Audiences at public talks show texture of fracking debate. Next up: Revolution Books, Joint Landowners Coalition

My nature and disposition are better suited for reporting and writing than public speaking. But it’s hard to write a book about an issue like fracking and then duck out of the fray.

So I do what I can as a speaker, and it's a role I find both challenging and fruitful. As a reporter, I seek out sources as part of my work-a-day routine. Less frequently do they seek me out (although that frequency is increasing in the Internet age.) The dynamic is different at public talks. Here I encounter in one spot a freewheeling mix of those there to listen and those there to tell me something, with protocols and expectations that tend to change from group to group. Speaking invitations have taken me to some diverse venues including geology conventions, libraries, bookstores, universities, a retirement community and a brewery. Some audiences tend to be neutral, some opinionated, and some committed to specific advocacy positions for or against gas drilling. Some are more informed than others. Some have unique experiences or are tied to the outcome of the story in a compelling and personal way. Some spontaneously become sources: the young couple in Greenville, Pennsylvania who anxiously await drilling crews to begin Utica Shale exploration on their property with large measures of both hope and anxiety and little concrete information; or community members in Oberlin, Ohio mystified about the workings and functions of a nearby disposal well; or a geology expert in Buffalo who offers technical insights in the interest of boosting clarity and credibility in my work. Spontaneous public turbulence is vital to all journalism. It can complicate a simple story line, but it also aerates and enriches reporting by broadening a reporter’s knowledge base and empathy for stakeholders.

In upcoming weeks, I will be participating at singular events hosted by groups at opposite ends of the fracking spectrum. On Wednesday, I will give a talk at Revolution Books in Manhattan– a store that provides customers “who refuse to accept the horrors of today’s world” with “the books and the deep engagement with each other about why the world is the way it is and the possibility of a radically different way the world could be.” I expect the audience will include anti-fracking activists who feel Big Energy’s grip on natural resources and influence on global politics comes at the expense of public health and the environment.

On May 30, I will moderate a forum in Albany hosted by the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York, a group that sees shale gas development as an economic engine and means for national independence. The forum will include speakers from the industry, medical community, and academia who will “debunk myths” about shale gas development. I expect the audience will include some people who feel that environmental and health risks are merely a fabrication of liberal interests challenging the system of free enterprise.

I have agreed to both of these forums because they give me a front row seat.  As a journalist, I think it’s critical to be engaged in and witness to all aspects of this debate and to learn as much as I can as I go. I do not have a formal position on whether the risks of shale gas development outweigh the rewards. But I am not exactly a disinterested observer. I feel strongly that transparency in matters of overwhelming public interest is one that is naturally embraced by any journalist, and there is a critical need for transparency, provided by aggressive reporting, in the energy industry.

I also believe that the press serves as an agent for reform and a popular counterbalance to concentrations of wealth and power. Some call this watchdog journalism, which is a fitting and non-political name. But I don't shy away from this: This brand of watchdog journalism embodies liberal ideals that traditionally have been associated with the traditional media since the days of Joseph Pulitzer and Upton Sinclair. Journalists are not there to take sides, but to equip society – commoners as well as elites -- with the tools it needs for self-governance, and that begins with a spotlight on matters of public interest.

Efforts to test Marcellus in upstate NY produces leaky well Carrizo crews on site to fix casing problem in Owego

Service rig at leaky Marcellus well in Town of Owego NY
Photo provided 

A Houston company’s pioneering venture into the Marcellus Shale in upstate New York has produced a leaky gas well that the company is trying to fix before abandoning the project or turning it over to another company.

A service crew is now working on the Wetterling Well in the Town of Owego after state inspectors found gas leaking from the ground between the bedrock and the cement casing last fall. Carrizo Oil and Gas drilled the vertical well in October to test the Marcellus Shale. The formation, one of the largest gas reserves in the world, runs from upstate New York through Pennsylvania and into parts of Ohio, West Virginia, and Maryland. Carrizo began the project in the Town of Owego even though New York state is not issuing permits for the kind of horizontal drilling and high volume hydraulic fracturing necessary for commercial production. The permitting moratorium is tied to a review of health and environmental impacts by the state Department of Environmental Conservation, now in its fifth year, and a growing protest movement against shale gas development in New York state.

Problems were first confirmed at the Wetterling well on Oct. 25, according to DEC records, when an inspector, responding to updates from company representatives, found levels of combustible gas leaking from the well bore. The leak averaged about 20 cubic feet per day and was coming from somewhere between the cement casing and the ground – an area known as the annulus.  According to the records, a company representative asked the agency last fall if it would be “OK to abandon the well with a vent pipe.”

The DEC inspector, who is not identified by name on paperwork released in response to a Freedom of Information Request to an area resident, reported in notes:

I told him that I did not know and the New York has no specific guidelines about the matter. I went on to say that I have seen other companies re-entering wells of their own accord to fix small leaks. We agreed to continue monitoring the well and that Carrizo would submit an interim plugging report…

The DEC is updating regulations for shale gas as part of the environmental review, called the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS). In February and March, officials said they expected the report to be issued within weeks. More recently they have said there is no timetable for its completion.

Under current rules, New York state gas well inspectors have broad discretion in interpreting conditions and tailoring enforcement efforts for a given permit. The leak at the Wetterling well was allowed to continue over the winter, before the company began work to fix the problem this spring.

Richard Hunter, vice president of Investor Relations for Carrizo, confirmed that a service crew had set up a rig at the Wetterling site to attempt to locate exactly where gas was leaking from. Hunter explained that crews inserted audio equipment into the hole to listen for the leak – similar to listening for a leak in an inner tube. When they locate the spot, he said, they will “squeeze in more cement” to plug the void between the casing and the ground.

Methane leaks, and the extent to which they are disclosed, have caused major problems for the industry’s image in Pennsylvania. Chronic problems in Dimock, Pa. became a showcase for the anti-fracking movement after methane leaked from production wells into an aquifer used by area residents. The problem became apparent after one water well exploded in 2009, leading to greater public awareness of risks related to shale gas development. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has documented dozens of other cases of methane leaks from gas development, some of them fatal.

Industry officials say problems with methane migration from drilling are exaggerated, and point out that methane can leak into water naturally.

Hunter said the Owego well was drilled as part of a contract with a company that sold assets to Carrizo.  From the beginning, Carrizo planned to plug and abandon the well after testing it, Hunter said, although it could be an asset in future business deals. Carrizo is not likely to pursue development in New York given the regulatory uncertainty, he said. But another company might.

 “The thickness, rock quality and everything in the well was very encouraging, and the same kind of thing we are seeing in West Virginia where we are having success,” Hunter said.

Note: Area resident Gerri Wiley provided records obtained by the Freedom of Information Law from the DEC and a photograph for this report. Sue Heavenrich also reported on the well today on her blog, The Marcellus Effect 

Reporting of shale gas story influenced by Internet trends PR, advocacy, fill niche as journalistic void grows

This post considers the latest news about methane migration in Pennsylvania. But to tell that story, I first have to tell another story.

In 2010, the number of public relations specialists in the U.S. had risen to an all time high of 320,000. By contrast, the number of reporters had fallen to a low of 58,500. The fantastic trajectory of the PR business will hold strong at least through 2020 with a 21 percent growth curve, according to Statistics at the Department of Labor. Over the next decade, the number of new PR jobs alone will exceed the payroll of the entire news industry.

For professional reporters and those who value their vocational contributions to society, it’s only going to get worse. The reporting payroll is projected to decline by another 6 percent by 2020. That means the public will be receiving more information billed as news that has been shaped, spun, or fabricated by professionals working within the narrow parameters of particular corporate interests. This growing rubric of the Fourth Estate will use the traditional tools – press releases and phone calls -- to leverage stories into news outlets. It also has at its disposal Facebook, Blogger, and Twitter – powerful tools to bypass the working press altogether.

At the same time free content on the Internet has eroded the number of staff writers and newscasters and lent traction to corporate interests, it has given rise to a volunteer corps of citizen journalists, muckrakers, and filmmakers. Josh Fox and Michael Moore have become role models for a new breed of advocacy journalists who, once merely consumers in the Market Place of Ideas, now have new access as vendors via social networks. By way of example, I have written about Vera Scroggins, an amateur videographer who lugs equipment over hill and dale, into town and country, recording municipal meetings, toxic spills, and interviews with residents. She filmed operations of shale gas operators that were beyond the wherewithal of the sparse professional reporting staff in rural northern Pennsylvania, and posted footage on the Internet, providing a repository of information otherwise unavailable. Participation of people like Vera is a good thing. It’s empowered the populous by giving everybody a voice -- access to the public stump in the square, and the ability to share information.

But it comes with a cost. The indy and PR news sources that thrive on the Internet are a welcome boon to free speech, but they also tend to undermine the traditional free press, which is unable to generate on-line revenue sources needed to sustain professional reporting. Beyond that economic consideration, there is the matter of content: Independent news largely comes unfiltered for noise, bias, and confusion. When newspaper reporters get a fact wrong, large or small, they are called on it. If necessary, corrections are issued, and their frequency is considered in a reporter’s annual performance evaluation. Additionally, reporters’ work has to pass muster with a staff of editors. These editors undoubtedly have varying political views, but they are all professionally committed to serving the expectations of a diverse readership. Editorial staff is separate from the news staff, both in the physical segregation of office space and in clearly defined roles.

As the public turns to free content on the Internet at the expense of paid content by professional reporters, the type of credibility and checks and balances that professional journalists have traditionally brought to the public are disappearing. The depth of reporting, and the newspaper’s traditional role as advocate for open government and transparency in matters of public interest are also suffering with the decline of revenue available for investigative journalism. It’s not just about the revenue, it’s about the source of revenue – from an independent readership and viewers – that makes the press such an effective watchdog.

Now for the other part of this story.

The gas industry claims that drilling is not a public health threat, and that fracking fluid is harmless. In support of these claims it cites lack of evidence tying operations to pollution and illness. What’s missing is full disclosure. The industry operates on private property without the level of regulatory oversight that other industries face. (It is exempt from both federal Safe Drinking Water Act and  hazardous waste laws that require disclosure of what goes into and what comes out of the ground.) When something goes wrong, it is often a matter between the company and the homeowner to resolve. When legal pressure necessitates, the industry can make the problem go away with settlements that contain non-disclosure clauses.

A recent example came to light with a personal injury claim against Range Resources and other operators by a family in Mt. Pleasant Township, Pa. Range Resources agreed to pay the Hallowich family $750,000 to settle a lawsuit for personal injury damages related to operations near their home. The case was settled by the parties in 2011, no official complaint was filed, and the records were sealed.  

We only know this because the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Washington Observer-Reporter filed and won a suit to get the records unsealed. The unsealed documents also revealed that the PA Department of Environmental Protection did not maintain records of an investigation into a complaint about water contamination at a neighboring property, and that the investigator, Mark Kiel, soon left the agency to work for the gas drilling company he had been investigating. For every case that gets unsealed, there are hundreds, if not thousands of cases sealed in documents that are never opened because their public relevance goes unchallenged, and that’s largely because mainstream media outlets have fewer resources to do that then they did in the golden age of investigative journalism.

Meanwhile, both the DEP and gas companies are able to keep matters of public interest unfolding in Susquehanna County from full public view. Last week, the DEP issued a brief statement that exonerated gas company WPX of causing methane pollution in three wells in the Township of Franklin Forks. Yet the agency is not releasing any results related to the investigation or to its conclusions. It is known that the Franklin Forks area and the nearby Salt Springs State Park contain rich methane reservoirs in both deep and shallow formations (hence the attractiveness of the area to petroleum operators). Although the DEP released its conclusions that the gas affecting the water wells was not from nearby gas wells or production zones being tapped by WPX, it did not explain the source or course of pollution at concentrations five times greater than the threshold for explosion risks.

It’s been a high-visibility case dominated by interest groups. Yoko Ono and other celebrities supporting anti-fracking groups visited the site in January to press their case against allowing fracking in neighboring New York state. On the other side of the fence, the industry group Energy In Depth issued a press release titled “DEP Debunks Methane Claims in Franklin Township,” which seized on the conclusion of the DEP investigation as proof that the industry is being vilified. Meanwhile, the landowner of one of the affected wells – the Manning family – is suing WPX for the pollution. Given the trend, it would be unsurprising if this gets settled behind closed doors.

Franklin Forks may have been less of a story if not for events that have unfolded in Dimock Township, about a dozen miles to the south. More than four years after the explosion of a residential water well called attention to the problem, the DEP is still investigating recurring water pollution problems in the middle of a gas field being developed by Cabot Oil & Gas. Wells providing water to several dozen homes have been taken off line or fitted with filtration equipment to remove gas and other pollution since the water well of Norma Fiorentino exploded on New Year’s Day, 2009. Under the Rendell administration, the DEP cited Cabot for various violations related to the problems.

Now Governor Tom Corbett’s DEP is investigating cases involving two homes in an area where the agency has banned drilling of new wells in the wake of chronic water problems. Recent tests showed dangerous levels of methane flowing into residential water wells near the junction of Carter Road and State Route 3023. Yet the problem, in the eyes of the DEP, remains elusive.  “We are slowly getting some test results back,” DEP spokeswoman Colleen Connolly said. “However  - as per our attorney, DEP does not share test results from private water wells with anyone but the private well owner.”

To be clear, the agency has a policy of releasing incomplete data to homeowners, a policy that has produced much criticism but little action. Officials justify the long-standing practice of excluding some fields as a sound method to filter noise from relevant data. Critics argue that the agency cherry picks the data, and the unreleased fields might be useful indicators of drilling contamination and other problems. Moreover, homeowners have a right to all results of water quality tests that can flag health risks.

The fight over the cause and consequences of methane seeping into private water wells in Susquehanna County is one example of an issue that could stand a little more legal leverage from professional news outlets. While some outlets, including the Scranton Times-Tribune, do what they can with declining resources to report the story, readers would be well served by a legal challenge to the DEP’s refusal to release ground water analysis paid for by tax-payer money concerning matters of overwhelming public interest. News outlets, of course, have to choose their battles and they have less discretion than ever as their revenues fall. In the meantime, we do our best with half-page press releases issued by regulatory agencies, rhetoric from talking heads for or against fracking, or hyperbolic “I told you so” by PR firms and activists representing stakeholders.  

NY Appellate Court upholds Home Rule fracking ban Landmark case critically linked to Marcellus development

New York’s anti-fracking movement scored a critical victory today in a landmark case testing the right of local governments to ban fracking.

In a much-anticipated decision, the state’s Third Appellate Division upheld a ruling  giving local governments authority to ban the controversial practice of unconventional drilling and well-stimulation techniques – including high volume hydraulic fracturing -- to extract petroleum from bedrock.

Today’s ruling comes after the shale gas industry appeal of a February, 2012 decision by a lower court favoring the right of local governments to ban drilling. The appeal was based on an argument that legislation amending the Oil Gas and Solutions Minding Law gave the state, not local governments, exclusive jurisdiction over wells.

In today’s appellate court ruling, the three-judge panel unanimously agreed that the oil and gas law did not reflect legislative intent to “pre-empt a municipality’s power to enact a local zoning ordinance banning all activities related to the exploration for, and the production or storage of, natural gas and petroleum within its borders.”

This theme was reiterated emphatically throughout the 15-page ruling:

We find nothing in the language, statutory scheme or legislative history of the (Mining Law) statute indicating an intention to usurp the authority traditionally delegated to municipalities to establish permissible and prohibited uses of land within their jurisdictions. In the absence of a clear expression of legislative intent to preempt local control over land use, we decline to give the statute such a construction.

Industry attorney Tom West said his legal team will file for an appeal, but it is up to the discretion of the state’s high court whether to hear the case.

Home Rule bans are supported by activists who fear shale gas development, including the use of high volumes of undisclosed chemical solutions injected into the ground to fracture shale and release gas – poses unacceptable threats to environment and public health. Activists praised the court’s decision to uphold local bans, while using the victory to encourage broader opposition.

“The real solution to this problem is for the state to ban fracking, but until that happens, local governments have a responsibility to protect their citizens from the oil and gas industry,” Kelly Branigan said in a statement. Branigan is a founding member of Middlefield Neighbors and a member of New Yorkers Against Fracking. Residents of the towns of Middlefield and Dryden supported the bans, which were legally challenged by Anschutz Exploration and Norse Energy.

The Marcellus and Utica shalea, some of the largest gas reserves in the world, extend throughout Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio. Today’s ruling could have a profound impact on the future of shale gas development in the Empire State. Unlike conventional gas development, which tends to be geographically limited, the footprints of shale gas resources cover large regions. Uncertainty over jurisdiction from one town to the next can be a critical disincentive for drillers. Absent a successful appeal, according to West, the prospects of large scale shale gas development in New York are dim.  “This sends a signal to the industry that New York is not stable,” he said. “You can invest millions of dollars to lease in New York and be at the mercy of a 3-2 town hall vote.”

Which is exactly why grass roots activist like it. Local control of the gas industry is a “David and Goliath battle,” said Branigan. “This decision shows that our democracy in New York State still works.”

Permitting for gas wells in New York has been on hold for five years, pending the outcome of a policy review by the state Department of Environmental Conservation accounting for environmental and health impacts. That review, called the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) has no timetable for completion, Department of Health Commissioner Nirav Shah said yesterday.

The battle continues, and shale gas development is still a real possibility in certain parts of the state despite today’s ruling. There are municipalities that support gas development, including many in Southern Tier counties that are adjacent to productive gas fields in Pennsylvania. If shale gas development were to begin in New York, it would be here, according to a plan floated by Governor Mario Cuomo last year.  The incentive to develop these areas in Broome, Tioga and Delaware counties are strong, because the geology is promising, they are close to major pipelines, and there is relatively little opposition from local town boards.

Unknowns about Eaton Township injection well tell story ...Observations from the field in Ohio

A tanker empties a load of fracking waste at a well in Eaton Ohio

Ohio’s Class II injection wells, depicted on a map as red dots, look like a rash spread over the eastern half of the state. These are end points for fracking waste.

While regulators and industry officials say properly constructed and regulated injection wells are a safe and effective answer to the growing waste stream from shale gas production, others view them as nothing more than sanctioned dumping of industrial toxins. Concerns over the long-term consequences of the practice are compounded by a lack of information about the composition of fracking waste, and distrust of an industry that operates outside of the authority of local jurisdictions and the line of public vision.

There are currently 179 wells in Ohio accepting drilling waste, much of it from Pennsylvania. Earlier this month, I went to see what one of these red dots on the map actually looks like. I was in Oberlin to give talks at the college and a nearby Quaker-inspired retirement community called Kendal at Oberlin. My host and guide was John Elder, an Oberlin College alumnus and Kendall resident with a broad background ranging from elder-community planner to Harvard theologian. Joining us on the field trip was Dennis Hubbard, a geology professor at the college.

We drove east from Oberlin on a series of county roads though a flat landscape of working class single-story homes -- the modest suburban homogeneity sporadically broken by a 19th century farmhouse or an empty field. The neighborhoods, cleared for farming in the 1800s, were later parceled into the kind of post-World War II American dream grounded in conformity, order, and gainful employment at nearby steel and auto plants. Those jobs are disappearing, and some homes are fairing better than others under the weight of change. These kinds of rust-belt neighborhoods are the underdogs in the 21st century’s post-manufacturing economy, and you can’t help but root for them.

John slowed and turned his Toyota van through an open gate onto a dirt lane running along a hedgerow flanking a dormant field amid houses in the Town of Eaton. Within several hundred feet of the road, three holding tanks and a chain link fence came into view. A solitary red tanker truck was on the far end, hooked up by a hose. (I later learned the tanks provide means for operators to recover any remaining traces of gas or oil from the waste before it’s injected.) The entire operation could have fit into a small barn. This was the visible aspect of the Suater well, which extended underground for 20 acres.

The Sauter well was developed in the mid 1980s to produce gas from Clinton Sandstone at a depth of 2,500 feet, a venture that proved unfruitful. In 1985, it was converted into a Class II injection well. It’s relatively small, and used mostly by conventional drilling operators. According to records from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, between 500,000 and 2 million gallons of waste per year is injected under this lot -- less than what is typically produced by a single shale gas well. The red dots to the east, closer to booming Marcellus Shale gas fields in Pennsylvania and new exploration ventures into the Utica Shale in Eastern Ohio, represent busier and more conspicuous operations. According to a report by Aaron Marshall of The Plain Dealer, state records showed Ohio was on pace to store a record amount of drilling waste in 2012 -- nearly 14 million barrels (588 million gallons) -- with about 56 percent coming from out of state, and from Pennsylvania in particular.

It’s likely that Ohio’s potential as a waste importer will continue to expand in the foreseeable future. Aaron reports that applications are pending or have recently been approved for 35 new injection wells in the state. In the northeast corner of Portage County, east of Eaton Township (in Loraine County), work has resumed on a cluster of 14 production and disposal wells that will operate around the clock to accommodate 270 to 300 tankers daily. Public concern has interrupted the plans, but not stopped them. Applications were temporarily suspended statewide in 2012 after state officials determined a dozen earthquakes in 2011, including a 4.0 trembler in Youngstown, were caused by injections wells along a previously unknown fault line. (See report here.) Permits resumed last fall, after officials modified construction standards and included a provision for seismic testing at the discretion of ODNR staff.

Meanwhile, Coast Guard officials are working on a proposal to support the shale gas boom by opening inland waterways to ship fracking waste. The policy would allow flowback, which includes fracking chemicals, brine and other waste that comes from deep formations, to be transported by barge on the Allegany and Ohio Rivers from burgeoning gas fields in Pennsylvania.

Ohio is a favored destination for drilling waste partly due to geology, partly due to its proximity to Pennsylvania, and partly due to regulatory matters. In 1983 the EPA, the body that regulates injection wells, granted Ohio officials authority to oversee those operating within the state. Ohio qualified for this status, called “primacy,” under the Reagan administration. It did this through an application process to show it meets minimum federal requirements to protect drinking water sources. Primacy has since been a key to Ohio’s waste disposal business, because it keeps permitting, record keeping, and inspections in the hands of state officials, easing the kind of bureaucratic hassles associated with federally regulated waste disposal programs.

Another factor comes into play, and it’s not limited to Ohio: The drilling and fracking industry is exempt from federal hazardous waste disposal laws. Consequently, fracking waste can be injected into Class II wells, which have less stringent specifications and lower costs than Class I wells mandated for hazardous waste. For drilling or fracking operators from Pennsylvania, it’s cheaper to get rid of waste in Class II wells, and cheaper still in Ohio, which has both the regulations and subterranean space, such as the Sauter well.

The red tanker at the Sauter well was operated by a burly man in a t-shirt and jeans. He approached us in a manner that suggested varying degrees of menace and curiosity and waited for us to explain ourselves. He fingered an unlit cigarette. His boss didn’t say anything about us being there, he said in a southern drawl.

Dennis, dressed in jeans, boots, t-shirt and work vest, looks like a man who has spent much of his ample career in the field. Dennis did the talking for our party, and his confidence in the subject, along with his observation that “there are people on all sides of this issue,” seemed to gain some purchase with the truck driver. I didn’t want to discourage the conversation by pulling out a note pad, so I left them to talk, trusting that I would be able to draw on state records to flesh out what little was visible from the scene.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources Oil and Gas Data base has online production records that show the early history of the Sauter well, when it was developed by Dome Producing, but nothing since it was converted to an injection well in the early 1990s under the ownership of S & H Water Service. Mark Bruce, a spokesman for the DNR, explained that the agency was still adding to its online data base, and he forwarded me files that I had requested. They included 10 notices of violations between 1991 and 2009 for leaks, substandard equipment specifications, missing records, and a complaint by a town zoning official on behalf of residents about noise, smells and truck traffic. 

Citations are not unusual for injection and production wells, and it’s hard to gauge their significance and effectiveness in the broader context of things. ProPublica’s Abrahm Lustgarten offered this perspective in a June, 2012 piece for Scientific America:

A ProPublica review of well records, case histories and government summaries of more than 220,000 well inspections found that structural failures inside injection wells are routine. From late 2007 to late 2010, one well integrity violation was issued for every six deep injection wells examined — more than 17,000 violations nationally. More than 7,000 wells showed signs that their walls were leaking. Records also show wells are frequently operated in violation of safety regulations and under conditions that greatly increase the risk of fluid leakage and the threat of water contamination.

Lustgarten cites an injection well in Chico, Texas as one example. Despite engineering models and calculations, officials had no idea the well would fail until one day in 2003 when, as described by Chico Public Works Director Ed Cowley, waste began bubbling up from the ground from other points on the property like artesian springs. How often does this sort of thing happen? Lustgarten’s attempt to quantify information – including the rate of failure on injection wells -- based on EPA records lead to dead ends due to a lack of information.

… the EPA acknowledged it has done very little with the data it collects. The agency could not provide ProPublica with a tally of how frequently wells fail or of how often disposal regulations are violated. It has not counted the number of cases of waste migration or contamination in more than 20 years. The agency often accepts reports from state injection regulators that are partly blank, contain conflicting figures or are missing key details, ProPublica found.

In 2007, the EPA launched a national data system to centralize reports on injection wells. As of September 2011 — the last time the EPA issued a public update — less than half of the state and local regulatory agencies overseeing injection were contributing to the database. It contained complete information from only a handful of states, accounting for a small fraction of the deep wells in the country.

The waste is not subject to testing or disclosure requirements, so its hard to know what is in a given load, but flowback from oil and gas wells typically contain salts, naturally occurring radio isotopes, heavy metals, petroleum byproducts such as benzene and various volatile organic compounds, and undisclosed array of chemicals used in fracking. Accidents sometimes happen, and sometimes they make news. Last spring, an injection well tank exploded in Parker County Texas after a “vapor management system” failed and gasses backed up into the storage tank, according to the fire marshal, as reported by the Weatherford Democrat. There were no injuries. Firefighters eventually extinguished the blaze and hazardous waste crews were dispatched to contain the resulting spill. In 2003, an explosion killed three operators who were pumping waste from trucks into a well in Rosharon, Texas. 

In Ohio, John Elder and I left Dennis to chat with the tanker operator and we walked across the street where a local activist was talking with a neighbor. With only a fraction of the operation visible above ground, the telltale sign of an injection well’s status is truck traffic. And traffic to this well, along with news about the earthquakes in other areas and general concerns about Ohio’s status as a drilling waste importer, had made the Sauter well an item of curiosity and suspicion. Activists and some community members saw the well as both precedent and harbinger, and they were making inquiries of their own.

John Pais, a member of Oberlin’s Communities for Safe and Sustainable Energy and the Western Reserve Land Conservancy, was chatting with a woman who lives across the street in a tidy Cape Cod style house with a swing set in the yard. It’s where she and her husband raised their children, now mostly grown. Pais was jotting notes on a yellow legal pad in the interest of self-education and to share with officials from the town zoning board. The woman’s husband was fighting brain cancer, he learned.  The woman noted trucks coming and going, and something that once smelled like burning rubber for days on end, but although she had lived there for a significant part of her life, she knew little about the history or current status of the operation “or what they are taking out of there.” I explained that it was an injection, well – that they were putting stuff in rather than taking it out. “They’re putting stuff in?” she asked, incredulously.

I didn’t see, in this particular field trip, the Big Story: hard evidence that injections wells are categorically bad, or reasons to believe they are harmless. But I did see a recurring theme in the broader story of local residents waking up to regional impacts of shale gas development: a disconnect between the industry and the communities in which it operates. It’s likely that people who live across the street from a chicken farm, auto plant, forgery, saw mill, furniture manufacture, trash incinerator, or quarry sometimes have issues with their business neighbors, but those issues are generally guided by an understanding of what they are dealing with, how they operate, and whether they conform to local ordinances. Unresolved issues can go before the town board. Likewise, the functions of a quarry truck, a milk truck, a UPS truck, or a manure spreader are familiar to the people who see them, and perhaps their operators less guarded about people approaching them for information.

Regardless, people tend not to like waste disposal operations in their neighborhoods, and there is a Home Rule movement afoot in Ohio working against injection wells. As Marshal reports in the Plain Dealer, nearly 63 percent of voters in the Town of Mansfield, in the southern part of the state, approved a home rule charter amendment that opens the door for local municipalities, rather than the state, to site injection wells. A waste disposal company with state approval to operate a pair of injections wells in the town is challenging the case in a federal court in Cleveland. Meanwhile, injection well bans passed in Cincinnati, Yellow Springs and Niles will serve as similar legal tests for the jurisdiction of local governments.

Waste disposal is an essential component to cheap energy production, but it is not comprehensively factored into the cost of doing business. Is shale gas production, as many proponents suggest, an eco-friendly bridge to a sustainable future and if so, have the legacy costs of injection wells been accounted for? Can large (and undetermined) volumes of undisclosed waste injected into the ground be counted on to remain put despite geological changes and physical deterioration of well casings over generations? More broadly, how is a well that the government sanctions as a waste repository different from a production well where a large percentage of the frack fluid pumped into the ground to stimulate production remains unrecovered?

The risks and rewards of shale gas development need to be deeply considered. Shale gas development offers energy independence to this country over the short term, and carbon fuels in general offer the promise of relief to energy-impoverished countries striving for the same standard of living that Americans have enjoyed for generations. But it’s hard to weigh all the factors fully and fairly over the long term with an industry that tends to operate out of public view.

Anti-frackers score victory on upstate NY home front... Town of Sanford board forced to repeal fracking gag law

Under legal pressure from anti-fracking groups, the Town of Sanford has repealed a law that prohibits people from publically discussing fracking at town meetings.

With the repeal, officials from The Natural Resources Defense Council announced this week they are dropping their case against the town.

In September, members of the Sanford Town Board passed a resolution banning the discussion of fracking during the public comment period at town meetings. The NRDC filed the lawsuit in February with the Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy in the U.S. Court of the Northern District of New York. The Town of Sanford resolution is unconstitutional, according to the complaint, because it bans speech at public meetings “about a matter of substantial public interest that has generated significant political activity.”

Several of the board members have direct financial stakes in the outcome of fracking and, be extension, policy being influenced in town halls on the controversial practice of extracting gas from bedrock using high volumes of undisclosed pressurized chemical solutions. Town Supervisor Dewey Decker is among those who signed a lease with XTO Energy to produce gas from the Marcellus Shale under his land. Decker leads a coalition of farmers who negotiated a deal with XTO Energy in 2008 to lease 50,000 acres for $110 million plus 13.5 percent royalties. Since then, development has been on hold pending a policy review on the impacts of shale gas development by state health and environmental officials

Sanford Town board meetings were becoming a draw for outspoken activists and residents opposed to fracking. Acting in the capacity of Town Supervisor, Decker sent a letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo last fall urging the state to expedite the pending health and environmental policy review, and complaining that a delay was “only empowering opponents.” Prior to that, the board passed a resolution urging the state to move forward, and rejecting calls for the town to ban fracking.

Decker was out plowing his fields today and unavailable. He doesn’t carry a cell phone and he takes his lunch with him, his wife Dawn told me. I will update this post after I reach him.

“This is a vindication of the right to free speech,” NRDC attorney Kate Sinding said in a statement. “And it sends a message to communities everywhere. As Americans, we have the right to speak up when we feel threatened. And it is our government’s responsibility to listen.”

Status report: In my last post a stated my “next post” would be about injections wells in Ohio. To finish that, I’m waiting for some records from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which I expect by early next week.

Scale of shale “oil patch” beyond historical comparison

I drove across part of the oil patch this week. I left early Monday morning from Endicott, New York and headed west at a good clip on Intestate 86. By late afternoon, 390 miles down the road, I was in Oberlin Ohio.

Oil patch --- It’s a term of endearment in oil and gas circles that suggests the colloquial charm and Ol’ Boy character of the industry. Unthreatening, familiar, folksy, agricultural, and local … Like a pumpkin patch. It conjures a notion that – contrary to hype -- there’s nothing really new or fanciful about fracking.

Yet, nomenclature aside, there is nothing old-fashion about 21st century shale gas development. The scale of resource alone – take a drive across Devonian ”oil patch” sometime – is a primary distinction. So are the “unconventional” practices that make drawing gas from rock possible. High volume hydraulic fracturing and computer-modeled horizontal drilling have spurred an on-shore drilling boom as dissimilar to yesteryear’s oil patches as Big Ag and ethanol production is to Ma and Pa’s back 40.  Even so, regulatory controls on the industry remain stuck in the past – a time prior to regional planning and national hazardous waste disposal laws, when toxic loads were legally disposed of in the ground or injected into rivers.

I drove across portions of the Marcellus and Utica shales that collectively encompass the sub-surface of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Maryland, including many regions that have never before been touched by the extraction industry. The sheer footprint of these resources and others like them throughout the country have increased the number of stakeholders with futures, for worse or better, tied to their development. (For an areal view of the oil patch, check out this video by Peter Saltonstall.)

What will this look like and what legacy will it leave for the next generation? Numbers, information and reports on the Internet have provided a convenient way to extract information on demand, often minus complexity, nuances and noises of real life.  But, as editors like to emphasize to reporters, nothing replaces being there. Writing Under the Surface has provided me with an unexpected windfall of information, perspective, and sources that comes with invitations from various stakeholders to speak on the subject. Inevitably this brings me to places where I would not have otherwise gone, and puts me in touch with stories I would not have otherwise seen. This past week I visited with activists at a potluck dinner at the basement of Peace Community Church in Oberlin, Ohio; spoke with a worker on the job at an injection well in central Ohio; and visited an area where wildcatters have begun exploring the Utica shale in western Pa. More on that in my next post.