, 1,000 feet from public water supply intake points and 300 feet from a recognized trout stream.

Industry groups have objected to the proposed new permit fees of $10,000 for an initial well and $5,000 for each additional well at that site. These fees aim to provide DEP with enough revenue to hire the additional gas field inspectors and support staff needed for Marcellus operations. Lawmakers have been hoping for detailed cost estimates from the agency, to allow them to adjust those fees and ease industry concerns. But DEP Secretary Randy Huffman told the committee Wednesday that each change to the bill requires a new set of estimates. Fleischauer and other lawmakers urged Huffman to provide at least some figures at Monday’s meeting.

Amendments to SB-424 regulating Marcellus shale drilling should be ready for a special session of the Legislature in November, according to the Joint Select Committee on Marcellus Shale.  After the Committee approved 10 amendments to a bill that died this past regular session, Delegate Tim Manchin, D-Marion and co-chairman of the committee, says he hopes the final three or four amendments can be discussed and approved during the October interims, allowing acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin to call a special session for November.  Manchin said he’s open to having three committee meetings next month if that’s what it takes to get a bill ready.

On September 14th, the committee approved amendments that, among other things, raised the permit fees per well to $10,000. Each horizontal lateral off the vertical well into the shale will require a separate permit fee of $5,000. Kristin Boggs, attorney for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said the higher fees could generate about $2.5 million next year. That would erase a $1 million operating deficit in the DEP’s gas well permitting section and allow the department to hire about nine new employees for the section, Boggs said.

The committee also increased bonding requirements for construction of new wells and approved a measure requiring drillers to pay surface owners a one-time fee of $2,500 to reimburse them for property taxes they pay on land they cannot use while drilling is under way.

Manchin said the remaining amendments deal with water wells and streams, surface owner input on the location of roads and wells and the proximity of a well to a dwelling or a building involved in commercial farm activity. That last one could be the most contentious, he said. Sen. Doug Facemire, D-Braxton who is co-chairman, said the committee needs three or four more meetings before it finishes work on a bill.