Posts Tagged ‘deputy director’

The Susquehanna River Basin Commission has a set of rules for gas companies.

STEVE MOCARSKY smocarsky@timesleader.com

The Department of Environmental Protection isn’t the only state agency intent on protecting water sources from natural gas drilling activities that could affect area residents.

Tom Beauduy, deputy director of the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, said the commission requires drilling companies to account for “every gallon of water” withdrawn from any water source within the basin – where it comes from, where it’s used and what happens to it after it’s used.

And, a $1 million water quality monitoring system is being put in place near drilling sites within the basin, Beauduy said.

Beauduy said Marcellus Shale development in Pennsylvania hit the commission “like a tsunami,” just like it did every other impacted agency in the state.

The natural gas industry uses 4 million to 6 million gallons of water per natural gas well to release gas from the shale in a process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Currently, the industry is using about 1 million gallons per day in the state, and Beauduy expects that amount to increase to 28 million a day.

The commission, which is responsible for water resources planning, management, conservation, development, use and allocation, responded quickly to the industry’s needs. Protocols were adjusted so the commission could deal with the surge of water allocation requests, but no corners are cut when granting water withdrawal approvals, Beauduy said.

All companies known to be drilling in the Marcellus Shale region, which underlies more than 72 percent of the Susquehanna River Basin, were notified of the commission’s regulatory requirements. And the commission activated a previously unused rule that authorized an administrative “approval by rule” process for water withdrawals solely from public water supplies.

To date, Beauduy said the commission has approved 111 surface water withdrawals, with 55 applications pending; and 22 approvals of public water supply withdrawals, with 14 pending. It has also issued 662 approvals by rule for individual well pad sites and has 181 pending.

While the amount of water the gas industry needs might seem massive, Beauduy pointed out that the golf and ski resort industry in Pennsylvania consumes an average of 56 million gallons per day. He said industry needs can be accommodated if regulated properly. The industry must abide by restrictions that prevent negative impacts on streams and rivers that could harm aquatic life and water quality.

And while DEP regulates how the industry must dispose of flowback water from fracking operations, the commission will track area rivers and streams to catch a contamination problem.

The commission will have 30 water quality monitoring stations set up by the end of June in the regions where drilling in the Marcellus Shale is most active, as well as other locations where no drilling activities are planned so the commission can collect control data. The monitoring network will provide constant data collection with instruments sensitive enough to detect subtle changes in water quality on a frequency that will allow background conditions and any changes to them to be documented throughout the year.

Each monitoring station will be equipped with water quality sensors and a transmitter to continuously monitor and report water temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, ability to conduct electricity (conductance) and water clarity. The water depth also will be recorded to establish a relationship with stream flows.

The monitoring of conductance is key to detecting impacts associated with natural gas activities if they occur because water produced by the natural gas industry is generally 200 times more conductive of electricity than water normally measured in streams in the basin.

The monitoring network, the data from which will be accessible online by the public, will provide early warnings to help DEP officials respond more rapidly and better pinpoint causes if water quality conditions change. It will also help local public water suppliers, local watershed groups and communities stay informed.

Steve Mocarsky, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 970-7311.

Copyright: Times Leader

Mauri Rapp Abington Journal Correspondent

Sir Francis Bacon once said “Knowledge is power.” To that famous quote, Calvin Tillman adds “Once you know, you can’t not know.”

Tillman, the mayor of DISH, Texas, was one of four panelists in attendance at “Impacts of Gas Drilling and Your Community,” a Marcellus Shale drilling information seminar held April 29 at the Clark Summit fire hall. DISH, a town of fewer than 200 residents located approximately 25 miles from the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, garnered national attention after changing its name from Clark in exchange for free cable television service for ten years from DISH Network.

DISH has also attracted another kind of attention: the eye of natural gas companies drilling in the Barnett Shale region, a natural gas field which stretches approximately 5,000 square miles across the state of Texas. Tillman called DISH the “Grand Central Station” of the Barnett Shale play, with 11 compressor stations, three metering stations and more than 20 natural gas pipelines located within less than two square miles.

Tillman described to the 150-plus people in attendance April 29 the impact natural gas drilling has had on his town. To date, the Barnett Shale play has added approximately $8 to $10 billion and 100,000 jobs to the Texas economy, Tillman said. The industry has also added toxic chemicals to DISH’s air, he said. A study performed in August 2009 by Wolf Eagle Environmental showed that the air contained high concentrations of carcinogens and neurotoxins. Tillman continues to advocate for the town’s population, and on April 22 the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality installed a continuous air monitor in DISH. “I believe more testing should be done,” he said.

The mayor has relayed his story to audiences in the Marcellus Shale region during the past several months. Tillman said he is not against the industry and believes in working with it to get things done, but feels that citizens and communities should go into leases with their eyes open. He said that certain measures, such as green technologies, declaration of areas such as schools and parks off limits to drilling, and a separation between the DEP regulating and permitting bodies could help make the industry safer. Tillman also spoke in favor of a severance tax for Pennsylvania. “I hate to break it to you, but the oil and gas industry came into Pennsylvania and picked your pockets,” Tillman said. “You need to have a severance tax to pay for roads, to pay for environmental issues, to pay for more DEP workers.”

Putting a personal face on the Marcellus Shale play was Victoria Switzer, a natural gas lessor from Dimock Township who said she wished she knew when she signed her lease what she knows now. “We’ve all heard the glories of the natural gas industry,” Switzer said. “I’m not going to dispute some of those things, but I’m going to show you what comes with the package deal.”

Switzer said that for the past couple of years, she has been living in a gas field with 63 wells located within nine square miles, the closest one 710 feet from her own home. Twenty-four of those wells have had violations, said Switzer. She now conducts what she calls “Victoria’s Toxic Tours” for citizens, journalists and public officials interested in seeing the impact natural gas drilling has had in her township. “You need to know what is coming your way,” she told the audience.

Panelist Paul Lumia, executive director of North Branch Land Trust, provided tips for those who decide to lease to natural gas drillers, including getting to know one’s gas man and remaining vigilant in reporting suspected violations to DEP. Lumia also encourages the crowd to pressure policymakers into decisions that preserve the environment. “Don’t just assume that your neighbors will do it,” Lumia said. “Protecting our land is up to us.”

Also on hand was George E. Turner, a professional geologist with more than 20 years of experience with groundwater and water testing. Turner advised those considering natural gas leasing to get their water tested beforehand. “This gives you legal proof in case your water is contaminated,” he said.

Scott Perry, deputy director of the DEP Bureau of Oil and Gas Management, was on hand to answer questions from the audience.

Copyright: Times Leader

Sporting groups, conservationists and anti-drilling neighbors protest the large-scale gas exploration.

MICHAEL RUBINKAM Associated Press Writer

PLEASANT MOUNT, Pa. — A few hundred yards from Louis Matoushek’s farmhouse is a well that could soon produce not only natural gas, but a drilling boom in the wild and scenic Delaware River watershed.

Energy companies have leased thousands of acres of land in Pennsylvania’s unspoiled northeastern tip, hoping to tap vast stores of gas in a sprawling rock formation — the Marcellus Shale — that some experts believe could become the nation’s most productive gas field.

Plenty of folks like Matoushek are eager for the gas, and the royalty checks, to start flowing — including farmers who see Marcellus money as a way to keep their struggling operations afloat.

“It’s a depressed area,” Matoushek said. “This is going to mean new jobs, real jobs, not government jobs.”

Standing in the way is a loose coalition of sporting groups, conservationists and anti-drilling neighbors. They contend that large-scale gas exploration so close to crucial waterways will threaten drinking water, ruin a renowned wild trout fishery, wreck property values, and transform a rural area popular with tourists into an industrial zone with constant noise and truck traffic.

Both sides are furiously lobbying the Delaware River Basin Commission, the powerful federal-interstate compact agency that monitors water supplies for 15 million people, including half the population of New York City. The commission has jurisdiction because the drilling process will require withdrawing huge amounts of water from the watershed’s streams and rivers and because of the potential for groundwater pollution.

The well on Matoushek’s 200-acre spread in the northern Pocono Mountains in Wayne County is up first. The commission is reviewing an application by Stone Energy Corp. of Lafayette, La., to extract gas from the well — the first of what could be thousands of applications by energy companies to sink wells in an area roughly the size of Connecticut.

Stone Energy’s application has already generated more than 1,700 written comments to the DRBC. The company, which paid a $70,000 penalty for drilling the Matoushek well without DRBC approval in 2008, has already received a permit from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

Eager gas companies have leased more than 300 square miles of watershed land, conservation officials estimate.

“This is certainly just the start. There’s a lot of acreage out there, and a lot of people interested in leasing their land,” said Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the anti-drilling Delaware Riverkeeper Network.

The Marcellus Shale is a rock formation 6,000 to 8,000 feet beneath Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Ohio, including about 36 percent of the Delaware River basin. New drilling techniques now allow affordable access to supplies in the Marcellus and other shales in the U.S. that once were too expensive to tap.

Energy companies combine horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” a technique that injects vast amounts of water, along with sand and chemicals, underground to break up the shale and release the gas.

While gas companies refuse to identify the chemicals they use — claiming that is proprietary information — critics cite contamination problems in other natural gas drilling fields. They worry that unregulated fracking can taint drinking water, deplete aquifers and produce briny wastewater that can kill fish. In Dimock, Pa., about 40 miles west of the Matoushek well but outside the Delaware basin, state environmental regulators say that cracked casings on fracked wells have tainted residential water supplies with methane gas.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced last month that it will study the impact of fracking on the environment and human health. The EPA said in 2004 there was no evidence that fracking threatens drinking water quality, but critics, including a veteran engineer in the Denver regional EPA office, argued that report’s methodology was flawed.

The industry contends environmental concerns are overblown. It says the drilling techniques are safe and that there has never been a proven case of groundwater contamination caused by fracking — in part because fracking occurs far below the water table. Congress exempted hydraulic fracturing from federal oversight in 2005.

Dozens of people told the DRBC at a recent public hearing why they oppose the watershed drilling. A few supporters called it an economic boon and a property-rights issue.

Richard Kreznar, who owns property in the Pennsylvania riverfront community of Damascus, said gas drilling primarily benefits large landowners and exploration companies.

“After the Delaware River and the stream next to my house are messed up, what compensation will I get? Who will put it back together again?” he asked DRBC staff.

Lee Hartman, the Delaware River chairman for Trout Unlimited, worries that large water withdrawals required for fracking will create low stream flows in the Delaware’s tributaries, damaging fish habitat. For the Matoushek well, Stone Energy wants to take 700,000 gallons a day from the Lackawaxen River’s narrow west branch.

Hartman and others say the DRBC should first study the cumulative environmental impacts of drilling in the Delaware watershed, and pass drilling regulations, before it allows any gas extraction to take place. The agency has asked for $250,000 in federal funds for a study, but commissioners have not said whether they will wait before voting on Matoushek’s well.

Opponents say they will sue if Stone Energy’s application is approved.

Downstream communities that rely on the Delaware for drinking water are worried about the coming gas boom. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg opposes any drilling in the watershed, while the Philadelphia City Council has asked the basin commission for an environmental study.

New York state regulators have put a moratorium on drilling in the Marcellus region, saying they won’t approve permits until they are finished drafting new regulations.

Back in northeastern Pennsylvania, Matoushek, 68, a semiretired farmer who signed a lease with Stone Energy three years ago, said he is counting on royalty checks from gas production to help fund his golden years and secure the land for future generations of his family. As far he’s concerned, the benefits far outweigh any theoretical harm.

Copyright: Times Leader

Industry reps cite permitting delays; DEP head says issues to be resolved.

DALLAS TWP. – Representatives from every aspect of the state’s burgeoning natural-gas drilling industry met on Tuesday and, though differing on specifics, emphasized that Pennsylvanians stand upon a multibillion-dollar windfall, but only if the state streamlines its permitting process.

The hearing at Misericordia University was organized by the state Senate Republicans’ policy committee to identify potential problems with drilling the Marcellus Shale about a mile underground, but the senators instead were told that many of the problems lie with the state itself.

“Fundamentally, what the industry has said to us is, ‘We need to know what the rules are,’” said Tom Beauduy, the deputy director of the Susquehanna River Basin Commission. The commission oversees water removal from the river basin.

Industry representatives were dire with their characterizations. The industry is experiencing “permitting delays unlike we have ever seen in any other state,” said Wendy Straatmann, president of Ohio-based Exco-North Coast Energy Inc. “Why would I spend so much of our company’s time and resources when I can go to some other state and use the gas and oil manual and follow the regulations?”

Ray Walker, a vice president with Texas-based Range Resources Corp., agreed that an inclusive regulations manual would help companies “put our money into protecting the environment and not paperwork.” He noted that smaller companies are considering drilling here, but won’t if the permitting process remains slow and taxes increase. That could keep development slow, he said.

That’s a prospect that few at the hearing wanted. John Hanger, the acting secretary of the state Department of Environmental Protection, assured that his agency was “working to make sure that gas can be produced and water protected.” Part of the lag has come from a dearth of disposal options for the fluids used to hydraulically fracture the rock, and Hanger said his favored alternative was to find ways for the companies to simply inject them underground.

DEP would need to increase its regulatory force to keep up with the permitting and inspections demand predicted based on industry desires, he said, noting the department has recently requested substantially increasing its well-permitting fees.

Still the Republican senators felt DEP is clamping down too tightly. “When I ran for Senate, I was mad at the state for over-regulating my industry,” said Sen. Mary Jo White, R-Venango County, who had worked for an oil corporation. “I think we’re heading down that road again.”

William Brackett, the managing editor of a newsletter that reports on the Barnett Shale, said gas drilling there “is a prime reason the north Texas economy has only caught a cold and not the flu.”

John Hanger, acting DEP secretary, said part of the lag has come from a dearth of disposal options for the fluids used to hydraulically fracture the rock.

Copyright: Times Leader

Industry reps cite permitting delays; DEP head says issues to be resolved.

DALLAS TWP. – Representatives from every aspect of the state’s burgeoning natural-gas drilling industry met on Tuesday and, though differing on specifics, emphasized that Pennsylvanians stand upon a multibillion-dollar windfall, but only if the state streamlines its permitting process.

The hearing at Misericordia University was organized by the state Senate Republicans’ policy committee to identify potential problems with drilling the Marcellus Shale about a mile underground, but the senators instead were told that many of the problems lie with the state itself.

“Fundamentally, what the industry has said to us is, ‘We need to know what the rules are,’” said Tom Beauduy, the deputy director of the Susquehanna River Basin Commission. The commission oversees water removal from the river basin.

Industry representatives were dire with their characterizations. The industry is experiencing “permitting delays unlike we have ever seen in any other state,” said Wendy Straatmann, president of Ohio-based Exco-North Coast Energy Inc. “Why would I spend so much of our company’s time and resources when I can go to some other state and use the gas and oil manual and follow the regulations?”

Ray Walker, a vice president with Texas-based Range Resources Corp., agreed that an inclusive regulations manual would help companies “put our money into protecting the environment and not paperwork.” He noted that smaller companies are considering drilling here, but won’t if the permitting process remains slow and taxes increase. That could keep development slow, he said.

That’s a prospect that few at the hearing wanted. John Hanger, the acting secretary of the state Department of Environmental Protection, assured that his agency was “working to make sure that gas can be produced and water protected.” Part of the lag has come from a dearth of disposal options for the fluids used to hydraulically fracture the rock, and Hanger said his favored alternative was to find ways for the companies to simply inject them underground.

DEP would need to increase its regulatory force to keep up with the permitting and inspections demand predicted based on industry desires, he said, noting the department has recently requested substantially increasing its well-permitting fees.

Still the Republican senators felt DEP is clamping down too tightly. “When I ran for Senate, I was mad at the state for over-regulating my industry,” said Sen. Mary Jo White, R-Venango County, who had worked for an oil corporation. “I think we’re heading down that road again.”

William Brackett, the managing editor of a newsletter that reports on the Barnett Shale, said gas drilling there “is a prime reason the north Texas economy has only caught a cold and not the flu.”

John Hanger, acting DEP secretary, said part of the lag has come from a dearth of disposal options for the fluids used to hydraulically fracture the rock.

Copyright: Times Leader



Agency said Susquehanna River has enough water, but withdrawal timing is key.

WILLIAMSPORT – The Susquehanna River watershed has enough water to supply drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale, members of the Susquehanna River Basin Commission assured at a public hearing on Tuesday.

The trick is to take it when there’s a lot available, and that requires planning.

“It’s not so much the consumptive use,” said Thomas Beauduy, the SRBC’s deputy director.

“It’s when it’s being used. It’s how it’s being used.”

To illustrate the point, Michael Brownell, the commission’s Water Resources Management Division chief, used a local drilling site owned by Chief Oil & Gas LLC as an example.

The site, tucked along rolling ridges east of Hughesville, is permitted for water withdrawal from a creek almost six miles away, meaning the water must be trucked. Water could probably be piped in from a smaller creek about half a mile away, but only in certain seasons when its flow is high enough, Brownell said, which would require forethought.

It’s a matter of submitting the application early, doing the research and picking the right time, he said.

Water use is a major factor for drilling in the shale about a mile underground.

Companies use an innovative horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing process that’s succeeded in similar gas-containing formations in Texas. Each fracturing process can use as much as four million gallons of water. Only about half of that is recovered, Beauduy said.

And while the commission is interested in recycling and reusing water, he acknowledged that every use is assumed to be a complete loss of the water from the watershed so that any recovery is seen as a bonus.

That said, both SRBC representatives noted that, in the aggregate, water withdrawal for well drilling would equal perhaps 28 million gallons per day, which is about half as much as PPL Corp.’s nuclear Susquehanna Steam Electric Station in Salem Township.

The hearing, which was meant to discuss proposed SRBC regulation changes, brought out concerns from both the industry and residents.

Potter County Commissioner Paul Heimel, who was representing the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania, noted two concerns.

First, that the chemicals used in the fracturing process haven’t been identified, and second, that it was unclear if the industry would be allowed to withdraw water during drought conditions.

Scott Blauvelt of East Resources, Inc. represented the Marcellus Shale Committee, which is made up of 28 members of regional gas and oil associations.

Copyright: Times Leader