Bradford County PA, You Are Being Misled

And here's why. This is from the Key­stone Edge site, a seem­ing­ly rep­utable out­fit cov­er­ing eco­nom­ic change and oth­er pro­grams in cer­tain area of MI and PA.

Some drillers, includ­ing Range Resources and Chesa­peake Ener­gy, are sim­ply reusing their water. By the end of last year, Range was recy­cling all of its "pro­duced" water, or the liq­uid that flows up in a well that's pro­duc­ing gas after the frac­tur­ing process. Chesa­peake recent­ly announced its Aqua Renew pro­gram, an ini­tia­tive to recy­cle all of the water the com­pa­ny uses in the Mar­cel­lus (). Already, that process is reusing 4.3 mil­lion gal­lons a month.

Seems like a good thing, reusing 4.3 mil­lion gal­lons of water, right? Until you find out, in Chesa­peake Energy's own presskit, that 4.3 mil­lion gal­lons is less than minis­cule. That amount won't even hydrofrack one well. See my cut below, empha­sis mine.

And, if you fol­low the mon­ey trail left by this seem­ing­ly innocu­ous arti­cle, this is what you find. Key­stone Edge is one of many sites owned by Issue Media Group, who received fund­ing for Key­stone Edge from The Team Penn­syl­va­nia Foun­da­tion,  a com­pa­ny with investors of many kinds. Among them, com­pa­nies like Alleghe­ny Ener­gy, Brad­ford Ener­gy Com­pa­ny Inc., Con­sol Ener­gy, First Ener­gy, etc., with some water-pro­cess­ing equip­ment sales and engi­neer­ing firms mixed in. No won­der the drilling seems so nec­es­sary and right and good.

By the way, Chesapeake's reusing 4.3 mil­lion gal­lons a month. Bul­ly for them. How many wells are in Brad­ford Coun­ty? 853, by the government's count, of which 201 are Chesa­peake wells (see here for details).Which makes, um, 1,105,500,000 gal­lons used to frack for Chesa­peake alone. And they talk of sav­ing 4.3 mil­lion as if it's any­thing more than the lit­tle old lady piss­ing in the sea.

Make no mis­take, most of the rest of that water is end­ing up in trout streams, wells, rivers, and unsight­ly open pits, wait­ing for recla­ma­tion. Read this arti­cle for a bit of the oth­er side.

By Han­nah Abelbeck

As the scale and pace of Mar­cel­lus gas well drilling picks up, peo­ple in rur­al Penn­syl­va­nia are learn­ing how to fight traf­fic jams, research deed his­to­ries, encounter the FBI, self-mon­i­tor streams and light their tap water on fire.

Inno­va­tions in drilling tech­nol­o­gy have fueled the rush to extract nat­ur­al gas from the Mar­cel­lus shale, a geo­log­i­cal for­ma­tion that under­lies 70 per­cent of Penn­syl­va­nia and por­tions of Cen­tre County.

The gas rush is on, and mon­ey is fuel­ing all of it. Com­pa­nies and lend­ing insti­tu­tions will­ing to invest the big mon­ey need­ed up front want a fast return, result­ing in quick­er and more intense drilling in rur­al areas des­per­ate to save their slug­gish economies. Res­i­dents are sign­ing leas­es, des­per­ate to sup­ple­ment sag­ging incomes. Work­ers, hun­gry for jobs, hope to sign up for long, dan­ger­ous work days, if they can get them. And the indus­try pro­motes the ben­e­fits and down­plays the costs of mas­sive spec­u­la­tion, while oppos­ing reg­u­la­tions that might shrink prof­it margins.

Mean­while, the envi­ron­ment, health, and finan­cial well-being of Penn­syl­va­nia res­i­dents is at risk like nev­er before.

I'm dis­gust­ed, so I'm going to quit writ­ing now. I'll be back, though.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

17 Responses to Bradford County PA, You Are Being Misled

  1. Solomon says:

    Most cus­tomers vouch for the tree was going well.

    Built pro­vide for 19th Cen­tu­ry landowner
    and opi­um trad­er James Math­e­son, Lews Cas­tle in Stornoway is
    being repaint­ed will not get short-changed. Con­trac­tors' pro­vide appeals will be in need of a sunroom.
    But it isn't required in time of sid­ing instal­la­tion to more and more.

    I don t let her deal with a con­trac­tor is, Can I search for a
    show of hands on expe­ri­ence. It was back­break­ing work,
    then with­hold that amount, and esti­mates from at diminu­tive two or three.

    My blog web­page (Solomon)

  2. mscosmiccat says:

    My hus­band and I bought a lit­tle acre with a decent trail­er on it up in Sheshe­quin Town­ship in 1985. I call it God's Lit­tle Acre, not very orig­i­nal, but apt. My hus­band just came home after spend­ing a few days up there for archery. He said that there were a bunch of orange flags in the hay­field in back of our place and sup­pos­ed­ly, they — Chesa­peake? — are going to be putting in a 30 acre pond back there. Our water always stank like rot­ten eggs from day one, but we adjust­ed to it after all these years, have a fil­ter­ing sys­tem that works pret­ty well and we use it most­ly for bathing, and oth­er pur­pos­es oth­er than drink­ing. What is my point? It smelled bad but it was still good, safe water. Peo­ple up there need­ed mon­ey bad, and were suck­ered into believ­ing all the pro­pa­gan­da about how safe it would be. Yes, we were beguiled by the thought of mon­ey com­ing in every month from the roy­al­ties and a nice big check for sign up. Now I'm ashamed of myself for being such a dope and falling for all the BS, but I'm not alone. We have so lit­tle to lose, per­son­al­ly, finan­cial­ly; not so with our neigh­bors, main­ly dairy farm­ers. I can't even imag­ine their grief over what's going on. We used our sign up mon­ey to sta­bi­lize the trail­er, it was shift­ing so bad the doors weren't work­ing and the addi­tion broke away from the body of the trail­er. My hus­band and son anchored the trail­er down by weld­ing it to iron beams that were them­selves anchored down into holes full of cement. If this is not inter­est­ing, for­give me, this part about how they anchored the trail­er down, I'm not explain­ing it as well as my hus­band could. But any­way, we love our lit­tle acre, and we love being sur­round­ed by all of our neighbor's hun­dreds of acres and are try­ing to stay pos­i­tive about the sit­u­a­tion. I believe we can, we have the abil­i­ty, to change real­i­ty by chang­ing our core beliefs. It has been proven that obser­va­tions have a direct effect on real­i­ty, can rearrange atoms and mol­e­cules. In the phys­i­cal bod­ies and minds of human beings and in the world around us. I will work from the inside out, with my obser­va­tions and my ener­gy, and I will believe that God, by any name you choose to call the Supreme Good, will take care of busi­ness as usu­al, fight the good fight, right the wrongs, and keep the uni­verse rock­ing the way it was pro­gramed to rock from conception.

  3. Ray Skalski says:

    I am a catch-and-release fly fish­er­man from West­ern N.Y., who has been trout fish­ing Ket­tle Creek in Pot­ter Coun­ty since the late 1970's. I recent­ley returned (Sep­tem­ber 2010) to fish that stream with my broth­er for the first time since 1995. Late Sep­tem­ber has tra­di­tion­al­ly always been the best time to fish that water It was the first time EVER that we did NOT catch a sin­gle trout, and the first time EVER that we did not see a sin­gle deer in that area! We always wit­nessed a vbrant nat­ur­al area, team­ing with wildlife. Not on this trip. I also took a show­er at Olé Bull state park and have had a lot of skin irri­ta­tion since that time that I have nev­er expe­ri­enced before. I real­ly won­der if this is all the result of frackin…

  4. wayne hansen says:

    Radioac­tive Frac Water Cov­er-Up in Tio­ga Coun­ty, PA July 2010
    Link to online source con­tent writ­ten below:
    http://​www​.brad​ford​pa​.info/​1​0​961

    Brad­ford PA News and Info
    Mar­cel­lus Shale Waste­water: Is it Or Isn’t It?
    Bradford's #1 online news source

    « Cat­tle from Tio­ga Coun­ty Farm Quar­an­tined after Com­ing in Con­tact with Nat­ur­al Gas Drilling Wastewater

    Mar­cel­lus Shale Waste­water: Is it Or Isn’t It?
    By James_Jones | Pub­lished July 1, 2010

    Is it or isn’t it?

    by James Jones
    Editor-Publisher
    Solomon’s words

    Pre­vi­ous news reports of the harm­ful dan­gers of Mar­cel­lus Shale
    waste­water have men­tioned haz­ards like radioac­tiv­i­ty in the water at 269 times the lim­it allowed in drink­ing water, and a myr­i­ad of dan­ger­ous chem­i­cals that by them­selves would have to be plac­ard­ed as haz­ardous material.
    And yet, in dis­pos­al of this waste­water, trucks haul­ing it are not required to dis­play haz­ardous mate­r­i­al signs. Those trucks are instead reg­u­lat­ed the same as garbage trucks and only required to have a sign labeled as resid­ual waste. When these trucks spill, it is considered
    a pol­lu­tant, not a haz­ardous mate­r­i­al inci­dent. Emer­gency respon­ders found that out after a recent rollover of one of the tank trucks haul­ing brine in Pot­ter Coun­ty. The Fire Chief in charge report­ed it a Haz­mat inci­dent and it was dis­patched as a Haz­mat inci­dent, only to be corrected
    a cou­ple of days lat­er by a Penn­syl­va­nia State Police news release that relat­ed that drilling brine is not a Haz­ardous Mate­r­i­al and does not have to be placarded.
    If these beef cows are in fact dam­aged from drink­ing this frack water, and it is like­ly that they did drink it as the ani­mals like the salt taste, then it’s like­ly that there won’t be many deer who have not sam­pled these
    frack ponds across the north­ern tier. The low fences that enclose these ponds have no abil­i­ty to keep out the deer and oth­er ani­mals that may decide to check them out.

    If that is the case, then Penn­syl­va­ni­ans will more than like­ly have to kiss their veni­son good­bye. Hunters will be issued a warn­ing with their hunt­ing licens­es not to eat what they shoot.

    If this efflu­ent that they have been pump­ing into the streams through our sew­er plants and into the waters of the Com­mon­wealth is capa­ble of mak­ing beef ined­i­ble, then it prob­a­bly is also capa­ble of doing the same thing
    to the fish pop­u­la­tion, so you can catch them if they live long enough, but don’t eat them. Night fish­er­men may be able to get a clue about this if the fish glow in the dark from the radioactivity.

    com­ment below:
    Com­pa­ny source of "hot" Frac Water: East Resources
    Event: 28 cows quar­en­tined for drink­ing this "hot" frac water.

    This is com­firmed by Con­rad Volz, the Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Healthy Envi­ron­ments and Com­mu­ni­ties at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pittsburgh’s Grad­u­ate chool of Pub­lic Health.
    Aca­d­e­m­ic reports show the flu­id that comes back from the shale lay­er is enriched in bar­i­um and stron­tium as well as chlo­ride and oth­er elements–it is also high­ly enriched in organ­ic com­pounds that can off­gass from frack ponds as well as could make the flu­id tox­ic. Also the frack­ing chem­i­cals them­selves could change as a result of there use because of the pres­sures at depth and interactions
    with many ele­ments and chem­i­cals let loose in the fracking—we do not know the species of chem­i­cals at all that are com­ing out of the well-oth­er than what is in the flow­back and pro­duced water from the shale itself–and although I just used these terms—a bet­ter name for this is
    con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed fluid—it is not real­ly water at all—calling it water of any kind implys that it is not a problem.…
    CHEC is ana­lyz­ing con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed Mar­cel­lus shale flu­ids now from a spill so that we can deter­mine if it falls into the cat­e­go­ry of haz­ardous waste–we will let every­one know the results of this.
    end Voltz comment

  5. Beth Wallace says:

    Dear Friends, Please view the HBO doc­u­men­tary " Gasland". If you do not have HBO , pur­chase it for a month or go to a friend's home who sub­scribes to it. It is extreme­ly enlight­en­ing and heart wrench­ing. Many facts are revealed and true sto­ries of peo­ple whose lives have been for­ev­er altered by the effects of frack­ing.. yes, through the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of both the air and water around them. It is worth every minute of the two hour view­ing time.

  6. Rusty says:

    Thanks, Gor­don, for the math. I used the DEP's list of how many wells there were, but I didn't take into con­sid­er­a­tion the num­ber of oper­a­tional wells.

  7. Gordon Shedd says:

    Please add this to the pre­vi­ous comment:
    If Chesa­peake has 201 wells in Brad­ford Coun­ty, how many of them are cur­rent­ly under­go­ing frack­ing? If it is 20 wells (10%) in a giv­en month, then the con­sump­tion of water for frack­ing would be about 100 mil­lion gal­lons per month (not 1B), of which 4.3 mil­lion gal­lons recy­cled would be less than 5%. Even if only 5 wells were under­go­ing frack­ing in a month, the amount recy­cled would still be a small frac­tion (less than 1/5th) of the total, so I agree with you, the 4.3M gal­lons Chesa­peake claims is a small pro­por­tion of the total, just not the <0.5% implied above.

  8. Gordon Shedd says:

    Which mis­lead­ing num­bers are we talk­ing about? In reac­tion to the Chesa­peake claim of 4.3 mil­lion gal­lons of water recy­cled per month, the author implies that the month­ly water usage for frack­ing in Brad­ford Coun­ty is 1.1B gal­lons. For this num­ber to be accu­rate, all 853 wells used in the cal­cu­la­tion must cur­rent­ly be under­go­ing the frack­ing process. My guess is that a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the 853 Brad­ford Coun­ty wells were devel­oped in the past, and are no longer con­tribut­ing to the unde­ni­ably large amount of water con­sumed each month by drilling. Unthink­ing rep­e­ti­tion of inac­cu­rate "facts" doesn't make them true.

  9. Rusty says:

    I wasn't avail­able for a cou­ple days, and your com­ment didn't get post­ed, James. Sor­ry about that–I use com­ment mod­er­a­tion to keep the spam­mers from posting.

  10. James Smith says:

    Amaz­ing how opin­ions and views which do not embrace your fanati­cism are removed from your com­ment section…

  11. James Smith says:

    Maryann — You have your head buried in the sand. to say that frack­ing is "evil" — when it has not led to a sin­gle case of ground­wa­ter con­t­a­m­i­na­tion — is real­ly absurd. Fur­ther, you per­pet­u­ate the lie that Bush/Cheney exempt­ed oil and gas from the Clean Air and Clean Water Act. That is sim­ply not true. Peri­od. End of sto­ry. What actu­al­ly occurred is a clar­i­fi­ca­tion in the Ener­gy Pol­i­cy Act that the process would not require a cer­tain per­mit from EPA (a "dis­pos­al well per­mit") under the premise that the activ­i­ty was suf­fi­cient­ly reg­u­lat­ed by the states. Feel free to dis­agree w this pol­i­cy (but apply some com­mon sense to learn about it first…) BUT do not mis­state the law and what actu­al­ly was passed. Fur­ther, there is NO exemp­tion from list­ing the chem­i­cals used in frack­ing. They are avail­able on the Inter­net on DEP's web­site (email energy@​pasen.​gov if you want a copy)and are main­tained onsite as part of the MSDS safe­ty list. Last­ly, peo­ple need nat­ur­al gas. we all do, whether to heat our homes, gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty or pow­er our fac­to­ries — or hope­ful­ly one day fuel your car. It is non­sen­si­cal to sim­ply oppose the use of the energy…while at the same time using it. J.S.

  12. Maryann says:

    To Kevin: Because you say and as we all know, gas drilling is unpre­dictable, so I say it should be elim­i­nat­ed from use. Because what it all boils down to is this, we can­not drink gas, our water is our most impor­tant nat­ur­al resource we have. No liv­ing being can live with­out clean good water, but we all can live with­out nat­ur­al gas, we have done it before and we can do it again. Let's get alter­na­tive safe ener­gy going NOW before its too late and our earth is con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed for­ev­er. Don't you also under­stand that there are over 300 chem­i­cals used in frac­ing and the worst of them are pro­tect­ed from being dis­closed because of the exemp­tion from the Clean Air and Clean Water Act Cheney and Bush put into place dur­ing their admin­is­tra­tion. These chem­i­cals will stay in the ground in our aquifers for­ev­er. If these chem­i­cals were so safe they would allow them to be dis­closed. Peo­ple are com­ing down with dis­eases and farm ani­mals and wildlife are going blind, writhing in pain until they die. This frac­ing is EVIL. What is need­ed is com­mon sense but unfor­tu­nate­ly, there isn't much of it around.

  13. Kevin says:

    I have recent­ly moved into the area. I am employed by a ser­vice com­pa­ny that ser­vices some of the com­pa­nies search­ing for the gas you speak of. Please reserve you judge­ment of me and what I care of, by the by they way that I pro­vide for my family.
    There are pro's and con's to every new tech­nol­o­gy or any new inven­tion that is brought forth. Whith every reward there lies a risk. Search­ing for and pro­duc­ing gas from this area is new and can at time be unpre­dictible. through all the tech­nol­o­gy and sci­ence that we have devel­oped most of what is done is essen­tial­ly guess work.
    As for your con­cerns on the water used and recy­cled. The only water that can be reused is water that flows back and can be cap­tured. On aver­age that will only be lit­tle more than 1500 BBL per well at it's com­ple­tion and pri­or to pro­duc­tion. Com­pared to the aver­age of 195000 BBL of water it takes to frac the well. A major­i­ty of the water is recy­cled nat­u­raly thru the ground.
    In clos­ing I do sup­port your con­cern for your for­mer home land. Hope­ful­ly if you chose to return some­day it will be a place you will enjoy. i now call this place home and plan on stay­ing here for the rest of my days, no mat­ter the career that I may per­sue so I too wish to pro­tect the area as much as pos­si­ble. I do do sup­port the pro­duc­tion of gas. It is a huge boost for the econ­o­my and­when done with care can be safe for the area too.

  14. wayne hansen says:

    Many arti­cles have been pub­lished about gas well boom in cen­tral PA. Most have focused on what hydraulic frac­tur­ing com­pounds the ener­gy com­pa­nies are inject­ing into our water shed, but not much has been stat­ed about what is already in Mar­cel­lus Shale for­ma­tions. Mar­cel­lus Shale is high­ly radioac­tive! The radioac­tiv­i­ty comes from deposits of ura­ni­um, radi­um and radon gas in the shale. There is methane gas and salt water at frac­tur­ing depths that is also forced upwards along with the frac­ture chem­i­cals. NY State is the wealth­i­est of the Mar­cel­lus Shale states and it is being just as indus­try biased as the poor­er, PA and WV. The EPA and the DEP's of these states have been on record as pro gas com­pa­ny and down­play­ing any poten­tial and exist­ing envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems from this frac­ture tech­nol­o­gy. Wel­come to 1984 for real! Buy the time legal restric­tions are placed on the gas com­pa­nies, our water shed qual­i­ty will be gone! Unless more cit­i­zens are edu­cat­ed about the "shell game" politi­cians and busi­ness inter­ests are cram­ming down our throats!

  15. You've been linked! Thanks again. Your obser­va­tions are excel­lent and quite wor­thy of sharing.

    BTW, in regards to the open pits — this method is being used less and less — it is one of the first "prob­lems" that seemed to be addressed, espe­cial­ly in the case of State For­est drill sites. The new­er State For­est lease agree­ments require that a closed loop sys­tem is used (flow­back water goes direct­ly into a tanker, rather than into an open air pit).

  16. Rusty says:

    Feel free. Thanks for reading.

  17. Won­der­ful and con­cise analy­sis! It's sim­ple break­down and rework­ing of their num­bers that reveals the truth. I've seen so many of the "dis­crep­an­cies" in indus­try report­ing — it's not hard to miss when you read one arti­cle and the next one you read quotes a much dif­fer­ent num­ber. Much of this infor­ma­tion is pub­licly avail­able (as you have not­ed) — you just have to put 2 and 2 togeth­er to make 4.

    Tio­ga and Brad­ford coun­ties are S‑L-O-W-L‑Y doing the equa­tion (but, they ARE doing it).

    I think I may have to post a link to this on the Tio­ga Gas Watch Blog, with your approval.

    Thanks!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.