EnviroPolitics Blog

That relocated EPA fracking hearing, scratch it!

Earlier today, we reported on the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to change the location of Thursday’s public hearing on the controversial gas drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracturing, or just plain fracking.

Call it what you will, it’s off. The hearing, that is, scratched until sometime next month.
The day-long public meeting (the last in a series of four) originally was scheduled to be held at Binghamton University. The EPA expected it to attract a crowd of up to 1200 persons.

$crowd attending EPA hearing on fracking in Canonsburg Pa in July 2010$
Jeff Swensen for The New York Times
Crowd attending fracking hearing in Canonsburg, Pa in July

When university officials began hearing reports that up to 8,000 impassioned supporters and opponents of the controversial drilling method might descend upon their tranquil campus, they hiked EPA’s bill more than five times over the original agreed amount.

They said it was to pay for the added security.

Maybe it was. Or maybe it was to get the EPA to take their hearing and all those impassioned folks somewhere else.

Whatever their motives, it worked. EPA quickly negotiated a new venue–the OnCenter Complex in Syracuse. It was 65 miles north of Binghamton, but it was available on the original hearing date, Thursday, August 12.

The EPA’s Region 2 Administrator Judith Enck sounded a little peeved in a press release announcing the need to change the location. Little did she know that, hours later, she’d be issuing a meeting cancellation notice.

What happened in between the news releases?

After EPA received initial agreement on switching the hearing to Syracuse, Onondaga County officials had time to think things over. They decided they didn’t have sufficient time to arrange for the security that might be necessary to handle protests and rallies outside the meeting itself.

So, the EPA’s meeting planners are back to the drawing board.

A bit embarrassed by all the fuss, perhaps, the agency remains undaunted. Its latest statement notes that residents of Fort Worth, Texas, Denver, Colorado and Canonsburg, Pennsylvania were all afforded a chance to express their views.

Should the EPA adopt new environmental regulations to insure the safety of shale gas drilling?

It’s Upstate New Yorkers turn to weigh in on the fracking issue.
Some day. Some place. Next month.

Our most recent posts:
Suppose EPA held a hearing and everybody came
Coal residue from NJ could help reclaim old PA mine site
Shale gas industry adds Tom Ridge to its lobbying stable
PADEP Secretary and ‘Gasland’ filmmaker trade jabs
EPA proposes new coliform rule for public water systems

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Suppose EPA held a hearing and everybody came

The possibility that far more people than originally expected might attend a hearing on natural gas drilling on Thursday has forced the Environmental Protection Agency to re-locate the day-long event from Binghamton University to a Syracuse convention center 65 miles north.

It’s the controversial nature of the meeting topic—the hydraulic fracturing method of extracting natural gas wells—that forced the relocation.

The EPA is undertaking a study to determine whether new environmental rules are necessary to insure that the technique (also known as hydrofracturing or fracking)
does not cause harm to groundwater or surface streams.

The technique involves the injection of chemical-laden water, under high pressure, to extract natural gas held in underground formations of shale rock.

Critics say the technology could poison water supplies. The industry says it’s been used safely for decades in mining operations in the west.

New crowd-size estimates force relocation

The EPA said 300 people had signed up to speak at Thursday’s sessions and 1,200 were expected to attend.

But a Binghamton University official said information from law enforcement and various interest groups suggested that an estimated 8,000 people could descend on the campus. That prompted the university to raise its cost estimate to cover increased security and a larger meeting area.

EPA’s Region 2 Administrator, Judith Enck, said the revised cost estimate was five times what had been agreed upon previously and that forced the agency to find a more affordable location.

Thursday’s hearing, to be held at the Oncenter Complex in Syracuse, will consist of three, four-hour sessions.

Click here for more information on the relocated hearing.

Are you concerned about hydrofracturing? Are new rules a good or bad idea?
Do you plan to attend the hearing? Use the comment box below to share your thoughts.

Our most recent posts:
Coal residue from NJ could help reclaim old PA mine site
Shale gas industry adds Tom Ridge to its lobbying stable
PADEP Secretary and ‘Gasland’ filmmaker trade jabs
EPA proposes new coliform rule for public water systems
EPA’s updated Toxics Release Inventory available online

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Coal residue from NJ could help reclaim old PA mine site

Old coal mine in Scranton, Pennsylvania

For decades, Pennsylvania mined the coal that powered New Jersey industries. Now a New Jersey utility wants to send a byproduct of coal burning back to Pennsylvania to help reclaim an old mine property in Hazleton.

There’s a sense of symmetry to the idea. But like any proposal that involves shipping one state’s waste to another state for disposal–especially waste that could contain harmful materials–this one is already stirring opposition.

Here’s the quick version.

Hazleton Creek Properties wants to reclaim 53 acres of former mine property for the construction of an amphitheater to attract concerts to the city. New Jersey’s largest energy company, PSEG, wants to dispose of waste material that is produced in its coal-burning power plants when limestone is injected into exhaust gases to minimize sulfur emissions.

The Pennsylvania DEP scheduled a public hearing on the proposal for Aug. 3.

Proponents are assembling their scientific studies to show the material will cause no environmental harm. Critics are gearing up, too, and will be questioning the levels of potentially hazardous elements in the residue and their potential impacts on groundwater.

For a more detailed discussion, check out the story in today’s Standard-Speaker:
Developer looks to fill reclaimed mine land with N.J. plant residue

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Shale gas industry adds Tom Ridge to its lobbying stable

The Marcellus Shale Coalition, the lobbying arm of the natural gas drilling companies in Pennsylvania, announced yesterday that former PA governor and national homelands security director Tom Ridge will become a “strategic adviser” working for their interests.

What will Ridge be doing?

The official line from coalition president Kathryn Klaber:

“[He will] stress our industry’s commitment to environmental and work-force safety and the positive and overwhelming economic benefits that responsible shale gas development continues to generate across the region.”

Translation:

He’ll use his political clout to:

– Convince state legislators not to impose a tax on natural gas

– Keep the DEP from imposing overly burdensome/costly regulations on gas drilling

Ridge’s name and stature also may help to reassure Joe and Jane Voter that the industry’s controversial drilling method called hydrofracturing (fracking) won’t destroy aquifers or kill fish in streams.

Ridge to promote benefits of natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania

Gov. Ridge Joins the Marcellus Shale Coalition as Strategic Advisor

Editorial: Shale’s shill

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PADEP Secretary and ‘Gasland’ filmmaker trade jabs

PADEP’s John Hangar

Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection Secretary John Hanger says film director Josh Fox was dishonest in his presentation in the award-winning film ‘Gasland.’

Hanger says that the documentary “intentionally highlights mistakes that the industry made.”

“Mr. Fox clearly has an advocacy position. He wants to shut down gas drilling. He presents only information that supports his goal,” Hangar said.

The DEP Secretary’s remarks were reported today in The River Reporter, a weekly newspaper out of Narrowsburg, NY. The publication has been actively covering Marcellus Shale drilling activities in New York and Pennsylvania.

Filmmaker Josh Fox

Fox, a filmmaker who lives in Milanville, PA, a small hamlet in Wayne County, shot back:

“It is Mr. Hanger that is being dishonest—not ‘Gasland’—by ignoring the problems that drilling has caused all over the state and by attacking the film and the citizens who are voicing their severe contamination issues and health problems.

“Contamination is widespread and severe. It is not only in Dimock and Fort Worth; it is everywhere the industry goes,” he said.

Related:
Delaware board says no to ‘Gasland’
Gasland exposes a big fracking mess
‘Gasland’ – Do the pictures tell the fracking story?

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PADEP Secretary and ‘Gasland’ filmmaker trade jabs Read More »

EPA proposes new coliform rule for public water systems

Public water system operators take note: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing changes to its Total Coliform Rule that will may affect your operations.

The proposed revisions, published in the July 14 Federal Register, would revise the EPA’s Total Coliform Rule (TCR), a national primary drinking water regulation which became effective in 1990. That rule set health goals (MCLGs) and legal limits (MCLs) for the presence of total coliform in drinking water. It also detailed the type and frequency of testing that water systems must undertake.

EPA says its proposed revisions are designed to protect public health by ensuring the integrity of the drinking water distribution system and monitoring for the presence of microbial contamination. The proposals, which are based on recommendations by a federal advisory committee, would:

require public water systems that are vulnerable to microbial contamination to identify and fix problems, and
establish criteria for systems to qualify for and stay on reduced monitoring, thereby providing incentives for improved water system operation.

Public information sessions on the proposed revisions will be held in Washington, Chicago and San Francisco.

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