The Halliburton Exclusions have exempted Drilling & Fracking for far too long

​——→ Check out the schedule and events here​

Speakers from the following Groups: Beyond Petrochemicals Campaign, Beyond Plastics, Beyond Extreme Energy, Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan, Communitopia, Concerned Citizens of Navarro County, Damascus Citizens for Sustainability(DCS), Earth Dog Films, Fracking the System, Earthworks, Environmental Health News, FracTracker Alliance, Keep It Wild, Lisa Johnson and Associates, OJI:SDA’ Sustainable Indigenous Futures, Ohio River Valley Institute, Park Foundation, Physicians for Social Responsibility Pennsylvania, Property Rights and Pipeline Center, ReImagine Appalachia, Sierra Club, The Natural History Museum, Yale School of Public Health and Yale Cancer Center

Topics / Presentations: Precautionary approach to fighting oil & gas; Playing the long game: Overcoming defeat and setting new goals in the oil & gas fight; Telling the truth about plastic pollution;Pushing back against the Bitcoin Empire in Texas; “We Refuse to Die” – On our exhibition, movement building, and media campaign to stop the petrochemical expansion; Stopping gas exports to protect public health and avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis!; Shared Prosperity in the Ohio River Valley; Using maps to inspire action; Journalism on plastic, toxic chemicals, and oil & gas pollution; Victory against the Epiphany Allegheny corporation and the ongoing battle against the Northern Access Pipeline in NY; Building power across labor, environmental advocates, faith leaders, and racial justice leaders in Appalachia; The Beyond Petrochemicals Campaign; Colorado’s oil and gas wars – Upcoming documentary film; FLIR Cameras – Making the invisible visible; Skill building for grassroots organizers; Legal advocacy for fracking victims and learning industry tactics; Getting a statewide fracking ban on the ballot in Michigan; Protecting landowners’ rights against pipeline development; and Addressing the Health Impacts of Fracking

Full details and guest speaker profiles are underway and will be added soon!

At the conclusion of the summit you’re invited to participate in a National Strategy call to discuss what is next and needed for the anti-fracking movement to be successful. Please participate and share what you’re working on with others.

Please register and invite your colleagues at https://lu.ma/2022-network-summit

Sincerely, Ryan Clover, Halt the Harm Network

Drinking Water Dilemma: Barging Oil and Gas Waste on the Ohio River

From an Article by Robin Blakeman and Sarah Carballo, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, July 30, 2020

A new threat recently emerged for communities along the Ohio River.

Three barge docks are proposed to be built along the river to transport oil and gas waste from horizontal and vertical fracking operations. The projects, if approved, could result in the first barges carrying briny fracking wastes on the Ohio River.

The terminals would be developed by 4K Industrial Frac Water Supply and Recycling Technologies in Martins Ferry, DeepRock Disposal Solutions about 61 miles downstream at Marietta, and by Fountain Quail Energy Services about 38 miles downstream from Marietta in Meigs County, Ohio.

According to Dr. Randi Pokladnik, a retired research chemist and volunteer with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC), these operations pose a substantial risk for the Ohio River — the primarily tap water source for approximately five million people.

“Citizens have every right to be concerned about yet another threat to their drinking water,” says Dr. Pokladnik. “A quick glance of the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) data collected from public drinking water suppliers along the Ohio River reveals that all public drinking water sources along the river have pollutants that in many cases exceed the EWG health standards and in some cases exceed federal standards.”

Based on current regulations, it is unclear what agencies would be tasked with responding to potential spills as a result of these new barging operations, and whether or not those agencies would be able to work together successfully to address the environmental and public health hazards associated with these pollutants.

Even worse, many public water treatment facilities are not equipped to filter out the contaminants if this conventional and unconventional oil and gas waste is spilled in the Ohio River. For example, some contaminants, such as radioactive chemicals in water, can only be removed using very specific techniques that are not currently utilized by most public water treatment facilities in our region.

In response to requests and comments from concerned citizens, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has scheduled a virtual public hearing on Friday, August 7, for the DeepRock barge dock near Marietta, Ohio.

To prepare for the public hearing, an online informational session will be hosted on Monday, August 3, by the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and other partners across the region. For more information about the issue or how to attend the public hearing, check out THIS ARTICLE from OVEC or contact robin@ohvec.org.

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See also: GREEN NEWS, WV Environmental Council, Volume 30 Issue 13 — https://wvecouncil.org/green-volume-30-issue-13/

Pennyroyal Opera House in Fairview (Ohio), area of concern for two injection wells

Please support the Concerned Ohio River Residents (CORR) by taking this action on two proposed injection wells for Belmont County, OH TODAY. With the proposed petrochemical hub in Appalachia, we believe more and more injection wells are being planned to prepare for the waste that would be generated to feed the build-out. We also believe that by stopping the cracker plant, there will be less of a need for injection wells. Read on to see how you can help CORR today.

Tri-State Environmental SWIW LLC is applying for two injection well permits at a single location in section #2 of Kirkwood Township on Dickinson Cattle Co. land near Barnesville, Ohio. The permit application states that the average injection at this site would be 8,000 barrels a day of oil and gas waste.

We have the opportunity to submit comments in opposition to this dangerous facility through March 14th. We urge folks to do so and to try to recruit others to take action as well. We would suggest also sending your letters of opposition to the company. Calling Ohio Dept. Of Natural Resources (ODNR) to voice your concerns, as well as submitting written comments, is encouraged.

***Please request for a public hearing in your letter or if you call. If there are enough requests, the ODNR may hold a hearing on the injection wells.***

Injection wells not only threaten our water supplies, they can also be a significant source of air pollution. Below is a link to Earthworks FLIR images of the Silcor injection well in Cambridge, Ohio that shows evidence of significant air pollution. If these injection wells are permitted, brine truck traffic will increase drastically in and around Barnesville, Fairview and surrounding areas. Injection wells have also been proven to cause earthquakes.

Efforts to stop these injection wells are encouraged and greatly appreciated. We must remain resistant and persistent to all that threatens us and our children’s future.

Thank you, Concerned Ohio River Residents
(740) 738-3024

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Send written comments postmarked by March 14th to:

Ohio Department of Natural resources, Resources Management
2045 Morse Road, Building F-2, Columbus, Ohio 43229-6693
(614) 265-6922

And to the company at:

Tri-State Environmental SWIW LLC
40200 Cadiz Piedmont Road, Cadiz, Ohio 43907

FLIR images of Hillstone Silcor Injection Well: https://youtu.be/_sKZoQTcPio

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See also: Company seeking permits for two injection wells in Kirkwood Township, Shelley Hanson, Martins Ferry Times Leader, March 1, 2020

FAIRVIEW — Tri-State Environmental of Cadiz has applied for permits to install two different brine injection wells off Fairview Road in Kirkwood Township, Belmont County. Fairview is home to the Pennyroyal Opera House.

According to a public notice, Tri-State has applied for permits with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to drill two wells to inject brine water associated with the production of oil and natural gas. The first well would be called Tri-State #1, in Section 31, Kirkwood Township.

“The proposed well will inject into the Ohio Shale at a depth of 4,600 to 4,800 feet. The average injection is estimated to be 4,000 barrels per day,” according to the notice. “The maximum injection pressure is estimated to be 1,060 psi.”

The second well would be called Tri-State #2, in Section 25, Kirkwood Township. “The proposed well will inject into the Bass Islands through Salina Group at a depth of 5,200 to 5,500 feet,” the notice states.

The No. 2 well also would receive an estimated 4,000 barrels of brine per day. This would equate to about 168,000 gallons per day.

For more information, contact ODNR at 614-265-6922. Comments and objections must be received by ODNR no later than 15 days after Feb. 28 via mail to:

Ohio DNR Division of Oil & Gas Resources Management, 2045 Morse Road, Building F-2, Columbus, OH 43229. Comments can also be emailed to: oilandgas@dnr.state.oh.us.

Pillar Energy injection well has potential to pollute local streams and perhaps the Cheat River

From an Article by Rick Steelhammer, Charleston Gazette, January 20, 2020

After receiving 1,100 comments opposing a permit to dispose of nearly 600 barrels of brine and other drilling waste daily by injecting it into an inactive well along a Tucker County stream, the state Department of Environmental Protection has agreed to hold a public hearing on the matter.

The permit, sought by Pillar Energy LLC of Charleston, would authorize the operation of a disposal well along Horseshoe Run near the community of Leadmine to serve the company’s gas drilling activity in the area. The disposal well is located within about 250 feet of the trout stream, according to a map accompanying the permit application.

According to the Friends of Blackwater, a public hearing on the permit request is expected to take place sometime in March, following a two-month extension of a public comment period that ended last week.

Comments submitted to the DEP by members of the conservation group raised concerns about the dangers of drilling waste leaking from the injection well or nearby storage tanks into the groundwater or Horseshoe Run, a tributary of the Cheat River. Major flooding took place along Horseshoe Run in July 2018 and June of last year, they noted.

If the permit in its current form is issued, it “could undermine years of restoration work on the Cheat that has been completed to return ecological health to the watershed,” said Judy Rodd, Friends of Blackwater director.

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FRIENDS Of BLACKWATER Invite Participation in Public Hearing

On Thursday March 5th, from 5-8 PM, the WV Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is holding a public hearing for the Pillar underground injection well permit renewal that FOB is opposing, worried that it will contaminate Horseshoe Run and the Cheat River.

Join us at the hearing at the Tucker Co Board of Education Gym at 100 Education Ln, Parsons, WV 26287 (above RT. 72 north of the Parsons stop light) and sign our petition here to stand with FOB and 1700 other supporters to oppose this potential source of water pollution.

CONTACT US: FRIENDS OF BLACKWATER, PO Box 247
571 Douglas Rd, Thomas WV 26292. 304-345-7663
info@saveblackwater.org. — https://saveblackwater.org

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See also: Tri-State Environmental wants to put two injection wells on a piece of land in Barnesville OH | WTOV News 9, March 2, 2020

“There’s definitely not a reason for the public to be concerned. Brine is water that is naturally occurring in the earth,” said ODNR’s Adam Schroeder. [This is certainly a misleading statement as the brine contains many trace elements some of which are radioactive. DGN, FCWV].

The public comment period is open through March 14.

Fracking results in toxic & hazardous pollution

From an ABSTRACT by Katherine E. Pelch, Environmental Heath Journal, 2018

Background— In the last decade unconventional oil and gas (UOG) extraction has rapidly proliferated throughout the United States (US) and the world. This occurred largely because of the development of directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing which allows access to fossil fuels from geologic formations that were previously not cost effective to pursue. This process is known to use greater than 1,000 chemicals such as solvents, surfactants, detergents, and biocides. In addition, a complex mixture of chemicals, including heavy metals, naturally-occurring radioactive chemicals, and organic compounds are released from the formations and can enter air and water. Compounds associated with UOG activity have been linked to adverse reproductive and developmental outcomes in humans and laboratory animal models, which is possibly due to the presence of endocrine active chemicals.

Methods— Using systematic methods, electronic searches of PubMed and Web of Science were conducted to identify studies that measured chemicals in air near sites of UOG activity. Records were screened by title and abstract, relevant articles then underwent full text review, and data were extracted from the studies. A list of chemicals detected near UOG sites was generated. Then, the potential endocrine activity of the most frequently detected chemicals was explored via searches of literature from PubMed.

Results — Evaluation of 48 studies that sampled air near sites of UOG activity identified 106 chemicals detected in two or more studies. Ethane, benzene and n-pentane were the top three most frequently detected. Twenty-one chemicals have been shown to have endocrine activity including estrogenic and androgenic activity and the ability to alter steroidogenesis. Literature also suggested that some of the air pollutants may affect reproduction, development, and neurophysiological function, all endpoints which can be modulated by hormones. These chemicals included aromatics (i.e., benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene), several polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and mercury.

Conclusion — These results provide a basis for prioritizing future primary studies regarding the endocrine disrupting properties of UOG air pollutants, including exposure research in wildlife and humans. Further, we recommend systematic reviews of the health impacts of exposure to specific chemicals, and comprehensive environmental sampling of a broader array of chemicals.

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See also: The Endocrine Disrupter Exchange, TEDX

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See also: The Science of Fracking and Health Webinar Series w/Dr. Chris Kassotis – YouTube, September 4, 2018

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Fracking consumes incredible amounts of water, toxic chemicals and speciality sand

From an Article by Jon Hurdle, State-Impact Penna., August 15, 2018

Water use for fracking by oil and gas operators in the Marcellus Shale region rose 20 percent between 2011 and 2016 as longer laterals were drilled to fracture more gas-bearing rock, even though the pace of well development slowed in response to low natural gas prices, a Duke University study said on Wednesday.

The rise was the smallest of any of the six U.S. regions studied, including the Permian Basin area of Texas, where water use surged by 770 percent over the period.

The study also said the volume of fracking waste water produced in the Marcellus – which includes Pennsylvania, West Virginia, eastern Ohio and southern New York, where fracking is banned — rose four-fold to 600,000 gallons in 2016, forcing energy companies to rely increasingly on holding the waste in underground injection wells.

But the Marcellus waste water increase was also significantly smaller than other regions, where it rose as high as 1,440 percent during the period, the report said.

Although fewer new wells were drilled during the period than in the early stages of the fracking boom, more water was needed because longer wells required the fracturing of more rock, said Andrew Kondash, the paper’s lead author. The median water use per Marcellus well rose to 7.4 million gallons in 2016 from 6.1 million gallons in 2011, Kondash said.

The peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Science Advances, shows the fracking industry is having an increasing impact on water resources after more than a decade of operation, said Avner Vengosh, professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

“We clearly see a steady annual increase in hydraulic fracturing’s water footprint, with 2014 and 2015 marking a turning point where water use and the generation of flowback and produced water began to increase at significantly higher rates,” he said in a statement.

The study, titled “The Intensification of the Water Footprint of Hydraulic Fracturing,” was based on six years of data from industry, government, and nonprofit groups on water use and waste-water production at more than 12,000 wells in major shale gas and tight-oil producing regions.

The data were used to model future water use and waste-water volumes, and concluded that if oil and gas prices recover to levels last seen in the early 2010s, water and waste water volumes could surge by as much as 50 times in unconventional gas-producing regions such as Pennsylvania by 2030.

Even if gas prices stay at current low levels, the model predicts large increases in water and waste-water volumes by 2030, Kondash said.

Natural gas futures have traded below $5 per million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange for most of the last eight years amid plentiful supply from the Marcellus and other major U.S. shale reserves. On Monday, the contract ended at $2.93, and has shown little movement this year.

The Duke study is in line with one by Pennsylvania State University in 2015 showing that fracked wells in Pennsylvania used about three times as much water in 2014 than they did in 2009 as drilled laterals extended to an average of 7,000 feet from 2,200 feet.

Those wells produced about three times as much gas and three times as much waste water, said Dave Yoxtheimer, an extension associate with the university’s Marcellus Center for Research and Outreach, and a co-author of the study. He said there has been a roughly ten-fold increase in gas production in the Appalachian Basin since 2010.

The use of water per foot didn’t change much over the Penn State study period, but the big extension of laterals underground consumed a lot more water, he said. “Certainly as you see longer laterals and greater production you’ll use more water and generate more brine,” Yoxtheimer said.

The longer laterals have been enabled by improvements in technology, said John Quigley, former secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection and now director of the Center for the Environment, Energy and Economy at Harrisburg University.

Demand is also fueled by the fact that some 80 percent of water used in fracking remains underground, even though more of it is being recycled, he said, arguing that increased use of injection wells to hold frack waste water threatens ground water and increases the risk of seismic activity, as seen in some locations where minor earthquakes have been reported near injection sites.

Quigley said pressure on water supplies for fracking is likely to intensify if climate change brings droughts, as predicted, possibly forcing energy companies to curtail fracking. That outlook may improve the prospects for adoption of waterless fracking technologies that use CO2, LPG or nitrogen instead, he said.

The Duke report echoed the concern about the sustainability of fracking in arid regions such as the U.S. Southwest where groundwater supplies are stressed or limited.

Duke’s Vengosh said the report, after more than a decade of the so-called fracking boom, provides a more accurate picture of the industry’s water use than earlier studies which used only the early years of the boom to conclude that fracking didn’t use any more water than other energy sources. “We now have more years of data to draw upon from multiple verifiable sources,” he said.

An industry representative said officials will review the Duke report in light of the industry’s current practice of managing fracking waste by reducing, recycling, treating and disposing of it in an environmentally sensitive manner.

“Throughout each step the focus is on environmentally sound and responsible methods of disposing of generated waste materials,” said Stephanie Catarino Wissman, executive director of the Associated Petroleum Industries of Pennsylvania, a division of the American Petroleum Institute.

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Response Comment from Anthony R. Ingraffea, August 16, 2018

In shale gas and oil, it has always been about SCALE: the stuff is so damn stingy you have to bludgeon it. Generation I wells used 3-5 millions gallons of water and 1-2 hundred pounds of sand per foot of lateral; gen II Wells, 5-10 million gallons, 500-1000 pounds of sand per foot; current gen III Wells, 10-30 million gallons, a ton of sand, and the laterals are now longer than 2 miles long. EIA forecasts a million more such wells in the next 20 years: you do the math. Might as well just transport The Fingerlakes and much of Wisconsin underground.

Getting so absurd that one needs a calculator with only scientific notation to run the numbers: 10 trillion gallons of water, 20 trillion pounds of sand. Think about the carbon footprint of acquiring and transporting it….

We have solutions to this nonsense.

Best, Tony Ingraffea, Physicians-Scientists-Engineers for Healthy Energy

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See also: The Need to Protect Fresh and Brackish Groundwater Resources During Unconventional Oil and Gas Development | PSE | Physicians, Scientists, and Engineers for Healthy Energy

"Residual Waste" is potent fracking wastewater

Court tells EPA to review its rules on oil and gas waste

From an Article by Jon Hurdle, PA StateImpact, December 29, 2016

Photo: A truck delivers drilling waste water to a frack water recycling plant in Susquehanna County, PA

A federal court directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to review and possibly update its regulations on oil and gas waste, in a decision that was welcomed by environmental groups who had sued the agency, claiming its rules have failed to keep pace with the fracking boom.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a consent decree late Wednesday saying the EPA must review the regulations, and if necessary issue a new rulemaking if it deems an update to be appropriate. The actions must take place by March 2019, the court said.

The consent decree, which is designed to settle a dispute between two parties without either admitting guilt or liability, is the outcome of a lawsuit against EPA by seven environmental groups who claimed that the agency has failed to review oil and gas waste regulations, as required every three years under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976.

In the suit, filed in May, the plaintiffs said existing regulations are too weak to stop the escape of toxic materials such as benzene and mercury that have been used in the fracking boom since the mid-2000s.

The environmental groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Integrity Project argued that EPA should use the law to stop drillers spreading fracking waste on fields and roads, and require landfills and pond that receive fracking waste to install liners that prevent leakage.

The suit also urged EPA to use the rules to address the disposal of waste water in underground injection wells, a practice that has been linked to earthquakes in several states.

On Thursday, the plaintiffs welcomed the court’s decision. “This consent decree is a step in the right direction toward fulfilling EPA’s duty to the public,” said Adam Kron, senior attorney at the Environmental Integrity Project.  “EPA has known since 1988 that its rules for oil and gas wastes aren’t up to par, and the fracking boom has made them even more outdated.”

Amy Mall, senior policy analyst for NRDC, said that any move by the incoming Trump administration to block the decree would leave the government in violation of the court order. “We are certainly very hopeful that the incoming administration will not violate the federal government’s legal commitments,” she said.

Among the incidents that could have been averted by updated EPA regulations, was one in Tioga County, Pennsylvania in 2012 when a pond holding 6 million gallons of fracking waste water leaked pollutants including strontium and arsenic into groundwater and a nearby stream.

The EPA referred an inquiry to the U.S. Department of Justice, which declined to comment. A spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute could not be reached for comment.

The other plaintiffs were Earthworks, San Juan Citizens Alliance, West Virginia Surface Owners Rights Organization, the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, and the Responsible Drilling Alliance.

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Obama’s Grand Finale on Fracking Is Too Little, Too Late

From an Article by Mike Ludwig, Truthout News, December 14, 2016

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finally admitted what the rest of us already know: Sometimes fracking pollutes drinking water.

On Tuesday, the EPA issued a report on fracking’s impacts on drinking water supplies. The media described the report as “long-awaited” and “highly anticipated” because it’s taken the EPA more than half a decade to put it together.

The first draft of the report was issued last year and recently became mired in controversy after journalists discovered that officials sought to downplay its most controversial findings by inserting language at the last minute. Now, in the final days of the Obama administration, the EPA is coming clean.

For those seeking stronger water protections, the report is way too little, way too late. Yes, advocates can use the report to challenge attempts by the incoming Trump administration to slash environmental regulations, but don’t expect Donald Trump’s EPA to read it and propose new ones.

What does the report say? In summary, fracking can pollute sources of drinking water when operators build faulty wells, suck up limited groundwater resources, suffer accidents and spills involving toxic fracking chemicals, or store fracking wastewater contaminated with these chemicals in unlined pits.

These problems don’t always happen, but they can and have in the past. What remains unclear is how often. In a fact sheet, the EPA said that “data gaps and uncertainties made it difficult to fully assess impacts” both nationally and in local areas. Such data is often difficult to collect or not collected at all, and oil and gas companies have locked some of it away in non-disclosure agreements resulting from lawsuits over fracking pollution.

Environmental watchdogs and journalists like myself have been cataloguing these problems for years, and they are not the only problems caused by the fracking boom. From silica mines blowing cancerous dust to earthquakes linked to wastewater disposal in underground wells, fracking has left its mark on the environment and communities across the country.

Over the past decade, the rapid deployment of enhanced hydraulic fracturing technology quickly industrialized rural areas, bringing communities from boom to bust. Oil and gas reserves grew, prices dropped and the industry rushed to build pipelines and expand exports. The US secured its so-called energy independence just as concerns over climate disruption and our addiction to fossil fuels reached a fever pitch.

Some people got rich, and some people got dirty water.

If the EPA’s report tells us anything we haven’t heard before, it’s about the nature of the EPA and the administration that’s been running it for the past eight years. Fracking is one of the biggest stories of the Obama administration, which saw natural gas as a “bridge fuel” that could reduce the nation’s reliance on burning coal and help the US meet international climate goals.

In the meantime, President Obama had to keep both a hungry industry and environmentalists happy. This got complicated when people who had nothing to do with the environmental movement joined the chorus of fracking’s critics after rigs and pipelines popped up in their neighborhoods and dirty water started flowing from their taps.

There are always winners and losers when it comes to resource extraction and the pollution it creates. Backed by laws like the Clean Water Act, the EPA has some say in the matter. Outside of legislative bodies, the agency is the designated federal space where industry, environmental activists and people who suffer from the impacts of pollution butt heads and attempt to codify their interests into public policy.

When making big decisions, the EPA takes comments from all sides, just as the authors of the fracking report heard from health professionals, the industry and the people affected by it. Eventually it makes a decision that attempts to reach a compromise between competing interests without straying too far from the political agenda of the administration that runs it. When one or more parties remain unsatisfied, the dispute often spills out into the courts.

This process is lengthy and arduous, which is one reason why it took the EPA years to complete an assignment from Congress and determine whether fracking could be compromising drinking water. In the meantime, fracking altered the landscape in huge swaths of the country, leaving people worried about their air and water, and health problems, such as respiratory disorders and premature births.

To the agency’s credit, the EPA did establish some modest regulations of air pollution and climate-warming methane leaks generated by oil and gas production, but these rules could be rolled back or simply not enforced under the Trump administration. The EPA isn’t useless — it made some ambitious strides under Obama that were met by a barrage of lawsuits — but its mission appears perpetually inhibited by institutional politics.

The Obama EPA’s final word on fracking makes it clear that we cannot rely solely on the government to protect us from pollution. People across the country are already aware of this. From Standing Rock in North Dakota to the oil fields of the Gulf South, people are taking matters into their own hands, defiantly putting their very bodies in the way of pipelines and fossil fuel production.

Now is the time to join them. We may not all live in the shadow of a pipeline or a fracking rig, but we all live in the shadow of climate disruption. If we keep burning this stuff, then we all lose.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Western PA wastewater treatment facility

Public Radio International — Living on Earth: “Fingerprinting Frackwater”

From Steve Curwood, et al., Living on Earth, PRI, July 10, 2015

STEVE CURWOOD: Now, as he [Allegheny Front’s Reid Frazier] was explaining, pinpointing the precise source of groundwater contamination can be tough. Many fracking chemicals are naturally occurring, or are used in other industries. But a study published a few months ago in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology lays out a new forensic approach to help track down the exact source of fracking water pollution. One of the authors is Robert Jackson, who teaches at Stanford University. He spoke with Living on Earth’s Emmett Fitzgerald.

EMMETT FITZGERALD: So tell me about a little bit about what you’ve done, about your study, and how that’s addressing some of these problems.

ROBERT JACKSON: Well, for a number years now, we’ve been interested in tracing the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing fluids and also elements found naturally deep underground that might contaminate groundwater. That contamination could occur through a well that’s made improperly or poorly, but it can also happen if wastewater leaks out into the environment. And oil and gas operations in United States generate a trillion gallons of wastewater every year. There’s a lot of it.

FITZGERALD: How are you able to determine whether water has fracking fluids present in it.

JACKSON: Well, in this paper we focused on a handful of elements. Boron, lithium, in particular, but also salts, such as chloride, and even bromide. And we’re focusing on these elements because some of them are added into hydraulic fracturing fluids – boron in particular – but all these things are found naturally deep underground. When the company pumps water deep underground to extract the oil and gas, some of that water flows back to the surface. When it does it carries those elements back with them, sometimes in very high concentrations. In the Marcellus [shale region], for instance, the water that comes back out of the well might be 10 times saltier than seawater, and so if that water that is produced out of the oil and gas well leaks onto the surface, then we can use the presence of these elements and their chemical signatures, the isotopes, to identify them.

FITZGERALD: So you call boron and lithium, in particular, tracers. What do you mean by tracers? So this kind of approach allows us to disentangle, to distinguish those kinds of situations. We can separate different waste streams and tag them back to their source.

JACKSON: A tracer is a compound that you can use to tell different sources apart. So when I talk about a tracer I’m thinking about something that might be found in different concentrations in different sources. It might be found in one source but not the other at all, or it might have a different chemical signature like its isotopic composition. So these compounds allow us, even at very low concentrations, to identify the source in the environment. So I’ll give you an example. A few years ago, in the Monongahela River in Ohio and downstream there was this really big controversy about increases in bromine and other salts in the river water potentially impacting people’s drinking water, and there was a lot of discussion about what the source of that was. Was it old coal mines, was it conventional oil and gas wells, or was it the newly hydraulic fracturing wells that were popping up all over the place in the watershed, or at least in the wastewater that was being brought to the watershed?

FITZGERALD: So basically you’re looking at the chemical, the presence, the concentration, the isotopic situation with these different compounds and indirectly you’re able to say well this possibly came through fracking chemicals rather than the way it would occur naturally.

JACKSON: That’s right. These tracers and many others that we’ve developed and many other groups around the world have developed allow us to identify the source of contamination in the environment really well.

FITZGERAL: Professor Jackson, you called this a “forensic approach”…can you explain what you mean?

JACKSON: We want to be able to keep track of wastewater in the environment. We might want to see if a wastewater treatment facility is working properly. We might want to identify the source of a potential spill, if somebody thinks a spill has happened in their neighborhood or in their stream or river, has it actually happened and if it’s happened what caused it? This allows us to go in and identify the sources of contamination in the environment and that’s really important and very useful.

JACKSON: Well, at a crime scene, investigators will go in and apply a forensic approach. They might gather DNA. They might gather blood types. They might gather hair, and they assemble a set of evidence to assess a probable cause, a probable weapon, even sometimes a probable person. So in science we can talk about forensics in the same way, we can gather and apply a suite of chemical analyses and then apply them to a particular situation and try to figure out what caused the problem.

FITZGERALD: You’re fingerprinting fracking wastewater?

JACKSON: We are fingerprinting fracking wastewater. It’s not the same scale of resolution as a DNA identification. It’s not a one in 100 million or one and 1 billion chance. The tools are not that accurate, but they’re pretty accurate.

FITZGERALD: In the end, what do you hope comes out of this research?

JACKSON: All of the research that I do in this area has a single purpose in mind. We want to improve things to make things better so we can provide some tools that companies and regulators can use to keep spills from happening, to track wastewater in the environment better and ultimately to make the entire process safer, then I think that’s a good reason for doing the work. There’s also a basic science component to this we’re learning about what’s found naturally deep underground so when I get a basic science project and a project with strong relevance today, I’m happy about that.

CURWOOD: Robert Jackson is a co-developer of the frackwater forensic fingerprint technique. He teaches at Stanford University, and spoke with Living on Earth’s Emmett Fitzgerald.

>>> Robert Jackson is a Professor of Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford University and co-author on the study “New Tracers Identify Hydraulic Fracturing Fluids and Accidental Releases from Oil and Gas Operations” published in the Journal of Environmental Science & Technology.

Related links:
- Read the original study
- Duke’s press release on “New Tracers Can Identify Fracking Fluids in the Environment”
- Study co-author and Professor Robert Jackson’s Stanford University webpage
- Locate over 1.1 million active oil and gas wells, spills and wastewater injection on FracTracker
- Difficulty making frackwater clean-up profitable, our piece.
- ThinkProgress’ piece on tracking fracking waste
- Inappropriate disposal of solid, radioactive frackwaste contaminates water, our story.

Tanker Truck for Frack Wastewater

Fayette County  Injection Wells at Lochgelly (WV) Stir Controversy

Action Alert Letter of Tom Rhule, Communications Director, WV Mountain Party, May 22, 2015

On May 14th the WV Environmental Quality Board “EQB” decided to allow Danny Webb Construction continue dumping hydro fracking waste at that Fayette County site without a permit. This is alarming.

It is also disturbing that the WV Dept. of Environmental Protection “WV-DEP” has never cited this operator nor ordered remediation, considering that a Duke University scientist found undisputed evidence of this waste in nearby Wolf Creek. But what is most alarming, is that as far as anyone can tell, that site is still leaking fracking-related toxins and dangerously high radioactivity.

When it comes to industrial dumping, the WV-DEP has never failed to live up to its reputation as the Department of Everything Permitted, especially when backed by the governor-appointed EQB and all the Friends of Cancer who pull the strings in the Statehouse. By the way, there are literally over a thousand industrial waste injection wells strewn all over the State.

So the good citizens of Fayette county have basically been left to their own defenses. And although on May 18, the Fayette County Zoning Board recommended that the County Commission regulate future injection wells through a stringent permitting process, unfortunately that plan will not stop Danny Webb Construction, nor any other currently operating injection site from polluting the county’s waters.

This has been a real problem for quite some time. The West Virginia American Water 2011 Source Water Assessment and Protection Plan for Fayette District PWSID WV330L046 clearly states that “hydrofracking fluid is being injected into abandoned mines.” In fact, page 7 of that Plan lists the dumping of frack waste into abandoned mines, as one of the highest priorities with respect to water contamination. And that was 4 years ago.

Once again, the County Commission’s current zoning recommendation fails to ban it.

The petition that we are circulating urges the Fayette County Commission to immediately pass an ordinance that will make it illegal to dump frack waste and coal slurry anywhere within the county. Passing that ordinance will tell the world that Fayette County is not a sacrifice zone. But it’s going to take your support to make that happen.

On Wednesday, May 27^th, at 9:00 am, the Fayette County Commission will hold its regularly-scheduled meeting. On the agenda is the Zoning Committee’s recommendation, where I intend to introduce the ordinance to ban industrial waste dumping outright. Scheduled at the Fayette County Courthouse and open to the public, your showing up to support the passage of an outright ban will be empowering.

If you haven’t already signed the petition now going door-to-door urging the Fayette County Commission to ban industrial waste dumping, there is a copy at the Cathedral Cafe in Fayetteville. Or, you may endorse a digital petition online at mountainpartywv.com by clicking on the orange-colored YODO – You Only Die Once – button. Accuracy counts, so only one signature per citizen, please!

Citizen activists Tom Rhule of the Mountain Party and Brandon Richardson of Friends of Water will hold a press conference immediately Commission’s meeting on May 27^th outside the Courthouse to answer questions and provide details about the petition drive and proposed ordinance.

Tom Rhule, Communication Director, Mountain Party of WV

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Note:  See also the Fact Sheet from the WV-DEP on the two Lochgelly injection wells.

Protesters at K & H Injection Well

Fracking waste stirs controversy in Athens, Ohio

From an Article by Laura Arenschield, The Columbus Dispatch, April 5, 2015

Torch, OH — The tractor-trailers arrive at a steady pace, turning off Rt. 50 and climbing a hill to a collection of tall, green metal tanks. The trucks haul long, white tanks that are bare except for a number that identifies their company and one word that has riled a vocal population in Athens County: brine.

Brine is another name for the fracking wastewater (“residual waste”) that bubbles up in oil and gas wells in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

The wastewater is laced with toxic chemicals used during hydraulic fracturing, a process in which millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals are pumped underground to crack shale and free oil and gas trapped within it. Much of the fracking fluids come back up and most often are sent to disposal wells, where they are pumped back underground.

Athens County, known for its progressive politics and college-town vibe, took the third-highest amount of fracking wastewater in the state last year. A new injection well, approved last month by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, could boost Athens to the top in wastewater injections.

That’s a dubious distinction, according to Athens County activists and some elected officials. “There’s probably not a county in the state that has as much activism objecting to the injection wells as Athens,” said Roxanne Groff, a trustee in Bern Township in eastern Athens County.

Almost 25 million barrels of wastewater were pumped into about 200 injection wells in Ohio last year, according to ODNR records. More than one-tenth of that — about 2.9 million barrels — was injected into seven Athens County wells last year. Nearly 2.5 million barrels went into two of those wells, both owned by K&H Partners, a company based in West Virginia.

On March 18, the ODNR issued a permit to K&H for a third injection well in eastern Athens County. As many as 12,000 barrels of fracking wastewater could be injected into that well every day, though K&H in its application estimated an average of 5,000 barrels would be injected every day.

That would increase Athens County’s annual total by as many as 4.4 million barrels, putting Athens well above Coshocton County, where about 3.5 million barrels of fracking wastewater were injected last year, leading the state.

Andrew Adgate, an ODNR geologist involved in permitting injection wells, said that Athens County’s location makes it a prime spot for fracking wastewater. “It’s close to where the waste from the oil and gas operations is produced,” Adgate said.

Bob Worstall, a geologist and deputy chief of Natural Resources’ oil and gas division, said the state requires companies to build casings at the top of each injection well to protect surrounding groundwater. A layer of shale above the injection zone keeps the wastewater from bubbling up to the surface, he said.

But Crissa Cummings, an Athens County environmental activist who was arrested last summer after blocking access to a K&H injection well near Torch, said she is not convinced those measures will keep the county’s drinking water safe. Cummings also said she worries about contaminants getting into the air as well as earthquakes, which have been tied to fracking and injection wells in Arkansas, Colorado, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas.

Worstall said the state will require K&H to conduct seismic monitoring both before its new injection well is operational and “for a period of time” after injection starts.

The K&H wells are not far from the Hocking River and Ohio River. California officials shut down 23 injection wells over concerns that they might have contaminated aquifers there.

Natural Resources received 244 letters about the well, and all but one were from people opposed to it. “The majority of them are just opposed to the idea in general,” Worstall said. “That’s difficult for us to deny an application, because somebody doesn’t like the idea.”

Athens County residents asked Natural Resources for a public hearing on this injection well, but the department declined to hold one. The Athens County Board of Commissioners appealed that decision and has tried to get the state law changed to force the department to hold public hearings if a local elected body asks for them.

Discretion for holding a public hearing on an injection well lies with the chief of the Natural Resources Oil and Gas Division. “He didn’t think that it posed health or safety issues,” said Lenny Eliason, an Athens County commissioner. “Obviously, people in the county thought it did. We feel it does. And they wanted to have a full airing of their concerns and they didn’t get it.”

Eric Heis, an ODNR spokesman, said the department received no comments that warranted a public hearing. Every issue raised, he said, had been addressed on the department’s website. Heis said the department also was reluctant to hold a public hearing in Athens County because another public forum on an earlier K&H injection well had gotten ugly. “There were protests, people with signs outside,” he said. “There was a sit-in at the forum and the police had to come.”

Teresa Mills, Buckeye Forest Council program director, said that shouldn’t matter. “It’s been obvious for years that the people in Athens County don’t want this, but it’s being forced upon them,” Mills said. “Nobody has a say.”

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net