FrackTracker Summarizes Shale Gas Environmental Impacts

Last year we had Samantha Malone on SN to talk about FrackTracker's interactive geographic information systems approach to Marcellus development. John F. Stolz, Ph.D. Professor of Biological Sciences just put up a piece that briefly explains many of the environmental impacts caused by a single gas well.

Here is the bare bones on just water:

• The amount needed for fracking (5 million gallons/frac)
• Loss of well (aquifer) water through disruption or contamination
• Gas migration causing methane contaminated water
• The fate of the produced water (“treated” at POTWs)
• Degradation of water quality in local streams and rivers
• Degradation of drinking water quality (need to purchase bottled water)

• 
  

There are also impacts to land usage, exposure to toxic chemicals (spills, aquifer contamination, traffic and road degradation, noise, air pollution, property devaluation, EMS and emergency procedures, and increases taxes to cover infrastructure damage, additional public services and security. Mike and I have wondered for some time what the long-term property damage will be.

How about an 85% loss of property value?

Questions of animal rights and sustainability

Veterinarian Colleges has posted a top 45 list of animal advocacy blogs. They note that the attention to animal rights movement has exploded in recent years. The internet has brought more people into the mix. Citing Charles Darwin, they write, “The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man." Check out the list.

The animal rights movement and sustainability movements have some considerable overlap, primarily regarding farming and food production. Both concern themselves with the ethics of farm to table. Animal rights activists tend to focus on raising the quality of livestock animals' living conditions, often seen as being achievable through free-range pasturing and evolved feeding that most often reduce environmental impacts. The sustainability movement tends to invert that, seeing better farm-environmental relationships as the focus - often noting how much less fossil fuel can go into small-scale organic farming - and animal welfare being the secondary concern.

This is a win-win in most cases. On Sustainability Now we've seen these movements converge in several of our guests. Several are vegetarians for reasons on both sides of the animal well-being + reduced (and sometimes restorative) environmental impacts. We have had two guests, Johnathan Lynch and Christopher Uhl, use the term Ahimsa - "no harm" - as their definition of sustainability. Animal and human welfare come into play in such a definition. Our sustainable agriculture guests from Pennsylvania Certified Organic and Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture were well-versed in the benefits of treating animals well and using farming techniques that restore the land.

One of the more interesting blogs on the list is the Food Ethics Blog that covers "ethical issues that arise in growing, shipping, processing, selling, regulating, and eating food."

What is your relationship to animals? What do you eat? How was it raised? Even more strangely, how do you feed your pets?

Peter is biking to Frackburg...Harrisburg

Dear Listeners and Readers,

Next Wednesday, March 9th, I will be riding my bike to Harrisburg from my house in Pine Grove Mills to do my own small part to stand up to Corbett and the gas companies. It just seems like the right thing to do. As you know, we've had some strong voices on shale gas drilling on the show and they need to have some justice done for them.

I will be joining an existing event that PennEnvironment has organized (listen to today's cast and see attached image). It is a protest of Corbett's budget and its utter lack of accountability around natural gas in general and about the lack of a severance tax in particular. Several organizations active on the issue will be there. It is at 1:30 pm. I should note that what I am doing following the event (see below) is not intended to supercede that event in any way. Nor is what I plan to do after the event in any way sponsored by PennEnvironment or any organization. But it is a good place to meet other concerned citizens who might want to go with me one small step further.

The Corbett administration's actions for the gas industry are out of control. Two recent decisions pushed me to this point. The first was to yank DCNR's ability to assess potential impacts on state forest and park land and the second was gutting DEP's ability to monitor air quality from drilling sites. For me this is very personal because I love the forest. Every year I spend hundreds of hours in Rothrock, Bald Eagle, Moshannon, Tioga, Forbes, and Sproul on my mountain bike, on hikes, and camping. Many of you have your own stories with our state forests. Beautiful stories.

It is also about the quality of our water and air and my hopes and fears as a father. Who wants to wake up and have your child bleeding from their noses because of toxic chemicals in their water? Who wants their neighbors sick from gas in the water? Who wants to breathe evaporating benzene? Not me.

I am riding my bike there because because it is better for the forest, for the person, for water, for air, for noise, for the climate, and for all of us than gas trucks, well-pads, natural gas, and frack water are. I am riding my bike because it means something better and brings me in touch with life and living. As a citizen of this commonwealth, the commonwealth's government should help me and my fellow common people to reach the common good.

So I called the governor's office and asked to speak with Governor Corbett. The staffer with whom I spoke was polite and listened to my grievances about shale drilling. I told her about the perception (some might say...fact) that Governor Corbett is governing for gas industry profiteers instead of for Pennsylvanians, their communities, their water, and our commonwealth's forests. She told me that all requests to meet with the governor have to be submitted in writing. I could not talk to him on the phone or just arrange a meeting no matter my concerns. I understand. You can't let just any yahoo in.

Okay. It will be delivered in writing.

After the budget protest I plan to go to the governor's office and request a meeting with the governor. Because I seriously doubt that they will just let me in to see the him, even if 5, 20, or 200 people went in with me, I will bring a letter requesting a meeting and submit it to the office. I will do this in person, with some insistence, instead of through the faceless email system or fax system. It will also be something of a prepared statement though i don't know that I will be able to read it.

The point, I suppose, is to put another real face to this. I am tired of this. I am worried. I am afraid. I am seeing and hearing too many angry and unheard people. I am also very motivated and believe that we must demand a better way for us, for water, for the forests. Letters aren't working. Protests keep failing. I write to my representative, Scott Conklin, and I get very short replies back and no solid action. My state senator, Jake Corman, is doing the gas industry's bidding. As I told the staff worker today, "We don't have the hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy access to governors or future governors. He HAS to talk with us. He is OUR governor."

So, I have to do what I have to do. If you would like to join the rally and then join me afterward to deliver my request for a meeting (and perhaps your own as well?), as individuals, I would love you to do so. It would be an honor to be joined by good people who deserve better. I suggest you bring letters requesting meetings too. Even if we have to walk away at the end of the day in Limbo, waiting for replies to our requests, at least we will have tried and started something new. Perhaps it will become something more. Maybe I'll end up looking like a complete fool.

I don't know. I just know that something must be done differently.

It is a modest goal. Please join me if you can.

Please copy and forward this message to other concerned people. People can RSVP to me at:

peter.evolves@gmail.com

With great hope,

Peter

p.s. I will ride in rain or snow also. The only way I won't is if it's icy. If you want to bike with me, that would be super awesome. I like company.

Protesting to get gas fairness

Some of our readers and listeners might be interested in attending this event in Harrisburg next Wednesday, March 9th at 1:30 pm. Sustainability Now's Peter Buckland will be there as both activist and journalist.

If you peruse most of the press out there - big media, local and independent papers, the citizen blogs - you will find overwhelming support for a severance tax on gas extracted from Marcellus Shale. Pennsylvania is the only state not collecting a severance tax.

As John Quigley, former Pennsylvania Secretary of Department of Conservation and Natural Resources said, “Quite frankly, the citizens of this state are being played for chumps.”

In a year with a looming budget crisis because of the economic downturn, wouldn't it make sense to garner revenue from a booming industry? Wouldn't it make sense to funnel that money from industry back to the commonwealth's common people for their common wealth? Wouldn't it make sense to use money from our own natural resources to help with environmental projects? Wouldn't it make sense to slow this stuff down? A Tea Party candidate for county commissioner in Bradford County wants to slow it down. This is not a Republican vs. Democrat issue or a progressive vs. conservative issue. This is about sanity, health, and environmental integrity.

Apparently Governor Corbett does not agree. Common Cause has noted that the gas industry has thrown about $2.85 million into political campaigns in the last 10 years. They write, "Drillers have a clear favorite in the 2010 gubernatorial race—Republican Tom Corbett, recipient of $361,207, with 93% of these contributions coming since January 2008." That's a lot of influence. How can we have that much influence?

So Peter will be there asking questions, talking to concerned people, and hopefully getting to speak with some people with authority.

How many Marcellus wells are there in Pennsylvania?

And what will this map look like in two years? Five years? Where will the wells be?

Fracking is hitting the U.K.

The Ecologist has an interesting story up. Apparently, the United Kingdom is considering hydraulic fracturing to get at natural gas. People there are worried about water pollution.

[Mark] Miller (CEO of Cuadrilla Resources) told MPs it would be 'near-impossible' for any of the fracking liquid pumped underground to breach the well and contaminate any underground water aquifers. If there was any break in the well wall, he said, they could repair it within three to five days. Miller also said the company was testing the surrounding soils, streams and air to provide a baseline in case of any future claims about contamination from the site.

They might want to learn about Pennsylvania.

Hickory, Pennsylvania's problems with Natural Gas