Shale Gas – You Can’t Make it Safe

We are hearing a lot today about making shale gas drilling safe.  The problem is that this statement

starts from a false premise – that you can make this highly destructive industrial practice safe – the truth is you can’t make it safe.  There are so many destructive elements of shale gas development that even if you remedy some or all of the harms of one element of the process there are many more to do harm.  And at its core shale gas is just another fossil fuel that will emit global warming emissions and prevent this country from quickly transitioning to better sustainable energy options like solar.

It requires 2 to 9 million gallons of water to frack a well.  Over 80% of this water remains under ground, removing it from our water cycle and use by present and future generations for drinking, bathing, growing crops, and supporting nature.   In just about 1/3 of the Delaware River watershed experts said there could be as many as 64,000 wells.  If only 50,000 of those were drilled at an average of 5 million gallons per well that means 250 billion gallons of water used and 200 billion trapped under ground, just from that one portion of one watershed.

To that water is a confidential recipe of chemicals, many toxic, such as hydrochloric acid, muriatic acid, biocides, glutaraldehyde, and ethylene glycol.  While the industry loves to say that only ½ to 2% of the frack fluids is these chemicals, in just one frack job of 5 million gallons that still adds up to 25,000 to 100,000 gallons of chemicals – that’s a lot!  Once that frack water circulates under ground as part of the fracking process it picks up other contaminants from the earth’s geology such as Barium, Strontium, Benzene, Toluene, Mercury, Methane, lots of total dissolved solids that can make the water as much as 5 times saltier than sea water, and Radioactive Materials including Uranium–238, Radium-226 and 228, and Thorium–232.  So the pure water originally drawn from surface water streams and fresh underground aquifers becomes highly, highly contaminated. 

The water that remains under the earth has the potential of polluting underground water supplies in the short term or the near term, either by flowing through existing or created cracks in the geology over time, or by climbing to our freshwater aquifers through failing casings of the boreholes drilled.   The cement and steel used to case the boreholes to prevent contamination themselves have a limited life of only 80 to 100 years in the best of circumstances, so pathways through the boreholes are just a matter of time. But when they fail, pollution can be almost instantaneous and the damage is essentially irreversible.

The water that comes immediately back to the surface of the earth during the drilling process is highly

toxified and yet most of these wastes are exempt from regulation under our hazardous waste laws, and we do not have good technology or treatment plants for handling the waste.  As a result, a major strategy for disposing of frack waste is to find a sealed underground cavern for disposal – once again taking that water out of the natural cycle.  Waste that has been taken for disposal at water treatment plants is creating other concerns because of the lack of technology for proper treatment --  for example, contaminating streams with radioactive material.  Sediments in Blacklick Creek in Pennsylvania were recently found contaminated with radium at concentrations 200 times above background level downstream of just such a wastewater treatment plant where frack waste had been discharged.  This is above radioactive waste disposal threshold regulations and raises the specter of the bioaccumulation of radioactivity in fish and the food chain.

Accidents during the drilling and fracking process are inevitable. In 2011 alone, the Pennsylvania

Department of Environmental Protection issued more than a thousand notices of violation to natural gas operators within the Marcellus Shale region. These accidents include a wide array of violations, including surface spills, blowouts, improper casing construction, erosion and sediment control failures, faulty pollution prevention, failures in site restoration, improper waste management, and wastewater impoundment construction failures.

Shale gas development consumes not only vast quantities of water but also acres of land for well pads, pipelines, and access roads.  Prior to drilling, space must be cleared and graded to construct the well pad and to accommodate all necessary equipment.[1] Each well pad requires the clearing and grading of, on average, 3.1 acres, while the construction of associated infrastructure (access roads, impoundments, pipelines, and compressor stations) necessary for future well site construction, drilling, and gas exportation consumes another 5.7 acres, for a total of almost 9 acres per well pad.[2]

In Pennsylvania, the Nature Conservancy has estimated that nearly two-thirds of well pads targeting the Marcellus Shale will be developed in forested areas, necessitating the clearing of 38,000 to 90,000 acres.[3] An additional 60,000 to 150,000 acres of forest area will be lost to pipeline construction and right-of-way maintenance in order to accommodate the delivery of the gas from well site to end user.[4] Compressor stations along the pipelines, which occupy an average of five acres each, are likely to number in the hundreds.[5] In New York, deforestation will occur on a similar scale, with losses in forest cover of up to 16% says the Nature Conservancy.[6]

Heavy truck traffic on rural roads, especially unpaved roads, that were not built to withstand hundreds or thousands of truck trips also leads to significant erosion, sedimentation and community problems.

Contrary to the folk tales the gas companies spin, shale gas development is not about energy independence, increased jobs, or protection from climate change.  Currently there are at least 20 applications for liquefied-natural-gas (LNG) export facilities in the U.S. pending before the federal government.[7] The gas companies want the exports overseas because they can sell the gas for more than 4 times the price as they can capture here in the U.S.

It is almost daily that new research emerges showing the harms of shale gas for our communities, our country and our earth.   Among the most recent scientific findings is that as much as 9% of the methane[8] -- one of the most potent greenhouse gases known to man -- produced while drilling for gas is lost to the atmosphere.  That 9% coupled with all the methane emitted during the transport of gas through pipelines, storage and use of the gas means that shale gas is a more potent contributor to climate change than any other fossil fuel – 21 to 33 times more potent than carbon dioxide if you look over a 100 year period; if you look over the next 20 years when it is the most crucial that we reduce damaging emissions it is over 72 times more potent.[9]  So shale gas, when you take into consideration all of the construction activities, including truck trips burning dirty diesel, compressor stations, deforestation and the release of methane to the atmosphere is increasingly found to be not better than coal  -- and no matter how you slice it is certainly not better than solar or other sustainable options – for saving us from climate change.

 

Creating “green” fracking fluids, reusing frack wastewater to the degree it can be, reducing leaks in pipelines to try to reduce the release of methane, for example, cannot and do not avoid the array of harms and vast levels of devastation shale gas development inflicts.  It’s not a matter of managing the harm – in the parlance of best management practices – because the damages are uncontrollable and inevitable.  The only truly safe path is to abandon the folly that is shale gas and fracking and instead to invest in truly protective and reliable energy options such as solar and other sustainable options.

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[1] See, e.g., New York State Dep’t of Envtl. Conservation, Revised Draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement on the Oil, Gas, and Solution Mining Regulatory Program: Well Permit Issuance for Horizontal Drilling and High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing to Develop the Marcellus Shale and Other Low-Permeability Gas Reservoirs 5-10 (2011), available at http://www.dec.ny.gov/data/dmn/rdsgeisfull0911.pdf

[2] The Nature Conservancy, “Pennsylvania Energy Impacts Assessment Report 1: Marcellus Shale Natural Gas and Wind,” November 5, 2010, at 10, available at http://www.nature.org/media/pa/pa_energy_assessment_report.pdf . The range of numbers reflects low, medium, and high shale gas expansion scenarios over the next 30 years of 6,000, 10,000, and 15,000 new well pads.

[3] Id. at 29.

[4] The Nature Conservancy, “Natural Gas Pipelines,” Excerpt from Report 2 of the Pennsylvania Energy Impacts Assessment, December 16, 2011, at 5, available at http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/northamerica/unitedstates/pennsylvania/ng-pipelines.pdf

[5] Id. at 5-6.

[6] The Nature Conservancy, “An Assessment of the Potential Impacts of High Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (HVHF) on Forest Resources,” Dec, 19, 2011, at 4, available at http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/northamerica/unitedstates/newyork/ny-hydrofracking-impacts-20111220.pdf

[7] See North American LNG Import/Export Facilities, Office of Energy Projects.  http://ferc.gov/industries/gas/indus-act/lng/LNG-proposed-potential.pdf

[8] Methane Leaks Erode Green Credentials of Natural Gas, Nature International Weekly Journal of Science, Jan. 2, 2013.  See also R. Howarth, D Shindell, R. Santoro, A. Ingraffea, N. Phillips, A Townsend-Small, Methane Emissions from Natural Gas Systems, Background Paper Prepared for the National Climate Assessment, Reference number 2011-0003, Feb. 25, 2012.

[9] R. Howarth, D Shindell, R. Santoro, A. Ingraffea, N. Phillips, A Townsend-Small, Methane Emissions from Natural Gas Systems, Background Paper Prepared for the National Climate Assessment, Reference number 2011-0003, Feb. 25, 2012; R.W. Howarth, R. Santoro, A. Ingraffea, Methane and the greenhouse-gas footprint of natural gas from shale formations, Climatic Change, June 2011, Volume 106, Issue 4, pp 679-690.

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Will PA’s KEEP Program Keep Kids in the Dark?

Written by Maya K. van Rossum

First posted Sept 30, 2013 

on Mom's Clean Air Force Blog/Website: 

http://www.momscleanairforce.org/2013/09/30/pennsylvania-energy-education/

I have often heard from my educator husband that power companies will pay for the creation and printing of textbooks so they can rewrite history about the impacts of their industry.  Now it looks like the state of Pennsylvania is getting in on the act – this time possibly brainwashing middle schoolers about clean energy. 

 The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP) has announced a new program called KEEP which stands for “Keystone Energy Education Program.”  The agency describes KEEP as a “series of free workshops, geared to middle school building teams” where “participants will learn about and explore energy issues.”

While I believe children as young as middle school should be thinking about the serious issues surrounding energy development, I am concerned about any political agenda being a part of the programming. And I question the ability of the PA DEP to provide good information about the most beneficial energy options for present and future generations.

Michael Krancer, who recently left the position of PA DEP Secretary, is on record questioning the level of scientific understanding and agreement regarding climate change:  “There is no uniformity within the scientific community on how much the warming is occurring,” said Krancer to State Impact, “And there’s no agreement about how much is attributable to the human part of it and how much is attributable to other factors.”

E. Christopher Abruzzo, the Acting Secretary of PA DEP, is not on record as a climate change denier. In fact, he has no record on environmental issues at all. Abruzzo may be an able prosecutor (he served previously in the Attorney General’s office), but he has no environmental expertise. Abruzzo is Governor Corbett’s man at PA DEP; he remains in the role as the Governor’s Deputy Chief of Staff even as he assumes the role of Acting Secretary at PA DEP.  He was recently nominated by Corbett to assume the leadership of DEP permanently.

There are good people at PA DEP trying hard to protect Pennsylvania’s natural resources. But budget cuts have drastically reduced staffing levels, and the hands of regulators have been tied by permitting windows that don’t allow time for thoughtful consideration of environmental impacts. Individuals are afraid of losing their jobs if their decisions delay pet projects of connected corporations. And if the recent leadership at the agency is any example, I’m afraid I see the potential for KEEP to be used to indoctrinate a new generation into supporting the current administration’s short-sighted path for our energy future – reliance on shale gas.

In fact, while the DEP description of KEEP is that it will: “will focus on teaching about and tracking energy efficiency in the school building and in the homes of the community” under this heading two of the eight topics for the “full day energy workshop” are:  (√) Energy extraction technologies and (√) Electricity generation technologies, including geologic resource extraction and renewable resources.  Shale gas and fracking are clearly among the priority areas of their clean energy focus.

The recent effort by the PA DEP to delete a peer reviewed paper by Dr. Robert Howarth, the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology and Environmental Biology at Cornell University, from a state report on how Pennsylvania will be impacted by climate is yet another example of why PA DEP’s KEEP program should be received with skepticism.  Dr. Howarth’s published paper challenges the assertion that natural gas is not a significant contributor to climate change and suggests that that it could be as harmful a contributor to climate change as coal. 

Education is about providing facts, science, well-rounded information and helping students to become critical thinkers with the capability to assess and analyze data.  If PA DEP is not allowing its own documents to include studies with which it disagrees for political reasons, and has among its leadership climate change deniers, how can it be trusted to educate our children about energy options in a fair and balanced way? 

Since the 2008-2009 fiscal year, PA DEP’s annual budget had been slashed by one-third. Rather than investing in programs for educators who are already trained and capable of creating their own energy curricula, perhaps PA DEP should invest its limited resources in enforcing our environmental protection laws and carrying out environmental protection programs.  Investing in strong environmental programs would better serve the goal of safeguarding our children’s health and future. 

Army Corps Against Fracking?

Who said the following about fracking and drilling the watershed of another river that serves as a primary drinking water supply?

• “Safe water supply is essential to life . . .”
• “Our needs for a safe, reliable water supply involve both issues of water quantity and quality.’
• “Long-standing interstate agreements for the . . . Watershed, to which we have been a signatory, have addressed water quantity and quality protection as essential to properly managing this key natural resource.”  “[A]ny action that could vitiate the effects of these agreements would be unwelcome.”
• “[S]trongly supports the selection of an Alternative that prohibits the use of horizontal fracturing (hydrofracking) for natural gas development . . .”
• “[E]nough study on the technique has been done and information has been published to give us great cause for concern about the potential for degradation of the quality of our raw water supply as well as impact to the quantity of the supply.”

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers!

 

Neversink River, just below NYC drinking water reservoir

The Washington Aqueduct, a division of the Army Corps’ Baltimore District, made these statements on October 17, 2011 when responding to a request for comments on a Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the George Washington National Forest.  The Washington Aqueduct is a federally owned public water supply providing drinking water for approximately one million people living in and around the District of Columbia.  The drinking water supply for the Aqueduct, and therefore Washington, D.C., begins in the George Washington National Forest.

The Army Corps made these comments to inform the decision about whether or not to open the George Washington National Forest up to drilling and fracking.

Why is the Army Corps so committed to protecting Washington, D.C.’s drinking water supply yet it sits on the fence when it comes to our Delaware River? The Army Corps has gone so far as to suggest that economic claims for drilling in our watershed could be more important than protecting the water 17 million people drink.

What do I think is the difference?

1.  The Washington Aqueduct is the President’s water.

2.  Damage to the Washington Aqueduct water supply will be blamed directly upon the Army Corps.

The Army Corps clearly knows drilling and fracking aren’t safe for communities and water — let them act like an army and stand in defense of all of the waters we as a nation drink, rather than let the water be poisoned by an invading industry that is happy to sacrifice U.S. citizens, residents and visitors just to make another dime.

Here is the key text drawn from the letter for those who would like to see more:

“Promoting and engaging in watershed protection efforts is as important to Washington Aqueduct as is selecting the best treatment technologies.  Our needs for a safe, reliable water supply involve both issues of water quantity and quality.  Long-standing interstate agreements for the Potomac River Watershed, to which we have been a signatory, have addressed water quantity and quality protection as essential to properly managing this key natural resource.  As a result, any action that could vitiate the effects of these agreements would be unwelcome.  Safe water supply is essential to life; the needs of the water treatment and supply utilities that rely on the Potomac River for source water must be given primary consideration.”

“Washington Aqueduct strongly supports the selection of an Alternative that prohibits the use of horizontal fracturing (hydrofracking) for natural gas development within the Forest.  Although studies on the technique are still needed in order to fully understand the potential impacts on drinking water, enough study on the technique has been done and information has been published to give us great cause for concern about the potential for degradation of the quality of our raw water supply as well as impact to the quantity of the supply.”

Carol Collier Is Retiring -- Regards and Hopes for Her Lasting Legacy

Carol Collier is retiring as Executive Director of the Delaware River Basin Commission.  Many good

things have happened during her tenure – not the least of which was the granting of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network petition that secured Special Protection Waters (SPW) status for the Lower Delaware River.  With SPW designation given to the Lower Delaware, and having previously secured SPW designation for the reaches of the River above the Delaware Water Gap (also in response to a Delaware Riverkeeper Network filed Petition) we became the national leaders in having the longest stretch of river (197 miles) in the nation with this highest level of protection.  This designation is the basis for the moratorium on shale gas development.

Under Carol’s leadership there has been other notable progress – attention to toxic contamination of the River, a report that recommends increased protections for floodplains, efforts to enhance water releases from the NYC reservoirs for the benefit of fish, attention to the high nutrient loadings in the Delaware Estuary and more.  Carol has been a good supporter of the public process and public involvement.

She has 6 more months to leave a lasting legacy that will ensure critical protections for the future of the Delaware River basin.  We hope she will use her time wisely.  We are hopeful Carol will use the next 6 months to become an outspoken champion for a permanent ban on shale gas development and fracking in the Delaware River Watershed, the piece of earth she has been working for over the last 15 years; that she will speak loud and clear for the need for DRBC leadership in actually passing regulations that carry out the protective floodplain and buffer recommendations made by an appointed advisory committee to the Commissioners; that she will use her position as a soap box to call for all things good, and call out all things bad that are, may, will or have happened at the DRBC to ensure that her lasting impression on this watershed and for the future of the River and all the River’s children is one of growing protection and health.

DRBC's Failures to Act Spur Direct Action

A movement is growing to change how we fuel our energy needs, to leave behind drilling, fracking, mountaintop removal and coal tar sands, to abandon polluting fossil fuels that are devastating our landscape and increasing extreme weather events. But our politicians aren’t listening, at least not to the people. Instead, they accept energy industry claims that we need shale gas when the facts, science and impacts on the ground prove this to be false.

After repeated and fruitless efforts to secure the attention of decision makers, we the people are increasingly turning to our last option—protest, civil disobedience and both legal and beyond-legal exercises of our first amendment rights—to be heard. Elected and appointed officials may try to dismiss these public displays of dissatisfaction and demands for environmentally responsible decision-making, but in doing so they are galvanizing public protest and outcry.

In February 2012, the environmental community 

asked the Delaware River Basin

The DRBC Commissioners

Commission (DRBC) to protect communities, wetlands, and old growth forests on public and private lands from the devastation to be brought by the construction of interstate pipelines, many of which are proposed for our region. Our request was ignored, as were subsequent requests submitted throughout the year.

DRBC is comprised of the governors of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware and a representative of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as the federal delegate. The governors serve by virtue of their office; we the people elected them to those offices. But the Commissioners were clearly not listening to us.

After seven months, frustrated environmental 

and community organizations and citizens

submitted a formal petition requesting action in September 2012. Then, on December 5th, with no comment on our request and with no opportunity for public comment, the Commissioners voted quickly and unanimously to reject our request.

Remarkably, in January 2013, DRBC admitted they got it wrong when they failed to exercise jurisdiction over two pipelines that were among those specifically mentioned in DRN's many requests and that, by January, had already been built. The construction and subsequent

operation of these two pipelines resulted in close to 400 violations. Still, DRBC refused to exercise jurisdiction over other pipelines.

By ignoring the public’s interest, the DRBC spurred public action. We wrote the DRBC before their March meeting to say there was still time to avoid the harms to be inflicted by pipelines, and submitted a formal petition calling for DRBC action. We made clear that we the people expected our request to be addressed and that we expected a meaningfulopportunity to be heard before votes were cast. 

With that goal in mind, the Delaware

Riverkeeper Network along with over 140 citizens and colleague organizations attended DRBC’s March 6th meeting, but it soon became clear that the Commissioners planned to once again ignore our request and instead approve dockets for industry and others.

At that moment, we the people took over the meeting to send a message to the DRBC. We held a People's Hearing; people  testified in an orderly fashion, unconstrained by a time clock. Our hearing concluded with the presentation of a resolution that would commit DRBC to exercise jurisdiction over

pipelines. Still the Commissioners refused to act. And so we the people began to sing and chant, taking control of the meeting. DRBC was created to serve the public’s needs, yet was totally disregarding us to serve the gas industry. If DRBC wasn't going to act on our petition, it should not be allowed to approve industry projects in our Watershed. Singing and chanting continued until the Commissioners ended the meeting and left the building.

It was important for the public to take back control of this public agency, even for these few hours. Clean water, clean air, healthy food grown from healthy land are fundamental

rights. But these rights are being taken from us in service to industry. Because officials arefailing to do the people’s business, we the people are rising up to stop rollbacks of environmental laws, to demand that people be treated like people and that corporations be treated like the bricks and mortar they are. Our water, our air, our earth and our health are at stake. We the people are talking; it’s time our elected and appointed officials started listening to us again.

Commissioners leave the room