I am greatly concerned about the proposed well pad at the Cratty farm off Election House Road. Currently, this pad is located within the watershed for Lake Arthur and Moraine State Park. This watershed is a state-designated Special Protection High Quality Watershed in which strip mining and other significant earth-moving projects have been prohibited since the creation of the lake in the 1960s. However, because the Marcellus Shale boom is so recent, there are no special protections concerning fracking. I am opposed to fracking in general, but it likely will happen regardless. Therefore, since townships have the power to regulate fracking within their communities through zoning and other laws since the repeal of Act 13, Franklin Township should pressure XTO Energy to move their well pad to the southeast, so that it would not drain into Shannon Run, which directly feeds Lake Arthur. 

I would like to point out the fact that XTO has one of the worst violation records for a drilling company in the state. XTO has 186 violations on record, the sixth highest in the state (NPR StateImpact). Here are some recent examples:

• April 22, 2014: XTO Energy issued a violation for “Failure to properly store, transport, process or dispose of a residual waste” at their AK Steel B1H well in Butler Township.   
  A similar incident also occurred at their Vadnal A Unit 10HB in Jefferson Township on April 20, 2014. There are numerous cases of this violation at XTO sites across Butler County. 
• July 23, 2013: XTO issued a violation for “Discharge of industrial waste to waters of Commonwealth without a permit” at their Kozick Bros Const Inc 2 well in Summit Township.

The majority of XTO’s numerous violations are related to spilling, mishandling, or dumping fracking fluid or residual waste. Fracking fluid contains “BTEX compounds, which stands for benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene.  They are volatile organic compounds (VOCs) – (organic chemical compounds that are highly evaporative and can produce noxious fumes). Benzene is a known carcinogen, and has also been shown to cause blood disorders.  Both benzene and toluene can affect the reproductive and central nervous systems.   Ethylbenzene and xylene can have respiratory and neurological effects” (from Catskill Mountainkeeper). A joint study by the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined that a fracking fluid spill in Kentucky in 2007 killed all of the aquatic life in Acorn Fork Creek, the stream into which the fluid was spilled. “After studying samples of the water and bodies of green sunfish and creek chub, government researchers have concluded that the spill acidified the stream and increased concentrations of heavy metals including aluminum and iron. Fish exposed to the water developed gill lesions and showed signs of liver and spleen damage, USGS announced in a press release. The gill lesions were consistent with ‘toxic concentrations of heavy metals,’ the researchers concluded” (from the Huffington Post). Hydrochloric acid was present in the spilled fluid.

As you can see, if similar incidents were to occur at the XTO site on the Cratty farm as have occurred elswhere in Butler County, Lake Arthur and Moraine would be directly affected by it. XTO will also likely construct both fresh and wastewater impoundments at the site due to the lack of municipal water sources and other drilling activity in the area. This poses another threat, as the linings in these pits are only required to be 30 mm minimum in thickness. Often, these liners are poorly installed or tear, leaking the fluid into the ground. These pits have also been known to overflow in heavy, sustained rains. 

I love Lake Arthur and Moraine, and I am certain that many in western Pennsylvania would be devastated if anything were to happen to our beloved park. I urge you to do the smart, common-sense thing and force XTO to move their wells out of the Moraine watershed. Since the repeal of Act 13, you have the power to do that and you need to use it. I have enclosed copies of the articles I mentioned in this letter. Thank you.

Samuel A. Hoszwa

For years, fracktivists and real estate lawyers have been warning of the potential conflict between gas leases and the ability to secure a mortgage on one's leased property.  Now the reality of that conflict is beginning to hit home locally.

A Butler Township resident, concerned over a gas lease that was taken out on his and his neighbors' condos by their homeowners' association, has been contacting area banks and lending institutions to inquire into their policies regarding the financing of leased properties. His research has yielded some very discouraging results.

Fewer and fewer banks in the area are willing to grant a mortgage to a leased property, and if the lease has the statement “lease has priority over mortgage” in it, even those few banks will not offer a mortgage for that property.

A representative from Dollar Bank said that their main concern is with the lease holder being sued. This would put the value of their mortgage in jeopardy since the lease has first priority on monies spent to settle claims filed against the gas company and lease holders. He also said that the bank would be very hesitant in issuing a mortgage if the well pad was within close proximity to the property, especially if the lease didn't absolve the lease holder from any damages. (That Butler Township has recently approved the construction of a well pad in a residential area potentially puts a number of properties at risk.) ESB Bank likewise is taking a close look at leases and liability issues. Many banks refuse to grant mortgages on leased properties simply because federal financial institutions consider gas drilling a “hazardous activity” and will not lend money for a property leased for such an activity; sometimes they refuse to finance a property that is even adjacent to one that has a gas lease.

(This was information received specific to the individual's property. It is always wise to meet and discuss your own situation with lenders.)

This same Butler Township resident has also researched a number of township leases on the Butler County Deeds and Records website; many of the residential leases in the township have the “lease priority” statement in them and the right to run water lines and access roads across the property.

This is a situation that could seriously impact Butler Township's future growth.

It should be noted that, in Aug. 2011, Butler Township formed a Marcellus Shale advisory board to help guide the township in making decisions regarding shale-gas drilling. In March 2012, an advisory board member handed the township officials an extensive report detailing the hazards and issues attendant to unconventional drilling and hydraulic fracturing. One of those issues was the potential lease/mortgage conflict described above. The advisory board member requested that the information contained in the report be shared with all township residents. This was never done.

If township officials had taken the potential lease/mortgage conflict seriously, they could have sent out a township-wide notification warning residents of this potential conflict and encouraging them to seek legal counsel on this specific issue. They did not.

Whatever may be the fallout of the lease/mortgage issue on Butler Township, one thing is certain: township officials cannot claim that they were not informed of this danger, that they were not “advised...”

M.O.B.

In his presentation at Butler County Community College's Energy Symposium 2014 (Gas drillers look at quantum leap, Mar. 16), Marcellus Shale Coalition president David Spigelmyer made it a point to mention the “reduction of surface impacts” afforded by unconventional horizontal drilling. I noticed that he carefully limited his comments on that subject to wells and wellpads, not bothering to mention the hundreds of miles of pipeline being laid across Butler County to service those wells. Want to see surface impacts? Take a drive along once beautifully forested McCalmont Road in Butler Township and see how the woods are being decimated for this industry. And with each drilling company requiring its own system of pipelines, we can expect to see more and more of these “surface impacts” in the future.

When water contamination concerns were mentioned by symposium attendees, Callum Streeter, operation manager for Edgemarc, extolled the virtues of steel pipe and cement casing to protect aquifers while saying that the process is “closely monitored.” That “close monitoring” by the state Department of Environmental Protection has yielded numerous violations for faulty cement casings in the past several years. Many of the 100+ documented cases of shale gas-related water contamination on file at the DEP are due to those faulty casings.

Streeter also mentioned that drilling companies voluntarily disclose the chemical composition of their hydraulic fracturing fluids to the website www.fracfocus.org. If that is so, why then is there a provision in Act 13, the state's oil and gas law, that requires physicians to contact drillers in order to obtain information about the chemicals their patients may have been exposed to, and then to sign a non-disclosure agreement that prohibits them from sharing that information with their patients, their colleagues and the communities they serve? Clearly, not all companies are disclosing all chemicals on the FracFocus site.

I noticed that there was no mention of clean, renewable, fossil fuel-free energy at this “energy” symposium. Why is that? Why not just call it ShaleFest 2014 and be done with it?

Let's cut to the chase, shall we? Shale gas drilling is a HUGE moneymaker, in Butler County, in Pennsylvania, in the nation, and in the world. Clearly, in Butler County, that's all that needs to be said. Spigelmyer and Streeter don't need to sugar-coat their message with false assurances of environmental safety because, to the majority of Butler County residents, those things don't really matter. With the exception of a few conscientious citizens, most notably of late in Butler city and in Middlesex and Adams townships, the only message that county residents will hear is how much money they can make from the drilling.

The rest will go in one ear and out the other.

j.p.m.