PA Is All Fracked Up

I want to thank two of my friends, Mark and Dana, for each posting this graphic (below) on their Facebook pages last week.  Because it got me thinking that I haven’t commented for a while on Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale natural gas boom that has entirely changed the landscape of much of the northern tier of the state, wrapping down along the Allegheny Plateau through southwestern PA and on into West Virginia. 

Drilling site in Dimmock, PA, with dozens of portable fractionation tanks lined

up to contain drilling waste water. (photo credit: http://www.theithacajournal.com)

 As a geologist, I have nothing against responsible development of Pennsylvania's energy resources.  I understand how and why the hydraulic fracturing process works.  I understand all of the settling lagoons and fractionation tanks that are needed to contain all of the wastewater before it’s taken somewhere for treatment or reinjected to drill the next well.  I understand all of the service roads to remote well pads that must be cleared and built just to get the equipment and materials to a new well pad location.

I also understand what can go wrong in the process.  When you have drillers and other subcontractors coming here to Pennsylvania from out of state to build well pads and wastewater lagoons and to drill a series of wells over 10,000 feet deep at each well pad, and when you have gas companies pushing their subcontractors to do more and do it faster, you are bound to get thousands of violations.  Realistically though, these 3,025 violations are only the ones that inspectors from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection actually see evidence of and write up.  So, unfortunately, there could be a few hundred or a few thousand more violations that have taken place but were not documented.

These data were compiled by NPR StateImpact, which is a collaboration of National Public Radio reporters and local reporters who cover the fiscal and environmental impact of Pennsylvania’s booming energy economy, focusing on Marcellus Shale drilling.  They acquired lists of violations from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, the state agency in charge of regulating natural gas drilling in PA.  The article in which these data were first published explains that these 3,025 violations were documented on 8,982 active gas wells from January 2009 until June 2012.  That’s three and a half years, with two and one-third violations per day.  

Gas companies would quickly point out that tens of thousands of horizontal wells have been drilled in the Marcellus Shale in the past five years, so the wells with violations (might) account for some small percentage of the total wells.  But to me, that's a carpetbagger rationalization for carelessness.  No violation is acceptable.  The PADEP should hold the gas companies to a higher standard.  Pennsylvania is the only natural gas producing state in the country that does not charge gas companies a severance tax based on the value of gas they produce and send to market.  If the PA state legislature and Gov. Corbett don't have the backbone to stand up to the gas companies and implement a severance tax like every other gas producing state has in place, Pennsylvania residents should get something in return.  And that something could be the most stringent enforcement of environmental regulations in the U.S.

Tanker full of drilling wastewater (frack water) that ran off the road in West Virginia.

(photo credit: West Virginia Sierra Club)

There is no minimum number of violations that are acceptable.  This is not a basketball game where you're allowed five fouls.  But maybe it should be.  But maybe gas companies with more than five violations should lose their right to continue to produce a gas well.  As soon as one gas company fouls out and gets sent back to Texas, maybe the remaining gas companies would take notice and be more careful.

Drilling issues are not limited to Pennsylvania and West Virginia.  The drill rig shown in this photo is near the town of Pinedale, WY. I once camped on U.S. Forest Service land next to Fremont Lake outside of Pinedale for a week. One or two of those nights I slept out under the stars with no sounds other than the crickets and no lights other than the moon and stars.  These drill rigs run loudly 24/7 and use flood lights at night. So even if no regulatory violations occur, there is still a loss of tranquility for anyone within earshot of drilling operations. (photo credit: Abrahm Lustgarten on http://www.propublica.orgpinedale)

Going Brown (When Going Green is Bad)

In my previous post, I wrote about the ponzi scheme that most municipalities fall into by investing public dollars for infrastructure improvements so that developers can build strip malls and big-box stores on greenfields and that ultimately fail in the long term to return on the public’s investment in them.  I said that there are typically two factors that work symbiotically to discourage brownfield development in favor of greenfield development.  They are: haste to start building; and inflexible, outdated zoning and land development ordinances.  Here is how this dysfunction happens.

(photo credit: London [Ontario] Free Press)

First, developers are understandably in a hurry to get their bulldozers rolling over a site so that Walmart can have their next grand opening as soon as possible.  Then the developers lull the government officials into thinking that there is a big competition for them to commit to infrastructure improvements on which their long-term payback will be less than $1 on the dollar.  A local politician would not want their constituents to think that the next town down the road scored the fancy, new strip mall because their own leaders could not come up with a suitable public infrastructure subsidy package to lure that same developer.  The result is new commercial spaces – be they retail or warehouses – that are only 50-60% occupied because their developer forged ahead based on opportunity rather than on market demand.

(photo credit: http://www.sonorannews.com)

Second, our municipal zoning ordinances often prohibit intelligent redevelopment of existing properties.  Sure, variances can be granted by the local zoning hearing board to allow a new use for an existing developed property, but it might add another year to the planning and review phase of the project before ground could be broken.  Most developers won’t wait that long to redevelop an existing parcel.  So they’ll go after a readily available greenfield and look for a government hand-out to subsidize the big-box boondoggle they are dreaming of plopping on a cornfield.

(photo credit:  http://www.capturelehighvalley.com)

The solution is for our local governments to amend their zoning and land development ordinances to be flexible enough to accommodate redevelopment of sites with something other than the exact thing that had been built there for 60 years ago and prospered for the first 40, struggled for 10, and has been sitting as a vacant eyesore for the past 10 years. If a commercial or industrial property’s previous use ran its course and that use is no longer viable for that community, why wouldn’t the community open its mind to a different use that could be viable for the next 60 years?

Brownfield development is nothing new.  By now, I suppose that most states have cleanup laws that were written specifically to grant environmental liability protection to entities that purchase a contaminated property and cleans it up.  My own state of Pennsylvania was one of the leaders in developing a realistic regulatory framework to help get environmentally compromised properties back on the tax rolls and employing people.

As an environmental consultant, over the past 15 years I’ve been involved in obtaining environmental liability relief for more than two dozen sites in Pennsylvania.  Obtaining liability relief for a site, also known as getting closure for the site, simply means getting the site cleaned up sufficiently so there are no remaining threats to human health or the environment and so the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) can close their file on the property.

Sites do not have to be cleaned up to pristine conditions; their owners simply have to eliminate any contaminant pathways to human or ecological receptors.  After delineating the bounds of the contamination in the soil, sometimes installing a simple concrete or asphalt cap on the soil is sufficient to prevent humans from coming into contact with the residual contaminants and to prevent rainwater from leaching the contaminants down into the groundwater.  And sometimes the closure process is nothing more than collecting enough samples to prove that there are no contaminants present at concentrations above their cleanup standards for soil or groundwater.  Usually it’s just environmental science, not rocket science.

I should also say that I’m not completely opposed to government subsidies for development projects.  If the cost-benefit analysis shows an acceptable return on the taxpayers’ investment, why not?  However, I think you’re more likely to see a reasonable return on investment from updating existing utilities or infrastructure to facilitate redevelopment of a brownfield than you would building new utilities or infrastructure to accommodate building on a greenfield.

You can teach an old dog new tricks.  When Bethlehem Steel shuttered operations at their flagship plant in Bethlehem, PA, in the mid-1990s, the city rallied to create a renaissance at the dilapidated, 100+ year old industrial property. (photo credit: http://kgurban.com/new/beth.html)

The brownfields are there, and they already have utilities.  They already have roads in front 
of them with people driving past them.  Many already have rail lines adjacent to them to move either freight or commuters in and out.  Let’s use the infrastructure that we already have in place and let the greenfields alone to continue to recycle our carbon dioxide into oxygen.  Building a new big box with a 4-acre parking lot on top of a fallow farm field does not do a thing to mitigate our carbon footprint.  But it does create a need to extend utilities and roads that taxpayers will have to start maintaining in 10 years when the developer is long gone.

Concertgoers gather for a show at the base of the former Bethlehem Steel blast furnaces in the heart of the new SteelStacks arts and cultural center in Bethlehem, PA.  (photo credit: http://www.philadelphiafed.org/community-development/publications/cascade/81/03_keys-to-success-for-small-industrial-cities.cfm)

The former Bethlehem Steel blast furnaces were retained as an historical and cultural monument in the heart of the new SteelStacks arts and cultural center in Bethlehem, PA.  (photo credit: http://www.philadelphiafed.org/community-development/publications/cascade/81/03_keys-to-success-for-small-industrial-cities.cfm)