Marcellus Fail

It's a little skimpy on details, but this report on violations related to Marcellus Shale gas development in Pennsylvania is instructive in terms of the kinds of environmental impacts we might expect in New York. Unfortunately, about three-quarters of the citations involve actions that have the potential to directly contaminate surface- and groundwater with a largely unknown suite of toxic compounds.

Water quality impacts of hydrofracking

While doing some research on hydrofracking, I turned up this great article from ProPublica. As it turns out, the site has an entire section devoted to the environmental impacts of gas drilling.

More recently, Yale's Environment 360 published an enlightening piece on hydrofracking in the NYC watershed and the Philadelphia City Council requested that the Delaware River Basin Commission deny a permit to drill until an environmental impact statement can be completed.

EPA will study hydrofracking again

Today, EPA confirmed that its Office of Research and Development will investigate hydrofracking again.

I was asked yesterday to be involved in the study design effort, so I'm researching to get up to speed. Here's some of the background material I've unearthed thus far:

EPA conducted a study in 2004 on the impact that hydrofracking coalbed methane (CBM) wells has on underground sources of drinking water (USDW) and found that "the injection of hydraulic fracturing fluids into CBM wells poses little or no threat to USDWs." That report can be found here. EPA also entered into a Memorandum of Agreement with BJ Services Company, Halliburton Energy Services, Inc., and Schlumberger Technology Corporation regarding the elimination of the use of diesel fuel in hydrofracking fluids. The MOA can be found here.

Recently, there has been interest in using hydrofracking to get to gas buried beneath other types of geology. For example, there is considerable interest in hydrofracking gas wells to crack the the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and southwestern New York State. (Check out the NY Times archive if you're curious.) The NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation released a draft supplemental generic environmental impact statement (EIS) regarding proposed hydrofracking in the Marcellus on September 30, 2009. EPA submitted comments on the EIS on December 30, 2009.

More to come...

Secrets of hydrofracking

According to Reuters, EPA will be conducting a study of the components of hydrofracking fluid used to facilitate extraction of natural gas by opening fissures in shale. Interesting, considering that I recently spoke with (ex-)Congressman Massa's staff regarding potential water quality impacts to Keuka Lake as a result of hydrofracking in the Marcellus Shale, and one of the major concerns was that nobody really knows what lurks in these proprietary concoctions.

Here's a letter from the Energy & Commerce Committee that spells out some of Congress's concerns, including the fact that government has virtually no ability to regulate the components of hydrofracking fluid and that the process has been excepted from complying with the Safe Drinking Water Act, except when companies use diesel fuel as an additive in the fracking fluids (which they agreed to stop in 2003, but which some have admitted to using as recently as 2007). Below is a particularly scary excerpt from the document (emphasis added):

Federal regulators currently do not have access to a full accounting of the types and quantities of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing fluids, although some states require disclosure. Under the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act, approximately 22,000 industrial and federal facilities must report to EPA the quantity of toxic chemicals they release, store, or transfer, which is then made public in the annual Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). Oil and gas exploration and production facilities are exempt from this reporting requirement. EPA also does not have authority under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) to require disclosure of the chemicals injected in hydraulic fracturing operations.

EPA has raised particular concerns about diesel fuel, noting that the “use of diesel fuel in fracturing fluids poses the greatest threat” to underground sources of drinking water. Diesel contains constituents regulated under SDWA because of their toxicity, including benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes (BTEX chemicals). The Department of Health and Human Services, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and EPA have determined that benzene is a human carcinogen. Chronic exposure to toluene, ethylbenzene, or xylenes can damage the central nervous system, liver, and kidneys.

In December 2003, EPA entered into a voluntary memorandum of agreement with the three largest hydraulic fracturing companies, Halliburton, BJ Services, and Schlumberger, to “eliminate diesel fuel in hydraulic fracturing fluids injected into coalbed methane production wells in underground sources of drinking water.” The MOA focused on coalbed methane wells, as these wells tend to be shallower and closer to underground sources of drinking water than conventional oil and gas production wells. The MOA does not contain any enforcement provisions nor does it confer immunity in an action to enforce the SDWA or EPA’s regulations on underground injection.

In 2005, Congress exempted hydraulic fracturing from regulation under the SDWA as part of the Energy Policy Act. Many dubbed this provision the “Halliburton loophole” because of Halliburton’s ties to then-Vice President Cheney and its role as one of the largest providers of hydraulic fracturing services. Specifically, Congress modified the definition of “underground injection” to exclude “the underground injection of fluids or propping agents (other than diesel fuels) pursuant to hydraulic fracturing operations related to oil, gas, or geothermal production activities.” As a result of this exemption, EPA cannot use the SDWA to regulate hydraulic fracturing unless it can show the use of diesel fuels.

Environmental groups, public health officials, and communities across the country have raised other concerns about hydraulic fracturing, beyond potential impacts on drinking water. In Texas, state regulators are responding to tests showing high levels of benzene in the air near wells in the Barnett Shale gas fields. In Pennsylvania, state regulators are facing a new challenge of how to ensure proper disposal of the millions of gallons of wastewater generated from natural gas development in the Marcellus Shale. In New York, the state Department of Environmental Conservation analyzed wastewater extracted from wells and found levels of radium-226 as high as 267 times the limit safe for discharge into the environment and thousands of times the limit safe for people to drink. Others have raised concerns about water scarcity, since the drilling and hydraulic fracturing of a horizontal shale gas well may require 2 to 4 million gallons of water.

Our mother the mountain

There's an excellent article exploring the impacts of mountaintop mining by Duke's Emily Bernhardt and ex-Dean Schlesinger in the new Science... and it calls EPA to task for allowing this work to go on despite mounds (no pun intended) of evidence linking the practice to egregious ecological damage.

Check out Andrew C. Revkin's blog post about it too, if only for the comments.

Toxic Waters

It's going to take me a while to wade through this entire New York Times series, but so far it's fascinating and dead-on with respect to my experiences as a regulator.

Brooklyn's Alps

An interesting story in yesterday's NY Times about rehabilitating a couple of dump sites in Brooklyn.

As someone who's done research on the problems that roots can pose in terms of maintaining a waterproof layer, I wonder what kind of reconnaisance the City has planned to make sure that the plastic sheeting isn't breached by roots...

A couple of new things

1. I'm working on an extensive green roof now that we should be installing over the next couple of weeks. (Unless it gets delayed -- then it'll be October sometime). I've sourced all the materials and put together an idea for the roof, will help to clear the roof of its existing tar and begin EPDM installation this weekend. I'll post pictures of the wknd's activities and the install as soon as these things happen.

2. I got a note from a colleague today re: a USGS study on mercury contamination in freshwater fish in the U.S. I've put the intro. blurb and link below. If you look at anything in the report, check out Figure 21 (pp. 36-9) for a number of interesting relationships between environmental variables and Hg levels.

The USGS released a study today that assesses mercury contamination in fish, bed sediment, and water from 291 streams across the nation, sampled from 1998 to 2005.

The report, along with a press release, podcast, and summary of major findings can be accessed at http://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/mercury/.

Scientists detected mercury contamination in every fish sampled in every stream. About a quarter of these fish were found to contain mercury at levels exceeding the criterion for the protection of people who consume average amounts of fish, established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). More than two-thirds of the fish exceeded the EPA level of concern for fish-eating mammals.

Atmospheric mercury is the main source to most of these streams — coal-fired power plants are the largest source of mercury emissions in the United States — but 59 of the streams also were potentially affected by gold and mercury mining. Since USGS studies targeted specific sites and fish species, the findings may not be representative of mercury levels in all types of freshwater environments across the United States.

For more information, contact Barbara Scudder, bscudder@usgs.gov , (608) 821-3832 or Mark Brigham, mbrigham@usgs.gov , (763) 783-3274.

Hydrofracing the NYC watershed

I got a note over the weekend from Earthjustice plugging a screening of Rage of Nature, a documentary examining the impacts of natural gas drilling.  It's happening tonight at Solar One in New York City.

I haven't seen the film, but based on the bits and pieces below, it looks both interesting and terrifying.

Rage of Nature: Trailer from JOSHFOX on Vimeo.