Embedded Files
Landfill poised to take fracking debris
By Mary Perham
Bath Courier
Posted Aug 12, 2012 @ 04:00 PM
Bath, NY-Steuben County is ready to accept soil and rock from Marcellus Shale drillings at the county landfill.
However, no start date has been set and there is a question how much debris – also known as cuttings – will be brought in this year. The material will be brought in from drilling in shale deposits in Pennsylvania.
County Public Works Commissioner Vincent Spagnoletti told the county Legislature’s Public Works Committee Monday it isn’t likely Steuben will be receiving large quantities of the cuttings removed during the initial well drilling.
The recent decline in drilling in Pennsylvania will reduce how much the county takes in -- and privately operated landfills in Chemung and Allegany counties now accept the cuttings, which will cut back how much debris Steuben receives.
Spagnoletti said the county will not accept any materials left from hydrofracturing, which releases natural gas from forcing massive quantities of chemically treated water through the shale.
Those hydrofracking waste materials include contaminated waste water, sludge and brine.
The county’s decision to accept cuttings has been opposed by some local environmental groups, which charge the debris is unsafe because it is radioactive or could be used to hide other highly radioactive materials.
Spagnoletti said landfill officials must approve the list of materials being delivered before it arrives. The material then must pass through a monitor at the landfill before being dropped off, he said.
Cuttings have a slightly higher radioactive level than other soil, but remain well below state Department of Environmental Conservation standards, he said.
In addition, annual loads of all radioactive material accepted at the landfill will be restricted to 50 percent of the level the DEC considers safe.
County officials would not allow opponents to discuss their concerns, saying they could speak during the public comment period held at the beginning of the full Legislature Aug. 27.
One opponent, Rachel Treichler, of Hammondsport, agreed to speak with Spagnoletti after the meeting, and passed out information cautioning against the cumulative effect of radioactive materials stored in one area.
Spagnoletti said he did not expect the topic to be discussed by the committee again, because cuttings will be treated as industrial waste.
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Fracking Chemical Fire Explosion Waxahachie Dallas Texas Magnablend Chemical Plant October 2011
Chemical mixing sparks massive Texas plant fire
WAXAHACHIE, Texas - A fire sparked as workers mixed chemicals at a plant south of Dallas shot massive plumes of black smoke and bright orange flames into the sky Monday, forcing schoolchildren and residents to evacuate or take cover indoors to avoid possible exposure to dangerous gases.
Flames engulfed a large complex at a Magnablend, Inc., facility in Waxahachie. The fast-moving blaze overwhelmed a sprinkler system and consumed a fire truck, but no injuries were reported from the fire or resulting smoke.
Waxahachie Fire Chief David Hudgins said it wasn't immediately clear what chemicals were involved in sparking the fire, but crews expected to quell the flames by late afternoon and allow about 1,000 evacuated residents to return to their homes in the city 30 miles south of Dallas.
"It's the building that's burning, and there's chemicals inside, multiple kinds of chemicals," Waxahachie Fire Department spokeswoman Amy Hollywood. "Saying which kind would be speculative."
According to the company website, Magnablend houses ammonia and other chemicals for industries ranging from oil fields to industrial cleaning, at the facility located just off of Highway 287 near Interstate-35E.
The fire started just before 11 a.m., reports CBS Station KTVT.
Magnablend Environmental Health and Safety Manager Donald Golden said the fire spread very rapidly. "Fire departments were on the scene pretty quickly, but it [the blaze] just seemed to take off and accelerate pretty quickly," he told KTVT.
Nicolas Brescia of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said air quality readings in the city of about 25,000 did not require further action but that officials would continue monitoring to ensure hazardous materials did not spread outside the plant.
Magnablend spokesman Donald Golden told WFAA-TV that 25 to 30 employees who were inside the plant's 100,000-square-foot warehouse evacuated safely when the fire broke out before 11 a.m. Golden said the company manufactures about 200 products, including some that are hazardous when ignited.
Although fire departments from multiple cities have been called in to combat the blaze, so far the fames and fumes are so intense that fire crews have decided to let the fire burn itself out.
"All firefighters have been pulled back because of the severity of the situation," Hollywood said.
Authorities had ordered residents closest to the plant to evacuate, while others were advised to stay inside with doors and windows shut.
Jessenia Colin, an assistant general manager at a nearby Hampton Inn and Suites, said hotel staff members turned off air vents so smoke and chemicals didn't enter the rooms. As they waited for news and watched the smoke billow, staff covered their mouths to protect against the heavy chemical smell that hung in the air.
"It smells like a whole bunch of chemicals, like wrappers burning," Colin said. "It's making everyone's heads hurt."
Stephanie Otto said she was preparing her new restaurant for a Tuesday opening about a quarter-mile from the plant when she heard sirens and walked outside to see a "huge plume." She said she could hear what sounded like gun shots for about 15 minutes, and there was a strong smell of ammonia.
"It was huge," Otto said. "It looked like an atomic bomb went off."
Ellis County emergency management officials issued a mandatory evacuation order for an apartment complex, an elementary school and a junior college. Sheriff's officials urged residents not to drive toward the area of the fire. Parts of Highway 287 have been shut down.
Magnablend, Inc., manufactures, blends and packages chemicals. Much of its business revolves around energy production, including chemicals used to stimulate oil and gas wells and hydraulic fracturing. The company was launched in Waxahachie in 1979 and now employs about 250 people, with operations in Pennsylvania, Wyoming and North Dakota as well as Texas.
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality spokeswoman Lisa Wheeler said Magnablend has been in compliance with its state permits. A search of public documents revealed no significant violations for the company.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/10/03/national/main20114848.shtml
Hydrofracking Upstate poses health risk to Long Islanders, local opponents say
Karen Rubin, Long Island Populist Examiner
December 7, 2011
So what if New York State permits hydrofracking to extract the natural gas in the southern tier. So what if environmentalists are right, and the blighted landscape ruins its tourism industry, contaminates the farms and the crisscrossing of pipes makes the land useless for future development upstate? Why should Long Islanders care?
In the first place, the rules change that New York State is contemplating in order to unleash a gold rush for the natural gas extraction companies will affect the entire state - the Marcellus Shale, which is in the southern tier, is only one area they are eyeing; they are also eyeing the Utica shale which spans most of New York State.
But most urgently for Long Island, where breast cancer rates are disproportionately high, is the risk to contamination of our water and food supplies from carcinogenic chemicals that are injected into the ground during the extraction, and the radon gas, a radioactive substance, that is released along with natural gas in the shale.
Natural gas may be less polluting than oil, but is still a fossil fuel, with a finite supply that is harder and harder to extract. In fact, the biggest oil companies -Exxon-Mobil, BP, Chevron - now faced with limits on the oil they can get at economically, are all acquiring natural gas extractors.
Laura Weinberg, president of the Great Neck Breast Cancer Coalition, notes that the process, if allowed, would set back years of progress the state has made in controlling carcinogenic chemical contamination in our everyday lives.
"As Governor Cuomo considers whether or not to allow fracking in New York State after January 11th, the entire cancer community in our state is in an uproar over its possible implementation," she comments. "Over 250 physicians in New York State have sent a letter to Governor Cuomo urging him to not allow fracking as public health is at stake."
Weinberg stated,
"For over 17 years I have been an advocate in the breast cancer movement, as well as president of the Great Neck Breast Cancer Coalition and a Board Member of the New York State Breast Cancer Network for over a decade.
"The NYS Breast Cancer Network consists of more than 20 grassroots breast cancer organizations in communities stretching from Buffalo to Long Island. Collectively our member organizations reach over 100,000 New Yorkers. Through these 20 organizations we work each and every day with people who are diagnosed with cancer and see the devastation it brings to them and to their families. We have fought hard for decades to lower the risk of cancer by demonstrating the link between cancer and environmental exposures.
"Working with our NYS legislators and the Governor's office, the NY State Breast Cancer Network was instrumental in the passage and adoption of laws and policies that reduce New Yorkers' exposure to carcinogens. We were instrumental in banning BPA in children's products and we worked with NYS government agencies on The New York State Green Procurement Executive Order, which includes a comprehensive list of 85 toxic chemicals for NYS to consider when purchasing products and services. This five year effort has put every New Yorker at lower risk of many cancers and other chronic diseases.
"The hydrofracking process uses a significant number of chemicals from that list that are known or suspected carcinogens such as benzene, formaldehyde and naphthalene. If hydrofracking is approved, our collective past efforts to protect public health in New York State is washed away as residents will be exposed to the very same carcinogens that the Green Procurement Executive Order intended to minimize -this time from fracking fluids. Fracking is a direct assault on the cancer community, as well as on the public health of New York State.
"According to the National Cancer Institute, 1 in 3 women and 1 in 2 men will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. What legacy are we leaving to our children if we allow hydrofracking chemicals into their environment that have been shown to increase the risk of cancer?"
At the November 30 DEC hearing in New York City, we encountered Paul Hartman, the government affairs representative for Chesapeake Energy, which is one of the companies hoping to get permits. Asked about the chemicals that are used in the process, Hartman declined to list any of the specific chemicals that are used in the process.
In fact, one of the concerns raised is that the industry keeps the chemicals secret, under a claim of "trade secrets."
Hartman said that there is a voluntary registry where the companies can list the chemicals. Note the word "voluntary."
But Weinberg cited the remarks of biologist and cancer researcher, Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D, at the press conference organized by the Food and Water Watch Campaign, during the DEC's public hearing in New York City on November 30. Dr. Steingraber was specific in listing the chemicals and their danger:
"Fracking fluids contain carcinogens and cancer-promoting chemicals: More than 25% of the chemicals used in natural gas operations have been demonstrated to cause cancer or mutations (Colborn, Kwiatkowski, Schultz, & Bachran, 2011). Between 2005 and 2009, according to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, hydraulic fracturing companies used 95 products containing 13 different known and suspected carcinogens. These include naphthalene, benzene, and acrylamide (Committee Staff for Waxman, 2011). Thirty-seven percent of chemicals in fracking fluids have been identified as endocrine-disruptors. By definition, these substances have the power, at vanishingly low concentrations, to alter hormonal signaling pathways within the body. Many can place cells on the pathway to tumor formation. Exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals has been implicated in cancers of the breast, prostate, pituitary, testicle, and ovary (Birnbaum & Fenton, 2003; Soto & Sonnenschein, 2010). These exposures may alter gene expression in pregnancy and early life (Colborn, et al., 2011)."
Weinberg added, "Moreover, many of us are wondering where the state plans to unload contaminated waste from daily, ongoing fracking activities? Regarding this concern, The Citizen's Campaign for the Environment (CCE) of Long Island issued the followed statement in a recent press release, "No plans for disposal of hazardous fracking wastes. There are no wastewater treatment plants in New York State designed to treat wastewaters from high-volume fracking operations. The draft review and proposed regulations are unacceptably vague with regard to what will become of the billions of gallons of toxic waste that will be produced in New York State once these operations are commenced."
"If fracking in New York State concerns you, we urge you to submit comments to the Department of Conservation (DEC) and letters to Governor Cuomo's office by January 11th. Collectively, we can make a difference!" Weinberg stated.
To submit comments online, go to the DEC website: www.dec.ny.gov/energy/76838.html
You can also send a letter to:
The Honorable Andrew M. Cuomo
Governor of New York State
New York State Capitol Building
Albany, NY 12224
© 2011 News & Photo Features Syndicate, a division of Workstyles, Inc. All rights reserved. For editorial feature and photo information, go to www.news-photos-features.com or email krubin723@aol.com.
Radioactive Waste from Horizontal Hydrofracking
By James L. “Chip” Northrup
http://www.otsego2000.org/documents/10sep21_RadioactiveWastefromHorizontalHydrofracking.pdf
Chemical and Biological Risk Assessment for Natural Gas Extraction in New York
Ronald E. Bishop, Ph.D., CHO
Chemistry and Biochemistry Department
State University of New York, College at Oneonta
Draft, January 21, 2011
http://www.otsego2000.org/documents/RiskAssessmentNaturalGasExtraction.pdf
Leaked Congressional Report on Frack Chemicals
Deadly Gas Industry Cover-up
Colorado Officials Investigating Hydrogen Sulfide Reports At Oil And Gas Drilling Sites
First Posted: 8/8/11 03:05 PM ET Updated: 8/8/11 03:05 PM ET
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/08/oil-gas-drilling-hydrogen-sulfide-colorado_n_921227.html
When it comes to oil and gas news, it's hard to beat 'fracking' for a more buzz-worthy topic. Add 'hydrogen sulfide gas' to the headline, though, and and expect eyebrows to rise.
A Sunday report in the Glenwood Springs Post Independent presented evidence the toxic gas, which can cause severe respiratory distress and death, has been documented in various concentrations at oil and gas drilling sites in Colorado.
Exposure to the gas at low concentrations can cause headache, dizziness, and upset stomach. At higher concentrations, gas inhalation triggers unconsciousness and death through respiratory paralysis.
A 2006 study titled 'Hydrogen Sulfide, Oil and Gas, and People's Health,' notes hydrogen sulfide develops naturally in conjunction with crude oil and natural gas, with 15 to 25 percent of U.S. gas wells likely 'soured.'
Established processes for removing the gas in processing facilities have been demonstrated effective, though homeowners near wells report feeling ill. Additionally, several workers have also grown ill after documented safety violations.
The reports have triggered Global Community Monitor to launch the 'Bucket Brigade' project, a community-led air monitoring program. Residents who live near oil and gas operations in Colorado and New Mexico gather air samples and submit them for lab analysis. A report published in July tested nine of the samples and found 22 toxic chemicals, including four carcinogens at levels ranging from 3 to 3,000 times higher than established safety limits.
A sample by the Bucket Brigade contained hydrogen sulfide gas at levels 185 times higher than a threshold set by the EPA as posing long-term health risks to humans.
The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission is tasked with investigating reports of hydrogen sulfide gas. Officials are expected to report their findings Monday in Denver.
Watch a KREX report on hydrogen sulfide at oil and gas sites.
http://scrapper.media.mit.edu/wiki/Talk:WellWatch
Talk:WellWatch
From WellWatch
Hello: My name is Carl L. Mc Williams, I AM married to Karen and we live in Garfield County, Colorado. There are over 10,000 active CH4 (methane) gas wells inside Garfield County, Colorado.
I spent one full year working on these CH4 wells. I was employed by LONKAR US LTD. a Canadian company and I worked on a "swabbing rig". We were not part of the exploration (drilling). We serviced existing and producing natural gas wells. A swabbing rig is a "workover-rig" and our purpose was to remove water from the well that had stopped the flow of natural gas in a producing well. It turns out that the water we were removing was residual "fracing" water and we were never informed of the benzene and other chemicals that exist in this "production water".
In March of 2008, my swabbing rig was working on a well site where the gas company had reused the same "fracing" fluids in an attempt to save money. The problem with that is the reusing of "fracing" fluids causes the manifestation of H2S, (Hydrogen Sulfide Gas) which, in doses above 50 ppm for 30 minutes is deadly. My co-worker died and I spent three months in workers-comp recovery. My employer and the billion dollar energy company basically lied and covered-up their gross negligence in ordering my co-worker and I to expose ourselves to the deadly H2S without proper safety equipment, such as supplied-air-respirators. Federal OSHA fined my employer. I blew the whistle to OSHA and was fired for doing so. My whistleblower case with OSHA is still pending and I have been black-balled from the industry.
That said, I do want to bring to your attention a very deadly practice that is taking place on every "fracing" job site. "Fracing" uses silica sand in the "fracing mix". The truck drivers, pulling "sand-cans" (box-car-size-trailers) full of silica sand arrive at the well site and using high pressure pumps unload from the "sand-cans" the silica sand into the "fracing tanks". During this process there is created a silica sand dust cloud that is much more dangerous than asbestos. Just as cut glass will lacerate the flesh of your arm, this silica sand dust is an airborne particulate, that when breathed into the lungs will cause lung damage that is a quicker death than asbestos exposure and extremely painful for the victim.
I informed Federal OSHA of this danger to Americans but nothing has happened from OSHA yet.
Therefore, I am informing you folks. The gas drilling industry has an expression: "WELL-FIELD-TRASH". The corporate officers of the natural gas industry considers all of their well workers to be "TRASH". The worker safety-protection measures on these gas well sites is non-existent.
Pass the word about the silica sand dust these Americans are breathing.
Carl Mc Williams Silt Mesa, Colorado, email: mcwilliams@balance-energy.us
The Whole Fracking Enchilada
Violating the bedrock, the atmosphere, and everything in between
Violating the bedrock, the atmosphere, and everything in between
by Sandra Steingraber
by Sandra Steingraber
I HAVE COME to believe that extracting natural gas from shale using the newish technique called hydrofracking is the environmental issue of our time. And I think you should, too.
Saying so represents two points of departure for me. One: I primarily study toxic chemicals, not energy issues. I have, heretofore, ceded that topic to others, such as Bill McKibben, with whom I share this column space in Orion.
Two: I'm on record averring that I never tell people what to do. If you are a mother who wants to lead the charge against vinyl shower curtains, then you should. If the most important thing to you is organic golf courses, then they are. So said I.
But high-volume slick water hydrofracturing of shale gas-fracking-is way bigger than PVC and synthetic fertilizer. In fact, it makes them both cheaply available. Fracking is linked to every part of the environmental crisis-from radiation exposure to habitat loss-and contravenes every principle of environmental thinking. It's the tornado on the horizon that is poised to wreck ongoing efforts to create green economies, local agriculture, investments in renewable energy, and the ability to ride your bike along country roads. It's worth setting down your fork, pen, cellular phone-whatever instrument you're holding-and looking out the window.
THE ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS can be viewed as a tree with two trunks. One trunk represents what we are doing to the planet through atmospheric accumulation of heat-trapping gasses. Follow this trunk along and you find droughts, floods, acidification of oceans, dissolving coral reefs, and species extinctions.
The other trunk represents what we are doing to ourselves and other animals through the chemical adulteration of the planet with inherently toxic synthetic pollutants. Follow this trunk along and you find asthma, infertility, cancer, and male fish in the Potomac River whose testicles have eggs inside them.
At the base of both these trunks is an economic dependency on fossil fuels, primarily coal (plant fossils) and petroleum (animal fossils). When we light them on fire, we threaten the global ecosystem. When we use them as feedstocks for making stuff, we create substances-pesticides, solvents, plastics-that can tinker with our subcellular machinery and the various signaling pathways that make it run.
Natural gas is the vaporous form of petroleum. It's the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of fossil fuels: when burned, natural gas generates only half the greenhouse gases of coal, but when it escapes into the atmosphere as unburned methane, it's one of the most powerful greenhouse gases of them all-twenty times more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping heat and with the stamina to persist nine to fifteen years. You can also make petrochemicals from it. Natural gas is the starting point for anhydrous ammonia (synthetic fertilizer) and PVC plastic (those shower curtains).
Until a few years ago, much of the natural gas trapped underground was considered unrecoverable because it is scattered throughout vast sheets of shale, like a fizz of bubbles in a petrified spill of champagne. But that all changed with the rollout of a drilling technique (pioneered by Halliburton) that bores horizontally through the bedrock, blasts it with explosives, and forces into the cracks, under enormous pressure, millions of gallons of water laced with a proprietary mix of poisonous chemicals that further fracture the rock. Up the borehole flows the gas. In 2000, only 1 percent of natural gas was shale gas. Ten years later, almost 20 percent is.
International investors began viewing shale gas as a paradigm-shifting innovation. Energy companies are now looking at shale plays in Poland and Turkey. Fracking is under way in Canada. But nowhere has the technology been as rapidly deployed as in the United States, where a gas rush is under way. Gas extraction now goes on in thirty-two states, with half a million new gas wells drilled in the last ten years alone. We are literally shattering the bedrock of our nation and pumping it full of carcinogens in order to bring methane out of the earth.
And nowhere in the U.S. is fracking proceeding more manically than Appalachia, which is underlain by the formation called the Marcellus Shale, otherwise referred to by the Intelligent Investor Report as "the Saudi Arabia of natural gas" and by the Toronto Globe and Mail as a "prolific monster" with the potential to "rearrange the continent's energy flow."
In the sense of "abnormal to the point of inspiring horror," monster is not an inappropriate term here. With every well drilled-and thirty-two thousand wells per year are planned-a couple million gallons of fresh water are transformed into toxic fracking fluid. Some of that fluid will remain underground. Some will come flying back out of the hole, bringing with it other monsters: benzene, brine, radioactivity, and heavy metals that, for the past 400 million years, had been safely locked up a mile below us, estranged from the surface world of living creatures. No one knows what to do with this lethal flowback-a million or more gallons of it for every wellhead. Too caustic for reuse as is, it sloshes around in open pits and sometimes is hauled away in fleets of trucks to be forced under pressure down a disposal well. And it is sometimes clandestinely dumped.
By 2012, 100 billion gallons per year of fresh water will be turned into toxic fracking fluid. The technology to transform it back to drinkable water does not exist. And, even if it did, where would we put all the noxious, radioactive substances we capture from it?
HERE, THEN, are the environmental precepts violated by hydrofracking: 1) Environmental degradation of the commons should be factored into the price structure of the product (full-cost accounting), whose true carbon footprint-inclusive of all those diesel truck trips, blowouts, and methane leaks-requires calculation (life-cycle analysis). 2) Benefit of the doubt goes to public health, not the things that threaten it, especially in situations where catastrophic harm-aquifer contamination with carcinogens-is unremediable (the Precautionary Principle). 3) There is no away.
This year I've attended scientific conferences and community forums on fracking. I've heard a PhD geologist worry about the thousands of unmapped, abandoned wells scattered across New York from long-ago drilling operations. (What if pressurized fracking fluid, to be entombed in the shale beneath our aquifers, found an old borehole? Could it come squirting back up to the surface? Could it rise as vapor through hairline cracks?) I've heard a hazardous materials specialist describe to a crowd of people living in fracked communities how many parts per million of benzene will raise risks for leukemia and sperm abnormalities linked to birth deformities. I've heard a woman who lives by a fracking operation in Pennsylvania-whose pond bubbles with methane and whose kids have nosebleeds at night-ask how she could keep her children safe. She was asking me. And I had no answer. Thirty-seven percent of the land in the township where I live with my own kids is already leased to the frackers. There is no away.
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/5839
Interior Dept. Prepares Fracking Rules
October 7th, 2011 Julie
A new proposal to create new rules for natural gas drilling on federal lands could surface within a month's time, according to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The rules would create chemical disclosure requirements for companies involved in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
Salazar hinted at the idea that the rule might address not just the chemicals used in the fracking process, but also well integrity and construction. He believes that natural gas development is important for the United States' energy future, but reiterated earlier warnings of a public backlash if fracking chemicals were not disclosed.
Fracking is the process of extracting natural gas from Shale rock formations by injecting water and chemicals into the rock at high pressure, opening up cracks that allow gas to flow. It is a highly controversial practice because many fear it contaminates water supplies.
"There should be transparency and full disclosure, otherwise people are going to get very understandably concerned about what is being injected into the underground," Salazar said.
"I think hydraulic fracking is very much a necessary part of the future of natural gas," he said. "I think hydraulic fracking can be done in a safe way, in an environmentally responsible way, and in a way that doesn't create all the concerns that it is creating across the country right now."
http://accident-injury-blog.com/2011/10/07/interior-dept-prepares-fracking-rules/
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