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Fracking Moratorium Urged by U.S. Doctors Until Health Studies Conducted
The U.S. should declare a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in populated areas until the health effects are better understood, doctors said at a conference on the drilling process. Gas producers should set up a foundation to finance studies on fracking and independent research is also needed, said Jerome Paulson, a pediatrician at George Washington University School of Medicine in Washington. Top independent producers include Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK) and Devon Energy Corp. (DVN), both of Oklahoma City, and Encana Corp. (ECA) of Calgary, according to Bloomberg Industries. “We’ve got to push the pause button, and maybe we’ve got to push the stop button” on fracking, said Adam Law, an endocrinologist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, in an interview at a conference in Arlington, Virginia that’s the first to examine criteria for studying the process. Fracking injects water, sand and chemicals into deep shale formations to free trapped natural gas. A boom in production with the method helped increase supplies, cutting prices 32 percent last year. The industry, though, hasn’t … Continue reading
State College Voters Overwhelmingly Approve Community Bill of Rights to Ban Fracking
November 9th, 2011 – “We’re really excited; this is a big win,” said Braden Crooks of Groundswell in State College, PA today. Yesterday, State College voters turned out a 72% “YES” vote on a community bill of rights to ban fracking. While the content of the bill of rights is similar to that of Pittsburgh and other groundbreaking bans, what’s unique here is that it’s the first successful popular vote of this type in the U.S. The vote came less than a week after an exploding compressor station in Bedford County, PA reminded voters just how unsafe gas drilling is. Two coordinated rallies celebrating this victory and confronting the gas drilling industry are planned for Friday, November 18th in State College, at noon and 1:30 pm respectively. Protecting Our Waters will be there. Read all about yesterday’s popular vote in the Groundswell press release below, submitted by Braden Crooks and Peter Buckland: Groundswell … Continue reading
Hydrofracking sure to contaminate water
December 13th, 2011 – As an environmental engineering technician with NYSDEC Region 5, I managed scores of groundwater remediation projects in the 1990s. I’ve reviewed countless hydrogeologic reports and seen thousands of lab results from contaminated wells. I’m familiar with the fate and transport of contaminants in fractured media, and let me be clear: Hydraulic fracturing as it’s practiced today will contaminate our aquifers. Not might contaminate our aquifers. Hydraulic fracturing will contaminate New York’s aquifers. If you were looking for a way to poison the drinking water supply, here in the Northeast you couldn’t find a more chillingly effective and thorough method of doing so than with hydraulic fracturing. My experience investigating and remediating contaminated groundwater taught me some lessons. There’s no such thing as a perfect well seal. Occasionally sooner, often later, well seals can and do fail, period. No confining layer is completely competent; all geologic strata … Continue reading
CDC scientist: tests needed on gas drilling impact
January 4th, 2012, PITTSBURGH - One of the government’s top scientists says much more research is needed to determine the possible impacts of shale gas drilling on human health and the environment. “Studies should include all the ways people can be exposed, such as through air, water, soil, plants and animals,” Dr. Christopher Portier wrote to The Associated Press in an email. Portier is director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. While other federal and state regulators are already studying the impacts of gas drilling on air and water, Portier said research should also include “livestock on farmed lands consuming potentially impacted surface waters; and recreational fish from potentially impacted surface waters.” Portier made clear that the science on the issue isn’t settled yet. “We do not have enough information to say with certainty whether shale gas drilling poses … Continue reading
Expert: Wastewater well in Ohio triggered quakes
January 3rd, 2012, CLEVELAND, OH – A northeast Ohio well used to dispose of wastewater from oil and gas drilling almost certainly caused a series of 11 minor quakes in the Youngstown area since last spring, a seismologist investigating the quakes said Monday. Research is continuing on the now-shuttered injection well at Youngstown and seismic activity, but it might take a year for the wastewater-related rumblings in the earth to dissipate, said John Armbruster of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y. Brine wastewater dumped in wells comes from drilling operations, including the so-called fracking process to extract gas from underground shale that has been a source of concern among environmental groups and some property owners. Injection wells have also been suspected in quakes in Ashtabula in far northeast Ohio, and in Arkansas, Colorado, and Oklahoma, Armbruster said. Thousands of gallons of brine were injected daily into the Youngstown … Continue reading
VICTORY! Public outrage halts D&L well in Youngstown.
December 31st, 2011 – Anti-fracking organizers won a victory last Saturday when Youngstown citizens were awoken by rumblings not of Santa’s hoofbeats, but another toxic earthquake from an injection well in their backyard, prompting the well’s closure. As reported in today’s edition of the Vindicator, the Ohio Division of Natural Resources has ordered the temporary closure of a D&L brine-injection well, a storage site for radioactive and carcinogenic fracking wastewater and the probable cause of at least nine earthquakes in Youngstown. The D&L well has been the subject of widespread community outrage, Youngstown area residents have attended township meetings, staged protests, sung anti-fracking carols outside the mayor’s office, and even blockaded entrances to the D&L injection site to put a stop to the toxic earthquakes themselves in the absence of any regulatory intervention. Susie Beiersdorfer, a geologist at Youngstown State and local activist, stated that “hard work and constant pressure is paying off. It’s in the news, it’s raising people’s awareness. That’s … Continue reading
Fracking wastewater leaked onto Ohio roads
December 24th, 2011, WOODSFIELD, Ohio – A spill of fracking wastewater in Monroe County has residents there concerned about whether officials there are prepared to handle the coming boom, as more and more contractors access shale formations deep underground. Ohio Department of Transportation officials said a truck hauling wastewater from the process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, spilled part of its load Thursday along two state roads in Monroe County, Ohio. Terrill Wickham, ODOT clerk at the Monroe County garage, said the spill involved about four miles along Ohio 537 and about six miles on Ohio 260 near Marr, and was reported around 7 a.m. to the Ohio State Highway Patrol after a motorist indicated there were some slick areas on at least one of the roads. “We thought it was going to be much worse than it was,” he said. “We were afraid it was oil but it was … Continue reading
New pipeline to carry Ohio gas: 70-mile extension of Texas-N.Y. line would connect to state’s developing shale wells
December 23rd, 2011 – Chesapeake Energy and American Electric Power are working together on a pipeline expansion that would connect Ohio’s Utica and Marcellus shale gas resources to markets in the East and South. The companies, joined by Spectra Energy Corp., are calling the project the Ohio Pipeline Energy Network, or OPEN. They will build 70 miles of pipeline to connect Ohio resources to Spectra’s Texas Eastern pipeline system, which runs from Texas to New York. The estimated cost is $500 million, according to Spectra. “It’s an issue of building infrastructure, and infrastructure needs to be built to manage these wells,” said Tom Stewart, executive vice president of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association. Stewart described this as a “chicken and egg” situation, in which investment in a pipeline can lead to investment in gas wells and processing, and vice versa. Chesapeake, based in Oklahoma City, is the largest leaseholder … Continue reading
Rush to Extract Natural Gas Stirs Health Concerns: Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale Reservoir holds largest US supply
December 23rd, 2011 – (Please visit original posting for audio and video material) The rush is on to tap new sources of domestic energy in the United States and the competition is especially fierce in Pennsylvania. The eastern state sits atop the Marcellus Shale, a 350-million-year-old rock formation, more than a kilometer underground, that holds the largest reservoir of natural gas in the United States. Since 2005, Pennsylvania has issued 4,000 permits to extract the gas, with another 2,500 expected each year for the foreseeable future. The growth is evident on back country roads where wells dot the farms, forests and fields across the state. Fracking But controversy surrounds how operators drill the gas. The process is calledhydraulic fracturing or “fracking.” Brian Grove, senior director of corporate development for Chesapeake Energy, the nation’s second largest gas company, says it has been used safely for decades. “The United States has drilled over one million wells … Continue reading
Black, Foamy Water Worries Fracking Neighbors: Pennsylvania residents blame illness on natural gas extraction
December 12th, 2011 – (Please visit original posting for audio and video material)There is a lot of construction near Janet McIntyre’s home in southwestern Pennsylvania. It’s not new houses, but new industry: 10 gas wells, a compressor station and multiple drilling-waste ponds. The state sits atop the nation’s largest deposit of natural gas known as the Marcellus Shale. What concerns McIntyre and her neighbors is an extraction process called hydraulic fracturing or “fracking.” It combines deep horizontal and vertical drilling with enormous amounts of water, chemicals and sand. Water troubles McIntyre never worried about her water before. When she looks out on the wooded rural landscape from her front porch she talks about her well water liked a cherished lost friend. “We never ran out of water. We never had a problem with our water. It was cold coming out of the spigot just as if you went to a regular spring … Continue reading
Tighter Natural Gas Extraction Rules Debated: Hydraulic fracturing raises health concerns
December 13th, 2011 – (Please visit original posting for audio and video material) Pennsylvania sits atop the largest deposit of natural gas in the United States. Called the Marcellus Shale, it’s a rich reserve trapped in a vast, kilometer-deep rock formation which is regarded as an important domestic source of energy and economic engine for the region. A drilling process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, that combines horizontal and vertical drilling with water, sand and chemicals has made it economical to extract. But the rush to drill has sparked a national debate over whether and how these drilling operations should be regulated to protect public health and the environment. Fifteen hundred protestors brought their concerns to Philadelphia this fall for “Shale Gas Outrage,” a rally calling for a halt to gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale. They warn it is a disaster of unprecedented proportions unfolding across Pennsylvania. The Marcellus Shale … Continue reading
Incidents where hydraulic fracturing is a suspected cause of drinking water contamination
December 19, 2011 - NRDC supports federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing under the Safe Drinking Water Act. We believe this is a sensible approach that would ensure a minimum federal floor of drinking water protection in the more than 30 states where oil and gas production occurs. Opponents of such regulation claim that hydraulic fracturing has never caused any drinking water contamination. They say this because incidents of drinking water contamination where hydraulic fracturing is considered as a suspected cause have not been sufficiently investigated, either because scientists and regulators could not properly investigate (did not have the information or technology needed) or because they chose not to, even where signs point to hydraulic fracturing. Some cases where groundwater was contaminated during hydraulic fracturing operations have been attributed to other causes, such as faulty well structure, even if a well failed during the hydraulic fracturing process. Below is a list of incidents where drinking water has been contaminated … Continue reading