Fracking waste disposal in Guernsey County, OH. (These activities are known risks of creating earthquakes.)

Environmental Essay by Lisa C. Lieb, Revelator Voices, March 27, 2023

Let’s Protect This Place: A region historically plagued by industrial pollution is overwhelmed with unconventional oil and gas development. The Allegheny Plateau is a lower-lying portion of the Appalachian Mountain Range that extends from southern and central New York to northern and western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, northern and western West Virginia, and eastern Kentucky.

Why it matters: The plateau consists of areas of gently sloping hills in the north and west of the region as well as rugged valleys in the south and east. It overlies the Marcellus Shale and Utica Shale, sedimentary rock formations. The region is rich in natural resources, including hardwoods, iron ore, silica, coal, oil and natural gas.

The abundance of these resources supported development in the region and were integral to the local steel, glass, rail and extraction industries.

Prior to widespread logging between 1890 and 1920, the area hosted old-growth forests containing red spruce, eastern white pine, eastern hemlock, sugar maple, black oak, white oak, yellow birch and American beech.

But the forest’s makeup is now different, favoring oaks, maples, hickories, American beech and yellow birch. Though fragmented and much less mature than the old-growth forests, today’s forests continue to play a vital role in ecosystems, serving as habitats for the federally endangered Indiana bat as well as locally endangered or at-risk species such as little brown bats, northern flying squirrels and blackpoll warblers.

The region hosts the Ohio River watershed and confluence, the Allegheny National Forest in New York and Pennsylvania, and the Wayne National Forest in Ohio.

The threat: Unconventional oil and gas development has boomed in the region over the past decade. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the Marcellus and Utica shale plays contain approximately 214 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas, making the Allegheny Plateau a lucrative location for hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”

Already more than 13,000 unconventional wells have been drilled in Pennsylvania. Fracking itself is a resource intense process, requiring between 2 and 20 million gallons of water per well. A 2014 study estimated that in Pennsylvania, 80% of the water used for fracking comes from streams, rivers, and lakes, thus potentially altering water temperature and levels of dissolved oxygen. This water is combined with sand and a mixture of hazardous chemicals, which may include methanol, ethylene glycol and propargyl alcohol.

Between 20-25% of the water that is injected into the well returns to the surface. This flowback water often has higher salinity and has been known to contain barium, arsenic, benzene and radium. While recycling of flowback is becoming more common, other methods of disposal include underground injection, application to road surfaces, treatment at public waste facilities, and discharging it onto rivers, streams and lakes.

Near fracking sites in West Virginia, elevated levels of barium and strontium were found in feathers of Louisiana waterthrushes, native songbirds who make their home in brooks and wooded swamps. In northwestern Pennsylvania, crayfish and brook trout living in fracked streams were found to have increased levels of mercury. Fish diversity is also reduced in streams that have been fracked.

Fracking consumes land, too. Each fracking well requires 3-7 acres. In Pennsylvania over 700,000 acres of state forest land are leased or available for gas production. Well pads, pipelines and other fracking infrastructure fragment forests, alter their ecology, and reduce biodiversity. Appalachian azure butterflies and federally threatened northern wild monkshood — purple-flowering herbaceous perennials found in New York and Ohio — are both sensitive to forest fragmentation.

In addition to the direct impacts of fracking, the availability of natural gas in the Marcellus and Utica shale plays attracts petrochemical development to the region. Shell Polymers Monaca initiated operations in November 2022 at a newly constructed 386-acre petrochemical complex in southwestern Pennsylvania, along the Ohio River.

The plant manufactures virgin polyethylene pellets, which will be largely be used for production of single-use plastic products. In addition to releasing hazardous air pollutants, volatile organic compounds and particulate matter, this ethane “cracker” plant will emit 2.2 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.

The plant’s existence will also fuel fracking in the region; it is anticipated that it will require between 100 and 200 new wells each year in order to supply natural gas for its productions. Other petrochemical companies, including Exxon, PTT Global and Odebrecht, have reportedly been considering building similar complexes in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.

My place in this place: I was born and raised in the area, and my family’s roots in southwestern Pennsylvania go back several generations. Some of my most cherished memories involve Pennsylvania’s forests, rivers and streams. As a child I loved my family’s summer pilgrimages to our cabin, a rustic building that had been converted from a one-room schoolhouse in the Pennsylvania Wilds. At “camp” we fished for yellow perch, smallmouth bass and walleye in the Sinnemahoning Creek and caught crayfish by hand. We sunned ourselves on the rocks along the river bank when the water was warm. In the evenings we walked on quiet, narrow roads in hopes of spotting an eastern elk in a grassy field.

I now live in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, one mile from the Shell cracker plant. I can observe the plant’s flaring from my kitchen window, which often creates an ominous orange glow in the night sky. To me the plant doesn’t symbolize job creation or a rebounding local economy, despite the assertions of local and state politicians. I see the plant as the perpetuation of a hopeless dependence on fossil fuels and corporate profit at the expense of ecological integrity. I worry that fracking and an associated petrochemical buildout will destroy already fragile ecosystems throughout my home in the Allegheny Plateau.

Who’s protecting it now: There are a variety of environmental groups located in the region. No Petro PA is an organization that resists fracking and pipeline development in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. More locally the Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community in western Pennsylvania opposes fracking and seeks to protect local community members from its harmful effects.

With the rise of the Shell cracker plant, the group also formed Eyes on Shell, a community organization that aims to hold Shell accountable for its activity and advocates for the surrounding communities’ health and safety. These are just three of the many grassroots organizations working to protect the air, soil, water, wildlife and communities in the region.

The national organization, FracTracker, also provides extensive data on oil and natural gas wells, pipelines, legislation and environmental health.

What this place needs: Ideally Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia will follow in the footsteps of New York and institute a ban on fracking in light of the environmental and health risks associated with unconventional gas and oil development. However, given their strong ties to the fossil fuel industry, it is unlikely that this will occur. Banning fracking on public land in the region, such as in state forests and county parks, in a practical first step in combatting forest fragmentation and pollution.

At a regional level, regulations should be put in place to protect the water quality of the Ohio River. The Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission, a multistate organization working with the federal government, could ban fracking in the Ohio River Basin in order to protect the river and its watershed. The Delaware River Basin Commission has successfully prohibited fracking within the Delaware River Basin; the rules developed by the commission could be adapted for use by the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission.

Additional government oversight would help to protect water quality in the region. Presently fracking is exempt from the Safe Water Drinking Act and therefore isn’t regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Ending this exemption could increase water quality and safety within the Allegheny Plateau.

Increased transparency from oil and gas companies is also required to protect the region’s water. As of July 2022, California is the only state in the country that requires full public disclosure of all chemicals used in fracking. Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio must implement policies that require full public disclosure of chemicals used in all phases of the fracking process.

Rural Oil & Gas Industrialization

Why damages “never” occur in oil and gas extraction!

Commentary by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor & Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

The human animal is a creature of habit. Analysis of our behavior involves the expenditure of energy, which is abhorred by our animal nature; and so custom, precedent and habit, lag behind change. Occasionally the spirit soars when understanding comes on a higher level, but to change our society is very difficult.

Oil and gas extraction began a long time ago, very gradually. Little energy was required, in fact little was available. The return was great, and since little area was disturbed by extraction, damages could be ignored. Most of what was used, lumber and nails, most of the waste oil and gas were removed by natural microbiological processes, and the iron machinery was valuable enough to be removed for junk. The marks down the hillside caused by salt water are still there, but grassed over – I have worked over them all my farming life. The oil on the creeks has washed away. The drilling platform was made by pick and shovel and occasionally by horse drawn slip scraper, and you can still find them, but they are not conspicuous.

Another factor was that the West was still open, so land was cheap. Cash money was hard to come by – think of the inflation since then. Much of the time in those days the wage for farm workers was “a dollar a day and all you can eat” – one good meal!

So it didn’t occur to people who owned both land and petroleum to separate the total return from the minerals into two parts – damage and mineral payment – it looked like a lot of money, just take it and smile.

When their children decided to move to town, some clever lawyers figured out a way to allow them to continue receiving the “royalty” payment for the specified minerals, and allow some land hungry person to buy the “surface.” This is called “separation of estates.” Invariably the mineral owner retained the “right to remove the (specified) minerals,” by methods unspecified. The new surface owner doubtless thought of the methods then in use and land value then current. He could hardly have been expected to think of changes in technology that would occur in 100 years.

Those early wells were drilled by spudding. That is raising and dropping a weight of solid iron about 6 inches in diameter weighing about a ton. Water was pumped out of the well, not brought to it, and the road was only wide enough for the oxen to drag up the engine block and later one track to allow a standard truck to come up and go down the hill one way at a time. Little rock was used, because it had to be broken up to the preferred size by hand. Qualitatively it was a different technology.

Fracking up to the 1950′s was done by dropping a bottle of nitroglycerin “down the hole.” In the early years the bottle was brought to the site by a horse and buggy which everyone on the road very carefully avoided. The remains of this extraction method are not conspicuous in 2015.

Today fracking involves 1000 truck-loads of water, carrying 4,000,000 gallons of water, truck-loads of chemicals of known and unknown toxicity. This is for each well and each well produces an average of 1,000,000 gallons of toxic flow-back carrying not only the chemicals sent down the well, but chemicals dissolved in the 180 degree temperature below. Trucks must pass, so the roads are often wider than the public road they hook up to. Drill pads and roads use acres and acres of land covered with thick crushed limestone that will be readily identifiable 2000 years from now. And acres and acres of pipeline right of way that will not be producing timber for 70 or more years after the production is abandoned. The return on capital and energy expended in drilling has diminished from over 50 to 1 to something like 10 to 1. Environmental damage has increased as a consequence by a similar factor.

And still there is no damage in the gas field, they say. Technology has outpaced custom and law. The rules are the same as they were in the beginning – the damage can be ignored because the return is so large. The owner of the minerals is not the owner of the damage, however. With separation of the minerals from the surface estate, separation of the income from the damage also took place. The surface owner took the environmental damage, the risk to his/her family from contamination of air and water, the inconvenience of the operation on the farm with fences to be rebuilt, areas cut off from the rest of the farm, diversion of storm water from its original path, toxic effects on the crops and livestock, and inconvenience to living standards. He still pays the same property tax while drilling and extraction is going on and in spite of the reduced productivity afterwards.

No damage done in the gas field? Deep mendacity. Mental laziness. Conservatism in the worst sense of the word – no thought.

The notion that environmental damage is less with slick water horizontal drilling and fracture is the invention of those who look at maps, not people who look at the result. It is not what the parties had in mind with separation of estates 70 years ago. It can absolutely ruin the small owner. Continuation of this practice is the result of the difficulty of making mental and legal rearrangement with a gradual change which has now become a revolution.

There is a precedent for making such a change, however. When strip mining first came into use a similar severance claim was the rule with coal. The miner obtained the coal and striped it with no compensation to the land owner. This unfairness was so obvious it was soon changed. By the late 1940′s the usual division was half for the land owner and half for the coal owner.

The original notion that the minerals belong to the land owner is somewhat arbitrary. In many countries they do not. In Poland and Australia, for example, the government owns the minerals. In Australia they famously say, “The landowner owns post hole deep.” Probably the reason minerals belong to the landowner in the United States is three fold: because of the huge abundance of land when the country was taken from the Indians, the fact the land owner was likely to be the one who extracted mineral value as well as agricultural value, and the desire to keep the government (of the individual states) corruption free and sensitive to citizen interests. At that time the Federal Government was concerned with defense, currency and diplomacy, and little more.

Separate mineral ownership is somewhat of a two edge sword for the oil and gas people. Royalty is a very good deal for the remote owner, with only tax to pay, no loss such as the landowner bears, so they are likely to grab what is offered. On the other hand such royalty is often very fragmented. And, it is hard to get agreement on price and all necessary signatures. Still the convenient fiction continues “no great damage in the extraction of oil and gas.” Yes, sometimes a nominal sum is paid. But, as the company man says, “Well, we find that West Virginians are mostly docile.” So, payments for damages aren’t typically very much.

The truth is that if damages were fully accounted for, present and future loses to agriculture, fracking wouldn’t be economic. Corporations seldom try to look much beyond seven years in any but the most hazy way. (Think about global warming and the inexoriable rise of world temperature.) The era of burning hydrocarbons is just a blip on the scale of human time, now understood at least in general outline for some 12,000 to 14,000 years.

Yes, damage occurs on that time scale (in more than one way). But not in the minds that are doing fracking or deep ocean drilling or mountian top removal or in the minds of those regulating these.

Severe Road Damages are Widespread

Road damages shown here; see also:  www.FrackCheckWV.net and  www.Marcellus-Shale.us