One thing people don’t realize – lab tests aren’t exactly definitive. ExxonMobil uses a cheap testing procedure (approved by the RRC) that reads “no detect” if there is any sort of matrix interference. (other things in the mix) We are going to experiment and thru trial and error find the best testing to find the chemicals common in ExxonMObil and Chevron’s legacy oilfields. We can run whats called a Mass Spec test. They are very expensive – $1000 but pick up everything. Then, we will back track and find which of the cheaper / readily available tests work. I’m going to teach everyone how to find and identify their oilfield contamination.

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Hexavalent Chromium contamination is spreading in the groundwater used by some Midland, Texas residents and environmental investigators say the mounting evidence points to the oil and gas industry. Affected residents say they have proof that hydraulic fracture giant Schlumberger is responsible.

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Jeffrey Jacquet of Cornell’s Department of Natural Resources said gas development firms prefer hiring workers they have used elsewhere and that the workers (imported or local), work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for two weeks without a break. Thousands of workers working 84 hours a week for two weeks without a break? Talk about accidents waiting to happen.

ShaleShock distributed a published column that Louis Allstadt, a retired Mobil Oil executive, wrote. Allstadt sees many problems with DEC’s current draft environmental impact statement, including its “proposed setback distances, which would allow drilling just 300 feet from New York City reservoirs, a mere 150 feet from the rest of the state’s municipal water supplies, and at any distance from individual water wells.”

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“They got sick in August. It was before school started. I thought it was just a bug and was trying to get them over it before school started. It didn’t go away and kept going until November and December. They had very severe stomach cramps and would throw up or have diarrhea, one or the other other. I was having problems with the water myself. One of my cats would throw up every time she drank the water inside, so we started using other water. This was reinforced by one of my neighbors telling me that one of my neighbors water wells had gone bad, and this was before Norma’s well had blown up. I started putting things together saying, my kids don’t get sick at school but they get sick at home.”

Just last week, the 15 families filed a lawsuit against Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation for allegedly causing a number of problems, including ruining their water supply.
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Residents of Preston, Smithville and Smyrna may experience cloudy water coming from their faucets as a result of seismic testing set to resume at the end of the month.

Norse Energy, Inc., the Norwegian-based company currently drilling into the Herkimer formation in Chenango County, has garnered work permits from the county highway department to haul in and lay seismic testing cables across the following roads: County Routes 10, 10A, 14, 21, 20, 3 and 3A.

Individual town boards have also granted seismic testing and permits for town road crossings, such as on the Bliven-Sherman and McDonough roads in Preston.

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Why did we sign? Partly because natural gas is a relatively “clean” fuel, so obtaining it locally seemed reasonable. Partly because the way it was presented to us made it sound inevitable and benign. Partly because the money was appealing. The Music Man came to town, and I am astonished and ashamed that we succumbed to his tune.

We never would have signed if we had known then what we now know about the pollution potential and the possible transformation of peaceful residential and agricultural areas into industrial zones. I am sure that there are many other landowners who feel the same way. We have decided to use the money we received from the lease to try to stave off this potential disaster. A new organization called “(F)leased” is forming to represent people who signed leases and wish they hadn't.

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Southern Tier farms, businesses and residents have a big stake in pending federal water quality regulations being developed to protect the Chesapeake Bay, 400 miles downstream on the Susquehanna River.

On Tuesday, they will have a chance to meet directly with officials from the federal Environmental Protection Agency to learn more about how the regulations are being developed, and their stake in the issue. The public meeting is scheduled from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Broome County Public Library, 185 Court St., Binghamton.

The meeting is part of the process to develop new standards, called a “pollution diet” by EPA officials, for the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

“We see this as the beginning of at least a one-year dialogue with the public,” said Bob Koroncai, a regulator with the EPA who covers Chesapeake Bay issues. “Anybody who eats food, flushes a toilet, uses fertilizer or drives a car is contributing to the problem.”

Although specific regulations are still being worked out, they involve capping states' contributions to pollution flowing to the bay. The goal is to impose the pollution diet to reduce nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment degrading water quality in the bay and upstream.

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DEP offices in Meadville, Wilkes-Barre, Williamsport and Pittsburgh have received “many dozens” of applications for National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits to build plants to treat waste water produced in the Marcellus Shale to “clean it” before it is returned to the environment.

One of those applications belongs to Somerset Regional Water Resources, based in Tunkhannock, which has proposed a plant along the Chemung River in Athens Township. Somerset plans to build a treatment plant on a lot in the Valley Industrial Park.

Dead fish float in a once-pristine stream. Algae thrives. Lovers of the outdoors are heartsick, and everyone wants to know what happened.

The scenario is playing itself out this autumn on the Pennsylvania-West Virginia border, and a Harrisburg-based agency wants to be ready in case the same scenario unfolds in its jurisdiction.
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Gas drilling companies will try to convince you that using up to 6-million gallons of water for fracing one gas well doesn’t amount to a massive amount of water. Even if they are successful in making that argument with you, the next topic becomes flowback or brine. What do you do with the crap that comes back out of the ground?

Somewhere between 30% and 70% of the water used for hydro-fracing a gas well returns to the surface as flowback. In addition to the frac fluids added by the gas drilling companies, this water picks up other contaminants from deep in the Earth (~ 7,000 feet deep) with one of the most notable being salt.

These fluids contain sodium and calcium salts, barium, oil, strontium, iron, numerous heavy metals, soap, radiation and other components. This fluid combination becomes brine wastewater, and tanker trucks hauling it are labeled with a RESIDUAL WASTE placard. Treated brine is also sold for deicing and other applications that utilize calcium chloride, often being applied to roadways.
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