Public interest (free) webinar to protect the public health (click to expand)

Following the presentations, Dr. Ned Ketyer, Medical Advisor for the Environmental Health Project (EHP), will moderate a discussion.

Webinar ~ PFAS & Health Impacts — Wednesday, October 19th, 7:00 to 8:30 PM EDT

For more information and to register for this webinar go here ~

https://www.environmentalhealthproject.org/event-details/pfas-and-health-impacts-what-frontline-communities-need-to-know

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See where toxic PFAS have been used in Pennsylvania fracking wells

From an Article by Kristina Marusic, Environmental Health News, October 13, 2022

PITTSBURGH — Toxic “forever chemicals”, also known as PFAS, have been used in at least eight oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania, but the exact location of those wells has never been publicly disclosed — until now.

Experts say it’s possible that communities where PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) have been used by the oil and gas industry could face contamination of soil, groundwater and drinking water — and that contamination could be widespread.

The chemicals don’t break down naturally, so they linger in the environment and human bodies. Exposure is linked to health problems including kidney and testicular cancer, liver and thyroid problems, reproductive problems, lowered vaccine efficacy in children and increased risk of birth defects, among others.

Last year, a report by the environmental health advocacy group Physicians for Social Responsibility revealed that PFAS have been used in hydraulic fracturing and other types of oil and gas extraction across the U.S. for at least a decade, and an EHN investigation published in August documented PFAS contamination in one Pennsylvania fracking community resident’s drinking water.

A 2021 op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer revealed that the chemicals were used in at least eight wells in Pennsylvania, but did not disclose the location of the wells. Physicians for Social Responsibility recently published a new report on the use of PFAS in Ohio oil and gas wells. In a footnote, that report listed the location for all eight Pennsylvania wells where well operators reported using PFAS in public fracking chemical disclosures.

The Pennsylvania wells where PFAS have been used are located in the following communities:

>> Chippewa Township, Beaver County (population 7,953)
>> Donegal Township, Washington County (population 2,192)
>> Independence Township, Washington County (two wells) (population 1,515)
>> Pulaski Township, Lawrence County (three wells) (population 3,102)
>>West Finley Township, Washington County (population 813)

The operators for all eight wells reported using polytetrafluoroethylene, or PTFE, which is a type of PFAS marketed as Teflon, in fracking fluid. PFAS may also be used during other phases of oil and gas extraction that don’t require any kind of public disclosure. It’s likely that the chemicals have been used in additional Pennsylvania oil and gas wells, but a lack of transparency makes it impossible to know.

PFAS are likely being used in oil and gas wells throughout the country, but little research exists on how widespread the practice is and whether it’s causing drinking water contamination. Most existing research on PFAS has focused on other sources of the chemicals, like firefighting foam used at airports and military bases and industrial emissions. Investigations have found drinking water contamination in communities across the country.

“It’s critical for state regulators to start looking for these contaminants in people’s drinking water near these oil and gas sites,” Dusty Horwitt, a co-author of Physicians for Social Responsibility’s reports on PFAS, told EHN.

Jamar Thrasher — press secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, which is responsible for overseeing the oil and gas industry — told EHN the agency investigates spills and releases at well sites and documents its investigations, but “absent a spill or release on the surface or below surface, there is no reason to conclude that well site fluids (whether including PFAS compounds or not) would have reached nearby soils or drinking water.”

PFAS use at oil and gas wells nationwide ~ At the national level, Physicians for Social Responsibility has reported that PFAS or substances that could break down into PFAS have been used in more than 1,200 fracking wells in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas and Wyoming, and that this number likely represents only a fraction of potentially contaminated sites.

The organization’s recent report on the use of PFAS in Ohio oil and gas wells found that the chemicals have been used in at least 101 fracking wells in eight counties in the state since 2013.

That number might represent just a fraction of the actual wells where the chemicals were used, according to the report, because oil and gas companies withheld the identity of at least one trade secret chemical in more than 2,100 oil and gas wells during the same period.

“We’ve seen a similar phenomenon in other states, but this is a huge number of trade secret chemicals and surfactants being used in Ohio,” Horwitt said. “That means use of PFAS and other dangerous chemicals in Ohio may be much greater than what’s been publicly reported.”

The organization published a similar report on Colorado in January, which found that PFAS were used in nearly 300 oil and gas wells in the state between 2011 and 2021. That report was influential in state regulators’ decision to ban the use of PFAS in oil and gas wells.

“It’s impossible to know how widespread PFAS contamination from oil and gas wells might be at this point,” Horwitt said. “We need more transparency before we can begin to address this issue.”

A dangerous waste stream ~ Waste from the Pennsylvania drill sites, including fracking fluid, drill cuttings and soil, may also have been contaminated by PTFE. Waste from each well site was sent to various secondary locations for disposal or reuse including other fracking wells, injection wells, sewage treatment facilities and landfills.

“These chemicals are very persistent, so it’s entirely possible that those disposal sites could also be contaminated with PFAS,” Horwitt said.

And because Pennsylvania doesn’t require complete public disclosure of all the chemicals used by the oil and gas industry, these eight wells and the locations where waste from them was disposed could represent just a fraction of the oil and gas wells throughout the state where PFAS have been used or disposed of.

Thrasher said there is no plan at this time to test any additional oil and gas wastewater disposal sites, but added “PFAS is an emerging issue and we will continue to explore the prevalence of PFAS in our environment. Our focus at this time remains on our efforts on the rulemaking to establish enforceable PFAS standards in drinking water.”

PFAS are a subset of many substances associated with health problems that are generated by the oil and gas industry.

How PA’s fracking communities can protect themselves from PFAS ~ On Wednesday, Oct. 19, the Environmental Health Project, an environmental health advocacy nonprofit, will host a free webinar about PFAS and health specifically for fracking communities.

Tasha Stoiber, a senior scientist with the Environmental Working Group, a research and advocacy organization that has spent years mapping PFAS contamination across the U.S., will speak at the event.

“In communities where we know there’s significant PFAS contamination either from a specific industry or point source, drinking water is a primary concern,” Stoiber told EHN. “Reverse osmosis and activated carbon filters are both effective at reducing PFAS in drinking water at home.”

Stoiber and Horwitt both said that regulatory agencies like the Pennsylvania DEP should test soil, groundwater and drinking water for PFAS in communities where we know the chemicals have been used in oil and gas extraction.

In Pennsylvania, that would mean specifically testing for PTFE and its breakdown products. Residents of these communities can contact the DEP to report potential PFAS contamination and request testing.

Stoiber said Pennsylvania residents should also ask their elected officials to consider phasing out the use of PFAS by the oil and gas industry.

Fracking Compendium, 8th Edition

From the Physicians for Social Responsibility, April 28, 2022

PSR is proud to co-release the eighth edition of the fracking “Compendium,” a collection of some 2,000 abstracts of and links to medical, scientific and investigative reports about the consequences of oil and gas drilling, fracking, and infrastructure.

This unique resource presents evidence that fracking-related activities harm public health, the environment, and the climate; links provide easy access to the source material. The 2022 edition includes reports on liquefied natural gas (LNG), which the U.S. proposes to export in massive quantities to Western Europe, thus prolonging dependence on this potent climate-damaging fossil fuel.

PSR co-produces the Compendium with the Concerned Health Professionals of New York.
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Cori Bush speaks at Lafayette Square rally on June 28th

From an Article by Cara Korte, CBS News, July 8, 2021

Progressive Democrats continue to demand bold climate action be included in any infrastructure legislation as the White House moves forward with bipartisan brokering that does not include measures to combat climate change. Climate activists and progressive members are working in a coordinated effort to mount pressure on the White House and drum up public support with the mantra and hashtag #noclimatenodeal.

Congresswoman Cori Bush sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the rest of House leadership on Thursday urging the Democratic caucus embrace a more progressive climate agenda. “As the urgency to invest in public climate infrastructure and jobs intensifies each day, we urge you to work with us to deliver robust and lasting investments at a scale that directly addresses the climate crisis,” read the letter, first obtained by CBS News.

The letter criticized President Biden’s proposed infrastructure goals and his willingness to negotiate with some Senate Republicans. Read the letter here.

“We are very concerned that the American Jobs Plan (AJP), and more so the bipartisan compromise as it presently stands, will not reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving the climate crisis to the extent that science and justice require.”

The message is cosigned by 10 members including Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Pramila Jayapal, who is the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. With an evenly-divided Senate and slim Democrat majority in the House, progressives potentially hold enough leverage to foil legislation they find unsavory.

As the White House has had ongoing infrastructure talks with a group of 10 bipartisan senators, climate goals have been diluted in the name of negotiation. Republican Senator Susan Collins, who has been at the negotiating table, said last month on “Face the Nation” that Republicans are working to include a tax on electric vehicle owners.

Progressives believe Mr. Biden ought to be listening to their demands more so than Republicans. “The conversation has become a discouraging, tepid dance between the already compromised [American Jobs Plan] and plans from Republicans and bipartisan coalitions that leave climate out entirely,” Bush writes.

Bush and her cosigners advocate for goals laid out in the Green New Deal, spending $1 trillion every year for the next decade “to match the scale of the climate crisis.” Also: “This is the very least we can do to avert the worst of the climate crisis. Anything less would be unacceptable and an abdication of our global responsibility.”

At a press conference on Tuesday, Senator Ed Markey, one of the coauthors of the Green New Deal, said he would only support a bipartisan infrastructure deal if he first had assurance of a complementary progressive climate bill with the promise of passing with 50 votes via reconciliation. Bush’s letter urges Pelosi to include progressive directives in the budget resolution process, “which will dictate the scale and scope of the upcoming reconciliation bill on infrastructure.”

The letter was written in collaboration with climate groups, including the youth-led Sunrise Movement and Justice Democrats, demanding the Democratic caucus fully support a progressive plan.

“We are up against the ticking time bomb of the climate crisis and if we neglect investment now to avert the climate crisis – if Speaker Pelosi ignores House Progressives and the thousands of young people behind them – costs and consequences will only be greater,” said Lauren Maunus, advocacy director of Sunrise Movement.

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Halt the Harm Webinar — May 18th @ 7 PM

Webinar scheduled by the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project (EHP) and Halt the Harm Network, May 18, 2021 at 7 PM

WEBINAR— “Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals and Shale Gas Development”

Presenters include Chris Kassotis, PhD, of Wayne State University, and Laura Vandenberg, PhD, of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The webinar will be moderated by EHP’s medical advisor, Ned Ketyer, MD, FAAP.

​This live webinar will take place on Tuesday, May 18 from 7 – 8:30 p.m. EDT. Register here for the webinar​.

What you’ll get from this webinar presentation:
1. A better understanding of how environmental exposure affects growth and development
2. Background knowledge to equip you in advocating for stronger regulation and policies to protect health
3. How to mitigate exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs)

About the presenters:

>>> Dr. Chris Kassotis is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and Department of Pharmacology at Wayne State University in Detroit. He completed his PhD at the University of Missouri working with Susan Nagel and Fred vom Saal to assess unconventional oil and gas operations as a novel source of endocrine disrupting chemicals and potential for adverse human and animal health outcomes. During a postdoc at Duke University, he assessed the metabolic health disruption potential of complex chemical mixtures (e.g. indoor house dust) via a combination of cell and zebrafish models. Now in his own laboratory, he is funded with a K99/R00 award from NIEHS to better evaluate metabolic health risks from exposure to various ethoxylated surfactants, used in hard surface cleaners, detergents, and also in hydraulic fracturing. His lab is focused on identifying and characterizing novel endocrine disrupting chemicals from diverse sources, including unconventional oil and gas operations, and evaluating potential health effects from these exposures.

>>> Dr. Laura N. Vandenberg is an Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s School of Public Health and Health Sciences. Her work addresses how low doses of chemicals during critical windows of development can alter gene expression, cell differentiation, and tissue organization in subtle ways that can lead to adult diseases such as cancer, obesity, and infertility. She is specifically interested in endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) and has worked extensively with chemicals used as plasticizers and flame retardants. Her work also focuses on how traditional toxicology assays have failed to identify a number of ubiquitous endocrine disruptors, and how current risk assessment practices can be improved in the study and regulation of this class of chemicals.

>>> Dr. Ned Ketyer is a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-area pediatrician. Dr. Ketyer enjoyed 26 years in private practice before retiring from patient care in 2017. He remains a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Environmental Health and is a board member of Physicians for Social Responsibility-Pennsylvania. Dr. Ketyer is a consultant for the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, bringing attention to the health impacts of fracking in the Marcellus Shale gas patch.

​Register here for the webinar (Tuesday, May 18 from 7 – 8:30 p.m. EDT)​

About these webinars: This upcoming webinar is part of our training series… short webinars brought to you by members of Halt the Harm’s leader directory. These programs are short, focused on tangible skills or information that you can use to be more effective in your campaigns protecting yourself from the oil & gas industry. If you have a presentation, campaign, skill, or tool to share with the network, please reply and let’s start the conversation.

>>> Sincerely, Ryan Clover, Halt the Harm Network, Halttheharm.net

The most complete compilation of evidence on drilling & fracking

From an Article by EcoWatch, May 11, 2021

What is fracking? — Fracking is a process of blasting water, chemicals and frac sand deep into the earth to break up sedimentary rock and access natural gas and crude oil deposits. The fracking industry, which has sought to promote the practice as safe and controlled, has preferred the term “hydraulic fracturing.”

Fracking emerged as an unconventional, “relatively new” and extremely popular technique only about 20 years ago in the U.S., after advances in technology gave it an unprecedented ability to identify and extract massive amounts of resources efficiently.

Fracking is one of the most important environmental issues today, and it’s a prime example of how a new technology that offers immediate economic and political benefits can outpace (often less obvious) environmental and health concerns.

Why is fracking so controversial? — Modern fracking emerged so quickly, faster than its impacts were understood. Just as importantly, once scientists, health experts and the public started to object with evidence of harm it was causing, business and government succeeded in perpetuating a message of uncertainty, that more research was necessary, further enabling the “full speed ahead” fracking juggernaut.

How does fracking impact the environment? — Fracking’s supporters have pushed an environmental angle, insisting that natural gas can be a “bridge fuel,” a cheaper, cleaner option than coal before we have a large-scale transition to renewable energy. This claim has some merit, as natural gas does emit much less carbon dioxide than coal or oil. However, it is still a fossil fuel, adding harmful emissions while the climate crisis worsens. Moreover, fracking wells leak methane, a greenhouse gas more than 25 times more potent than CO2.

Water — In order to break up rock formations one to two miles deep, a fracking operation requires millions of gallons amount of water. After it’s used, the resulting wastewater, which contains chemicals is pumped back into injection wells, sent to treatment plants, or can be dangerously dumped or spilled.

In 2016 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a report skewed friendly to industry in its language: Hydraulic Fracturing for Oil and Gas: Impacts from the Hydraulic Fracturing Water Cycle on Drinking Water Resources in the United States. The EPA acknowledged that drinking water contamination was possible, but ultimately came to this conclusion: “Data gaps and uncertainties limited EPA’s ability to fully assess the potential impacts on drinking water resources locally and nationally.”

Earthquakes — According to the U.S. Geologic Survey, disposal of wastewater has caused an increase in earthquakes in the central U.S. Seismologists have reported that fracking’s initial blasting process can trigger earthquakes.

Air Pollution — In addition to methane, fracking releases many toxic contaminants into the air. EPA has acknowledged the public health threat, but a lack of urgent political pressure has sidelined the agency into advising on ways to control and reduce, rather than eliminate, the danger.

Toxic Chemicals — Fracking fluids contain unknown chemicals and known carcinogens such as benzene. Fracking companies haven’t been required to disclose their proprietary formulas, however. This is yet another example of how uncertainty serves as an enabling force. The EPA has identified more than 1,000 different chemicals used in fracking fluid.

Wildlife — Fracking can destroy wildlife habitats, pollute rivers and fisheries, poison birds, and use up water supplies that animals need to survive.

How does fracking affect the economy? — The fracking boom made the U.S. the world’s largest producer of oil and gas, reducing its energy imports from 26% to less than 4%. It has lowered oil and gas prices and created thousands of industry jobs. While fracking companies profited greatly at first, as prices dropped their margins collapsed. Many are now going bankrupt.

How is fracking regulated? — Congress has enabled the oil and gas industry to be exempt from such regulations as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Fracking surged during the Obama administration, which moved to protect water from fracking on federal lands in 2015. Subsequently, the Trump administration sought to roll back protections and expand fracking on federal lands.

Key Examples of Fracking in the United States

Pennsylvania — Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale is the source for about 40% of shale gas production in the U.S.

New York — While the Marcellus Shale also runs through New York, the state has banned fracking.

Texas — Texas produces more crude oil than any other state.

North Dakota — The Bakken Shale in North Dakota has been one of the main sites for the fracking boom and subsequent bust, leaving behind extensive environmental damage.

A recent report found that all 50 states could provide 100% (or even greater) in-state renewable energy.

Other Countries — Outside the U.S., only Canada, China and Argentina have commercial fracking operations. A UN report in 2018 said that other countries were “highly unlikely” to produce at such a large scale as the U.S., due to political and cultural factors, and existing infrastructure.

The Future of Fracking — While renewables were considered a solution for “peak oil” only a decade ago, fracking changed the terms of the debate, with a new focus from environmentalists to “keep it in the ground” starting in 2015.

The Biden administration now stands at a pivotal moment in the climate crisis. Biden’s stance on fracking is not yet entirely clear, but he has rejoined the Paris agreement and appears to take climate seriously. At the same time, he is sympathetic to workers in fossil fuel industries, was vice president during the fracking boom years under Obama, and may be more inclined to seek a gradual transition than one fast enough to help solve the crisis.

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See also: Fracking 101 from Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Melissa Denchak, April 19, 2019

Hydraulic fracturing has upended the global energy landscape and made fossil fuels big business in the United States. Mounting evidence shows that it poses serious threats to our health, environment, and climate future. Here’s a look at the fracking boom and its increasing risks.

Toxic chemicals are part of plastic products

From an Article by Olivia Murray, Morgantown Dominion Post, April 11, 2021

PHOTO in ARTICLE — Just as plastic waste fills our oceans and landfills with pollutants, it can have the same effect on bodies — ours and other living creatures’.

According to West Virginia University professor Michael McCawley, the insidiousness of plastic lies largely within. Because just as plastic waste fills our oceans and landfills with pollutants, it can have the same effect on bodies — ours and other living creatures’. And, there is no perfect way to rid ourselves, or our planet, of plastic once it’s there.

McCawley, a clinical associate professor with WVU’s Department of Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences, explained the science behind why plastic’s breakdown can cause problems. He said plastics can take only a few months to be broken down into microplastics, which are easily scattered, but can take thousands of years to fully degrade into chemical compounds.

McCawley said as plastic breaks down, it releases chemicals and reacts with living things in harmful ways. Some of the hydrogen and carbon compounds found in plastic make up carcinogens, which he described as “chemicals that cause cancer.”

“Otherwise, they can cause all sorts of other problems in the body. They can interfere with the normal chemical function of the cell in the body, and that will cause something that’s known as inflammation, and inflammation is that reaction that a cell has to something that irritates it,” McCawley said.

He said inflammation can lead to other health issues, including the majority of chronic diseases, such as arthritis and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as heart problems.

“If [plastic] gets into the environment, whether it be aquatic or the terrestrial environment, you have all sorts of living things exposed to it and potentially undergoing changes. It can be some very toxic kinds of things. Plastic just seems benign … but in fact it has the possibility, as it starts to break down, of undergoing chemical change,” McCawley said.

Rachael Hood, a master’s student in the WVU geography department and a WVU campus organizer for the Post-Landfill Action Network, agreed. She said some known effects of plastic production and leaching have been linked to cancer and reproductive health issues in humans.

“Because plastics have really increased exponentially, it’s unclear what the long-term health consequences are of consuming plastics. One can assume that they’re not great, but it’s scary to think about these unknown consequences of plastics, which are so ubiquitous in our lives,” Hood said.

PHOTO in ARTICLE — Plastic garbage mixes with other debris behind the Morgantown Lock and Dam along Don Knotts Boulevard.

Microplastics are present in seawater, which means they are also found in sea life, and can end up in human bodies through consumption of seafood.

Microplastics aren’t the only waste found in the ocean, however. There is a mass of solid waste roughly twice the size of Texas floating in the Pacific Ocean, and that makes up only a fraction of the plastic waste found in water or discarded as litter.

“The plastic waste input … is about 8 million tons of plastic, going into just the ocean, and there’s about 270 million metric tons of total plastic waste being produced annually,” McCawley said.

And the Sierra Club says nearly eight million metric tons of plastic finds its way into the oceans every year — “the equivalent of a garbage truck full of plastic being dumped into the ocean every single minute, every day of the year. There are 500 times more pieces of plastic in the ocean than there are stars in our galaxy.”

McCawley said recycling is not an easy process, as polymers — material included in the composition of plastics — are not “infinitely” recyclable; over time, they lose the ability to be recycled or reformed into new products. “Eventually, it becomes waste, and that’s the difficulty in doing recycling, particularly for plastics,” McCawley said.

Though he said recycling is still a preferable alternative to immediately creating large accumulations of waste in landfills, McCawley said products we make must be created with recycling in mind in order for the process to be successful — otherwise, even products that were intended to be recyclable eventually end up in a landfill.

McCawley recommended the questions: “Do we need this? Do we have to have that product?” be asked in regard to plastic products.Questioning the necessity of a plastic product can reduce plastic usage in the first place, thereby reducing the amount of plastic waste.

“It’s a complex problem that we don’t have a perfect solution for, and that everybody is still working for,” McCawley said.

Coming this Month in the Morgantown Dominion Post:

April 18: Morgantown and Mon County officials talk about limiting waste by reducing, reusing and recycling in city and county offices and facilities; and a look at what some area businesses are doing to be more environmentally friendly.

April 25: What WVU does to reduce, reuse and recycle on campus; and WVU students talk about how they do the same.

A most unusual legislative session comes to an end

From: West Virginia Rivers Coalition, Kathleen Tyner, ktyner@wvrivers.org

Location: Charleston, WV — Date: April 8, 2021

Ready for some good news? The dangerous bill that would exempt certain oil & gas storage tanks from the Aboveground Storage Tank Act appears to have been defeated!

Yesterday, 4/8, was the last meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee, where HB 2598 was sitting. The bill was on the agenda on 4/7, then late that evening it got pulled off and never came back. Because the Committee did not advance the bill before the deadline, it “died” in the committee. This means over 880 oil and gas storage tanks will remain under the protection of the Aboveground Storage Tank Act!

This victory demonstrates the power of persistent citizen advocacy. Over the course of the legislative session, more than 20,800 messages were sent to members of the WV Legislature on the dangers of this bill.

Defeat of this bill is a good reminder that every email and every call makes a difference. Thank you for your dedication to clean, fresh, safe water in West Virginia!

WEST VIRGINIA RIVERS COALITION
3501 MacCorkle Ave SE #129 | Charleston, West Virginia 25304
304-637-7201 | wvrivers@wvrivers.org

Newspaper columnists write for money and fame

From an Article by Nick Martin, New Republic, March 25, 2021

Greg Kozera’s weekly column glorifies natural gas and can reach hundreds of thousands of readers throughout shale country. The industry also helps pay his salary.

“If we hit our CO2 targets and every one of us are living in abject poverty, is that really how you really want to live?” Greg Kozera is making his pro-fracking case to me. Later in our phone call, he’ll argue that renewable energy depends on child labor in Congolese cobalt mines and observe that his golden retriever lived to the ripe age of 14 years old romping around three fracking wells, proving that the practice poses no health risks. He makes a version of this case every weekend in the opinion pages of newspapers throughout Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania—the case for natural gas, for industry, and, if you take his word for it, for America.

Four years ago, an editor at the Parkersburg News and Sentinel in West Virginia contacted Shale Crescent USA, a nonprofit “messaging” organization in Marietta, Ohio, whose funders include natural gas companies and pipeline construction companies, to ask what the group’s work entailed. Kozera, a former oil and gas salesman who now serves as Shale Crescent’s head of marketing, responded by suggesting the paper run a five-part series, authored by himself, about how to return jobs to the Mid-Ohio Valley by embracing natural gas. The series debuted in August 2017 and was such a hit, to hear Kozera tell it, that the paper offered him a weekly column. Then the column started getting picked up by other regional papers, including the Charleston Gazette-Mail and occasionally the Columbus Dispatch.

Today, Kozera’s weekly pro-fracking column often runs in eight to 10 local papers throughout the Ohio River Valley, reaching anywhere from 60,000 readers to well over 200,000 if his column is picked up by the region’s major papers like the Gazette-Mail, Dispatch, or Akron Beacon Journal. It reaches even more when recirculated by national publications like the New York Daily News, which has one of the largest readerships in the country.

Four years after the News and Sentinel’s initial inquiry, Kozera is now one of the most ubiquitous voices in the fracking conversation in the Marcellus Shale region, which stretches from southern New York down through the three crucial battleground states of West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. And for nearly as long as he’s been writing those columns, environmentalists and climate scientists have asked the newspapers publishing his words a simple question: Why have they given this man a megaphone?

West Virginia newspapers, like most local news outlets, have had a rough few decades. Once a bastion of accountability journalism and cross-town rivalries, the region’s dailies were decimated by mergers and layoffs of the late 1990s and early 2000s, just as the natural gas industry was about to explode, replacing the declining coal economy. Since the shale boom of 2008, West Virginia has set state records every year in terms of natural gas production. The focus, and even ownership groups, of the adjacent regional newspapers has shifted accordingly. In 2018, the Charleston Gazette-Mail, already the result of a merger of two competitors, was bought by HD Media; its founder, Doug Reynolds, the son of a tobacco tycoon who now owns upward of eight newspapers in West Virginia, is the president and CEO of a natural gas pipeline company.

As local outlets struggle to inform the community while maintaining their readership, the extractive industry promises readers a seductive short-term fix to a generations-spanning crisis. These readers, in turn, hold outsize sway in the national conversation: Both Pennsylvania and Ohio remain swing states, while West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin now operates as the deciding vote in the tightly split chamber. The fight for the hearts and minds of these voters is happening locally. Messengers like Kozera have both a captive and disproportionately powerful audience.

Kozera columns follow a formula. He offers short bursts of useful, blandly agreeable Chicken Soup-esque advice as packaging peanuts while delivering the gospel of fossil fuels. Last March, for example, Kozera opened a column with a seemingly level-headed lede about how he hoped that the Trump administration would speak honestly about the threat of the pandemic. The column then unspooled into a hodgepodge commentary on “truth,” connecting Kozera’s experience being stood up in college to the unfolding economic ruin. After a brief detour into Trump-Russia trutherism, the point of the piece emerged: “As an engineer, I have caught the major media in numerous lies and half truths about energy, renewables and hydraulic fracturing.” (He generally refers to all fossil fuel critics as “antis.”)

In a January column purportedly about the importance of focus, Kozera quoted motivational speaker Willie Jolley saying, “Success isn’t about hocus pocus it is about focus focus”; spent a couple paragraphs on Covid-19; criticized Trump’s second impeachment; praised the high school soccer team he coaches (state runners-up this year!); and then took an abrupt turn into an oil and gas sales pitch: “At Shale Crescent USA our focus is on creating jobs. It was sad to see the Keystone XL pipeline project shut down this week with the loss of over 10,000 jobs out west.”

Shale Crescent’s goal, according to its website, is to “deliver targeted messaging to high energy intensive industry decision makers.” When Kozera called me last week to chat about his columns, it was clear why Shale Crescent tapped him to deliver that message. His script was flexible; his manner laid-back and affable. He just wants people to have good-paying jobs, he said. Fostering ties between the fracking industry and local communities is a lot like his role coaching the high school soccer team. He wants his community and his country to be self-sufficient. He’s an “environmentalist at heart,” and his job is “not about oil and gas,” but part of a moral-driven effort to help raise the standard of living.

He also happens to be dead-set on convincing anyone willing to listen that natural gas is America’s best and only path forward.

“I believe we have an ethical responsibility to [speak up],” Kozera told me, “if someone’s proposing something that I know is going to kill a bunch of people.” And renewable energy, Kozera said, will kill people. “Make solar panels in Cambridge, Ohio—that’s great. Those are real good jobs, we’ll do that,” Kozera said. But, “when the sun doesn’t shine, the wind doesn’t blow, and people start dying in the dark, I got a problem. I got a serious problem with that. And the best way I can think to solve that is to educate the public so they understand what’s at stake.”

There isn’t actually evidence that transitioning to solar and wind energy will kill people; coal and oil already kill millions every year through emissions alone (more, when you factor in spills and other accidents), while estimates suggest wind or solar might kill one person every 29 or 53 years, respectively. But Kozera’s tone relayed nothing but an air of reasonableness — he wasn’t so much trying to convince me that wind and solar are the harbingers of death as he was trying to get me to agree that people dying in the dark is bad.

This superficial air of compromise and common sense pervades his work. He does not deny climate change. “You can’t keep putting garbage in the atmosphere without bad stuff happening,” he said. But he’s adamant that the American government, its industries, and its citizens should support the continued increase of fracking and natural gas production. America, he told me, should ramp up fracking and export the gas back to China, to aid in the shuttering of its coal plants and build a sustainable revenue stream and economic bedrock for American towns. (Fracking’s massive release of methane — a greenhouse gas 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term — doesn’t seem to factor into Kozera’s vision.)

The picture he paints for the readers of the News and Sentinel, the Times, the Jeffersonian, and the rest is simple: Fracking will give them jobs. It won’t poison them. “The antis are still looking for one well where fracturing has contaminated ground water,” he wrote in October.

The editors and publishers who ran Kozera’s column did not issue a correction or addendum to his piece, even though both ProPublica and the Environmental Protection Agency have documented numerous cases of suspected fracking contamination of local groundwater. In 2019, a report found oversight of the fracking industry’s wastewater disposal procedures and permits has been patchy and inconsistent in West Virginia, potentially endangering drinking water.

In recent years, research has linked fracking to higher incidences of numerous health problems, with particularly robust evidence for asthma and pregnancy and birth outcomes. On the phone, Kozera offered a verbal shrug, saying of fracking: “If it was really as bad as everybody said it was, we should all be dead by now.”

The thing about talking to Kozera is that, even when you disagree with him at every juncture, it’s a cordial conversation. That’s its power: Research tells us this blend of the casually personal and political is the best way to persuade people, whether that means convincing them that climate change is real or that fossil fuels should rule the world. It’s called “deep canvassing.” Instead of having to go door to door or visit every local meeting to convince people to invite the fracking industry into their towns, Kozera can currently reach a regular readership of 60,000 that expands into the hundreds of thousands depending on which other dailies choose to syndicate that week.

The people who could fact-check his claims don’t have that platform, even though they’re trying hard to break through. Last week, Eric Engle, who heads a variety of conservation efforts, including the nonprofit organization Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action, wrote to the News and Sentinel protesting the outsize role Kozera has been given in the paper’s opinion pages.

Shortly before the November election, Randi Pokladnik, an Ohio resident with a Ph.D. in environmental studies, penned an op-ed in the News and Sentinel refuting one of Kozera’s pieces about the merits of fracking.

And after Kozera tried to blame the February winter storm catastrophe in Texas on renewable energy, community member Jean Ambrose wrote a letter to the editor objecting both to the inaccuracies and the broader thrust of Kozera’s columns. “The buildout of the region based on natural gas hasn’t delivered as promised,” she wrote. “You know it, and I know it. But Kozera hopes you don’t remember that, and keeps pushing fake facts so we’ll let fossil fuels squeeze the last bit of profit out of our communities before they take their private jets and move to Cancun.”

Ambrose is right. That’s the really troubling part of this story: It’s not just that fracking pollutes and Kozera says it doesn’t. The core appeal of Kozera’s original column — the promise of jobs and prosperity that helps people look away from the pollution, and the reason his original series probably did well at the News and Sentinel — has now been debunked by a number of economic studies.

In February 2019, research produced by the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy and the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis found that many of the industry’s early projections overstated the actual impact of natural gas production on West Virginia’s economy. From 2008 to 2017, the natural gas industry added 2,500 jobs, not the 5,700 that were predicted, the study’s authors wrote: “The only reason that there has been any growth in employment at all from 2008 to 2017 is the increase in employment due to natural gas pipeline construction, which are largely temporary jobs,” almost half of which go to out-of-state workers.

This pattern holds for nearly every major natural gas project proposed in the past 12 years: When a pipeline is completed, the need for construction jobs disappears, and the day-to-day operations of these fracking outposts or pipelines are continued by a relatively small number of employees.

Neither Engle, Ambrose, or Pokladnik — all of whom are good writers, by the way — gets a spot in the paper on a weekly basis. Their voices and their columns are, by nature of being in response to Kozera, reactionary, and as such, easily sidelined. Relegated to the task of debunking sweeping claims, their articles necessarily read as more pedantic than Kozera’s mishmash of half-truths.

When Kozera asked me how “we” would feel hitting emissions targets but living in abject poverty, he followed it up with a personal appeal. “You’ve got a lot more living to do than I do,” Kozera said. “Your kids should have every opportunity that I’ve had — that my kids have had — and they should have the opportunity for a future brighter than anything we’ve ever had. And that’s possible.”

The truth is, there is no one person or paper to blame or thank for Kozera growing into a mainstay regional columnist, except maybe Kozera himself. The paper needs readers, and many of its readers need jobs. Greg Kozera promises both. That he can simultaneously make that promise, maintain his grandfatherly tone, and launder an agenda as blatant as any you’ll hear or read is his gift—and maybe the Ohio River Valley’s curse.

Our children deserve strict water quality standards

Opinion — Editorial by Eric Engle, Parkersburg News & Sentinel, March 15, 2021

The Parkersburg News and Sentinel publishes a piece every week from Greg Kozera, director of marketing and sales for Shale Crescent USA. Shale Crescent USA is a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization dedicated to oil and gas and petrochemical expansion in the Ohio River Valley around the states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Mr. Kozera’s byline says he is a professional engineer with a master’s in environmental engineering and 40 years of experience in the energy industry. That’s great! That background should lead to more to offer than just oil and gas public relations.

Usually, Mr. Kozera’s pieces are fairly benign and hard to disagree with; that’s part of public relations. This past week, though, in the March 7 edition of the News and Sentinel, Mr. Kozera got downright insulting:

“Whenever there was a public hearing on an oil and gas issue,” Kozera said, “the ‘antis’ would show up in force. One of their standard lines was, ‘It’s all about the money.’ I would laugh because they had no clue. Oil and gas is not alone, the petrochemical and manufacturing industries are similar in their concern for people and communities.”

Is that so, Mr. Kozera? That’s interesting.

As I write this, a bill is advancing in the West Virginia Legislature’s House of Delegates that would, to quote from the Charleston Gazette, “remove tanks containing 210 barrels or less of ‘brine water or other fluids produced in connection with hydrocarbon production activities’ in zones of critical concern from regulation under the Aboveground Storage Tank Act.”

Zones of critical concern are defined by the WVDHHR as areas for a public surface water supply that are comprised of a corridor along streams within a watershed that warrant more detailed scrutiny due to their proximity to the surface water intake and the intake’s susceptibility to potential contaminants within that corridor.

The Aboveground Storage Tank Act requires registration and certified inspection of such tanks as well as submittal of spill prevention response plans, but industry doesn’t want to continue complying for many tanks.

According to the 7th Edition of the Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking, a fully referenced 475-page compilation provided by Concerned Health Professionals of New York and Physicians for Social Responsibility, “the 2005 Energy Policy Act exempts hydraulic fracturing from key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act. As a result, fracking chemicals have been protected from public scrutiny as “trade secrets.”

Companies are not compelled to fully disclose the identity of chemicals used in fracking fluid, their quantities, or their fate once injected underground. Of the more than 1,000 chemicals that are confirmed ingredients in fracking fluid, an estimated 100 are known endocrine disruptors, acting as reproductive and developmental toxicants, and at least 48 are potentially carcinogenic.

Adding to this mix are heavy metals, radioactive elements, brine, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which occur naturally in deep geological formations and which can be carried up from the fracking zone with the flowback fluid. A 2020 study identified 1,198 chemicals in oil and gas wastewater, of which 86 percent lack toxicity data sufficient to complete a risk assessment.” The oil and gas industry doesn’t appear to see a problem here.

The WV Legislature is also considering water quality standards updates for West Virginia. In 2015, the U.S. EPA recommended 94 water quality standards updates, including on some standards that have not been updated since the 1980s. The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection decided to update 56 of these standards. When the matter came to the WV Legislature, industry stepped in and essentially said that West Virginians are fat and we don’t eat our fish, so we can handle more toxins. They can got kicked down the road and now the legislature is only considering 24 water quality standards updates and is seeking to weaken 13 of those, including for a contaminant that massively poisoned the water of Paden City.

The climate crisis rages, plastics pollution contaminates every part of the globe (and our bodies), and we can’t get industry to clean up its messes (see Preston County and the Cheat River, orphaned oil and gas wells, and Minden, W.Va., as examples). If this is communal caring and concern, I’d hate to see Mr. Kozera’s definitions of neglect and malevolence.

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>> Eric Engle is Chairman of the not-for-profit volunteer organization Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action, Board Member for the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, and Co-Chairman of the Sierra Club of West Virginia Chapter’s Executive Committee.

Plastic refuse is accumulating at an alarming rate

From an Article by Jared Paben, Resource Recycling, October 21, 2020

Three virgin plastics companies recently announced developments in the area of chemical recycling. The following are summaries of the news from Chevron Phillips Chemical, SABIC and BASF.

Commercial-scale milestone: Chevron Phillips Chemical announced that it successfully completed its first U.S. commercial-scale production of polyethylene (PE) derived from chemically recycled mixed plastics.

“We are exceptionally proud to be the first company to announce production of a circular polyethylene on this scale in the U.S.,” Jim Becker, vice president of polymers and sustainability for the company, stated in a press release. “The successful production run marks a huge step for CPChem on our path to being a world leader in producing circular polymers.”

The company is now looking to scale up the use of the pyrolysis technology, as well as achieve certification for the new PE through the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification Plus (ISCC Plus) mass-balance methodology. Upon certification, Chevron Phillips Chemical intends to market the plastic under the trade name Marlex Anew Circular Polyethylene.

Recycled-content tube: Three companies are collaborating to bring chemically recycled plastic into beauty product packaging. Virgin plastics producer SABIC will supply recycled resin derived from post-consumer mixed plastics, part of the company’s TRUCIRCLE portfolio of chemically recycled polyolefins. Albéa will convert the plastic into tubes for Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) products; specifically, the tubes will hold Origins skincare brand products. According to a press release, the package is expected to hit store shelves in 2021.

In August, SABIC announced that its TRUCIRCLE recycled polypropylene (PP), produced via a pyrolysis process, was being used in Magnum brand ice cream tubs. Over 7 million of the recycled-content tubs are slated to be rolled out across Europe this year.

From tires to recycled plastics: BASF’s ChemCycling project has focused on using a pyrolysis technology to process difficult-to-recycle mixed plastics into chemicals for use in new plastics. Now, BASF is supporting the use of pyrolysis on scrap tires.

The global chemical company plans to invest 16 million euros (nearly $19 million) in Pyrum Innovations, a German company using pyrolysis on scrap tires. BASF plans to use the resulting pyrolysis oil to produce recycled-content plastic products for customers, alongside its existing recycled-content offerings derived from scrap plastics.

“With the investment, we have taken another significant step towards establishing a broad supply base for pyrolysis oil and towards offering our customers products based on chemically recycled plastic waste on a commercial scale,” Hartwig Michels, president of BASF’s Petrochemicals division, stated in a press release.

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New plastic pyrolysis capacity planned in the United States

From an Article by Craig Bettenhausen, Chemical & Engineering News, Vol 98, Issue 27, July 10, 2020

Plants by Braven Environmental and Encina May take in a combined 225,000 metric tons of waste plastic per year

Two new plastic pyrolysis plants are in the works in the US that could add a new recycling option for plastic trash and increase the supply of some commodity chemicals.

In pyrolysis, a feedstock such as waste plastic is heated in a low-oxygen environment and, instead of burning, breaks down into a mix of simpler hydrocarbons. Tweaking the reaction conditions—such as temperature, pressure, or use of a catalyst—allows operators to get various product mixtures.

The pyrolysis firm Encina is finishing designs with engineers at Worley for a plant that will take in about 160,000 metric tons (t) of waste plastic per year and yield 90,000 t of BTX, a mixture of benzene, toluene, and xylenes normally produced from oil. The firms say the designs are modular, which will let them add capacity later. This will be Encina’s first plant, and founder David Schwedel says the company has four more in the planning stages globally.

Braven Environmental is planning a plant in central Virginia that will take in 65,000 t of plastic per year and produce 50 million L of a diesel-like hydrocarbon blend, according to Michael Moreno, the company’s chief operating officer. The $32 million plant will also produce syngas, which it will burn to fuel the process. The firm expects to create 52 permanent jobs at the site when it opens in mid-2021.

Environmental advocates debate the merits of pyrolysis, citing concerns about scalability, toxic by-products, and derailment of a transition away from single-use plastics. Promoters of such chemical recycling methods counter that they save energy and help keep plastics out of landfills and waterways.