Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a national environmental group, contacted MOB in August with a request to visit Butler County to see what is happening with unconventional well drilling.   The President, Frances Brenenke, brought two board members and 6 staff members to Butler to see the impact toxic fracking is having on people and communities. 

Two members of Marcellus Outreach Butler, Ping Pirrung and Dennis McCann, hosted a lunch at their home in Middlesex Township on August 27 for our visitors.  Janet and Fred McIntyre shared how their lives have been turned upside down and their health compromised  since drilling began in the Connoquenessing.  Woodlands.

At the end of the luncheon, Raina Ripple, Director of the Southwest Health Center,  told the visitors that the stories of people impacted in Butler County are the same as the stories she is hearing in Washington, Greene and Fayette Counties.  People are sick and living with contaminated water and breathing air that forces them to stay indoors.  And what is so upsetting to her is that “no one is doing anything to help these people – not the state or local governments, not the medical profession.”

The NRDC visitors were visibly moved by what they heard and this was reinforced when they piled into cars and took a tour of the shalefields in Butler County.  With Janet McIntyre and John Stolz as guides, a caravan of cars traveled down Brownsdale Road where there are 4 drilling sites within a  mile radius from one another.   At one site in the Woodlands,  the liner from a pond which had held contaminated flowback water had been carelessly left by the side of the road.  After visiting several drilling sites, a compression station and the gas processing plant,  our guests had to travel south to Washington County where Ron Gulla was hosting a similar event for them the following day to show them the impacts in Southwestern PA.

What were the results of NRDC’s tours of fracking sites, like their visit to Butler County?   Check out the impressions of  Frances Brenenke’s, President of NRDC, tour of western PA as captured in her blog.

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/fbeinecke/calling_for_national_fracking.html

On September 19th, NRDC launched the Community Fracking Defense Project. This new project, which is launching in five states—New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and North Carolina—will provide assistance to towns and other local governments that want added control over the siting of and/or protections against the harms of fracking in their communities.

For example, NRDC legal and policy staff, together with local partners, will:

•    Assist in drafting local laws and land use plans that control the extent of fracking within their borders and/or limit the harmful effects of fracking.

•    Work to re-assert communities’ rights to protect themselves under state law.

•    Defend relevant zoning provisions and other local laws that are challenged in court.

Kate Sidding, a NRDC attorney, filed an amicus brief in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on behalf of a number of municipalities in support of a lower court decision striking down portions of Act 13, a recently enacted Pennsylvania law that severely limits the ability of local governments to use their zoning powers to control where fracking occurs.

MOB was happy to host NRDC’s visit and is encouraged by their response and actions.  We need more powerful organizations to step forward and take a stand like NRDC is doing.  As more people and organizations stand up and make their voices heard, we increase our chances of stopping this destruction and getting permanent solutions for the people whose lives have been so negatively impacted.

-Dianne Arnold

On Aug. 23, the PA DEP issued an “environmental health and safety” violation to Rex Energy for “failure to properly store, transport, process or dispose of a residual waste” in Lancaster Township, Butler County. I know this because my wife and I subscribe to an online service that continuously monitors the DEP violations database and sends us notifications of violations in our area. (Note: “Residual waste” from hydraulic fracturing is generally toxic.)

This online service is a valuable resource, because the DEP is not legally required to report drilling violations to the public, nor to local officials, and so, for the most part, it doesn't. If I wanted to learn more about this violation, I would need to apply to DEP for a “file review” – a rather involved process which would include a trip to the Northwest District office in Meadville.

An in-depth analysis of DEP data by the PennEnvironment Research and Policy Center, “Risky Business: An Analysis of Marcellus Shale Gas Drilling Violations in Pennsylvania 2008-2011,” identified a total of 3,355 violations of environmental laws by 64 different Marcellus Shale gas drilling companies between January 1, 2008 and December 31, 2011. Of these violations, the Center identified 2,392 violations that likely posed a direct threat to the environment and were not reporting or paperwork violations. Of these thousands of violations, perhaps a handful have received any media attention.

In March, the supervisors of Center Township, Greene County, learned of a 480-gallon diesel spill into a local stream. The spill occurred in December. They learned about it because a reporter from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review did a violations file review. The supervisors were upset, saying that DEP should have notified them. Department officials told them that they wouldn't want to know about “every little spill.” “It isn't clear that DEP officials should be making that judgment if a 480-gallon spill went unreported to the public,” said Edward “Butch” Deter, chairman of the township's board of supervisors and president of the Center Township Volunteer Fire Department, Company 91.

Ed Barale, a supervisor in Amwell Township, Washington County, is also dissatisfied with DEP's lack of notification. DEP officials “don't tell us any more than they have to. I think we have a right to know. DEP keeps you in the dark, so I don't have much faith in them.” Three Amwell families are suing Range Resources and DEP over environmental problems they claim stem from violations committed by Range that the DEP did not report to the public.

Online services such as skytruth.org, epa-echo.gov and fractracker.org can help local residents to stay abreast of drilling violations in our area, and also, via skytruth, of new drilling permits that have been issued by the DEP for our area.

But wouldn't it be nice if the DEP would issue regular detailed drilling violation reports to all state media outlets, and especially to local officials and all residents within a mile or two of violation sites? One would think DEP would do this out of a sense of moral responsibility, or that state lawmakers would make it a legal requirement. If these violations were made public, maybe local residents would have a clearer, more realistic perception of the “safe and responsible drilling” taking place in their communities.


j.p.m.