Fresh Water Accountability Project

Don’t Frack Our Valley — Citizen Groups Concerned About Water Quality in Ohio River Valley

Contact: Robin Blakeman, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, December 11, 2014

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Late in November, representatives of citizen groups from West Virginia and Ohio gathered in Huntington, W.Va., to discuss the growing threats to the Ohio River Basin, which provides drinking water for five million people.

The impetus for the meeting came from the dramatic rise in the oil and gas industry’s activities and proposals slated for the Ohio River Basin. The industry is proposing to build docks and barge toxic, radioactive waste along the Ohio River. The waste is generated by the deep shale hydraulic fracturing (fracking) method of extracting natural gas. Millions of gallons of liquid waste would be unloaded at dock sites for transport to injection wells in Southeast Ohio. The Coast Guard has yet to announce approval of barge transport for this kind of industrial waste, but such facilities are already being permitted and built along the river.

“Alarmingly, Ohio already has more than two hundred injection wells, most of which are within the Ohio River watershed,” said Andrea Reik of ACFAN (Athens County (Oh.) Fracking Action Network), who was present at the meeting. “According to a Government Accountability Office report on Class II injection wells released this summer, Ohio is the least regulated state for these hydraulic fracturing waste disposal wells.”

(A map of the injection wells so far permitted and/or active in Ohio can be found here.)

“It is alarming how many of these wells are located near, or in the Ohio River watershed,” said Katie O’Neill, a resident of Athens County, Oh.

Also present at the meeting was Bill Hughes with the Wetzel County (W.Va.) Action Group, who noted that landfills near the Ohio River from the northernmost Brook County landfill, then downriver to Parkersburg are accepting massive quantities of drill cuttings from Marcellus Shale fracking activity. The drill cuttings have been shown to emit low-level radioactivity. The radium is water soluble and will continue to create Radon gas.

Hughes has examined more than 3,000 pages of reports on leachates from West Virginia landfills. “This is a very serious issue. Leachate liquid — with concentrated amounts of radioactivity and toxicity — from the landfills near the Ohio can make its way into the river. During the past three years more than 800,000 tons of Marcellus Shale drilling waste has been deposited into landfills near the river, and our government is being willfully ignorant about the contents and effects of the leachate,” Hughes said.

Compounding the barging, injection and landfill threats to the Ohio River Basin, the state of West Virginia has accepted bids to allow hydraulic fracturing for natural gas under portions of the Ohio River. Some of these portions have underlying fault lines; could exacerbate the risk of seismic activity under, or near the riverbed.

“A perfect storm is brewing within the Ohio River watershed that could lead to toxic pollution of tap water for millions of people; our groups are banding together across state lines to identify both the threats to river and means we can use to reduce these threats. We would welcome more groups from other states in the Ohio River basin,” said Robin Blakeman, with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC).

Terry Lodge, an attorney who is assisting affected residents, said, “This cross-boundaries coming together of grassroots activists, to combat the increasing madness, is utterly needed.”

Attending the meeting were representatives of OVEC, ACFAN, Wetzel County Action Group, Freshwater Accountability Project (Grand Rapids, Oh.), WV Chapter of the Sierra Club, Buckeye Forest Council (Columbus, Oh.) and Jefferson County (Oh.) Citizens for Environmental Truth. Representatives of several other groups, including The Guardians of the West Fork (W.Va.) are participating in subsequent discussions.

The groups are carrying out some initial shared research goals and will meet again in January. For information on the next meeting, contact OVEC organizer Robin Blakeman at robin@ohvec.org or Lea Harper, Managing Director, of FreshWater Accountability Project (FWAP.org) at wewantcleanwater@gmail.com

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The NIMBY Well Pad -- In Your Back Yard?

PETITION — “No Drilling Under the Ohio River”

Petition by Robin Mahonen, Ohio County, WV

The Wheeling Water Warriors and multiple other concerned groups call on you to stop plans to drill under the Ohio River.

The Ohio River provides drinking water to over 3 million people, and 10% of the population of the United States lives in the Ohio River Valley. The Ohio River is 981 miles long, and runs through six states: Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois, and is the largest source of water for the Mississippi River, which flows to the Gulf of Mexico. This intracoastal waterway needs to be kept safe from hydraulic fracturing, which has caused the contamination of numerous water sources in our region, and which is also implicated in increased seismic activity and earthquakes.

West Virginia is already overrun with fossil fuel extractive industries which pollute our air, land and water and negatively disrupt our lives. Our state is unparalleled in its natural resources, and yet we are among the poorest states in the country. We believe that corporate interests have prevailed over the best interests of the citizens of this state. We are told there is an economic crisis which requires us to drill under the river. Clearly, if our communities are polluted, our public health is ravaged, our environment devastated, and we are not reaping the economic benefits which we were promised for this sacrifice, it is not a sacrifice we are willing to make.

In the wake of the recent MCHM water crisis and other contaminations in our state just this year, we must act now to prevent wild, wonderful West Virginia from becoming an industrial wasteland, preserve our river, and our precious water resources.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

NOTE: Over 3,570 individuals have already signed this Petition, with a target for 5,000 likely to be achieved within a few days.  This is a great risk to the people of the Ohio valley and to the environment if such drilling and fracking takes place.  Already, there has been the incident at Natrium where gas well drilling has interrupted a salt well of Axiall Chemical, formerly PPG Chemicals.  The earthquakes of the Youngstown area in Ohio are another indicator of trouble.  If the WV Governor and WV-DNR persist, then an environmental impact assessment would be an essential first step, but none has been done!  DGN

The Petition is here —  https://www.change.org/p/randy-c-huffman-no-drilling-under-the-ohio-river

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Restoration plans were described on August 25^th in Morgantown for Dunkard Creek.  In September of 2009, some 22,000 fish and thousands of mussels (14 species) were decimated by the toxins from an extensive golden algae bloom. The algae may well have invaded from Texas or Oklahoma where it is rather common, in brackish waters.  The algae bloom was possible because of the high level of total dissolved solids resulting from mining operations, over 20,000 parts per million (or milligrams per liter).

CONSOL has now broken ground on a $200 million water treatment facility near Mannington (Marion county) to remove dissolved inorganic compounds (salts) from about 2500 gallons per minute of contaminated mine water from three area mines, namely Blacksville 2 (Monongalia county), Loveridge (Marion county), and Robinson Run (Harrison county).  The treated product water will go to the Hibbs Reservior, which drains into Buffalo Creek.  The residue filter cake and crystallized salts will be landfilled near the treatment plant.

The WV Division of Natural Resources (DNR) described a five year project to restore smallmouth bass and 30 inch muskies to Dunkard Creek.  Another project was described to restore six mussel species if possible, described as difficult and complex.   Mussels depend upon adequate water flow and a fish population as well as limits on contaminants.  Seasonal variations in flow rate and water removals for mining operations and Marcellus hydrofracking could be a serious challenge for the mussel restoration plan.  Northeast Natural Energy already has Marcellus drilling operations ongoing near Dunkard Creek.

David Wellman of WV-DNR reported that earlier instances of golden algae detection in other streams of West Virginia were probably in error, and that even Dunkard Creek has not shown the presence of the golden algae since November of 2009.  Apparently, golden algae are very difficult to detect and easily misidentified. Residual golden algae may well remain in Dunkard Creek. And, the theory still remains that the occurrence of the golden algae in Dunkard Creek arose from contaminated trucks working here in the Marcellus gas industry, from Texas or Oklahoma.

Information on the 2009 Dunkard Creek Fish Kill is available from the WV-Department of Environmental Protection. Shortly, the WV-DNR is to post their “Proposed Dunkard Creek Fish and Mussel Restoration Plan” on the following web-site and provide for a thirty day comment period:    Select the “Fishing” category at www.wvdnr.gov

The Morgantown Dominion Post today reports that the algae found a few weeks ago in a pond near the West Virginia-Pennsylvania border is not golden algae, an algae that led to a massive fish kill in Dunkard Creek in 2009.    Frank Jernejcic, District 1 fisheries biologist for the Division of Natural Resources, revealed the news yesterday. A final resolution has not been issued because those involved want to understand why there was disagreement in initial findings.
   
CONSOL has monitored the Dunkard watershed area after elevated levels of total dissolved solids caused an algae bloom that released a toxin killing most of the aquatic life in Dunkard Creek. Mine discharges from Blacksville No. 2 included possible wastewater from coal mine degassing and fracking flowback water. 

In addition to paying $200 million to construct water treatment facilities, violations of the federal Clean Water Act at six West Virginia coal mines has resulted in CONSOL Energy paying $500,000 to restore the fish population in Dunkard Creek. The order entered this week by U.S. District Judge Frederick P. Stamp Jr. finalizes the litigation against CONSOL by both federal and the WV-DEP for violations, some of which apparently took place at mines on Monongalia, Marion, Marshall and Brooke counties.