Will a push for plastics turn Appalachia into next ‘Cancer Alley’?

From an Article by Emily Holden, The Guardian, October 11, 2019

Critics say ethane expansion will not only prolong fracking but could also trigger a public health disaster.

Construction cranes climb into the sky and sprawl across the massive petrochemical facility that will turn a byproduct of fracked gas into plastic on the banks of the Ohio River, just outside Pittsburgh. Even at a distance, from the car park of a cancer treatment centre on a nearby hilltop, Royal Dutch Shell’s 386-acre site is a behemoth. It will anchor yet more gas, plastics and chemicals infrastructure in the tristate region of Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.

The plant would solidify demand for fracked natural gas and the ethane that comes with it out of the ground. It would make 1.6m tons of plastic and 2.2m tons of globe-heating carbon dioxide annually – roughly the same amount the city of Pittsburgh is trying to eliminate. The facility would also release hundreds of tons of toxic compounds into the air.

As global demand for plastics grows, the buildout of this industry threatens US progress on the climate crisis and clean air.

Opponents say the vast plastics industry will prolong fracking, even after power companies shift further towards renewable power, such as solar and wind. “To me, it’s so obvious that they are trying to lock us into fossil fuels,” said Terrie Baumgardner, a member of the Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community.

At a time when scientists warn humans must stop pulling fossil fuels out of the ground and spewing plastics into the environment, natural gas drilling is booming in Appalachia and the ethane-to-plastics industry there is just getting started.

In a tall office building on a hazy Pittsburgh day, Matt Mehalik, the executive director of a public health collaboration called the Breathe Project, slammed his hand on a table. “This region has been down this path before and we should know better,” he said. “I grew up in Pittsburgh at the time the steel industry unravelled. It has taken 30 years to recover.”

Dangerous air is already present and more coming

Opposed residents have myriad concerns. The Shell ethane facility, or “cracker” plant, would use extreme heat to turn ethane into ethylene, which becomes the polyethylene in plastic bottles, bags and food packaging. It will be fed by thousands of fracking wells that dot local communities, including next to day-care facilities and school bus stops.

Pipelines run under neighbourhoods that have previously been affected by explosions and fires. Trucks overwhelm the roads.

Residents opposing the ever-growing expansion say they worry about illnesses and dozens of cases of rare cancers they never saw in generations past.

Pittsburgh already has some of the most dangerous air in America. The city received a double-F rating from the American Lung Association for smog and particle pollution from fossil fuels. And Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, has ranked in the top 2% for cancer risks from air pollution.

And a report by the Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania last year found that since 2007, companies profiting from fracking had spent nearly $70m lobbying the state government, in part to insist the method was safe.

“Fracking money has undermined the voice of the people in comparison to the voice of the desire for fracking in the region,” said Mark Dixon, a film-maker and activist.

The pro-business group the Allegheny Conference on Community Development has boasted the plastics boom could turn Appalachia into a petrochemical hub similar to the Gulf Coast. But there, Louisiana residents have long tried to draw attention to the stretch of communities between New Orleans and Baton Rouge known as “Cancer Alley”.

The conference argues its goal is to attract business and that government regulators are responsible for keeping residents healthy. A spokesman, Philip Cynar, said: “We have to think about the holistic approach … we can do a lot more for the overall benefit of the region if we have a good economy.”

The fear of health risks is misplaced, according to Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. In consultation with US regulators, it approved Shell’s air pollution plan in 2015. Allegheny County’s health department considered the effects of the plant’s releases of benzene, toluene, hexane, formaldehyde and ammonia – which cause cancer and other serious health problems. The department found the levels would be “well below the health-based risk value” for an individual.

Shell has said it designed the facility to “obtain the lowest achievable emissions.”

Aside from air pollution, the Shell plant will be as bad for global heating as putting a further 424,000 cars on the road each year. “It’s a huge paradox,” said Grant Ervin, Pittsburgh’s chief resilience officer. Oil and gas jobs pay well, even for people straight out of high school, he said. But the climate crisis puts humans “at the precipice of a public health disaster.”

Job creation has been a priority

Republicans and Democrats have supported the Shell plant, saying it will bring work to an area that has been hit hard by a downturn in US-made steel and coal.

Shell says it will create 6,000 construction jobs in the short term and 600 over the longer term. It is unclear exactly how many will go to locals. State lawmakers offered the company a $1.65bn, 25-year tax cut, the biggest break in Pennsylvania history.

Republican legislators have proposed a package of bills to encourage the natural gas industry, including by speeding the process for permitting projects and providing huge financial incentives.

Pennsylvania’s governor, the Democrat Tom Wolf, inherited the project from a Republican predecessor and now supports it.

But the facility and others like it are antithetical to Wolf’s plans to shrink the climate footprint of Pennsylvania, the country’s fourth-largest emitter of carbon dioxide. He wants to cut carbon pollution in Pennsylvania 26% by 2025, and 80% by 2050. His Department of Environmental Protection said the state is requiring the plant to reduce its climate footprint as possible “to help ensure that economic development and environmental protection can go hand in hand.”

Pittsburgh’s mayor, the Democrat Bill Peduto, famously challenged Trump on climate change, saying Pittsburgh would abide by an international pledge to limit heat-trapping pollution, even if Trump would not. But Peduto has stayed silent about the plant.

Construction continues (temporary stop work underway)

Hailed by Barack Obama as a “bridge fuel”, natural gas has become a nightmare for climate advocates. It has spurred a transition from coal, which emits twice as much carbon dioxide. But the bridge does not seem to be ending, and the natural gas production process leaks methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

The industry has continued to build wells, plants and pipelines – about 27% of natural gas in the US comes from the Marcellus and Utica shales under Appalachia. By 2040, the area will produce 37% of the country’s natural gas, according to the data firm IHS Markit.

Appalachia has wet gas, meaning it produces both the methane mixture that is used for power and stovetops and natural gas liquids, including ethane and propane. Drillers want a local market at which to sell them all.

Of the Democratic frontrunners for president, senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have pledged to ban fracking. Joe Biden, the former vice-president, has not. But the Trump administration is supporting the build-out.

Ken Humphreys, a senior adviser for regional economic development at the US Department of Energy, said: “Broadly this is about creating the conditions for private capital to flow into the region.

Between 2018 and 2040, the US’s capacity for making ethylene and intermediate petrochemical products is expected to nearly double. The energy department argues that global demand for plastic is rising, and it will either be produced in the US or in countries with more lax environmental standards.

Humphreys said there were 7,500 businesses within 300 miles of Pittsburgh, employing 900,000 people to make products that incorporated petrochemicals – most of which came from the Gulf Coast. Producing plastic locally would be more efficient, the department said.

Rare cancers in southwestern Pennsylvania

In Washington County, Pennsylvania, south-west of Pittsburgh, fracking well pads sit alongside neighbourhoods. One, called a super-frack pad because of its dozens of wellheads, sits in a valley next to the former coal community of Marianna.

A school bus stop overlooks the site and the children who wait there each morning live in brick homes that were built for coalminers and then abandoned.

Four counties in south-western Pennsylvania have been afflicted by a rash of rare cancers, including 27 cases of Ewing sarcoma over 10 years in a population of about 750,000. The bone cancer usually occurs in children and young adults.

A retired paediatrician, Ned Ketyer, said: “Ewing sarcoma is a nightmare for the families that are given that diagnosis, and certainly for the patients and also for the physicians that diagnose it. It starts very quietly but by the time the diagnosis is made it has deepened and spread.”

There are dozens of other rare cancer cases in the area too. The Pennsylvania Department of Health studied rates of the disease in two school districts and said there was no evidence of a cluster.

But people are still worried. Last week, 50 environmental advocacy and public health groups as well as hundreds of individuals signed a letter to the Pennsylvania governor asking him to attend a public meeting to hear their health concerns. The state’s epidemiologist attended instead.

The region has a toxic legacy that predates natural gas – including hundreds of years of coal-mining and agriculture pesticide use. But Ketyer said the cancers did not begin until fracking arrived.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection found the Shell plant’s hazardous air pollutants–which cause cancer and other serious sicknesses–“will not threaten public health and safety,” spokesman Neil Shader said.

Residents also worry about gas industry accidents. One September morning in 2018, Karen Gdula awoke to an explosion and flames shooting into the air from a 24-inch pipeline buried a few houses away. Her neighbours narrowly escaped with several of their dogs, but they lost their home, another dog and four cats in the fire.

Another neighbour, who was celebrating her birthday, had trouble convincing an emergency services operator that the pipeline had exploded until the operator heard the fire roar. The flames were so hot they melted a nearby transmission tower.

A second pipeline is under construction that will cross over the one that exploded. Gdula has been working with the construction company to make it safer for the neighbourhood. “My goal is safety,” she said. “We don’t believe we can stop them but we can do what we can to be safe.”

Global climate change

Natural gas from shale – the type that is extracted with fracking – is expected to double in the US in the coming decades, mostly in the east, according to the US Energy Information Administration. And the energy department expects an enormous 20-fold surge in ethane production in the eastern US by 2025.

Scientists say to avoid catastrophe from rising temperatures, people must rapidly reduce their emissions from fossil fuels to net zero by 2050.

The world is already 1C hotter than before industrialisation, and it is on track to warm an additional 2C – worsening extreme weather and poverty and leading to rapidly rising seas.

The Center for International Environmental Law, a pro-environment group, estimates that by 2050 climate-harming emissions from the production and incineration of plastics could reach 56 gigatons per year, or 10-13% of the budget allowed for keeping temperatures from rising more than 1.5C.

There is no way of knowing how much a plastics hub in Appalachia will exacerbate global warming and offset the work of states and cities trying to cut heat-trapping emissions. The ethane boom will, however, stretch beyond western Pennsylvania into Ohio and West Virginia.

In nearby Barnesville, Jill Hunkler said she was driven from her home by fracking. As gas wells were constructed around her, Hunkler said she started to experience headaches, breathing problems, burning eyes and a metallic taste in her mouth.

Hunkler counts 78 producing wells within five miles of her house, according to data from FracTracker. “There’s just no respect for the local community’s health,” she claimed.

Bev Reed, a nursing graduate and intern at the Sierra Club, a grassroots environmental organisation, said the community had no say over whether the facility was built.

“We already know it’s not sustainable and that Appalachia has been pillaged and plundered and raped for pretty much as long as its existed,” Reed said. “We’ve seen enough and we deserve better.”

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See also: The Ohio River Defines the Borders of Five States—But Its Pollution Doesn’t Stop at State Lines, Susan Cosier, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), August 21, 2019

In a move that could open the door to industrial waste and interstate squabbles, the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission is making its water quality standards voluntary.

[The Ohio River consistently is ranked as the most polluted in the country, with an estimated 30 million pounds of toxic chemicals illegally dumped into its waters each year.] dgn

Leases are already being finalized!

WJU to Host Forum On Fracking Under Ohio River in WV

From an Article by Casey Junkins, Wheeling Intelligencer, January 31, 2015

Wheeling, WV — Wheeling Jesuit University biology professor Ben Stout is eager to hear Gastar Exploration Senior Vice President Mike McCown explain how the driller can safely frack beneath the Ohio River to retrieve Marcellus and Utica shale natural gas.

Stout and McCown are slated to speak on the matter during a public forum at 1 p.m. February 7th inside the Recital Hall at the Center for Educational Technologies building.

Gastar is one of several companies making deals with the West Virginia Department of Commerce to extract oil and natural gas from state-owned minerals lying thousands of feet below the riverbed. Noble Energy recently bid to drill on 1,400 acres beneath the river, while Statoil is also making plans to bore under the river.

Combining the lease payments with the 20 percent worth of production royalties each company will render once gas starts flowing would give the state a steady stream of millions of dollars over several years.

“This is a great opportunity for us and for the state,” McCown said. “We are confident, with our track record for working in Marshall County, that we can do this. We have fracked close to 70 wells with no incidents.”

However, Stout said there is too much unknown about fracking to proceed with the plans. “I am not a big fan of fracking,” Stout said. “Bu air pollution and water disposal – those are the things that concern me more so than the river. To me, frack water being stored in old tanks along the river is more of a concern than putting a pipeline under the river.”

According to West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection records, Gastar had one violation for “pollution of waters of the state” on March 1, 2012, though it does not list additional details. The company resolved the situation by April 30, 2012, the DEP shows.

“I am willing to take Mike on his word about that,” Stout said. “The biggest thing we need is more dialogue between the industry and the community.” By comparison, DEP data show several other drillers with significantly more violations.

Beth Collins, director for the Appalachian Institute at WJU, said the forum will be a chance for the community to express concerns regarding fracking beneath the river, but also in general. “There are a lot of concerns about hydraulic fracking around the state of West Virginia. Our drinking water comes from that body of water, and I’m glad that Mike and Dr. Stout will be on hand to give clarity to these major concerns,” she said.

State legislators invited to attend include Sens. Ryan Ferns, R-Ohio, and Jack Yost D-Brooke, as well as Delegates Ryan Weld, R-Brooke; Erikka Storch, R-Ohio; Shawn Fluharty, D-Ohio; Dave Evans, R-Marshall; and Mark Zatezalo, R-Hancock.

McCown believes because the Marcellus Shale is more than one mile deep in Marshall County, the horizontal drilling bores will be so far beneath the surface that nothing Gastar is doing would impact the river. “What is on the surface has no bearing on the success of our operations,” he said. “You can drill under the city of Wheeling, for that matter, and not have any issues at all.”

>>>>>  Ohio River in Wetzel County, WV <<<<<

Hannibal Locks & New Martinsville Bridge

See the initial “prospectus” for bidding on leases for drilling and fracking under the Ohio River.  What about the possible earthquake damages to the locks & dams, to the bridge abutments, to the hydropower facilities, to the water quantity and quality?  Plenty of questions but no definitive answers.

Forced Pooling is like Eminent Domain

WV Lawmakers, interest groups leery of ‘fair pooling’ proposal

From the Article by David Beard, Morgantown Dominion Post, November 21, 2014

Charleston, WV — Horizontal gas well mineral tract pooling will be on the legislative calendar this session. Legislators and various interest groups have reservations about the pooling proposal presented this week. Leaders of the Independent Oil and Gas Association — West Virginia (IOGA) and the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association (WVONGA) described what they termed a “fair pooling” proposal to legislators.

The purpose of the proposed bill is to enable industry to pool unwilling mineral owners into a production unit of combined mineral tracts. In its current form, it states that an operator must have agreements with mineral owners totaling a 67 percent supermajority of the unit’s acreage before it can apply to the Natural Gas Conservation Commission for a pooling order.

The operator must extend good-faith offers to unwilling leaseholders. Proposed compensation must be market value — current code says “just and reasonable.” Mineral owners who don’t reach an agreement can request a hearing before the commission, at which evidence of market values is presented.

Delegate John Shott, R-Mercer, was concerned about the transparency of the evidence presented regarding market value. Jim McKinney, with IOGA, and Kevin Ellis, with WVONGA, said the commission can compel the operator to reveal that information. Before that point, though, company landmen negotiate terms with the owners, based on a range of prices set by the company.Ellis likened it to a car deal. They’re not going to start with the high figure, and they’re not going to tell the owner what everyone else is getting.

Delegate Barbara Evens Fleischauer, D-Monongalia, also raised questions about that and asked about substituting “fair market value” for “just and reasonable” in the bill. “You’re taking away people’s private property rights, no matter how you sugar coat it,” she said.

McKinney disagreed, saying it’s not a taking, it’s fair compensation. And both leaders said industry thinks “just and reasonable” essentially means the same thing. After the meeting, Fleischauer remained skeptical about industry’s view.

Also after the meeting, Ron Hayhurst, with the West Virginia Royalty Owners Association, expressed some skepticism about the proposal. “What the bill does is give all the power to the commission with no parameters they can work within.” And the commission is largely industry-oriented, he said. He believes pooling orders will still include deductions off royalty, which can effectively reduce a 12.5 percent royalty to 6.5 percent.

“Hopefully, next month we’ll get a chance to talk about it,” he said. “We want wells drilled. We just don’t want royalty owners taken in West Virginia.” He noted that most of the major operators are based out of state and take their money there: Antero in Colorado, EQT in Pittsburgh, and Chesapeake in Oklahoma.

Tom Huber, also with the association, said he’s concerned about market-based values discussed in the proposal. In the real estate market, prices are on the deed and are public information, he said. “They’re adamantly opposed to revealing to the public how much they’re paying in any given area. That’s why they oppose fair market value. … We’re talking real estate here. This is not a car deal. … I think that was a little disingenuous.”

The industry presenters said that the hearing process is designed to be easy and friendly, and mineral owners shouldn’t need to hire lawyers. David McMahon, co-founder of the West Virginia Surface Owners Rights Organization, questioned that. “Forced pooling is highly technical. Anybody that goes into this ought to at least sit down with a lawyer and talk about what they need to say and what evidence they need to have.” Royalty owners don’t necessarily have representation on the commission, he said, and no one on the commission has expertise in property values. Another problem: The owner may not get to see the evidence, McMahon said.

McKinney and Ellis talked about the evidence being presented under seal, and it wasn’t clear if the mineral owner or only the commission would see it, or what kind of evidence would be presented. “That’s putting more trust in the commission than for any administrative proceeding that I know about.”

McMahon also questioned the market value terminology. Market value is what everybody’s paying, he said, which may not reflect the true value of the land. “Fair market value is what it’s worth to someone with a knowledge of what’s going on and access to the facts. … I think it ought to be based on what it’s worth to the industry.”

That, he said, is several thousand dollars an acre signing bonus and 20 percent total royalty.

Chesapeake  Well Pad Near Wheeling Park High School

The Ohio County Board of Education has written to the WV-DEP regarding a possible Marcellus well pad just 1300 feet from Wheeling Park High School.  The letter has been received said Kathy Cosco of the WV-DEP, according to the Wheeling Intelligencer. 

Although the well’s distance from the school is more than twice the legal limit for wells to be located from an “occupied dwelling,” this does not suffice for the school board and others who are objecting to the site, including the Ohio County Commission, city of Wheeling and several individual residents.

“The Board objects to Chesapeake’s decision to put its interest above those of the students, faculty, staff and families of Wheeling Park High School by placing its well pad in such close proximity to the high school,” the letter states.

This letter supplements comments the school district previously made regarding the problems with Chesapeake’s evacuation plans and potential dangers from increased truck traffic.

When asked if Huffman had the authority to deny a permit that otherwise meets all legal requirements, Cosco said her agency has denied “at least two oil and gas permits in the last year,” though she did not know the specific reasons for these denials.

“Typically, we fall back on what the law says,” she said. “However, we do have the authority to apply conditions to the permit, based on the unique circumstances that may be involved. We recognize that not every well site in the state has the same issues.”

The land on which the well is to be drilled is owned by the “Parks System Trust Fund of Wheeling.” This Chesapeake lease is signed by members of the Wheeling Park Commission, which oversees the operations of the Oglebay Resort and Wheeling Park. Commission attorney James Gardill said these two bodies are officially separate, while Commission President and Chief Executive Officer J. Douglas Dalby said the drilling issues must be resolved by the school, Chesapeake and the DEP.

Chesapeake’s original 2010 drilling plans for draining the gas from the Oglebay Park property called for the closure of the Oglebay Stables, with the company’s drilling pad to be established nearby at a point between W.Va. 88 and GC&P Road. However, park commissioners quickly objected to the DEP by questioning plans for water usage and transportation and the disposal of fracking fluid, among several other concerns. At that point, the DEP sent this permit application back to Chesapeake, as referenced by Cosco.

Chesapeake eventually established the nearby Minch pad drilling plan for gaining the Oglebay gas, thus abandoning the plan to place drilling equipment on the Oglebay surface property. “It is our hope that the company and the county work together to address any concerns the school has that are not addressed in the permit requirements outlined by the regulations,” Cosco added of the plans to drill near WPHS.

One of the concerns the individual objectors note is possible air pollution at the school because of the close proximity. Chesapeake, in legal advertisements, notes the “potential to discharge” an array of air pollutants from its Sand Hill and Battle Run compressor stations, as well as from some local gas well sites throughout Ohio County.

Chesapeake To Drill Under Brooke High School

According to Scott Warren in the Wheeling News Register, Chesapeake Energy’s plan to drill for natural gas under Brooke High School should not create any problems for the more than 1,000 students who attend there each day, County Superintendent Kathy Kidder-Wilkerson said.

The lease agreement Brooke County Schools officials signed with Chesapeake will pay the district $661,500 in lease money, based on a rate of $3,500 per acre on 189 acres. The district also will receive 18 percent of production royalties once Chesapeake gets the gas flowing from the Marcellus Shale underlying the high school. No specific plans have been make as to how to use the money.

Chesapeake is proceeding to drill many wells in Brooke County, in addition to Ohio, Marshall and Wetzel counties. Along with drilling operations come truck traffic as well as potential environmental concerns from the drilling and fracking operations.

When Kidder-Wilkerson said there will be no drilling on school property, she’s referring to horizontal drilling, a technique that allows drillers to access gas in a pooled unit from a central well site. This process will allow the gas trapped under Brooke High School to be released through a well that is drilled on someone else’s surface property. The well bores are drilled vertically down into the earth before being turned horizontally to extend out into the adjacent mineral beds.

As for the truck traffic, Kidder-Wilkerson said her school has not yet experienced any problems with this, adding that she does not foresee any issues with the trucks sharing the roads with school buses and student drivers.