Help Butler County Families Hurt by Gas Drilling Now!
Please help the families of Connequenessing Township, Butler County, Pennsylvania get the clean safe water they deserve. Over the past two weeks we’ve published two heartbreaking stories coming out of Butler County, “Black Water + Purple Water = A Fracking Nightmare” and “Drilling Spills in Over a Dozen Creeks.” In fact, we first reported about Kim McEvoy’s black water and Janet McIntyre’s foaming water, her family’s vomiting, and her dog dying back in September.
Now, AP, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh Tribune, and other traditional news media are finally starting to cover this story. Hundreds of people have written to the EPA to urge these families be given clean safe water. Even Congress is paying attention.
But the situation, nonetheless, has gotten even worse. Six more families, including three families whose well water was bright orange last time they looked, are being cut off by REX Energy from their clean replacement water buffaloes next week.
Kim McEvoy's daughter Skylar in the McEvoys' kitchen: Connoquenessing Township, Butler County PA February 4th 2012. Photo: Iris Marie Bloom
Twelve families in Butler County will be without clean drinking water starting Wednesday, February 29th. That’s the day that gas-drilling company REX Energy will stop delivering clean water to the Butler families.
We call on you to stand up for these innocent families by taking a few minutes to:
- Sign the letter to the EPA urging clean water be provided, along with extensive testing so that water, air and health are protected.
- Make a donation that will directly fund clean water deliveries to the Butler County families. By donating to “Water LOVE,” the Emergency Water Fund established by Protecting Our Waters, you’ll be giving a lifeline to some of the hardest-hit families in Pennsylvania’s shale gas disaster. Your donation is 100% tax-deductible through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, EVOLVE Foundation.
Protecting Our Waters is working directly with the impacted families, local organizers with Marcellus Outreach Butler, and good-hearted souls such as farmer Stephen Cleghorn who already donated his own water buffalo to the McIntyre family. If EPA, the Department of Health, or any other entity intervenes to make sure emergency water deliveries to these 12 families continue, we will use any funds raised to provide water for the next fracking emergency. No families in Pennsylvania should ever have to suffer like this.
Janet McIntyre reported yesterday that she hadn’t slept for two days, since her neighbors got their letters from Rex Energy saying their water deliveries will be cut off starting next week. One man has already died, and the rest of the neighborhood is living in a state of emergency. Janet suggested we call the fund “Water LOVE” — Life’s Outpouring in a Vital Emergency. Water is life and there’s no doubt these families need love as well as water. Thanks everybody!
Press Release: Butler County Spill; Farmer Blockades Fracking Trucks in Jefferson County
Even as Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission investigates a dozen different drllling-related spills in a dozen different creeks in Connoquenessing Township, Butler County, Pennsylvania (new spills in the past two months), Rex Energy has just announced it will remove 6 more families’ water buffaloes next week, depriving families of clean replacement water. One of those families reports health impacts and witnesses say their water, which used to run clear, clean and abundant, has turned “bright red.” Another neighbor died at the age of 49 a few weeks ago after first reporting “rashes all over his body” last September and after being diagnosed with leukemia in December. He never received replacement water.
Over 250 people have now written an emergency letter to the EPA demanding clean safe replacement water for the dozen families whose replacement water is being or has already been cut off by Rex Energy. EPA is also being urged to investigate air impacts and surface water impacts; at least two families are reporting having been made sick by fumes. The EPA press office said yesterday they are “taking the situation very seriously.” The letter to EPA, which anyone can sign on to, is here.
Below is a hasty press release Protecting Our Waters put out on Monday, after a spill was reported on Crab Run Road. We also updated press contacts about a Jefferson County farmer’s one-man direct action, the Bennett Blockade. Bennett’s action should continue to get attention so that heavy big rig gas drilling trucks will face real consequences when they repeatedly, arrogantly and willfully break the law.
Monday, February 21, 2012
For Immediate Release
Jefferson County Witness: Stephen Cleghorn c 814-932-6761
A Wild Day in Butler County: Drilling-related Spill Threatens Crab Run Creek
Jefferson County Resident Brings Water Buffalo to Assist Impacted People in Butler County; Witnesses “Bennett Blockade”
Evans City, PA ”It’s been a wild day already this morning. I got a call at 7:45 AM from a gentleman reporting a chemical spill coming right of the side of the hillside by the Grossick Well. You can see it on Crab Run Road, off of Woodlands Road. That’s a Rex Energy site. I’ve talked to two witnesses now,” said Janet McIntyre, a Connoquenessing Township resident surrounded by Rex Energy gas drilling and fracking operations in Butler County.
“It’s this gray gluck coming out of the side of the mountain. It may be running into Crab Run Creek. It’s running alongside the ditches, which go into the creek. It’s running off the hillside in two places,” Janet reported. “Apparently they (Rex Energy) are trying to stop it from running into the creek.”
Janet has previously reported that her own water has come foaming and discolored out of her tap on two occasions in 2011, causing vomiting, rashes and other problems for her family; one dog died. She has reported the water problems to Rex Energy, PA DEP, and to the EPA. Other residents nearby, including Kim McEvoy, have also reported contaminated water and foul, sickening air. Protecting Our Waters’ Director Iris Marie Bloom said, after a visit to the Grossick Well on Woodlands Road on February 4th, 2012 (the same one with the chemical spill right now) “Breathing the foul gasses being vented off the Grossick Well for 60 seconds was unbearable; I almost vomited after being exposed for just one minute.” Bloom reported the incident to EPA, with no response.
Sickening Air in Butler County
Another Butler County resident reported via email that his wife became sickened for several days after inhaling foul air 1/4 mile away from a gas processing facility in the Connoquenessing area. Joseph P McMurray said that on December 8th, “my wife drove near the Sarsen plant as she was driving home from her job. She was on Upper Harmony Road just East of 528/Prospect Road when her car filled up with a noxious chemical odor. She quickly turned off the heater in her car. Within seconds the back of her head was numb, indicative of adrenal overload. These few seconds of exposure left her in a weakened state for several days; it seems evident that her immune system took quite a hit.” The EPA website listed the Sarsen plant was listed as “permanently closed” due to noxious uncontrolled emissions on that same day, but has since been renamed. Multiple residents, including Janet McIntyre, report a high level of activity, including flaring of gasses, at the site for several weeks as of today.
Contaminated Water in Butler County
Farmer Stephen Cleghorn, who lives an hour and a half away in Jefferson County, is right now in the process of bringing his own water buffalo, a large plastic container which holds 450 gallons of water, to the McIntyre family, which was one of ten known families for which Rex Energy had been providing clean replacement water. Six families have kept their water buffalo replacement water. But last month Rex Energy removed the water buffaloes, and stopped delivering all but a few gallons of bottled drinking water for four families including the McIntyre and McEvoy families, which have been outspoken about the contaminated water and air. Rex plans to discontinue even the bottled drinking water deliveries to the McIntyre and McEvoy families on February 29th.
More information:
Butler County water and air problems
Details about the McIntyre family
Kim McEvoy’s letter to Governor Corbett
A citizens’ call to action supporting the Butler County families’ need for clean water and EPA oversight
Bennet Blockade: Jefferson County Farmer Fed Up with Fracking Trucks
Meanwhile, this week farmer Stephen Cleghorn of Jefferson County witnessed a neighboring farmer blockading big gas well drilling trucks. “People are getting pretty fed up with how these driller operate,” he said. One photo and a complete report on the blockade is here.
More photos are available from Stephen Cleghorn.
Stephen Cleghorn, Paradise Gardens and Farm 814-568-1207. Photos available from: jstephencleghorn@yahoo.com
###
The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission reported this morning that they are now investigating over a dozen different drilling mud spills in at least a dozen different freshwater creeks in the Connoquenessing Township area of Butler County. More details below. Kim McEvoy, whose water first turned dark gray in January 2011, said this morning after living with contaminated water for over a year, “The whole ecosystem is destroyed. We are trying to move out this month. I love it here. We don’t want to move.” A photo of the McEvoys’ home with snow coming down on February 4th, 2012, with lovely evergreen trees and an American flag flying, is below. As more and more Pennsylvania families become environmental refugees due to heavy gas drilling, what can ordinary people do?
First, take action. If you haven’t written EPA yet to demand clean safe drinking water for, and further investigation to protect the health and survival of, impacted families in Connoquenessing Township, Butler County, please do so immediately. Please just add an initial sentence of your own to this letter to Shawn Garvin, Administrators, EPA Region 3 and send it asap. Thanks!
Kim McEvoy's home in Connoquenessing Township with American flag, evergreens. Photo: Iris Marie Bloom
Second, stay informed. Yesterday, February 20th, 2012, Connoquenessing residents including Kim McEvoy and Janet McIntyre reported a spill of a “gray liquid” coming off the hillside in two places near a Rex Energy gas well drilling site. A very nice out of state worker on the scene, who told Stephen Cleghorn that he was with the company that does horizontal drilling for Rex Energy, said they had had a “frack-out” and that the liquid had come back up to the surface during fracking.
It is not known at this time whether there were two spills yesterday, or just one. Photos taken yesterday show bales of hay placed in steep man-made ditches flowing downstream towards a creek which local residents identified as Crab Run Creek. Across the street from that steep hillside, black hoses were positioned in another ditch that runs alongside Crab Run Road.
Stephen Cleghorn, of Paradise Gardens and Farm in Jefferson County, drove three hours round trip yesterday to deliver his own water buffalo to Janet and Fred McIntyre of Connoquenessing Township so that their family could begin again to take showers at home with clean water (as soon as they find a way to fill the empty container with water). The McIntyres reported that their water became contaminated in January 2011, when their tap water suddenly began foaming. Family members vomited until the McIntyres shifted to drinking bottled water; a family dog which had continued to drink the tap water died with bloody diarrhea last Valentine’s Day (2011), and the family also experienced rashes, a nosebleed so severe that the family member had to be hospitalized; and other health problems.
Connoquenessing residents have also reported foul air from gas drilling operations so intense that it has sickened them; the most recent reports of sickening odor incidents include December 8th and February 4th. We will report that separately to keep this short. Meanwhile, if you are running out of time to absorb all this news, please just take a moment to write EPA requesting clean water for the impacted families now.
Drilling Mud Spills and a “Frack-Out”
Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission’s Officer Nestor confirmed today that the Commission is investigating about a dozen drilling mud spills that have occurred in the tiny Connoquenessing area since December 2011. Asked if they had investigated any spills earlier than that, he said, “maybe a couple in November 2011.” The spills are “mainly associated with pipelines, whenever they go under a stream and bore horizontally,” he said. Lubricants are used when drillers bore horizontally under streams and roads.
Officer Nestor said that the drilling mud, which he also referred to as bentonite, has “come into about a dozen different creeks.”
In addition to the phone reports from local residents who described “gray gluck” coming down off the hillside, we also have one first-hand report, by email, of yesterday’s spill. Stephen Cleghorn writes,
We went down to Crab Run Road, which I gathered takes its name from the Crab Run creek that runs down below it. There we saw several trucks that appeared to working on containing a spill of some sort. The ditch beside the road had been blocked in sveral places with hay bales to make the water (frack water?) pool up and they had hoses into it. On the other side of the road, down a steep embankment to where Crab Run was flowing through, I could see that they had made some ditches and plugged those with hay bales, too. Hard to know what they were trying to accomplish.
Then I spoke to a worker, a very nice young man who said he was from out of state and was working with the company doing the horizontal drilling for Rex Energy. I asked him what happened. He said they had a “frack out” – that was what he called it. He said that the liquid came to the surface during the fracking. I presumed it must have been from the well on the rise above us, which we could not see from Crab Run Road, so we drove around and I took a picture of that well site.
It was quite bizarre, because clearly the hay bales and the occasional soft cloth-looking dam they use (it has a name, a “boom” I think, but these were really small) did not seem adequate to preventing the fluid in that ditch from getting to the creek below, and I had no idea why they had ditches and hay bales below even closer to Crab Run (Janet told me that was the name of the waterway, which given the name of the road makes sense).
Here’s a photo of the hay bales in man-made ditches heading down towards Crab Run (left) and the truck and black hoses in the ditch running alongside Crab Run Road (right):
Hay bales placed in ditches flowing down towards Crab Run Creek in Connoquenessing, accomplishing what? Feb 20, 2012 Photo: Stephen Cleghorn
Another spill in Connoquenessing: Truck, ditch, bales and black hoses, February 20th, 2012. Photo: Stephen Cleghorn
Bennett Blockade: PA Farmer Blocks Fracking Trucks
“I just witnessed a farmer, Mike Bennett of Bennett Farms and Greenhouse up above Big Run, take some unilateral action to blockade the drilling trucks on the Big Run-Prescottville Road that runs through his vegetable farm,” reported farmer Stephen Cleghorn of Jefferson County, PA on February 17th. “People are getting pretty fed up with how these drillers operate,” he commented.
Pennsylvania farmer Mike Bennett, fed up with fracking trucks, blockades gas well drilling trucks. Photo: Stephen Cleghorn
Cleghorn described the scene:
Mike Bennett got fed up with the big well drilling trucks from a nearby well on Spring Road coming down his road to take a shortcut. The road was not bonded by Henderson Township supervisors for truck traffic from this well, yet the drilling company was using it anyway, despite Mike having asked them to go the way they are supposed to go. Those trucks are supposed to use Kramer Road and Paradise Road in front of my farm to get to that well.
So Mike Bennett took his white pickup truck and parked it in the middle of the road; and then he called the State Troopers and the township supervisors to come sort things out. It caused quite a traffic tie-up of big drilling trucks as you can see. I hope that his action will lead to the company being properly fined for improper use of the road.
Reporters can call Mike Bennett (814-427-5276) to find out what happened. He may know how it all came out and the facts on who the well drilling company is, etc.
I took several other photos which you may use if you like. The one with the trooper cars show the officers discussing the matter with a current and former township supervisor. I am sure that Rod Pifer (our newest supervisor) or Todd Peace (former supervisor) can tell you more if you get hold of them. People are getting pretty fed up with how these drillers operate. My neighbor Dick Trithart has gouges in his front yard from the trucks passing by him, and his wife Myrna says the water trucks go by all night and keep her awake. And this stuff is just getting underway here.
Submitted by: Stephen Cleghorn
Paradise Gardens and Farm 814-568-1207
Photos available:
jstephencleghorn@yahoo.com
The Enbridge Tar Sands oil disaster over a year ago in the Kalamazoo River is “worse than originally reported,” according to analyst Beth Wallace. Over 1.1 million gallons of tar sands oil have been recovered so far and remediation efforts are continuing well into 2012.
On November 9th, 2011, the U.S. EPA updated their webpage to reflect the latest recovery efforts for the Enbridge tar sands oil spill. It is now being reported that well over 1.1 million gallons of tar sands oil has been recovered from the spill site. This is a difference of nearly 300,000 gallons of oil from the 840,000 that Enbridge is reporting as spilled.
But another devastating aspect of the Enbridge aftermath is depicted in the Youtube video, “Seizures from Tar Sands Oil Spill.” It’s disturbing; it’s raw; and people should watch it. And I think people should think about it. And then begin organizing much more seriously and directly to stop extreme fossil fuel extraction than any organizing we’ve seen yet. It’s extraordinarily obvious that our leaders can’t lead, so we must lead ourselves — lead away from the precipice over which we are already falling like lemmings.
I continue to wonder why Angelina is having seizures. Until last November, she lived in a part of Bradford County, PA surrounded by Chesapeake Energy high-volume hydrofracturing for natural gas. Although they didn’t suspect it at first, and therefore kept drinking and showering in the water for some time after becoming ill, her family’s water was contaminated by high methane and, they said, arsenic, barium, radium, uranium, and other contaminants which may include hydrocarbons. Angelina’s mother, Judy Stiles, told me that Angelina had almost passed out in the shower several times while they were still showering in, and drinking, water they later learned was contaminated. And now, over a year after they moved out, Angelina has been having seizures for many months. She is pregnant, and I worry about her every day. What is causing the seizures?
I continue to wonder why seizures have also been reported in Butler County, PA; the onset of one person’s seizures was not long after heavy drilling and fracking came to the Connoquenessing Township area of Butler County. I traveled to Butler County in far western PA, in a situation where I at first thought I was going to be “merely” reporting on the terrible inconvenience people there are enduring when they don’t have any safe water for drinking or bathing, but found myself again confronting the question of seizures.
The youtube video, “Seizures fromTar Sands Oil Spill,” makes the case that many people began having seizures after the Enbridge disaster, or if they had a pre-existing condition, the seizures became more frequent and got worse. There are no scientists in white coats in this video, just suffering people; a powerpoint presenter explaining that an oil spill can tip the balance in a person’s system already compromised by cumulative chemical exposure; and one level-headed community-minded woman saying, in the end, “stop asking for industry or the government to make it better. We are the ones who have to stop it and make it better” [to paraphrase -- she says it better -- watch her. Listen].
What are we going to do, wait 30 years until we have the scientific “proof” that shows that the seizures people are describing — the seizure shown on the video — the seizures animals and people are beginning to experience in shale country in Pennsylvania — are in fact related to extreme fossil fuel extraction? We can’t wait. Because the word “seizure” used to crop up in my shale gas drilling research about once a month. And now it’s cropping up daily.
That means something. Even I, who keep trying to wake everyone up, who keep trying to report on the reality I see, have found the descriptions of animals’ seizures and deaths so painful to hear about that I kind of “forgot,” kind of blocked out, the farmers who first told me in 2010 about their animals seizing before death. But this reporter tells it straight out in a February 9th, 2012 post, “Fracking’s toll on pets, livestock chills farmers“:
Smelling gas one morning, a southern Pennsylvania farmer almost passed out when he went outside to check on his bellowing cows.
One of the animals did keel over, kicking its feet in spasms. A couple of days later, a calf was fighting for its life, the farmer said. It died.
Something awful is happening over the Marcellus Shale, the vast geological formation in eastern North America where energy companies are looking for natural gas.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a process for extracting gas by injecting high volumes of water and chemicals into deep wells, has sparked complaints about ruined landscapes and fouled groundwater. Increasingly there is evidence, mostly anecdotal, that animals are suffering.
A new study by veterinarian Michelle Bamberger and Robert Oswald, a professor of veterinary medicine at Cornell University, chronicles case studies of dozens of farmers and pet owners in six states over the Marcellus Shale.
Their findings, published in “New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy,” are a harrowing account of sudden deaths of cattle, as well as reproductive and neurological problems in horses, cats, dogs and other animals.
The Pennsylvania farmers I spoke with have lost cows, calves, a horse, a couple dozen chickens. Many of the animals succumb in the same way: seizure-like symptoms, gasping for breath and a quick wasting away. A Rottweiler and a Dalmatian also fell ill and died.
Animals matter of and for themselves; these animal deaths are terrible. But as Bamberger and Oswald point out, they are also sentinels.
Loyal readers, you are probably missing our best blogger Kristian Boose right now. He used to actually post something light every Sunday. Comic strips. Anti-fracking comic strips to be sure, but funny, brief, not so full of awful thoughts and awful realities as this post. Here I am, Paul Revere, telling you the seizures are coming, telling you it’s time to fight. If you’re already fighting as hard as you can, fight smarter. If you’re not fighting yet, start now.
Wherever you may be, connect up with like-minded others on the local, regional and national levels. And don’t wait around for our next action alert to do stuff. But please DO follow up on the action alerts! You can subscribe to this blog or just check the “Action Alerts” section of this blog often. Each action you take really matters — don’t let anyone tell you it doesn’t. Gandhi said, “You may never know what results come from your action, but if you take no action, there will be no result.”
No problem if you couldn’t get to Harrisburg for the Feb. 16th public hearing of the Susquehanna River Basin Commission. You can still tell the Commissioners what you think. Written comments on water withdrawal permits for shale gas development and related matters are being accepted until February 27.
Take action here, where Earthworks has created a sample letter to tailor and send, talking points, and links for more information.
Remind the Commission that its job is not to facilitate risky drilling for short-term gain – but to protect public water resources for a long time to come. Call for a moratorium on water withdrawal permits, since there’s been no assessment whatsoever of the full life-cycle impacts from high-volume hydrofracking in the huge, beautiful and endangered Susquehanna River watershed.
You can also comment by snail mail or e-mail:
Susquehanna River Basin Commission, 1721 North Front Street, Harrisburg, Pa. 17102-2391, or submitted electronically to Richard A. Cairo, General Counsel, rcairo@srbc.net. Comments mailed or electronically submitted must be received by the Commission on or
before February 27, 2012 at 5 pm.
Fractured bureaucracies may not protect us from toxic fracking, but our public outcry is essential since the damage is escalating so quickly right now. We must build the people’s powers of protection. The Susquehanna River Basin and its people, including the Chesapeake Bay, are too important, too vital to allow this poisoning. Ninety percent of the freshwater for the northern Chesapeake Bay comes from the Susquehanna River. Downstreamers, the time is now to raise your voices.
Thanks for all you do! Next step: Mark your calendars now. The actual vote on these water withdrawals for fracking will take place in Harrisburg on March 15th.
Groups Press Susquehanna River Basin Commission for Moratorium on Water Withdrawals for Fracking
For Immediate Release
Contact: Nathan Sooy c 717-585-2700 nsooy@cleanwater.org
Central PA Campaign Organizer, Clean Water Action
———__—–Iris Marie Bloom c 215.840.6489 protectingourwaters@gmail.com
Director, Protecting Our Waters
Groups Press Susquehanna River Basin Commission for Moratorium on Water Withdrawals for Fracking
SRBC has “Legal obligation to follow the science and moral obligation to protect the earth,” (Rabbi Mordechai Liebling in SRBC Testimony)
Harrisburg: Today the Susquehanna River Basin Commission meets at 2:30 pm in Room 8 E-B in the East Wing at the Capitol to hear testimony from public health advocates, environmental groups and citizens concerned about clean water, clean air, climate damage and other acute and cumulative impacts from high-volume hydraulic fracturing with horizontal drilling, the new combination of technologies collectively referred to as “fracking.” The groups call for an immediate moratorium on permits for fracking water withdrawals.
Opponents of the SRBC water withdrawals will gather today at 1:30 pm in Room 8 E-B in the East Wing at the Capitol Building prior to the 2:30 pm hearing. The SRBC heard over two dozen opponents of the water withdrawals testify in favor of a moratorium on permits at a hearing in Wilkes-Barre on December 15th, followed by an extraordinary and dramatic scene during which the SRBC delegates voted hastily and inaudibly to approve the withdrawals — approximately 29 billion gallons of permanent, consumptive water withdrawals for fracking over four years — while opponents chanted a poem with the refrain, “We honor the river, we honor our lives.” Several groups including Earthworks and Sierra Club issued a legal challenge to the proceeding, resulting in SRBC allowing the second hearing on the water withdrawals today and calling for a vote on the water withdrawals in March.
Clean Water Action, Susquehanna Riverkeeper, Gas Truth, Protecting Our Waters, Earthworks, Pennsylvania Sierra Club and other groups are joining together in a “broad and broadening coalition,” according to Iris Marie Bloom, to protect the Susquehanna River watershed. “The problem here is not just fracturing, but a fractured process in which the consumptive use and permanent poisoning of 29 billion more gallons of Susquehanna Basin water would be approved with absolutely no plan to deal with the resulting toxic flowback wastewater, the sickening air emissions from compressor stations, frack pits and truck traffic; the negative impact on climate, and the escalating human and animal health problems,” said Bloom. The Pennsylvania Council of Churches posted the call for a moratorium on water withdrawals on its website: http://pachurchesadvocacy.org/weblog/?p=10098.
“We call for an immediate moratorium on water withdrawals from the Susquehanna River,” said Nathan Sooy, Central Pennsylvania Campaign Organizer for Clean Water Action. “The SRBC is charged with being the steward of our Susquehanna. The SRBC has not served the interests of the people of the Susquehanna. Rather, they have followed the interests of the oil and gas companies.”
The groups call on the SRBC to stop issuing water withdrawal permits at least until they have:
- Developed a Comprehensive Plan.The Commission must develop and launch a comprehensive plan based on sound science and the consideration of a range of impacts (e.g., on drinking water supplies, wildlife, and ecosystem health). As indicated in Article 14.1, a comprehensive plan must also consider the specific effects on the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. SRBC should not issue more permits for water withdrawals or gas development-related projects until a comprehensive plan is completed.
- Respected Joint Authority between the States. SRBC should delay final adoption of its proposed regulations and not issue any more permits for water withdrawals until the work of the Maryland moratorium commission and New York’s environmental review process are complete. On the basis of joint authority, the resulting assessment of gas impacts and the regulations necessary to prevent them will need to be integrated into, and be the primary basis for, the Commission’s framework for decisionmaking.
- Increased Transparency and Opportunities for Public Participation. As a public agency whose members are appointed by State Governors (i.e., elected officials), SRBC must be responsive to the concerns of residents across the Basin. Doing so will ensure public confidence in the Commission’s commitment to its mandate and the sound management of public water resources. The Commission can support this process and gain public confidence in a variety of ways, including
- FULL DISCLOSURE: Make more information available to the public on the SRBC’s website.
- BRING THE PUBLIC TO THE TABLE: Establish a Citizens Advisory Council.
- NO BACK DOOR DEALS: Allow the public to review and comment on the proposed revised Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the SRBC and the DEP.
BACKGROUND: In public testimony at the SRBC hearing in Wilkes-Barre on December 15th, 2011, Rabbi Mordechai Liebling summed up the concerns of those present when he said that the SRBC has a “legal obligation to follow the science and a moral obligation to protect the earth.” Nadia Steinzor of Earthworks and Thomas Au of Pennsylvania Sierra Club called for a moratorium on water withdrawals based on the grounds listed above. The Reverend Leah Schade called for a moratorium to protect human health and future generations. The Mayor of Betterton, MD sent a letter opposing the water withdrawal permits based on the cumulative impacts on downstream residents throughout the Chesapeake Bay.
Don Williams of Wyoming Valley, who identified himself as working for a large international law firm and also as a supporter of American Rivers, said, “When you degrade a part of the whole, you degrade the whole.” Fred Murray pointed out that attempts to protect striped bass from the devastation caused by pesticides and herbicides is coming ’35 years too late,’ and urged the SRBC not to repeat the cycle of destruction. Dean Marshall said we are “hogs for energy,” and that it would be a terrible waste to approve 8 billion more gallons of water per year for fracking because the U.S. doesn’t need methane gas for domestic energy use. Scott Cannon said “this industry is just like the tobacco industry, telling lies in an attempt to cover up water contamination, blowouts, illegal dumping and truck accidents,” which he included among the everyday destructive impacts from all phases of fracking.
The Susquehanna River provides 90 percent of all the freshwater to the upper half of the Chesapeake Bay, and 50 percent of the freshwater to the entire bay, according to Susan Q. Stranahan, author of Susquehanna: River of Dreams (1993: Johns Hopkins). The Chesapeake Bay is already crtically endangered due to agribusiness and farming practices, pesticide and fertilizer use on lawns, runoff from roads, human population growth and destruction of habitat, wetlands, and protective forested buffers.
Chemicals used in fracking include carcinogens (chemicals which cause cancer), neurotoxins (chemicals which damage the human brain and nervous system, with greatest damage to fetal development, infants and young children), endocrine disruptors (chemicals which mimic or damage hormones, causing a wide variety of damage ranging from stillbirths and reproductive failures to intersex fish and male mammals which carry eggs in their testicles instead of sperm), and biocides (chemicals which kill living organisms). In addition, fracking flowback contains radioactive materials such as Radium 226; volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) such as benzene and toluene, which damage human health in the parts per billion; and heavy metals, such as arsenic. For more scientific information visit http://psehealthyenergy.org/
###
Shale Gas: Bubblenomics & Shell Games
This piece was written by guest blogger Martha Powers.
Deborah Rogers has never seen an investment more hyped than shale gas. On February 1st, Ms. Rogers spoke at the University of Pennsylvania about whether extraordinarily optimistic predictions should lead us to ask how much gas is actually contained in shale, which has long been touted as an economical solution for our country’s energy independence. Decidedly, she told us to question.
On the surface, it appears that shale gas is exploding—more and more wells are being dug, we hear the words “cheap” and “abundant,” and even President Obama, once again, cited the potential for natural gas during his recent State of the Union. But, as we learned late last week, the Energy Information Agency slashed Marcellus Shale estimates by over 60%, leaving only a mere 6 years of supply at current consumption rates. So, what is this apparent inconsistency? This is what Ms. Rogers first started asking a few years ago when she began exposing the anomalies of shale gas.
Ms. Rogers, who is part of an air monitoring task force for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (the equivalent to Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection), serves on the Advisory Council for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. She is no stranger to the industry, as she comes from an oil and gas family and lives on the land that has been in her family for three generations near Ft. Worth, watching drilling infrastructure develop up and around her home.
As she explained, due to a Securities and Exchange Commission (S.E.C.) rule change adopted in 2009, gas companies can now claim reserves previously not allowed, and no third party independent audit is required. This allows for monies to be borrowed on shale gas reserves that are not necessarily verified. When Ms. Rogers helped to sound the alarm, the S.E.C. began an investigation in 2011 looking for discrepancies between what drilling companies are telling investors about costs, profits and performance of shale gas wells versus the reality of the situation.
And, according to Ms. Rogers, that reality is quite different than what has been portrayed by the companies. Even though there are a number of very active wells, it is often the case that they are surrounded by huge areas of profitless wells. Companies claim that a well lasts for 50 years or more, however, in the Barnett shale where Ms. Rogers lives, a well lasts 15-20 years at most, with the majority of wells being played out by year 7. While it is true that shale gas has grown, that has come at the expense of conventional drilling. That is to say, unconventional wells are replacing conventional wells, they aren’t adding to the overall number of active wells, further adding to the illusion of a natural gas “boom.”
Even if there is high initial production with an unconventional natural gas well, this tends to fall off dramatically after the first few months, after which companies must drill more and more new wells to keep pace with production levels. Ms. Rogers depicted the situation as drilling to meet debt service. This problem, she argued, combined with the high number of profitless well and the overestimating of shale gas reserves, means that much of the shale gas may not be commercially extractable unless natural gas prices rise. This voids industry’s main argument that natural gas is a cheap source of energy.
Ms. Rogers described the morning she discovered that two of her baby goats had died during the night. It occurred soon after Chesapeake had started drilling operations near her farm. After air testing was conducted on her property, a senior toxicologist at a local university was so troubled by the results that he wrote a letter of concern. However, this letter was not allowed to be written on university letterhead. The toxicologist’s scientific findings could not be affiliated with his academic institution because the school receives a substantial amount of funding from the oil and gas industry.
(As a side note, we learned that the Department of Earth & Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania does not receive any money from the oil and gas industry, according to Prof. Bob Giegengack).
For those of us who may be have been more focused on the innumerable environmental and health issues surrounding natural gas drilling, such as myself- an environmental studies graduate student, Wednesday’s talk provided much needed insight into the dangerous financial game the industry is playing. As Ms. Rogers said, if an investment has been hyped to this extent, you had better beware.
Deborah Rogers’ website: www.energypolicyforum.com
Triple Action Alert!: Stop the Tarsands, Repeal 1950, and Fight for the Susquehanna
Dear Protectors, this week we have no shortage of actions you can take to help protect human and animal health and the environment. Please contribute in every way you can.
Kill the Keystone XL Pipeline, Again
We’re sad to report that the Tarsands Keystone XL Pipeline has been resurrected, again. After President Obama nixed the plan to move forward with it, twice, the Senate is currently considering legislation to greenlight construction of this disastrous project. Not that we really need more evidence of corporate influence shaping dangerous policy decisions, but here we go again. It’s action time.
We are working with our friends over at 350.org and tons of other coalition partners to put together a massive response to show them that approving Keystone is unacceptable. We plan to blitz the Senate with over 500,000 messages in 24 hours to demand they stop the pipeline.
What can you do:
1) SIGN THE PETITION HERE
2) Share the petition on Facebook and Twitter
3) Call your Senators: Tell them to stop the pipeline.
Senator Bob Casey: (202) 224-6324
Senator Pat Toomey: (202) 224-4254
Demand a Repeal to HB 1950
There will be protests on Thursday, February 16 at the offices of southeast Pennsylvania State Senators who voted for HB 1950, which forces all local communities to allow gas extraction operations without restrictions. Join us to speak out and show our state legislators that the public opposes legislation written and paid for by the gas industry.
11:30 am Sen. Tim Solobay’s office, 68 E. Pike St., Canonsburg, PA (at the Canonsburg Borough Bldg.) (contact Steve at shvozdovich@cleanwater.org for info)
12:00 noon Sen. Ted Erickson’s office, 5037 Township Line Rd., Drexel Hill, PA (contact Adam at agarber@pennenvironment.org for info)
12:00 noon Sen. Charles McIlhinney’s office, corner of State and Main, Doylestown, PA (contact Tracy at tracy@delawareriverkeeper.org for info)
Save the Susquehanna: Stop the Frack Water Withdrawals
Also on Thursday, February 16 at 2 PM, in Harrisburg, at the Capitol Building, is an opportunity to resist the wholesale approvals of water withdrawals to gas drillers in the Susquehanna River watershed. After civil disobedience caused an illegal vote at the Susquehanna River Basin Commission’s (SRBC) December meeting, the commission is taking public comment again on a docket of over 20 gas industry water withdrawal requests.
This Thursday, the SRBC is holding a public hearing to receive verbal comment on the proposed water withdrawals. Then, next month the commission will vote on whether to approve the withdrawals. Please see the action alert from our allies at Gas Truth of Central PA for more details on how to participate in Harrisburg on Thursday.
SOS Butler County: Black Water + Purple Water = A Fracking Nightmare
Kim McEvoy manages to find a spot to put a tray of cupcakes in a kitchen where every level surface is covered with jugs of water. Some of the water is drinkable: that’s the water her husband re-fills at his job, using one-gallon jugs; or the water she drew from her then-clear, good-tasting well water back in 2008, stocking up for a hurricane. But some of that water is not drinking water. Many of the jugs have brownish-grayish water in them — the water that comes from her kitchen tap, which have an “X” marked clearly on them with a black marker. Kim’s kitchen tap has been connected again to her water well since the gas drilling company, Rex Energy, took away the water buffalo (large plastic container) full of replacement water they had been providing for her family up until January 16th.
Kim’s neighbor Janet McIntyre succeeded in persuading Rex Energy to provide both her family and Kim’s family with 20 gallons per week of bottled drinking water, but even that will be cut off by February 29th, and even that required Janet to threaten, in a phone conversation with Rex Energy representative, to call her attorney. “They were none too gracious about it,” Janet said. Six neighboring families still have their water buffaloes; two other families, besides the McIntyres and McEvoys, had the clean water deliveries cut off by Rex Energy in January. One of those families is paying out of pocket for replacement water.
In Kim’s kitchen last Saturday, February 4th, I had a conversation I never expected to have with a three-year-old. Referring to the jug of brownish-gray water I’d just watched Kim fill from her tap, I asked Kim’s daughter Skylar, “What does the black X mean?” She said smartly, “Don’t drink the water!” Looking at a photo Kim McEvoy took of her own bathtub last year, showing gray and black water residue, I asked Skylar, “Do you take baths in your bathtub any more?” and she answered emphatically, “Nope!”
Kim McEvoy lives in Connoquenessing Township, Butler County, in western Pennsylvania. She and, according to a rough survey, 51 of her neighbors have had their water “go bad” — discolored; in one case foaming; in some cases smelly; and in some cases running out — since January 2011, when her water suddenly turned such a dark gray that it left black marks in the bathtub. By September, struggling to find out what was in her water and struggling to get a secure source of clean replacement water, Kim had had enough. She wrote Governor Corbett a letter to which the governor has never responded. It began,
My name is Kimberlie McEvoy, I own my home in Connoquenessing Township, Butler County, and I have black water.
Between the end of February and the beginning of March 2011 my water turned black and had a foul, smelly odor. My fiancée and I showered in the water and became sick with headaches, fatigue and painful sinuses. I’m so glad I did not
bathe my two-year-old daughter in the water.The only thing in my environment that had changed was the drilling of two gas wells near my home, so I called the gas company, Rex Energy. They came out and retested my water well and gave me a water buffalo. The retest of my water showed arsenic, manganese, ammonia and other volatile organic compounds. Rex is now fracking the gas wells…
Right now the health and well being of my family depends on my water buffalo. When Rex Energy takes it away we will have no water. Since the fracking and flaring have begun, the air quality has deteriorated. We can’t play outside without getting a headache or a sore throat.
Now that the water buffalo is gone, the situation is much more serious. While Kim, her fiance and 3 year old daughter, Skylar, are neither drinking nor showering in their well water, their neighbors are experiencing multiple problems. Neighbors are reporting health symptoms including rashes; a severe nosebleed; vomiting; headaches; and more. Two leukemia cases have been reported.
One man died just over a week ago. According to Janet McIntyre, Kim’s neighbor, the man, Mr. Dennis Peterson, 49, had reported last September that he had “rashes all over his body,” and he was diagnosed with leukemia by December. The cause of death has not been confirmed independently as of this writing. While leukemia is associated with volatile organic chemicals, in particular benzene; and volatile organic chemicals abound in association with gas drilling — moving through air and water, while benzene also multiplies due to the sudden heavy industrialization and increase in truck traffic — it may be difficult to know whether the man’s rashes, failing health and death were directly caused by gas drilling in the area. The EPA recently found benzene in drinking water at 50 times the safe limit in Pavillion, Wyoming after fracking has been going on there for over ten years. Rex Energy has been drilling and fracking in the Connoquenessing area for over two years, and the people there appear to be completely without authoritative help from those who should be most concerned: the EPA, CDC and ATSDR.
“We are surrounded”
Janet McIntyre sent her water test results, including tests showing toluene, acetone, high methane levels, and other contaminants, including one test (which PA DEP says was a “blank,” meaning they say it was just trouble with the test tube) showing 1,3,5 trimethyl benzene, to EPA last December. The last she heard from EPA, around Christmas time, they had “received the documents but have been too busy to review them.”
Both families say that Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP) has told them their water troubles are “just aesthetic,” and has assured them that the water is safe to drink. Requests for re-tests have gone unanswered, and Janet McIntyre said that one PA DEP regulator told her, “You should be grateful for the fracking because they’re injecting lots of water underground, raising the level of the aquifer.” Both Kim and Janet say they have been told point blank, “You’re the only one having any problems.”
Unfortunately, the problems now include disappearing water. While the gas industry withdraws millions of gallons of water locally for fracking, local residents including the McEvoys and a neighbor named “Denny Fair,” are finding their water is running out. Denny Fair reported his water was “gone” around last November, according to Janet McIntyre; and Kim says her water runs out after seven minutes.
Some of the reported health impacts, such as the vomiting, severe nosebleed, and rashes described by Janet and Fred McIntyre, are disturbingly consistent with known gas drilling impacts. Janet also described flaming water on at least one occasion: “We collected Denny Fair’s well water in a bucket. At that point we set it on fire. We were so amazed it had caught fire, I thought, ‘oh, I was so stupid not to have a video camera!’ “
Janet described her own water as foaming out of the tap on two occasions, which she refers to as “attacks” because it felt their water was under attack by the gas drilling company. She said it was purple. Other residents have reported their water turning orange, red, and brown.
Janet McIntyre sent a statement to the press conference Protecting Our Waters organized in September 2011. and our summary of interviews with her up until that time describing her troubled water, including her test results and the death of the family’s dog, is here.
Five months later, when I finally met the McIntyres in person, Fred McIntyre told me, “We are surrounded by thirty gas wells.” On a ten-minute tour I saw several of those well pads spaced close together, along with a huge frack pit open to the sky.
Janet McIntyre, like many others, including Theo Colborn, had tried to describe to me in words the overpowering stench at gas drilling operations which regulators call an “odor event.” This blog reported on an “odor event” in Texas not long ago here. But when we stopped by the Grosick well pad on Woodlands Road and rolled down the car window, I was coughing to the point of retching within 60 seconds. It was not a mere “odor” or “smell” in the ordinary sense of the word — it was rather more like being overpowered, choked and nauseated. I have reported the event to the EPA and have gotten no response. But that was based on a few minutes’ exposure. The McIntyres said, “We were breathing that bad air all last summer.” So were the cows across the street from the Grosick well pad.
Kim McEvoy commented, “I can’t even stand to live here any more… my dream is dying.”
Kim’s gets the last word, from her letter to Governor Corbett — hand delivered to Governor Corbett’s Philadelphia office on September 7th:
I love Butler County but I fear I will have to foreclose on my home and leave. I just wonder how many more Pennsylvanians will have to make this same heart breaking decision. Please stop the drilling. It’s not right to allow the gas
companies to gamble with our lives.
UPDATE February 20, 2012: To take action to help the impacted families in Butler County, please send this letter to the EPA. It’s great if you can help by adding a supportive sentence of your own to the beginning of the letter to individualize it.
And, even while more bad news accumulates (a gray liquid observed spilling off a Rex Energy drilling pad site this morning while workers did not appear to observers to have contained the ongoing spill; another woman reported that foul odors from the Sarsen plant in Butler County sickened her on December 8th, from 1/4 mile away– that’s some extreme emissions for you!) there’s good news too!
Farmer Stephen Cleghorn of Jefferson County drove 3 hours round trip today to lend his own water buffalo to the McIntyre family; and I got a pledge from an environmental group to buy drinking water, for the month of March, for two of the impacted families, on an emergency basis! Step by step is the only way to build our meaningful assistance and resistance.
Thanks for all your letters to EPA and for any offers of help. For the moment, please email me at protectingourwaters@gmail.com if you would like to donate to help provide water, because I am already in touch both with the impacted families and with a wonderful network of local activists who are meeting right now to provide organized assistance. We will be accountable, transparent and public if any funds are donated. If you do want to help, please put DONATE WATER FOR BUTLER in the subject heading of your email; and we will coordinate with the bookkeeper of our 501(c)3 fiscal sponsor to make sure donations can be tracked properly and channeled to the families appropriately. We will report back. Meantime, please write EPA because really, this is their job. Thanks!
