Posts Tagged ‘Writer’

By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: August 13, 2010

There are no unleased acres left in Pennsylvania’s state forests where Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling sites, pipelines and access roads could be built without damaging environmentally sensitive areas, according to a new analysis by the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

Nearly 139,000 acres of state forest have been leased for gas drilling since 2008 and money from those lucrative leases – a total of $354 million – has been used to help balance the last two state budgets.

But DCNR Secretary John Quigley said the era of leasing large parcels of state forests for gas drilling is over.

“We may do some little stuff here and there,” he said, “but in terms of large-scale leasing, we’re done.”

The department’s findings, demonstrated in a series of overlain maps on DCNR’s website, show the forests in northcentral Pennsylvania above the gas-rich Marcellus Shale crowded by leased land, parcels where the state does not own the mineral rights and places where development must be restricted.

Of the 1.5 million acres of state forest underlain by the shale, 700,000 acres have already been leased or the mineral rights under them are controlled by an owner other than the state.

An additional 702,500 acres are in ecologically sensitive areas – places with protected species, forested buffers, old growth or steep slopes. Another 27,500 acres are designated as primitive and remote lands, 49,600 acres were identified through a forest conservation analysis as priority conservation lands, and the last 20,400 acres are so entwined with the other sensitive areas that they cannot be developed without damaging them.

The department began to study the limits of the state forest land that can safely be leased to gas drillers as it developed a series of Marcellus gas leases in 2008 and January and May 2010.

Gas drilling has taken place on state forest land for over six decades, and mineral extraction is one of the forest’s designated uses, along with sustainable timber harvesting, recreation and conservation. But, Mr. Quigley said, “There are limits to how much you can develop the resource and maintain balance. And I think we’re there.”

There are currently about 10 producing Marcellus Shale gas wells in the state forest. The department expects there will be about 6,000 wells on 1,000 separate drilling pads when the resource is fully developed in 15 or 20 years.

The secretary said the prime consideration for any future leasing, “if we do any at all,” will be that drilling or associated activities not disturb the forest’s surface – a possibility with horizontal drilling technology that enables drillers to access the mile-deep shale from adjacent properties.

The impact of the DCNR’s findings is unclear.

Gov. Ed Rendell said earlier this year that no additional forest land will be offered for lease during his tenure, which ends in January, but the department’s findings have no legal bearing on the next administration’s ability to change its forest policy.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House passed a three-year moratorium on new leasing of state forest land for gas drilling in May, but the measure has not been taken up by the Republican-led Senate.

Patrick Henderson, a spokesman for Sen. Mary Jo White, R-21, Franklin, chairwoman of the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, said he does not sense “at all” an upswell of support among the members of the Senate to pass it.

Mr. Henderson said the department’s findings “carry some weight,” but he said the claim that there is no forest land left for surface gas development is subjective.

“I think different people can conclude if there may be some tracts of land out of 1.5 million that lie within the fairway to lease,” he said.

A $120 million lease deal DCNR reached with Anadarko Petroleum Corp. in May that is expected to have minimal impact on the state forest’s surface could not have been possible if the House’s moratorium bill had been law, he said.

“There’s something to be said for having a fresh set of eyes under the new administration take a look at it and draw their own conclusions.”

Mr. Quigley was optimistic that if future decisions about forest leasing are left to DCNR, his department’s findings will stand.

“The science tells us that we’ve reached the limit,” he said. “The question becomes whether we will face another occasion when economics looms larger.”

ONLINE http://bit.ly/DCNRmaps

Contact the writer: llegere@timesshamrock.com

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Copyright:  The Scranton Times

By Robert Swift (Harrisburg Bureau Chief)
Published: August 10, 2010

HARRISBURG – The natural gas industry is lobbying lawmakers to tax natural gas production at a lower rate during a well’s early years of production.

Proposals for a three-tiered well tax, requiring pooling together land parcels for drilling operations and making drilling a permitted use for local zoning are being advanced by the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry trade group. A copy of the coalition’s legislative agenda is circulating at the Capitol.

“Together, these policies will help ensure that Marcellus development remains competitive with other shale gas producing states and that critical capital investment will continue to flow into the region,” coalition president Kathryn Klaber said Monday.

Tax deadline Oct. 1

The coalition’s proposal surfaces with leaders of the House and Senate declaring their intent to pass a state severance tax by Oct. 1 and have it go into effect Jan. 1, 2011. The declaration is part of a state budget package enacted last month. Lawmakers return to session in mid-September with the Marcellus Shale and transportation funding issues competing for attention.

The newest details in the proposal focus on what production would be taxed at lower rates or exempt, an already contentious issue in Harrisburg.

Under the proposal, “high cost” Marcellus Shale wells that go to 5,000 feet or more below the surface to reach deep gas pockets would be taxed at 1.5 percent of market value of gas produced for the first five years, with a five percent tax rate kicking in after that.

So-called marginal Marcellus wells would be taxed at one percent of market value. These are described as wells not capable of producing more than 150,000 cubic feet of gas per day in a month. Wells not capable of producing more than 90,000 cubic feet of gas per day in a month would be exempt from taxes under the proposal.

Shallow gas wells would be exempt from taxes.

Market value would be defined as the amount generated through cash receipts less the cost of dehydrating, treating, compressing and delivering the gas.

As an example of high costs, the coalition cites a provision in state law that requires Marcellus producers to drill down into the Onondaga Layer which underlies the Marcellus Shale formation if the drilling takes place in a coal region. The added cost can amount to $200,000 per well, it states.

The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center issued a report recently criticizing tax breaks on new wells as depriving the state of tax revenue during a well’s greatest years of production.

“It would be a severance tax in name only,” said center executive director Sharon Ward.

The industry is seeking a two-sided exemption, with the reduced tax rate at the start and exemption for wells it considers low-producing, said Michael Wood, center research director. A 150,000-cubic-feet threshold is high, he said.

‘Use by right’

In addition, the coalition wants lawmakers to declare drilling a “use by right” in local zoning ordinances. That means drilling would be allowed, without the need for a major review by a local government, as long as it meets the standards specified in an ordinance. A local zoning permit would still be needed, but that would be issued relatively quickly.

This would provide for gas development in an orderly way while allowing municipalities to impose reasonable conditions on land used such as lot size and landscaping and safety features, the coalition said.

“We have problems with that,” said Elam Herr, an official with the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors. A township can’t exclude drilling under zoning laws, but local officials should be able to say where it takes place and keep it out of areas zoned for residential use, he said.

Other proposals call for providing incentives to convert state and local government and transit vehicles to natural gas fueling and giving priority to tax revenue distribution to host municipalities and counties.

Contact the writer: rswift@timesshamrock.com

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Copyright:  The Daily Review

By Elizabeth Skrapits (Staff Writer)
Published: August 2, 2010

JACKSON TWP. – Just as individual property owners are testing their drinking water wells before natural gas drilling starts, Pennsylvania American Water Co. has established a baseline to ensure nothing affects the quality of water the company provides to its thousands of customers.

After giving The Citizens’ Voice a tour of the Ceasetown Reservoir’s filtration plant last week, Pennsylvania American Water representatives explained what the company is doing to augment its water quality monitoring to prevent contamination from natural gas drilling.

Although no gas wells are planned near the Huntsville or Ceasetown reservoirs in Jackson and Lehman townships, Encana Oil & Gas USA Inc. has leased mineral rights to land close to both reservoirs and is preparing to drill an exploratory well in Lake Township, not far from the Lehman Township border.

Pennsylvania American Water Production Manager Mark Cross said the company has met with Encana and showed the gas company maps to indicate where the reservoirs’ watershed is and where future drilling activity could affect them.

“We had a lot of conversations with them to say this is a concern to us, and we need ongoing communication, and we need to know what your plans are,” he said.

Pennsylvania American Water also shared its watershed maps with the state Department of Environmental Protection, Cross said. Although there is no legal requirement to notify water companies when drilling permits are issued, DEP will take the watershed maps into consideration, and Pennsylvania American Water is also keeping up “ongoing dialogue” with the state agency, he said.

“Our focus is we want to know what’s going on out there, we want constant communication, we want to know what is in place out there, what their mitigation measures are, what spill control and response plans they have,” Cross said. “And it’s worked very well. They’ve been very cooperative, both DEP and Encana.”

‘Constantly monitored’

When people in Ashley, Conyngham Township, Courtdale, Edwardsville, Hanover Township, Hunlock Township, Larksville, Nanticoke, Plymouth, Plymouth Township, Pringle, Salem Township, Shickshinny and Wilkes-Barre City turn on their taps, the water probably comes from the Ceasetown Reservoir, which is fed by Pikes Creek.

Pennsylvania American Water’s 70,000 customers served by the Ceasetown Reservoir have their water treated at a facility in Jackson Township. A similar facility treats the water from the nearby Huntsville Reservoir, which serves about 29,000 customers. Huntsville serves Dallas, Kingston Township, Swoyersville, West Wyoming and Wyoming.

The “raw water” from the reservoir is piped into the facility in a 42-inch main, where chemicals are added to coagulate the small particles and make them easier to remove, Cross said.

The water then goes through a series of filters, which include irregularly shaped plastic beads that gather impurities, and layers of sand and gravel. The water is treated with chlorine to disinfect it and lime to adjust the pH level, then it is sent to a series of storage tanks and pump stations for distribution to customers.

Ceasetown’s facility handles a normal flow of 9 million gallons a day, Plant Supervisor Sean Sorber said. During droughts, Harveys Creek is used as an emergency source, but that hasn’t been necessary for about 10 years, Cross said.

“Ceasetown Reservoir is a very good source, very good quality,” he said.

Cross said the water is “constantly monitored” at the plant, and physical tests are done in its lab. A sink in the lab has a series of specialized faucets, each pouring water in a different stage of treatment. Every shift at the plant runs a minimum of two series of 15 tests – about 100 a day – Sorber said.

Because of impending natural gas drilling, Pennsylvania American Water instituted an additional set of parameters, Cross said.

Several months ago full baseline testing started at Pikes Creek, Harveys Creek, the Huntsville Reservoir in several locations, and the raw and treated water at the Huntsville and Ceasetown plants, he said. The water is tested at the plant and in the watershed for substances including volatile organic compounds, methane and total dissolved solids – extremely tiny particles of minerals or organic matter.

“We ran a full series of baseline tests – VOCs, metals, methane – on all of the sources in this Luzerne, Lackawanna and Susquehanna county area that are subject to any possible drilling,” Sorber said. “So we have a good baseline of what we currently have, and those tests will be run periodically also, as activity increases.”

Conductivity tests are one way to measure the amount of total dissolved solids, or TDSs. Changing levels of TDSs could signify a lot of things, including the water is being affected by natural gas drilling. Sorber took a sample of untreated water from one of the faucets and placed a probe in the plastic cup, then checked the meter. It was normal.

“If we see something jumping up, that will be an indication for us there’s something going on. It’s a very straightforward test,” he said.

Besides monitoring and testing, Pennsylvania American Water is active in trying to get Pennsylvania legislation changed, according to PAWC Communications Director Terry Maenza.

Two things the company would like to see changed are adding a requirement for drinking water utilities to be notified of any nearby natural gas drilling permit applications, and to have the buffer zone outside which drilling is allowed increased from 100 feet to 2,500 feet.

“We’re being as vigilant as we possibly can be, just to keep an eye on what’s proposed and before activity takes place, what safeguards are going to be in place,” Maenza said.

Contact the writer:  eskrapits@citizensvoice.com, 570-821-2072

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Copyright:  Citizens Voice 

By Patrick Sweet (Staff Writer)
Published: July 18, 2010

Harry Traver and Doug Brody glanced at each other, stood up and followed their neighbor’s lead.

“We didn’t drive all the way out here to make changes,” neighbor Joel Field responded when Carrizo Oil & Gas proposed amendments to the multimillion-dollar deal the three came to finalize.

Before the men made it very far, the company reeled them back to the bargaining table at its Pittsburgh office and hammered out a natural gas deal that includes the mineral rights to roughly 8,500 acres.

Willing to walk away from a deal worth more than $4 million – with the potential to become much more than $40 million – the three men exemplify the roughly 135 families they represent.

“Ninety-five percent of the people that signed live here,” Mr. Brody said. “I mean, this is our home … It’s been our group’s home for years and generations in some cases. We took our time and I think we did it right.”

Noxen is a community that came together and protested the closing of its post office on a bitter December morning. They embrace the camaraderie of a community that answered the call when its historic train station was threatened with demolition and raised money to protect it.

So, when gas company land agents approached residents in rural Noxen Twp., they demonstrated perhaps their greatest skill: their ability to unite.

Strength in numbers

Residents gathered under the pavilion behind Noxen United Methodist Church to formulate their plan of action. Across the street from his Whistle Pig Pumpkin Patch, Mr. Field found himself responsible for preserving the hopes of his family, friends and neighbors for a lucrative gas lease. The Noxen Area Gas Group was born.

“I kind of stood up and said, ‘Well, we ought to try this and we ought to try that,’ and everybody said, ‘OK. Great. Go do that,’” the 47-year-old farmer said.

“The responsibility was awesome.”

Over a 2½-year span, those responsibilities included innumerable hours of courthouse research, days studying the natural gas industry and negotiating deals that never succeeded. He even traveled to Houston to market the land that their farms, orchards and businesses have rested on for generations.

“We didn’t sign in the end, but for quite a long time we were dancing with Chief,” Mr. Field said. “The only reason we danced with Chief Oil and Gas was because we did courthouse research that revealed they had a couple thousand acres right contiguous to our block.”

Mr. Field didn’t realize exactly what he was getting himself into that day. He never thought he would have to hunt down the estranged brother of a neighboring family to gain his signature on their lease.

“It actually took a couple months to find the brother in California,” Mr. Field said. “They actually tracked him down through his union.”

Just as much, Mr. Traver and Mr. Brody – whom Mr. Field called upon to help organize the group – didn’t think they would be studying geology or helping to cover a several thousand dollar attorney bill.

Two days after the group signed the lease on July 10, Mr. Field, Mr. Traver and Mr. Brody sat down with Times Shamrock Newspapers for an exclusive interview about the experience. It was a complete about-face for the tight-lipped trio who refused to jeopardize any part of the deal before it was done.

Sitting at the wooden picnic table behind Mr. Field’s house, not far from the barn where the group held some of its meetings, the three men smiled as they shared stories.

“Getting up to speed on (natural gas) and keeping the people together was always, I guess, our biggest concern,” said Mr. Field.

“But the people stayed together and that’s what made it happen,” Mr. Traver added.

“Some of our principles in the very beginning, when we first started out, was to stick together as a family, as a community,” Mr. Field continued.

A boomtown again?

It’s not difficult to imagine why the community would unite so well. The tiny farming community has struggled to strengthen its economy ever since Mosser Tanning Co. left town in 1961.

The tannery employed enough people to force the construction of a second hotel and a row of houses nearby. It brought unprecedented life to Noxen’s economy that was once based on just more than a dozen farms and a handful of small businesses.

“When the tannery left, everything left with it,” Noxen resident Pearl Race said. “This was a booming town at one time.”

So, when a gas company comes and injects millions of dollars into a community that has seen half a century pass by since its industrial backbone collapsed, residents are more than excited.

“I think it’s a wonderful thing,” Ms. Race said. “It’s got to help financially; much more taxes, much more money.

“We’re going to finish paying our mortgage off.”

Carrizo paid each lessor $500 per acre up front with an additional $4,500 and 20 percent royalty if the company finds a decent supply of gas.

On the day of the signing, Mr. Traver said, an elderly woman who was having trouble getting by stepped up to the table, leased her roughly 1-acre property and took her check. Mr. Traver’s wife, Dawn, offered to take her to the bank.

The woman, Mr. Traver said, declined the offer.

“I want to keep it for a couple days just to look at it,” she said.

The possibility of a check more than 10 times the amount they just received, it seems, has most folks embracing the words of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin: “Drill, baby, drill.”

“We want production,” Mr. Field said. “We’re not just out there to get the bonus money. The value in this arrangement is in the royalty.”

Is the gas there?

The problem is companies aren’t quite sure the gas is there. Carrizo bought 2-D seismic data, senior landman Phillip Corey said, to get an idea of what they’d find.

“Based on what we see, it looks OK,” Mr. Corey said. “You’re trying to extrapolate a picture with three data points, though, when what you really need is a hundred.”

The uncertainty is why Carrizo didn’t pay the full $5,000 per acre up front. The company will drill two exploratory wells to test the area’s potential before cutting any more checks.

The Noxen group is split into southern and northern areas. Carrizo will drill one well in each area. If gas production is strong in the north but not the south, Carrizo will only have to pay northern landowners and vice versa.

Wooden stakes with neon flags tied to the tops mark the location of the northern well in Mr. Field’s pumpkin patch. The Sordoni family’s huge Sterling Farms property will host to the southern well.

The Sordoni property is one of a few properties directly abutting Harveys Lake. A provision in the lease prevents Carrizo from drilling within 500 feet of any structure or water source.

Still, some folks are concerned with what might unfold.

Noxen resident Viola Robbins, 72, has family in Dimock Twp., the poster-child community for environmental disasters caused by natural gas drilling. Thousands of gallons of potentially carcinogenic drilling fluid spilled just outside the town.

“They can’t do nothing,” Ms. Robbins said. “(The gas company) brought them water for drinking and cooking.”

Toxic water forced Ms. Robbins’ great-niece Andrea Ely and her family to move back in with her parents.

“I’m against it,” Ms. Robbins said. “Maybe it’s me. It might be a different story if I had lots of land for them to drill on.”

Still, many others have faith that Carrizo won’t make the same mistakes as Cabot Oil and Gas did in Dimock Twp.

“We all own farms down through here,” Mr. Traver said. “When these people say that they are worried about the water, they aren’t as worried as these guys, because that’s how they make their living.”

Contact the writer:

psweet@citizensvoice.com

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Copyright: The Scranton Times

BY STEVE McCONNELL (STAFF WRITER)
Published: July 15, 2010

A company developing a railroad facility to serve the natural gas drilling industry is also seeking to withdraw 905,000 gallons of water a day from the Lackawanna River in Fell Twp. to support its operation.

Honesdale-based Linde Corp. began developing the Carbondale Yards Bulk Rail Terminal this year inside the Enterprise Drive business park to provide a transportation mode for materials and to mix fluids on-site that natural gas drilling companies use in the drilling process.

Susan Obleski, a spokeswoman with the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, which regulates surface water withdrawals in the watershed, said the commission is reviewing Linde’s application to see if flow meters, which measure the amount of water in the river at all times, will need to be installed around the withdrawal point as a way to mitigate potential impact to aquatic life, especially during drought conditions.

Linde officials have said they intend to mix the drawn water with sand and a chemical concentration to create a “drilling mud.”

The river withdrawal point, which is located near Linde’s facility, is also upstream from a stretch of the Lackawanna River from Archbald to Olyphant designated as wild, “trophy” trout waters with stringent fishing regulations enacted by the state Fish and Boat Commission.

Larry Bundy, a law enforcement assistant regional supervisor for the state Fish and Boat Commission, which also regulates state waters and aquatic wildlife, said Wednesday that he “wasn’t aware” of Linde’s application. However, he said his agency relies on the river basin commission’s biologists and staff to make determinations on whether water withdrawals may impact trout or other aquatic life.

“I haven’t seen any problems,” he said of other commission-approved water withdrawals in his Northeast Pennsylvania jurisdiction.

As of Monday, the river basin commission had only approved only one water source withdrawal for natural gas-related development projects in Lackawanna County – 91,000 gallons a day from the South Branch of Tunkhannock Creek in Benton Twp.

It has approved dozens of others throughout its 27,510-square miles jurisdiction, however, including 22 water withdrawal applications specifically for natural gas projects in Susquehanna County.

The Susquehanna River Basin Commission could vote on Linde’s application at its September meeting.

Contact the writer: smcconnell @timesshamrock.com

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Copyright:  The Scranton Times 

By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: June 29, 2010

Gas tax law could OK ‘forced pooling’

Firms would drill from nearby site

The Marcellus Shale natural gas industry wants to see legislation attached to any severance tax adopted by the state that would force property owners who refuse leases to allow drillers to gather the gas beneath their land, an industry coalition leader said Monday.

Calling it the most economical and conservative land-use approach to drilling for gas, David Spigelmyer, Chesapeake Energy’s regional vice president for government relations, said in a Times-Tribune editorial board meeting that “forced pooling” is a key element of any legislation the state’s Marcellus drillers could support and is actively being discussed during budget negotiations in the capital.

Mr. Spigelmyer said he does not expect forced pooling to be adopted in the coming days as part of budget talks, but he said “an agreement” likely will emerge with the budget “to talk about (the severance tax) holistically” with other industry-supported legislation on forced pooling.

The Marcellus Shale Coalition, an organization of the state’s Marcellus drillers, “has not said, ‘Hell no’ ” to a severance tax, said Mr. Spigelmyer, the group’s vice chairman. “We’ve said there needs to be a broader discussion.”

A forced pooling statute would require landowners without gas leases to allow a company to drill under their land from a nearby leased property, and it would define the amount of royalties those holdout landowners are owed for their gas.

Eminent domain

Such a statute would help avoid an unnecessary proliferation of wells, Mr. Spigelmyer said, but critics say it is a form of eminent domain.

In May, State Rep. Camille “Bud” George, D-74, Houtzdale, Clearfield County, called it a “controversial, ugly provision” through which “an intrusive government would be depriving an individual’s property rights to benefit private companies.”

Limit zoning laws

As part of severance tax discussions, the industry also wants to limit municipal ordinances that attempt to regulate where gas drilling can occur – a development spurred by a state Supreme Court decision last year that opened the door for municipalities to have some control over where gas wells are located through zoning.

“We’re willing to work with municipalities, but we’re seeing … an extraordinary number of ordinances that are coming into play that basically zone out development completely,” Mr. Spigelmyer said. “We want to make sure we don’t have ordinances in place that basically remove your rights.”

Negotiations over a severance tax are at the center of ongoing state budget decisions, and Mr. Spigelmyer said Monday a Pennsylvania tax needs to look like those in other, competing shale-gas producing states.

Pennsylvania has benefitted from increased drilling without a severance tax, he said, but an unfair tax and recently introduced legislation to halt drilling in the state will deter development.

“I’ve already seen where companies have walked away from joint venture opportunities to invest in Pennsylvania because of the mere inference of a moratorium,” he said.

“It has the potential to, and I think it already has, limited capital investment in the commonwealth.”

Contact the writer: llegere@timesshamrock.com

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Copyright:  The Scranton Times

BY JEREMY G. BURTON (STAFF WRITER)
Published: June 24, 2010

Pennsylvania authorities found environmental and safety violations on more than 130 trucks hauling wastewater from natural gas wells during a three-day enforcement blitz last week, the state Department of Transportation said Wednesday.

Overall, officials inspected 1,137 trucks between June 14 and 16 during the multi-agency operation, which was focused on Marcellus Shale drilling sites. Of the 210 commercial vehicles ordered out of service for violations, 131 were transporting wastewater used in the process called hydraulic fracturing.

The added enforcement has been made necessary by the growing gas industry’s heavy truck traffic, especially in rural counties, state police Commissioner Frank E. Pawlowski said in a statement.

Also participating was the state Department of Environmental Protection, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission and the federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

In Troop R – which covers Lackawanna, Pike, Susquehanna and Wayne counties – officials shut down 25 vehicles and issued 141 citations during 142 inspections.

Sixty-six vehicles were shut down and 358 citations issued in 166 inspections within Troop P, which covers Bradford, Sullivan, Wyoming and part of Luzerne counties.

One hundred nineteen vehicles were shut down in western and central Pennsylvania.

Inspectors especially looked for safety deficiencies that could lead to crashes, authorities said.

Contact the writer: jburton@timesshamrock.com

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Copyright: The Scranton Times

by Laura Legere (staff writer)
Published: June 20, 2010

One natural gas well has been drilled into the Marcellus Shale in Lackawanna County, but much more development is on the county’s doorstep.

Already more than an eighth of the county’s land has been leased to companies planning to drill in the Marcellus Shale, according to deeds recorded with the county.

The total land leased – about 38,000 acres – amounts to an area roughly twice the size of Scranton.

Those leases carry a soft deadline for drilling: Many of them have a primary term of five or seven years, which means the companies have to make some progress to develop the gas within that time or renegotiate to extend the agreement and risk losing the lease to a competitor.

Because the vast majority of the leases in the county – 816 of them – were recorded in 2008, the incentive for developing the gas is approaching.

The land rush has touched a vast area of the county. Land in 20 of Lackawanna’s 40 municipalities has been leased, with the largest concentration of leases in northern municipalities, including Scott, Benton and Greenfield townships, as well as areas of the Abingtons.

Many of the county’s most prominent farmers, including the Manning, Eckel, Roba and Pallman families, have signed leases.

Although much of the land has been leased outside of the population centers along the Lackawanna Valley, leased parcels are not strictly on farms or in rural areas.

Baptist Bible College leased 114 acres on its South Abington Twp. campus.

The Abington Hill Cemetery Association leased 120 acres in South Abington along the Morgan Highway.

Leases have also been agreed to on land near residential areas. For example, 38 acres have been leased along the 900 and 1000 blocks of Fairview Road in South Abington.

Property owners with leases include private individuals, but also churches, golf courses, businesses and community associations. The Greenfield Township Sewer Authority leased 7.3 acres; the Fleetville Volunteer Fire Company leased 65 acres in Benton.

The Newton Lake Association and the Associates at Chapman Lake, two community associations that own their namesake lakes and the area around them, both signed leases.

Religious organizations have also signed leases, including the Harmony Heart church camp in Scott, a 59-acre parcel in Scott owned by Parker Hill Community Church, the Evangelical Free Bible Church in North Abington Twp., and Community Bible Church in Greenfield.

Three national energy companies, Oklahoma-based Chesapeake Appalachia, Texas-based Exco Resources, and Texas-based Southwestern Energy, hold nearly all of the leases.

The amount of Lackawanna County land leased for gas development surprised even people who have followed the subject closely for years.

Lee Jamison, a leader of the multi-municipal Abington Council of Governments, which has hosted educational events and speakers regarding Marcellus Shale drilling since 2008, did not know the extent of the leasing or its reach to areas outside of the rural northwest of the county.

He said despite educational events and active gas drilling in nearby communities, Lackawanna County municipalities have to do more to follow changing legislation and precedent-setting court cases to prepare for the coming development.

“I still think there’s quite a lack of preparedness on the part of the local municipal officials,” he said. “Often times you get conflicting reports and confusing stories.”

Mr. Jamison, who recently lost in the Republican primary race for state representative in the 114th House District, made Marcellus Shale a central part of his platform.

“Over 90 percent of the people I’ve spoken to are in favor of developing the Marcellus resource,” he said, “but they want it done correctly. With that caveat.”

Mary Felley, the open space coordinator for the Countryside Conservancy and a representative of Dalton in the Scranton-Abingtons Planning Association, said residents and municipal officials are “aware that it’s coming but not quite here.”

“I come to my local borough meetings, and people ask what can we do as a borough to regulate this, and we don’t know,” she said.

Because of unsettled case law regarding what role municipalities can take in regulated drilling, “we’re not getting a whole lot of clear guidance on what we can and cannot do here,” she said. “That’s kind of scary.”

There has also been a dearth of local training specifically targeting municipal officials on preparing for gas development. Even if there were such meetings, “my concern is people may not attend those until there’s a lot more activity in the county,” she said.

“This is the way we’ve evolved apparently: you respond to urgent threats you can see. You don’t respond to slow, impending threats that are over the hill somewhere.”

Contact the writer: llegere@timesshamrock.com

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Copyright: The Scranton Times

MARC LEVY Associated Press Writer

HARRISBURG — A key piece of the state’s approach to controlling water pollution from Pennsylvania’s fast-expanding natural gas drilling activity cleared a major hurdle Thursday.

The Independent Regulatory Review Commission voted 4-1 over the objections of the gas industry to approve the Rendell administration’s proposal to prevent pollutants in briny drilling wastewater from further tainting public waterways and household drinking water. State environmental officials say too much of the pollutants can kill fish and leave an unpleasant salty taste in drinking water drawn from rivers.

“Drilling wastewater is incredibly nasty wastewater,” state Environmental Protection Secretary John Hanger said after the vote at the panel’s public meeting. “If we allow this into our rivers and streams, all the businesses in Pennsylvania will suffer … all those who drink water in Pennsylvania are going to be angry and they would have every reason to be, and all of those who fish and love the outdoors are going to say, ‘What did you do to our fish and our outdoors?”’

The vote comes at the beginning of what is expected to be a gas drilling boom in Pennsylvania. Exploration companies, armed with new technology, are spending billions to get into position to exploit the rich Marcellus Shale gas reserve, which lies underneath much of the state.

The rule would put pressure on drillers to reuse the wastewater or find alternative methods to treat and dispose of the brine, rather than bringing more truckloads of it to sewage treatment plants that discharge into waterways where millions get drinking water.

The rule is designed to take effect Jan. 1. However, the Republican-controlled Senate, a key counterweight to Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell, could delay that if it votes to oppose the rule.

The drilling industry, as well as a range of business groups and owners, opposes the rule, calling it costly, confusing, arbitrary and rushed during more than three hours of testimony before the regulatory review commission.

Some, including a representative of the state’s coal industry, said they were worried about how it would affect different industries that also produce polluted water.

Water utilities, environmental advocates and outdoor recreation groups lined up behind it.

With drilling companies poised to sink thousands of wells in Pennsylvania, state environmental officials worried that its waterways would become overwhelmed with pollutants. They began writing the new rule last year.

Conventional sewage treatment plants and drinking water treatment plants are not equipped to remove the sulfates and chlorides in the brine enough to comply with the rule.

In addition, the chlorides can compromise the ability of bacteria in sewage treatment plants to break down nitrogen, which can be toxic to fish, environmental officials say.

Currently, a portion of the massive amounts of brine being generated by well drilling is entering the state’s waterways through sewage treatment plants, and that flow would be unaffected by the rule.

Once the rule takes effect, a treatment plant would have to get state approval to process additional amounts of drilling wastewater beyond what it already is allowed, or ensure that it was pretreated by a specialized method that removes sulfates and chlorides.

Hanger said no other industry will be affected and he has worked to incorporate the concerns of business groups that have had more than a year to scrutinize the administration’s plans. The companies, he said, are making more than enough money to pay for alternative treatment methods.

Copyright: Times Leader

State DEP chief warns gas companies to put end to well blowouts and water pollution.

MARC LEVY Associated Press Writer

HARRISBURG — Serious consequences await the state’s rapidly growing natural gas industry if companies are caught cutting corners of safety measures to pump up profits, Pennsylvania’s top environmental regulator warned Wednesday.

Environmental Protection Secretary John Hanger told a state Senate committee that companies flocking to Pennsylvania to exploit the rich Marcellus Shale natural gas reserve must stop well blowouts, gas migration and water pollution.

He said he has seen examples of negligence and accidents and cited his agency’s actions to withhold new permits, stop a company’s operations or seal wells when safety is compromised.

“We need this industry to get the message from us that we expect that safety is not going to be sacrificed when those decisions have to be made, and there will be serious consequences” if it is, Hanger said.

Hanger spoke on the heels of two high-profile natural gas well accidents, one in Pennsylvania and one in West Virginia.

The Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee hearing was held as a result of a well blowout in Clearfield County earlier this month that spewed natural gas and wastewater into the air for 16 hours before it was brought under control.

It was incredibly lucky that a nearby engine did not ignite the gas and cause an explosion or fire, Hanger said.

Hanger declined to reveal the results so far of the investigation into the June 3 blowout, though he repeated criticism Wednesday of the apparently botched attempted by the company, EOG Resources, to get in contact with his agency’s emergency response hotline.

On another matter, he told senators that his agency found no violations after inspecting several Pennsylvania wells being drilled by Union Drilling, the contractor that was drilling a West Virginia well that caught fire three days after the blowout.

Hanger’s 90 minutes of testimony came a day before a state board is to vote on proposed new standards that he views as crucial to protecting public waterways from briny and chemical-laden drilling wastewater.

Copyright: Times Leader