Earthbytes

Natural Gas Drilling: What We Don’t Know - ProPublica

Gas drilling is often portrayed as the ultimate win-win in an era of hard choices: a new, 100-year supply of cleaner-burning fuel, a risk-free solution to the nation’s dependence on foreign energy. In the next 10 years, the United States will use the fracturing technology to drill hundreds of thousands of new wells astride cities, rivers and watersheds. Cash-strapped state governments are pining for the revenue and the much-needed jobs that drilling is expected to bring to poor, rural areas.

Drilling companies assert that the destructive forces unleashed by the fracturing process, including the sometimes toxic chemicals that keep the liquid flowing, remain safely sealed as much as a mile or more beneath the earth, far below drinking water sources and the rest of the natural environment.

More than a year of investigation by ProPublica [1], however, shows that the issues are far less settled than the industry contends, and that hidden environmental costs could cut deeply into the anticipated benefits.

via www.propublica.org

This is a long article, but so is the public dangerously short of reliable informations on externalized costs of hydrofracturing methods of gas drilling. If you haven't read other articles I've linked to over the past few days, this one is a good summary of the major unknowns and uncertainties of gas drilling.

It's interesting to me that, yesterday, the EPA announced that the agency has taken a significant step to protect taxpayers from having to pay for externalized costs that have historically accompanied cleanup of "environmental releases." The press release names three additional industry sectors for which it will begin the regulatory development process for any necessary financial assurance requirements: the chemical manufacturing industry; the petroleum and coal products manufacturing industry, which primarily includes refineries and not coal mines; and the electric power generation, transmission, and distribution industry. They had already initiated a look at hard rock mining, and note in some of the documents that just because an industry has not been singled out yet doesn't mean they couldn't be at a future time. You can check out this issue here.

The financial requirements for cleaning up messes are yet another question in addition to the four main ones ProPublica has been investigating with respect to uncertainties around gas drilling.

It seems that the number of citizens impacted despite arrogant industrial reassurances that their processes are safe is growing by the month. Many of these people have yet to be compensated for losses they have suffered. What bugs me is that people and nature often suffer consequences long before anyone will admit -- or anyone has evidence sufficient to make a case -- that a particular process or chemical or whatever has messed things up. So, the people who've been hurt have to keep suffering while the institutions catch up.

I hope responsible people in all the right places can get a handle on this hydrofracking stuff really quick.

Drilling Wastewater Disposal Options in N.Y. Report Have Problems of Their Own - ProPublica

New York's Department of Environmental Conservation took a stab at addressing the wastewater problem in the draft environmental impact statement [6] (EIS) on gas drilling it released in September. The report said the DEC won't issue drilling permits until companies prove they can dispose of the water. The report also listed three disposal options [7]: Injecting it into underground storage wells, trucking it to specialized treatment plants in nearby states, or having it processed at sewage plants in New York.

But ProPublica has found that none of these methods are realistic.

via www.propublica.org

On the 25th, I blogged about a toxic wastewater disposal problem with TVA coal ash in Alabama. In New York, future gas drilling permits in the Marcellus shale may hang on the same issue. Many processes associated with extraction of fossil fuels -- as well as at many points in their production cycles -- involve huge amounts of water.

I thought Joaquin Sapien and Sabrina Shankman did a great job in this article to call many of the proposed wastewater disposal options for gas drilling into question. Read the whole article at the link under the excerpt or go here.

In New Gas Wells, More Drilling Chemicals Remain Underground - ProPublica

Three company spokesmen and a regulatory official said in separate interviews with ProPublica that as much as 85 percent of the fluids used during hydraulic fracturing is being left underground after wells are drilled in the Marcellus Shale, the massive gas deposit that stretches from New York to Tennessee.

That means that for each modern gas well drilled in the Marcellus and places like it, more than three million gallons of chemically tainted wastewater could be left in the ground forever. Drilling companies say that chemicals make up less than 1 percent of that fluid. But by volume, those chemicals alone still amount to 34,000 gallons in a typical well.

These disclosures raise new questions about why the Safe Drinking Water Act, the federal law that regulates fluids injected underground so they don't contaminate drinking water aquifers, should not apply to hydraulic fracturing, and whether the thinking behind Congress' 2005 vote to shield drilling from regulation is still valid.

via www.propublica.org

In the latest article in his investigative series on gas drilling hazards in the Marcellus shale, Abrahm Lustgarten (ProPublica) challenges the industry storyline that most of the constituents of fluids used to force natural gas into wells from fissures in the shale do not remain underground.

As a result, hydrofracking fluid has been exempt from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. In June of 2009, federal legislators introduced the Fracking Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act (the FRAC Act) that would remove the exemption for hydrofracking fluids and require the industry to disclose the chemicals they use in fracking processes.

In addition to new disclosures that up to 85% of these fluids may remain in the ground, Lustgarten's new article gives a helpful analysis of the evolution of this issue in terms of legislative action, EPA involvement, and arguments from the oil and gas industry. It's a long article but well worth reading, especially if you live near oil and gas reserves.

And since the sponsors hope for a vote as early as the spring of 2010, it's not too early to let your senators and representatives know what you think about all of this.

Lustgarten's reports have plenty of links and graphics, but here's a few quick links to earlier articles and other documents:

FRAC Act (Senate)

FRAC Act (House)

FRAC Act article by Lustgarten, June 2009

Buried Secrets (Home page for ProPublica's gas drilling reports)

Kingston Coal Ash Impacts Continue to Test Human Imagination

via www.youtube.com

Hurricane Creekkeeper John Wathen's video documents yet another of Earth's inconvenient truths: nature functions as a whole, interconnected system and not a collection of isolated parts. When the coal ash pond at TVA's Kingston plant discharged more than a billion gallons of waste into the Emory River and Kingston community last December, anybody with common system-sense had to know that it's impacts would reach far beyond.

A few gallons might have made a different story. What one-billion gallons looks like is difficult to imagine in a way that makes it real, let alone how to grasp the magnitude of cleaning up that much muck. What did anybody really think we would do with it all? All of it would have to go somewhere.

It may be somewhat mentally manageable to think of it being loaded on trains and shipped to Perry County, Alabama's Arrowhead Landfill. But how many trains? How many cars and for how many days and weeks or years?

Once it gets to the landfill -- in amounts that we may or may not be able to imagine -- the dumping of it is not the end of what we must be able conceive. There's the matter of water: water in the coal ash, rain falling on the landfill, groundwater, Alabama's rivers and streams.

The water that collects in many landfill drainage structures -- toxic, dirty, stinky water -- all has to go somewhere. How many gallons? Can you imagine it? Does it come to a waste water lagoon near you?

If it doesn't come to your neighborhood, John Wathen's video can help you imagine what that might be like. Heavy truck traffic...black water...stinking air...birds and animals disappearing...health problems for you and your neighbors.

And all this is just short term stuff. What about the long haul? And who knows for sure what we even started with in terms of the health of the entire Tennessee River system?

To accurately imagine possible impacts of a billion gallons of coal ash flushed into the Emory River and Kingston neighborhoods, we must also consider the historical context into which it was dumped.

The federal Clean Water Act that we have today did not originate from a progressive, proactive desire for stewardship of clean water resources. Congress acted because observable deterioration of water quality -- especially in navigable rivers -- was in their face. And though the current Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, it has roots clear back to the River and Harbor Act of 1899, and a succession of laws over several decades whose purpose was to salvage American river systems that were already seriously trashed.

The point is that those billion gallons of Kingston coal ash did not spill into a pristine river. New contamination coming into any compromised river system further complicates recovery and restoration efforts already underway. Furthermore, we have a long history of inconsistent enforcement by states and by the EPA, not to mention recent efforts by construction, mining and real estate development industries to challenge regulation of human activity in small streams, creeks, springs, and seeps. If this attack on headwater protection succeeds, downstream reaches of our river systems will continue to lose capacity for resilience to insults such as the Kingston disaster.

Even as Alabama residents gear up to fight the poisoning of their communities from TVA coal ash, residents of Cumberland County, Tennessee have organized against a proposed coal ash landfill at a surface mine site on Smith Mountain that threatens to bring some of the same problems to their neighborhoods.

Unfortunately, as coal ash battles erupt on new fronts further and further away from Roane County, too many people at ground zero of the Kingston disaster have yet to be relieved of their suffering or compensated for their losses from this unimaginably huge environmental disaster one year ago.

If you want to explore more about "coal near you" go to the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal pages here.

Take Action to Protect Communities from Hazardous Coal Mining Waste

via action.sierraclub.org

December 30th, 2009 is the deadline for comments in the most recent round of efforts to protect people and nature from hazardous coal mining waste.

Last month, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking and a notice of intent to prepare a supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) in relation to the conduct of mining activity in or around streams. Part of this process involves a do-over of the woefully inadequate -- and downright dangerous -- Bush era stream buffer zone (SBZ) rule.

According to OSMRE,

This proposed rulemaking reflects commitments contained in a June 11, 2009, memorandum of understanding (MOU) among the Department of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Army Corps of Engineers to reduce the harmful environmental consequences of Appalachian surface coal mining.  The MOU identifies the stream buffer zone rule and our regulations concerning approximate original contour as two rules that we will consider revising.  In the notice, we describe options that we are considering for revision of the stream buffer zone rule and other related rules.  We invite you to comment on those options, to suggest other options, and to identify other provisions of our regulations that should be revised to better protect the environment and the public from the impacts of surface coal mining nationwide.

Here are some information links you can review if needed before you take action:

Federal Register Notice, November 30, 2009

EPA-OSMRE-USACE Memorandum of Understanding, June 11, 2009

Interim stream protection measures

OSM publishes notice on stream buffer zone rule, Ken Ward article with several background links

Now, please take action!

Sierra Club online action (quick and easy)

Federal e-Rulemaking Portal, Docket ID: OSM-2009-0009 (a more complicated route)

 

Gregory V. Button: The TVA Ash Spill One Year Later

The TVA's tactical response to the disaster has been to manufacture doubt and uncertainty to keep the public confused and avoid environmental compliance and accountability. Their ability to pursue this strategy calls into question the regulatory powers of state and federal agencies.

via www.counterpunch.org

University of Tennessee prof Greg Button brings TVA's response to the Kingston coal ash disaster into clear focus with this Counterpunch article.

As we approach the one year anniversary of this horrific event the only thing I can think of to celebrate is that no human being got killed when the coal ash unleashed its muddy fury on the Kingston community and the Emory River.

I live many miles north of this area, but I followed the tragedy closely. Back in the '80's I served for a time as chief of a large rural fire protection district in Colorado. In that capacity I had the opportunity to attend advanced incident command training at the National Fire Academy in Maryland. My department was also blessed to be operating in Boulder County with a sheriff and county commissioners who were ahead of the curve on preparedness for large-scale emergencies.

As a result of these experiences, I was able to wonder early on why the hell I wasn't seeing any evidence of the national incident command system being in place at Kingston. (And, yes, I wondered the same thing when Katrina bashed New Orleans!)

I also began to wonder if it wasn't in place not because people didn't know about it, but because somebody didn't want it to be in place. This is one of the issues Dr. Button takes on in his article.

Please go to Counterpunch and read the whole thing. And please continue to hold the Kingston community in your heart. The suffering there is far from being resolved and we have yet to discover what long term impacts of this monumental coal ash contamination of people and nature will manifest.

This Is Bigger Than Climate Change. It Is a Battle to Redefine Humanity | CommonDreams.org

This is the moment at which we turn and face ourselves. Here, in the plastic corridors and crowded stalls, among impenetrable texts and withering procedures, humankind decides what it is and what it will become. It chooses whether to continue living as it has done, until it must make a wasteland of its home, or to stop and redefine itself. This is about much more than climate change. This is about us.

via www.commondreams.org

I think this article by George Monbiot really gets down to the core of things. The idea he puts forward here is one that has been very much on my mind as I've read reports from Copenhagen on the plight of the world's indigenous peoples, and especially those island and coastal nations that are immediately at risk for displacement as a consequence of climate change.

Video from 350: Our Movement Is Awake

via action.350.org

Damning New Evidence Raises Concerns About Hydrofracking | | AlterNet

Additionally, the Lytles' problem has significant repercussions for New York's exploitation of the Marcellus Shale, an enormous, goldfish-shaped rock formation that stretches from Syracuse to northern Tennessee and is believed to contain 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. A contentious issue, Marcellus drilling has already hit snags in Dimock, PA, where 14 families recently filed suit against Cabot Oil and Gas for allegedly contaminating their water; and in central New York, where anti-fracking signs adorn many front yards and drilling has been mired for months in a complex approval process.

This process (the state has completed a draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement, or dSGEIS, to determine whether or not hydrofracking in the Marcellus is safe) was most recently complicated by findings that allege decades of negligence on the part of New York's DEC. According to a November study conducted by Toxics Targeting, an Ithaca, NY-based environmental research company, there have been 270 cases of oil and gas spills in New York over the last 30 years -- 65 of which have yet to meet cleanup standards.

via www.alternet.org

Great article about some really scary stuff. There are too many stories like the Lytle's in which extraction industry folks trash land and water and then dodge accountability, whether it's mountaintop removal mining, oil and gas drilling or other processes.

'We Are All Connected' -- Symphony of Science

via www.youtube.com

What an amazing day for Earth! I'm still integrating all the news from the Copenhagen summit, EPA's ruling that CO2 is a threat to human health and welfare, and voices from the rally to save Coal River Mountain from Massey Energy's greed in West Virginia today. I'm celebrating them all by sharing this video: We are all connected!