Contains the keyword press

Opponents to Fracking Disclosure Take Big Money From Industry, Lustgarten, Abrahm , ProPublica, (2011)

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Congress isn’t going to regulate hydraulic fracturing any time soon. But the Department of Interior might.

For starters, Interior is mulling whether it should require drilling companies to disclose the chemicals they use to frack wells drilled on public lands, and already the suggestion has earned Interior Secretary Ken Salazar an earful.

On January 5, a bipartisan group of 32 members of Congress, who belong to the Natural Gas Caucus, sent Salazar a letter imploring him to resist a hasty decision because more regulations would “increase energy costs for consumers, suppress job creation in a promising energy sector, and hinder our nation’s ability to become more energy independent.”

A week later, 46 House Democrats followed up by signing a letter to Salazar urging him to at least adopt the disclosure requirement because, as Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., said, “communities across America have seen their water contaminated by the chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing process.”

"The public has a right to know what toxins might be going into the ground near their communities, and what might be leaking into their drinking water," said the letter, which was sent by the three initial sponsors of now-stalled legislation to regulate fracturing, Hinchey, Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., and Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo.

...According to Hinchey’s office, disclosure on federal lands would set an important precedent, because that information would become part of the public record and, when combined with state-based disclosure rules, “would provide a great deal of useful information for those concerned with the risks these chemicals may pose.”

See: ProPublica Series. "Buried Secrets: Gas Drilling's Environmental Threat".

See: Mixplex | Articles by Abrahm Lustgarten

Pa. drillers told to stop sending wastewater to treatment plants, Maykuth, Andrew , Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia, PA, (2011)

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"We need to protect the water," Gov. Corbett said.

Pennsylvania regulators on Tuesday called on Marcellus Shale natural gas drillers to stop sending wastewater to 15 treatment plants, citing an increased risk of contaminating public drinking water.

The Department of Environmental Protection's action, while voluntary, will likely set the stage for a formal ban on the discharge of inadequately treated wastewater into the state's rivers...

DEP's announcement came the day after Corbett, who has been criticized for his close ties to drillers and his refusal to support a gas-production tax, assured local officials he would not allow the industry to "poison the water."

"We need to protect the water," the governor, a Republican, said at a meeting of the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors. "But we must do it based on science, not emotion."

...The DEP and the industry appear to have been influenced by complaints from public water suppliers in Western Pennsylvania, which say they are challenged by bromide levels whose concentrations have increased concurrently with the drilling boom.

The bromides themselves are not a public health risk - they account for a tiny part of the salty dissolved solids that create an unpleasant taste in water at elevated levels.

But bromides react with the chlorine disinfectants used by drinking water to form brominated trihalomethanes (THMs), a volatile organic compound.

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See: Carbon County Groundwater Guardians | Pennsylvania

Studies have linked the prolonged ingestion of high levels of THMs to several types of cancer and birth defects.

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Officials at several water authorities in the Pittsburgh area say their facilities have failed several tests for trihalomethanes in recent years.

See: Despite overhaul, gas wastewater still a problem

See: Regulation Is Lax for Water From Gas Wells

See: The Effect of the United States Supreme Court's Eleventh Amendment Jurisprudence on Clean Water Act Citizen Suits: Muddied Waters

Pittsburgh’s drinking water is radioactive, thanks to fracking. Only question is, how much?, Mims, Christopher , Grist, (2011)

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Residents of Pittsburgh -- as well as potentially tens of millions of other everyday citizens in the Northeast corridor who rely on their taps to deliver safe water -- are consuming unknown and potentially dangerous amounts of radium in every glass of water. That's the buried lede in the Sunday New York Times' massive exposé on fracking, the relatively new process for extracting natural gas from the massive shale formation that stretches from Virginia to New York state.

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Property Rights and Drilling, Smith-Heavenrich, Sue , Tompkins Weekly, Ithaca, NY, p.1, 14, (2011)

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[At the Cornell 2011 Energy Conference]...Ithaca attorney Helen Slottje, from the Community Environmental Defense Council, addressed the nature of property rights.

Helen Slottje
Helen Slottje

“People often say, ‘It’s my property and I can do anything I want to,’” she said, adding that there is an overarching understanding of public welfare. In addition, property ownership does not grant a person the right to use his property in a manner that interferes with another’s use of his land.

“Each landowner has the right to quiet enjoyment of his property,” Slottje said. And the rights property owners have over activities conducted on their land change with time.

“A very fundamental property right is the right to exclude,” Slottje said. But New York law allows compulsory integration: the pooling of unleased landowners into drilling units when 60 percent of the land in a unit is leased.

When drilling into conventional reservoirs, where gas and oil flow from unleased land to the well, compulsory integration makes sense. But in shale, drillers must break the rock to release gas and that, said Slottje, involves a trespass.

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This diagram, from Petrocasa, explains the widely held gas industry view, "Horizontal drilling also has less impact on the environment. With horizontal drilling, it's possible to extract gas from property adjacent to the well. That means that natural gas can be removed from under property without being on the surface of the land." (Neil Zusman 2011-04-20). For property owners who don't lease, how is this a good thing?

“When you are integrated, you are left with no right to exclude,” Slottje said. “You are left with toxic compounds beneath your land and you are not even compensated at market value.” [At this time integrated landowners are not paid for use of the land and receive the lowest possible royalty, 12.5 percent.]

 

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Slottje warned municipal officials to avoid getting trapped into thinking they have to provide road use agreements. In a 1969 case, the courts found that a corporation’s claim to the right to profit was not greater than the residents’ right to not be impacted. What that means, she explained, is that no corporation has the right to use local residential roads for high-impact industrial traffic. New York law implies that communities can say “no” to heavy trucks, preserving residential roads for local use.

The biggest problem Slottje sees facing municipalities is the increased erosion of enforcement of environmental regulations. “So we’re swinging back to protecting the environment through property rights and home rule,” she said.

See: Cornell 2011 Energy Conference (New!)

See: Spectra Energy Watch

See: State Decision Blocks Drilling for Gas in Catskills

See: There’s Gas in Those Hills

See: Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE): Landowner Information

See: Proposed gas drilling ban in city wins friends, foes such as Tom Ridge

Protests urge fracking fluid ban, Robison, Daniel , PBS | Innovation Trail, (2011)

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Protestors outside the Buffalo offices of the Department of Environmental Conservation today called for an executive order by Governor Andrew Cuomo to define fracking fluid as a hazardous waste and ban its treatment by municipal facilities...

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Can local facilities adequately treat fracking fluid?

Small local facilities cannot adequately purify fracking fluid because it contains hundreds of chemicals, including known carcinogens, according to Rita Yelda of the Buffalo chapter of Frack Action, which organized the protest.

Yelda says water is also at risk because layoffs at the DEC could compromise the agency’s work to address fracking issues.

See: 'Wastewater' of Fracking Resources Guide

Regulation Is Lax for Water From Gas Wells, Urbina, Ian , The New York Times, (2011)

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...the relatively new drilling method — known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking carries significant environmental risks.

It involves injecting huge amounts of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, at high pressures to break up rock formations and release the gas.

With hydrofracking, a well can produce over a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements like radium, all of which can occur naturally thousands of feet underground. Other carcinogenic materials can be added to the wastewater by the chemicals used in the hydrofracking itself.

While the existence of the toxic wastes has been reported, thousands of internal documents obtained by The New York Times from the Environmental Protection Agency, state regulators and drillers show that the dangers to the environment and health are greater than previously understood.

The documents reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle.

Other documents and interviews show that many E.P.A. scientists are alarmed, warning that the drilling waste is a threat to drinking water in Pennsylvania. Their concern is based partly on a 2009 study, never made public, written by an E.P.A. consultant who concluded that some sewage treatment plants were incapable of removing certain drilling waste contaminants and were probably violating the law.

The Times also found never-reported studies by the E.P.A. and a confidential study by the drilling industry that all concluded that radioactivity in drilling waste cannot be fully diluted in rivers and other waterways.

But the E.P.A. has not intervened...

See: A Life’s Value May Depend on the Agency, but It’s Rising

See: EPA in the Crosshairs

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Walter Hang said this about the NYT report:

"A 2008 drinking water crisis is documented that affected more than 850,000 residents along the Monongahela River near Pittsburgh. When New York imposed its de facto Marcellus Shale horizontal hydrofracturing moratorium, many firms went to drill in Pennsylvania.

Municipal treatment plants were accepting up to 40% of their influent as natural gas drilling wastewater even though they were not equipped to handle that type of waste. So much Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) pollution was discharged in the Monongahela River that the water became unpotable. A 70-mile stretch of the river was impacted."

Hang, Walter. “The New York Times Covers Marcellus Shale Gas Drilling Wastewater/Hold Onto Your Hats.” 2011-02-26 6:42 PM EST: n. pag. E-Mail.

See: Drilling Down | Documents: Natural Gas's Toxic Waste

See: Video: Natural Gas, Polluted Air

See: Interactive Map: Contamination

See: Graphic: Pulling Gas From Rock

Over the past nine months, The Times reviewed more than 30,000 pages of documents obtained through open records requests of state and federal agencies and by visiting various regional offices that oversee drilling in Pennsylvania. Some of the documents were leaked by state or federal officials. Here, the most significant documents are made available with annotations from The Times.

See: Readers' Comments. (347)

See: Ian Urbina. "Drilling Down Series Index." NYT. Feb. 27, Mar. 2, Mar. 4, 2011.

See also: Freedom of Information in the USA

See also: Do the natural gas industry’s surface water withdrawals pose a health risk?

See also: With Natural Gas Drilling Boom, Pennsylvania Faces an Onslaught of Wastewater

See also: WATER: Gas drilling in huge Appalachia reserve yields foul, briny byproduct - AP

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See: Lifton, Barbara. The Assembly. State of New York. "Letter to Governor Cuomo re: Executive Order No. 41 and the Marcellus Shale DRAFT Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (DRAFT SeEIS), signed by 50 Democratic and Republican representatives." April 13, 2011.

We, the undersigned members of the New York State Legislature, write to thank you for signing a continuation of Executive Order No. 41 as one of your first official acts. That order requires your Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to: "analyze comprehensively the environmental impacts associated with high-volume hydraulic fracturing combined with horizontal drilling.." DEC is then required to revise its Marcellus Shale DRAFT SupplementalGeneric Environmental Impact Statement (DRAFT SGEIS) to address widespread criticism of the
original document...

…First, extensive new scientific and technical information has become available since the SGEIS proceeding began nearly three years ago. This includes data gleaned from more than 30,000 pages of documents recently brought to light by the New York Times in a three-part series. We request that you require a public comment period of no less than 30 days to afford interested parties an opportunity to identify sources of new natural gas drilling information that DEC should review in order to revise its DRAFT SGEIS.

...We request that you require the scope of the SeEIS to be expanded to include those issues and all other issues required to fulfill Executive Order No. 41.

The public should be allowed to comment on that matter.

In conclusion, you have repeatedly said you believe horizontai hydrofracturing of Marcellus Shale must only be allowed to proceed in New York State based on "good science." Our requests are entirely consistent with that policy.

See: New York State Assembly Passes Moratorium on Hydrofracking | Governor Vetoes Bill.

Republicans ask court to toss climate case, Bravender, Robin , Politico, (2011)

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Two top House Republicans and the Senate’s leading global warming skeptic asked the Supreme Court Monday to throw out a lawsuit seeking to force electric utilities to slash greenhouse gas emissions.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), his energy lieutenant Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) and Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) submitted an amicus brief Monday in the high-profile American Electric Power v. Connecticut case.

According to the American Journalism Review, Politico is a Washington, D.C. based website and newspaper that focuses on Beltway political coverage, started by veteran Washington Post political reporters John Harris and Jim VandeHei started in January 2007.

See: Glenn Greenwald. May 30, 2008. "The right-wing Politico cesspool". Salon.

I once thought that Politico would be a pernicious new addition to our rotted media culture. Instead, it actually provides a valuable service by packing every destructive and corrupt journalistic attribute, in its most vivid form, into one single cesspool.

See: Smackdown: climate science vs. climate economics

See: EPA in the Crosshairs | Mixplex

See: Beware The Green Dragon! | Right Wing Watch

See: Energy & Commerce Committee Investigates Potential Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing

See: Global Warming Experts

See: Climate Science Watch

See: EPA chief faces hostile House GOP

Smackdown: climate science vs. climate economics, Roberts, David , Grist, (2011)

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As I see it, there are two incommensurate stories being told about climate change. I'm not talking about the largely fake debate between those who say climate change is happening and human-driven (scientists) and those who say it isn't (the GOP).

I'm talking about two different ways of envisioning what we can expect in a climate-changed future, both of which exist among people who take climate change seriously. Sometimes they take up residence in the same head! Like, er, mine. But they don't fit together very well. One comes to us from science, the other from economics.

...Getting clear on this is ultimately going to require a lot of progress in both science and economics. But for my part, when I see scientists panicking and economists telling me not to panic ... my palms start sweating.

...We are stumbling around in the dark, in an area where scientists tell us some very, very nasty beasties dwell. In that situation, it seems to me the overwhelming bias should be toward action -- getting lean, mean, and nimble enough to handle ourselves no matter what slouches our way.

See: EPA chief faces hostile House GOP

See: Beware The Green Dragon! | Right Wing Watch

See: Energy & Commerce Committee Investigates Potential Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing

See: Global Warming Experts

See: Climate Science Watch

See also: Republicans ask court to toss climate case

Grist Staff Bio

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David Roberts, Staff Writer
droberts@grist.org
206.876.2020 ext. 220

David was born and raised in the South. A revelatory summer working in Yellowstone National Park convinced him that it was not the world but just the part where he lived that sucked, so he moved out West. After several wayward years spent snowboarding and getting an MA in philosophy (go griz), he woke up with nothing but a dissertation between him and an arid, cloistered life spent debating minutiae with the world's other 12 Dewey scholars. So he bailed. A period was spent trudging through the swamp of Seattle tech work, wading past Amazon.com, IMDb.com, and Microsoft, before the fine folks at Grist fell for his devastating good looks in December 2003.

Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) Members' Blogs and Websites, Society of Environmental Journalists , Society of Environmental Journalists, (2011)

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A list of blogs by members of the Society of Environmental Journalists covering the environment.

The mission of the Society of Environmental Journalists is to strengthen the quality, reach and viability of journalism across all media to advance public understanding of environmental issues.

SEJ provides critical support to journalists of all media in their efforts to cover complex issues of the environment responsibly.

Society of Environmental Journalists Selected Blogs

Coal Tattoo
Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette writes about mining's mark on our world.

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How to Boil a Frog
Jon Cooksey's funny treatment of the Big Picture — global warming, peak oil, overpopulation, shrinking resources, income inequality — reflects the personal, populist tone and broad scope of his upcoming theatrical docu-comedy of the same name.

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Andrew Revkin's Dot Earth and more.
New York Times man Revkin blogs at Dot Earth about climate change, the environment and sustainability; at Amazon on global warming; and also talks to kids via this NYT global warming website.

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Toxic Waste: Hazardously Sour Candy Recall, Reilly, Maureen , Examiner.com, (2011)

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A chewy candy bar with the ironic name Toxic Waste Nuclear Sludge has been recalled due to concerns that the bars contain elevated levels of lead. Here is the press release from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. No this is not a Yes Men art work.

Candy Dynamics, distributors of Toxic Waste® Nuclear Sludge® chew bars, has issued a recall of all lots, sizes and flavors of Nuclear Sludge® due to levels of lead that exceed the FDA standard. In addition, the company is discontinuing Nuclear Sludge®. Click here for more information.

Maureen Reilly of the Canadian listserv Sludge Watch commented:

The Toxic Waste candy that was recalled had only 0.24 ppm lead.

The EPA allows 400 ppm lead in children's play soil.
And the EPA even allowed sewage sludge compost containing 237 ppm lead (that's 1000 times more than the level in the candy) to be spread on childrens bare soil yards for poor black families in Baltimore.

The candy producer had the decency to call the candy Toxic Waste....unlike the sludge industry which calls its stuff that is 1000 times more contaminated: Beneficial Use Biosolids Organic Compost. (see Sourcewatch article).

The EPA should order a recall of this very real toxic sludge ...

Maureen Reilly (commenting on Howard Portnoy. "Alert: “Toxic Waste” candy recalled due to fears of lead contamination." Examiner.com. Jan. 17, 2011.

See: Biosolids:Sourcewatch.

See: Organic Consumers Association. "Toxic sludge is good for you?". 2010.

See: Stauber, John, and Sheldon Rampton. Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry. Common Courage Press, 2002. Print.

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See: Patrick Trahey. "Sewage Sludge Everlasting." In These Times. April 19, 2010.

See: Maureen Reilly comments on Huffington Post.

See: Tox Town - Home Page - Environmental health concerns and toxic chemicals where you live, work and play.