Anti-frackers score victory on upstate NY home front...

Town of Sanford board forced to repeal fracking gag law Under legal pressure from anti-fracking groups, the Town of Sanford has repealed a law that prohibits people from publically discussing fracking at town meetings. With the repeal, officials from The Natural Resources Defense Council announced this week they are dropping their case against the town. In September, members of the Sanford Town Board passed a resolution banning the discussion of fracking during the public comment period at town meetings. The NRDC filed the lawsuit in February with the Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy in the U.S. Court of the Northern District of New York. The Town of Sanford resolution is unconstitutional, according to the complaint, because it bans speech at public meetings about a matter of substantial public interest that has generated significant political activity. Several of the board members have direct financial stakes in the outcome of fracking and, be extension, policy being influenced in town halls on the controversial practice of extracting gas from bedrock using high volumes of undisclosed pressurized chemical solutions. Town Supervisor Dewey Decker is among those who signed a lease with XTO Energy to produce gas from the Marcellus Shale under his land. Decker leads a coalition of farmers who negotiated a deal with XTO Energy in 2008 to lease 50,000 acres for $110 million plus 13.5 percent royalties. Since then, development has been on hold pending a policy review on the impacts of shale gas development by state health and environmental officials Sanford Town board meetings were becoming a draw for outspoken activists and residents opposed to fracking. Acting in the capacity of Town Supervisor, Decker sent a letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo last fall urging the state to expedite the pending health and environmental policy review, and complaining that a delay was only empowering opponents. Prior to that, the board passed a resolution urging the state to move forward, and rejecting calls for the town to ban fracking. Decker was out plowing his fields today and unavailable. He doesnt carry a cell phone and he takes his lunch with him, his wife Dawn told me. I will update this post after I reach him. This is a vindication of the right to free speech, NRDC attorney Kate Sinding said in a statement. And it sends a message to communities everywhere. As Americans, we have the right to speak up when we feel threatened. And it is our governments responsibility to listen. Status report: In my last post a stated my next post would be about injections wells in Ohio. To finish that, Im waiting for some records from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which I expect by early next week. Posted by TOM WILBER at 11:48 AM 3 comments Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook Labels: catskill citizens, dewey decker, fracking, gag rule, high volume hydraulic fracturing, lawsuit, nrdc, town board, town of sanford

Saturday, April 13, 2013 Scale of shale oil patch beyond historical comparison I drove across part of the oil patch this week. I left early Monday morning from Endicott, New York and headed west at a good clip on Intestate 86. By late afternoon, 390 miles down the road, I was in Oberlin Ohio. Oil patch --- Its a term of endearment in oil and gas circles that suggests the colloquial charm and Ol Boy character of the industry. Unthreatening, familiar, folksy, agricultural, and local Like a pumpkin patch. It conjures a notion that contrary to hype -- theres nothing really new or fanciful about fracking. Yet, nomenclature aside, there is nothing old-fashion about 21st century shale gas development. The scale of resource alone take a drive across Devonian oil patch sometime is a primary distinction. So are the unconventional practices that make drawing gas from rock possible. High volume hydraulic fracturing and computer-modeled horizontal drilling have spurred an onshore drilling boom as dissimilar to yesteryears oil patches as Big Ag and ethanol production is to Ma and Pas back 40. Even so, regulatory controls on the industry remain stuck in the past a time prior to regional planning and national hazardous waste disposal laws, when toxic loads were legally disposed of in the ground or injected into rivers. I drove across portions of the Marcellus and Utica shales that collectively encompass the subsurface of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Maryland, including many regions that have never before been touched by the extraction industry. The sheer footprint of these resources and others like them throughout the country have increased the number of stakeholders with futures, for worse or better, tied to their development. (For an areal view of the oil patch, check outthis video by Peter Saltonstall.) What will this look like and what legacy will it leave for the next generation? Numbers, information and reports on the Internet have provided a convenient way to extract information on demand, often minus complexity, nuances and noises of real life. But, as editors like to emphasize to reporters, nothing replaces being there. Writing Under the Surface has provided me with an unexpected windfall of information, perspective, and sources that comes with invitations from various stakeholders to speak on the subject. Inevitably this brings me to places where I would not have otherwise gone, and puts me in touch with stories I would not have otherwise seen. This past week I visited with activists at a potluck dinner at the basement of Peace Community Church in Oberlin, Ohio; spoke with a worker on the job at an injection well in central Ohio; and visited an area where wildcatters have begun exploring the Utica shale in western Pa. More on that in my next post. Posted by TOM WILBER at 3:30 PM 9 comments Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook Labels: frack, fracking, high volume hydraulic fracturing, injection well, marcelllus, ohio, oil patch, utica

Saturday, April 6, 2013 Sustainable shale development hype, hope or hoax? CSSD standards reflect chronic transparency problem We learned last month from the Associated Press that Energy firms, environmental groups agree on tough new fracking standards. Specifically, the report by Kevin Begos characterized these standards as a breakthrough, a product of an unlikely partnership between longtime adversaries once at odds over assessing merits and risks of shale gas development. The reconciled parties include the Environmental Defense Fund, the Heinz Endowments, and a group called Clean Air Task Force representing environmental interests, and Shell, Chevron and others representing industry. The group established 15 voluntary performance standards that operators can follow to attain certification -- and an implicit stamp of approval for consumers. The standards range from the best way to case a well to least harmful waste disposal practices. Compliance will be selfreported and subject to audits from the sanctioning body -- a recently formed agency called the Center for Sustainable Shale Development made up of representatives from industry, environmental groups and independent stakeholders. This was a story worth checking into. My search for what exactly the standards said took me to the CSSD website. Those who dont like a lot of packaging with their policy information, beware. If you go here, you will spend a few minutes navigating pages of vague preamble about unprecedented collaboration, constructive engagement, rigorous performance standards and commitment of various strategic partners ensuring safe and environmentally responsible development of our abundant shale resources, along with carousel billboards of fern-lined trout streams and primary-colored drilling rigs. With some clicking and negotiation, I came upon anoutline of the standards themselves, and learned quickly where the bar was set. Here are a few examples: Performance Standard No. 7 states: Operators will not use diesel fuel in their hydraulic fracturing fluids Performance Standard No. 8 states: In the event of spill or release, beyond the well pad, Operators shall immediately provide notification to the local governing body and any affected landowner. Some standards were more sophisticated. Some were not. Performance Standard No. 2 stated that the industry should recycle waste water to the maximum extent possible until a standard is set next year. A theme throughout seemed to be a lack of critical definitions such as what precisely recycling is. Searching for a point of clarity, I turned to an issue that, in my mind, would be a decisive test of how sincere this whole effort was, and whether my feeling of creeping skepticism was justified. Would the CSSDs rigorous performance standards require operators to fully disclose fracking

compounds? The answer, I found in Performance Standard No. 7, is yes. Operators will publically disclose the chemical constituents intentionally used in well stimulation fluids. Followed by a no. If an operator, service company or vendor claims that the identity of a chemical ingredient is entitled to trade secret protection, the operator will include in its disclosures a notation that trade secret protection has been asserted and will instead disclose the relevant chemical family name. Note: The difference between knowing a specific compound rather than a general family can be huge in assessing exposure impacts to health and ecology. And the company can invoke the trade secret clause for just about anything. And then came another qualification: Operators will implement measures consistent with state law to assist medical professionals in quickly obtaining trade secret information from the operator, service company or vendor holding the trade secret that may be needed for clinical diagnosis or treatment purposes. There was no explanation in the rules or anywhere on the CSSD website for that matter that, Under a law enacted by the Corbett administration in Pennsylvania, doctors cannot get the name of a fracking compound in an exposure case, even in an emergency, without first signing a contract that forbids them to share the information with anybody. These, then, are the kinds of standards the oil and gas industry are aspiring to. Something that takes the guise of transparency dressed up on a green-looking website, with broad loopholes and no practical enforcement mechanism. And in our country, the industry is understood to be better regulated than anyplace else in the world a claim that has some credibility. Yet I saw nothing in the CSSD template that spoke to the monumental weaknesses in industry oversight lack of regional planning for waste disposal and water consumption and other impacts, and exemptions from federal hazardous waste disposal and disclosure laws that allow the industry to operate with one foot in the pre-regulatory era. So why are the EDF and the Heinz Foundation on board? The answer seems to be, its a start, and that in itself is something of an achievement. This coalition is a step in the right direction to better protect the quality of life for people living among the gas fields, Mark Brownstein wrote in defense of the program after it received anticipated backlash from environmental groups representing both mainstream organizations and grass roots activists. Brownstein, Vice President & Chief Counsel of the US Energy and Climate

Program at Environmental Defense Fund, was instrumental in arranging the CSSD collaboration, and he felt obligated to defend the program under attack with some points not mentioned on the CSSD web site. The organizations voluntary standards are no substitute for the real thing, he stressed. Perhaps the constructive working relationship weve developed with the companies participating in CSSD will lead to a broader consensus on the full range of challenges confronting communities in the middle of the shale gale. We hope so, but we know we are not there yet Some of our environmental colleagues see the voluntary nature of the new standards as a way for the natural gas industry to avoid real oversight, and I understand their skepticism. But, like I said, CSSDs standards arent being put forward in place of regulation and enforcement. To the contrary, by demonstrating that industry leaders have what it takes to produce shale gas safer, CSSD can help build a broad industry-environmentalist coalition in favor of getting the rules right. The agency is committed to setting clear guidelines for a rigorous certification and auditing process, he said. (The CSSD is yet to release any specifics about how that will work.) The operative word is can, Brownstein concluded. Time will tell how effective this effort is, and whether it can or should to be replicated elsewhere. There are other factors at work. Last year the EDF received a three-year, $6-million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies to minimize the environmental impacts of natural gas operations through hydraulic fracturing, according to an agency press release at the time. The funding is to support EDFs strategy of securing strong rules and developing industry best practices in the 14 states with 85 percent of the countrys unconventional gas reserves. The charity is tied to its name sake, billionaire philanthropist Michael Bloomberg, who also happens to be the mayor of New York City, one of the largest energy consumers in the world. Representatives from mainstream environmental groups were quick to distance themselves from the EDFs involvement with the CSSD. Deb Nardone, Director of the Sierra Clubs Beyond Natural Gas Campaign, felt it necessary to reiterate that the Sierra Club had no involvement with the project: Voluntary certification is in no way a substitute for rigorous safeguards, monitoring, and enforcement. Voluntary safety certification is akin to slapping a band aid on a gaping wound. We know the oil and gas industry cannot be trusted to police itself and we cannot afford to give a free pass to bad actors in the industry. Sandy Buchanan, Executive Director of a group called Ohio Citizen Action, brought another perspective: This is not a conflict between oil and gas companies and environmentalists. The drillers are up against landowners, neighbors, and taxpayers; people who drink municipal water, people who drink well-water; doctors, nurses, firefighters, EMS technicians, and so on. To portray this as just environmentalists makes it seem as though it is just two special interest groups at odds. It sets

up a situation where one or more groups with the word Environment in their name think they can cut a deal with the drillers. Criticism, ranging from harsh to caustic, focused on the title of the program as evidence of a sham. Is there really such a thing as sustainable shale gas development? Certainly not in the way the word sustainable is understood (and revered) in the environmental community. Dory Hippauf, a blogger on Shaleshockmedia.org, wrote Fracking Center and Fluffy Kittens. WHOOO-HOOO, Frackers and Environmentalists collaborate! At least thats the headlines and spin from the natural gas PR people and the media echo chamber. What does this new collaboration have to do with fluffy kittens? Not much. What does this new collaboration have to do with addressing the real issue of fracking? Not much. This new collaboration is called the Center for Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD). NOTE: SUSTAINABLE SHALE DEVELOPMENT. Many in environmental academic and policy circles, both grass roots and institutional, were buzzing. But not everybody was displeased and some influential voices supported the plan. Among them John Hanger, former Secretary for Pennsylvanias Department of Environmental Conservation and now an early candidate for the 2014 Pennsylvania gubernatorial race. Hanger characterized the CSSD standards as a game changing event that will do for shale gas operators what sustainable certification program did for loggers: Consumer preferences and this powerful market demand means that smart gas producers will join Consol, Equitable, Shell, and Consol in improving their gas production operations so that they can earn CSSD certification. Whether gas producers like CSSD or not, CSSD just changed fundamentally their business world by empowering consumers to decide what gas they will buy and what gas they will not. Maybe so, but Hanger did not explain that, unlike natural gas, forest products are genuinely a sustainable resource. I will end here with my two cents. Performance standards are well and good. Best practices are something every industry should and often does strive for. But the very fact that a vague plan by the gas and oil industry to establish baseline standards becomes big news tells us something about the gas and oil industry. Beyond that, the Madison Avenue packaging and presentation of the new CSSD standards reflects a chronic problem with the industry: Its short on policy and long on pitch.