Group raises alarm over gas wells near schools, hospitals

[Divernan]

Source: Pittsburgh Post Gazette

Thursday, May 05, 2011
By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Marcellus Shale gas well development near hundreds of schools, day care centers and hospitals across Pennsylvania poses a significant health risk to children and individuals with existing medical conditions, according to a new report by PennEnvironment.

According to the 50-page report released today, the state Department of Environmental Protection has granted Marcellus Shale drilling permits within two miles of 320 day-care facilities, 67 schools and nine hospitals statewide.

The statewide environmental organization said the well drilling industry has "a track record of pollution, accidents and violations," and called on federal, state and local governments to provide protection for "Pennsylvania's vulnerable populations" by requiring a much wider buffer around drilling sites.

State regulations require only a 200-foot buffer zone between gas wells and occupied structures, including schools, day cares, hospitals and homes.


Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11125/1144397-100.stm#ixzz1LXIMoOM6

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The article provides a link to an interactive map showing the location of drilling, schools and hospitals. So far, there are only 3 wells in Allegheny County/Pittsburgh area. But 12 day care centers and four schools are less than two miles from these wells, and 4 day care centers and 2 schools are within a mile of the wells.

We've got a primary election for "County Executive" this month. All four candidates support the development of natural gas drilling in the county, but the two Democrats, county Controller Mark Patrick Flaherty and Rich Fitzgerald, the former county council president, clashed on the best way to exploit the resource to shore up the county's finances. Their stated concern is how to get the most money out of the drillers - not protecting the health and safety of the community.

But hey, why should the oil and gas drilling companies worry? They've got a bought and paid for GOP Governor and GOP majorities in the state house and senate. Pennsylvania is the only state with shale deposits which does not impose an extraction tax on the industry and state "regulations" (HAH!) requiring a buffer zone of only 200 feet between a drilling site and occupied structures.

History tells us that the summer in Europe, before the outbreak of World War I, was exceptionally sunny and lovely. I have the feeling that whatever the weather this summer in Pennsylvania, it will be far lovelier than subsequent summers when we will have the stench of fracking fumes, parklands and woodlands torn up by roads bringing in tens of thousands of semi-trailer trucks of fracking water laced with toxic chemicals, game trails destroyed, creeks with fish kills, and people driven off their residential properties when water sources contaminated with said toxic chemicals and fracking destroy our water tables. Our way of life, and of course, our property values, will be destroyed, just as has happened in other states where fracking has been practiced.

If you haven't seen the prize-winning documentary, Gasland, do so. You will find that I am not exaggerating the horrors of fracking.

[defendandprotect]

1. k/r --

[texastoast]

2. Oil companies ruin everything

It really does rape the Earth. I grew up in the oilfield in a neighborhood with an unfenced open sludge pit and pumpjacks across the street from the house. The oil companies ruined our water table, and not even from fracking. Secondary recovery salt water injection turned my mom and dad's sweet water well to salt. You are right about the area starting to stink when operations start. We would have visitors come and just hold their noses and tell us our town smelled like a fart.

[Divernan]

4. That's a very graphic & horrifying description.

I realize that corporations have become so infected by greed that they know no limits to what they will do in pursuit of profit. Now that the era of American world leadership is over, and countries like China and India are establishing economic dominance and leadership, the corporations will move their headquarters from the US, and exploit and export as much of our natural resources as they can.

But our elected politicians are selling out their own states and their own communities - where do they plan on living? Where will their children and grandchildren live? HOW will they live?

[plumbob]

3. Awww, don't be a crybaby! Just like nukular, petroleum is probly

green, too!!!

Here: try this experiment - put a fresh steak into a room with an open barrel of crude oil. Come back in a week and see if that oil hasn't turned that steak green!

See? Case closed.

[Bozita]

5. Hydrofracked? One Man’s Mystery Leads to a Backlash Against Natural Gas Drilling

I second the motion to recommend the viewing of Gasland.


Hydrofracked? One Man’s Mystery Leads to a Backlash Against Natural Gas Drilling
by Abrahm Lustgarten
ProPublica, Feb. 25, 2011, 7 a.m.


This story was published as part of Amazon's Kindle Singles program, and is available for reading on that device. ProPublica's first Kindle Single,"Pakistan and the Mumbai Attacks: The Untold Story," is also available.



There are few things a family needs to survive more than fresh drinking water. And Louis Meeks, a burly, jowled Vietnam War hero who had long ago planted his roots on these sparse eastern Wyoming grasslands, was drilling a new well in search of it.

The drill bit spun, whining against the alluvial mud and rock that folds beneath the Wind River Range foothills. It ploughed to 160 feet, but the water that spurted to the surface smelled foul, like a parking lot puddle drenched in motor oil. It was no better — yet — than the water Meeks needed to replace.

Meeks used to have abundant water on his small alfalfa ranch, a 40-acre plot speckled with apple and plum trees northeast of the Wind River Mountains and about five miles outside the town of Pavillion. For 35 years he drew it clear and sweet from a well just steps from the front door of the plain, eight-room ranch house that he owns with his wife, Donna. Neighbors would stop off the rural dirt road on their way to or from work in the gas fields to fill plastic jugs; the water was better than at their own homes.

But in the spring of 2005, Meeks’ water had turned fetid. His tap ran cloudy, and the water shimmered with rainbow swirls across a filmy top. The scent was sharp, like gasoline. And after 20 minutes — scarcely longer than you’d need to fill a bathtub — the pipes shuttered and popped and ran dry.

Meeks suspected that environmental factors were to blame. He focused on the fact that Pavillion, home of a single four-way stop sign and 174 people, lies smack in the middle of Wyoming’s gas patch. Since the mid 1990’s, more than 1,000 gas wells had been drilled in the region — some 200 of them right around Pavillion — thousands of feet through layers of drinking water and into rock that yields tiny rivulets of trapped gas. The drilling has left abandoned toxic waste pits scattered across the landscape.It has also disturbed the earth itself. One step in the drilling cracks and explodes the earth in a physical assault that breaks up the crust and shakes the gas loose. In that process, called hydraulic fracturing, a brew of chemicals is injected deep into the earth to lubricate the fracturing and work its way into the rock. How far it goes and where it ends up, no one really knows. Meeks wondered if that wasn’t what ruined his well.

more, lots more...

http://www.propublica.org/article/hydrofracked-one-mans-mystery-leads-to-a-backlash-against-natural-gas-drill

[Divernan]

9. Excellent, if horrifying article. I'm forwarding it to all on my distribution list.

Thank god for Pro Publica. The article is a wake up call to the country that the fracking disaster will make the BP Gulf incident pale by comparison. The comments to the article are also of interest. You see some fracking hacks trying to cover up everything with an industry sponsored "report", but this is easily shot down by other commenters.
"There are few things a family needs to survive more than fresh drinking water. And Louis Meeks, a burly, jowled Vietnam War hero who had long ago planted his roots on these sparse eastern Wyoming grasslands, was drilling a new well in search of it."

We have been warned for years that future wars will be over fresh water. This war is about to start in all the US states where fracking is occurring.

[Divernan]

10. Pro Publica - investigative journalism safeguarding the public interest!

[Blacksheep214]

6. Which Republican said

that the schools can suplement their budget by leasing the mineral rights? (and letting them drill and pump and pollute)

[Divernan]

8. GOP, PA. Gov.Corbett cut state colleges' funding 50%; said bring in drillers

[Blacksheep214]

12. What a swell guy!

I'm trying to fit this in with religion and family values but can't seem to be able to do it!

[IamK]

7. The oil was there first....

[L. Coyote]

11. Time for an end to "Big Oil Exceptionalism under Law" and treat poisons as poisons.

and place health above profits. End the Halliburton exception, end the petroleum product exceptions to worker safety laws, create public health protections in relation to hazardous chemical emissions of any kind, from natural gas or crude oil, to volatile organic solvents used in drilling. It is time to treat poisons as poisons.