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Feature- Other States Look To Pennsylvania To Learn From Marcellus Shale Errors
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By Rona Kobell, Chesapeake Bay Journal Maryland natural resources officials are trying to learn everything they can about drilling in the Marcellus Shale formation before granting any permits, saying they hope to avoid the environmental problems that Pennsylvania has endured.
About a year ago, two companies applied to drill for natural gas in Garrett County, in Maryland's far western corner. That county is one of two in the state that overlay the Marcellus Shale, a gas-rich rock formation about the size of Greece that also stretches across Pennsylvania, New York and Virginia. Already, several companies have leased 100,000 acres of land in Garrett and Allegany counties.
Maryland Department of the Environment Acting Secretary Robert Summers said the department has both the authority and the flexibility to regulate drilling effectively. But as he follows reports of water contamination and wastewater problems in Pennsylvania, he said, he can't help but worry about what would happen should Maryland approve the permits before it had looked at every issue. As a result, Summers said, he supports a bill winding through the General Assembly that calls for a two-year study before drilling begins.
"All of us, not just the regulatory agencies but the companies as well, have learned from the mistakes made in Pennsylvania," Summers said. "We're making sure we don't repeat the mistakes they've made."
John Griffin, Maryland's Secretary of Maryland's Department of Natural Resources, agrees that the state is not yet ready. He said the department still has to inventory its extensive land holdings in Garrett County and determine where it has mineral rights. Among his concerns is the preservation of the Savage River, its adjacent state forest, and the Youghiogheny River, which remains the state's only scenic and wild river.
"There are a lot of great natural resources in Garrett County," Griffin said. "We're concerned about the overall cumulative impacts on landscapes, forest fragmentation and habitat destruction. The question is where, to what extent and how we can go forward in a more measured way than in the Wild-Wild-West way, which is what is happening in Pennsylvania."
The Marcellus March Begins
Natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania has pumped money into struggling local economies and made some farmers very rich.
But it has also led to drinking water contamination, fish kills in once-pristine creeks and major wastewater problems that could affect the Susquehanna River, and its watershed, where much of the activity is occurring.
The gas has always been there, but no one could access it until about 10 years ago, when Halliburton pioneered a technology known as hydrofracking. The process uses water pressure, sand and a mix of chemicals to open fissures, or fractures, in the shale that holds the gas.
In the Marcellus in Pennsylvania, drillers bore about 8,000 feet down through overlying rock formations. When they reach the shale they turn the drill sideways. To fracture the shale they pump down about 5 million gallons of water laced with chemicals, such as sodium, benzene and strontium, to lubricate the rock and create the fissures, or fractures.
While four-fifths of the chemical-laden water, known as fracking fluid, stays in the rock, about 1 million gallons come back up. The wastewater brings with it naturally occurring, but harmful, elements buried deep in the rock, including radium.
Some companies recycle the water, storing it in lagoons near the drilling site. But in many cases in Pennsylvania, the water has been hauled to wastewater treatment plants. The plants are not equipped to remove many of the toxic substances before they discharge it into rivers and streams, some of which supply drinking water to communities downstream.
Pennsylvania only tests for radium every six to nine years at drinking water intake facilities. Recently, the EPA asked the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to test wastewater sites accepting drilling waste on a more frequent basis after a New York Times story focused attention on the issue.
Because each fracking operation requires million of gallons of water, many environmentalists and residents worry about withdrawals from small streams. The Susquehanna River Basin Commission regulates those withdrawals. And while it occasionally steers companies away from slow-to-refill streams, it rarely denies permits.
Peter Patokas, a Lycoming College biologist who studies hellbender salamanders, is concerned about loss of habitat and the largely self-regulated nature of drilling in Pennsylvania.
"No one, literally no one, has come out and looked at entire impacts, like air pollution, birds, amphibians, and the ecosystem," he said.
Another problem is drinking water contamination. Wells can be contaminated with methane and other chemicals, particularly if the casings are installed improperly.
In 2005, the EPA exempted fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act protections, over the objections of several agency scientists. The exemption was known as the Halliburton Loophole because then-Vice President Dick Cheney, Halliburton's former CEO, was intimately involved with crafting the nation's energy policy at that time and, it was widely believed, pushed for the exemption. Several congressmen and senators have since pushed to regulate fracking. The EPA is studying the issue.
In the meantime, regulations vary across the states. West Virginia allows and taxes drilling, but its legislature declined this year to pass more stringent environmental regulations. A drilling moratorium remains in effect in New York because of safety concerns. Marcellus drilling hasn't begun yet in Virginia, although land has been leased. Drilling there is permitted by the Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy.
But hundreds of wells have been drilled in Pennsylvania in the last three years - some in state forests. The state has also declined to pass a tax, making it the only shale-drilling state without one.
The pace of drilling concerned John Quigley, who was secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Recreation until just a few months ago. Gov. Ed Rendell signed a moratorium on leasing in the state forests before he left office; his replacement, Republican Tom Corbett, has said he intends to lift it.
Quigley said the state was ill-prepared to regulate the industry properly, or turn down its largesse. Companies pumped money into the economy, as well as into politicians' campaigns. Corbett, for his part, took nearly $1 million in campaign contributions from the industry, more than all his rivals combined.
"The bottom fell out of the economy almost from the minute I sat in the secretary's chair, and then the bottom fell out of the state budget shortly thereafter," Quigley said. "The gas industry here has engaged in shameless influence buying - It has distorted the public debate. There's a backlash now, as more and more environmental incidents are occurring."
Travis Windle, a spokesman for the Marcellus Shale Coalition, a group of energy companies and related firms, did not return several phone messages to comment on the Pennsylvania problems. Several other gas companies contacted for this story did not respond, nor did DEP officials.
Drew Cobbs, executive director of the Maryland Petroleum Council, said most of Pennsylvania's problems stem from well design and are not connected to the fracking process itself. He agrees that Maryland should learn from Pennsylvania, but worries Maryland may lose an opportunity if it takes too long to allow drilling.
"There are issues to be addressed with the development of it, there's no doubt about it," Cobbs said. "The question is, can it be safely and responsibly done, and we think it can be."
Lessons From Pennsylvania
But in many cases, both the DEP and the Susquehanna River Basin Commission have fined companies that have illegally withdrawn water or polluted waterways.
In towns like Dimock, PA, a tiny crossroads between Scranton and Binghamton, several residents lost their once-pristine water supply when high levels of methane seeped into their wells, causing one of them to blow up. For more than a year, these residents drank bottled water at their own expense; last year, the DEP fined the company, Cabot Oil and Gas, $240,000 and ordered the company to plug the wells believed to contain the migrating methane and restore the water supply.
In August 2009, the DEP fined Texas-based Spectra Energy $22,000 after its Clearville compressor station shut down twice in one week, allowing methane, a potent greenhouse gas, to be vented and lubricating oil to be spilled on several properties and a nearby pond.
Angel Smith, owner of the pond, said such a fine is inadequate. She said she and her husband have already spent $11,000 to install a water-purification system after discovering her well water was laced with chemicals. They have lost animals to the water, she said, and have had to give up their garden, as well as the 500 blueberry bushes she grew for a pick-your-own operation.
"You have 500 blueberry plants, and nobody comes and picks them, what do you do with them?" she asked. "You have a compressor station that blows toxic oil on your property, when you're trying to be an organic farmer and not use pesticides, and they turn around and get a $22,000 fine?"
Smith said that she believes Central Pennsylvania has become a "sacrifice zone," wherein rural families are expected to give up their rights to clean air and clean water so that companies like Spectra can learn to drill the right way, and the nation can wean itself off both foreign oil and dirty coal. It's a refrain repeated by many living in the area who have experienced similar problems.
John Trallo, a musician who lives about 30 miles north of Williamsport, said he has seen his once-pristine community creek run dry at times and has gotten sick from drinking his water, as has his 17-year-old son. He said drilling companies have tried to intimidate him into signing a lease for his small property, but he refuses. The sparsely populated county could become the site of thousands of wells in the next few years.
"We've become the new ground zero for drilling here," he said. "They're trying to, I guess the new phrase is, "Dimock us.'"
Asked if he had any advice for other watershed states considering drilling, Trallo said simply: Don't do it.
"This is not an industry that, from what I've seen, can be regulated," Trallo said.
Other States Proceed Cautiously
Stories such as these have limited drillers' opportunities in other states.
In Virginia's Shenandoah Valley last summer, Carrizo Energy was on its way to securing a drilling permit. An official with the state's Department of Mining, Minerals and Energy said the company had met all of the criteria. But it needed a special exception from Rockingham County.
Citizens and environmentalists flooded what was to be a routine zoning meeting. The commissioners agreed to table the matter while they investigated; since then, they have visited neighboring states to see drilling problems.
Kate Wofford, executive director of the Shenandoah Valley Network, praises the commissioner's diligence. But she questions why environmental protection should be left to commissioners with no background in geology or hydrology.
"The county staff has no capacity to become experts in hydrofracking and go head-to-head with the gas industry lawyers," she said. "It's just absurd to think the county is the level at which communities and natural resources can be assured to be safe."
In Eric Robison's mind, though, Rockingham is lucky. At least it has zoning laws to offer some protection. His county, Garrett, has none.
Robison, who founded a group called Save Western Maryland, asked his representatives to help slow down drilling. But Sen. George Edwards and Del. Wendell Beitzel instead put in bills requiring the state to put in Marcellus drilling regulations by the end of 2011.
Robison and other concerned residents then turned to Montgomery County Del. Heather Mizeur, who submitted the bill for a two-year study period.
"I'm a contractor, I build houses. I'm not the tree-hugging, dirt-kissing environmentalist that people paint me to be," Robison said. "But we do not have regulations for this industry. This is not your grandfather's well."
Robison came to Annapolis to testify at the Environmental Matters Committee in support of the study bill, along with Quigley and many other Pennsylvanians.
Cobbs testified for the industry. At least 20 states have shale deposits, he said, and the companies will go elsewhere rather than wait for Maryland to do a study.
Griffin disagreed
"I've said to them, 'you've hired lobbyists. You've leased land. You're doing business here. How do you expect us to sit in the face of what's happened in other states and not take a precautionary approach?'" Griffin said. "What we know about their revenues suggests they are not going to walk away."
Chesapeake Bay Foundation Maryland Executive Director Kim Coble said Maryland should be able to proceed differently because of lessons learned from its northern neighbor. The drilling area is confined to Western Maryland. Thus far, she said, the drillers have been amenable to the need for further study.
But perhaps the best hope, Coble said, is that, for once, the legislature is ahead of the problem.
"I get in front of this committee frequently and talk about cleaning up this, cleaning up that," she said. "What would it be like if we didn't make those mistakes, if we didn't have to clean it up and fix it?"
Rona Kobell is a former writer for the Baltimore Sun. (Reprinted from Chesapeake Bay Journal)
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4/4/2011 |
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