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Is Drilling Safe? New Evidence Suggests No
Ithaca (WENY) - An environmental watchdog firm out of Ithaca claims DEC documents prove the department knew about hundreds of gas, oil and brine spills in New York causing harm to neighbors. Walter Hang of Toxics Targeting wants the DEC to scrap its most recent environmental study, claiming the evidence shows, the state can't effectively regulate. Hang's firm got the documents through the freedom of information act. The information shows over 200 natural gas and oil problems in towns across New York including five here in the Southern Tier. Hang is asking Governor Cumo to retract the environmental impact study, in which the DEC claims drilling can be done safely.
Recent spill reports include a 200 gallon brine spill in Horseheads on June 23rd this summer. Equipment failure caused almost 700 gallons of brine to spill on Briggs hill Rd. in Van Etten this May.
DEC says neither has met clean up standards.
"Routinely DEC does not enforce cleanup standards they have had hundreds of fires and explosions, uncontrolled releases and the bottom line is they cant do it safely they know they cant do it safely," says Hang, "They know they cant do it safely because they cant even control the problems that they've encountered up until now."
A DEC spokeswoman says in none of these cases were drinking water supplies contaminated. Three cases were closed because clean up was completed and no further action was necessary. Work continues on two other cases.
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Residents fault DEC over claims of gas drilling impact on water wells
Ithaca -- Landowners who believe their drinking water has been affected by drilling activity in central and western New York said they have had trouble getting the state Department of Environmental Conservation to thoroughly investigate their cases.
David and Kelly Ferrugia, a couple in Chautauqua County in the far western tip of the state, have been unable to get their questions answered about why their water quality changed six years ago.
Fred Mayer of Candor is also without an explanation as to why his well began producing methane three years ago, after a gas exploration company dynamited a hill on his 96-acre property.
The DEC investigated the two cases and determined there was no contamination caused by natural gas drilling, and drilling has been the cause in only a small fraction of reported contamination cases across the state, an agency spokeswoman said.
Still, Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton said the problems Mayer and the Ferrugias' have had illustrate a wider problem with the DEC's responsiveness to potential drilling issues.
"Clearly there are very significant cases," said Lifton, D-Ithaca. "The DEC has walked away from its responsibilities. They did not do a full investigation there."
Though suspected to be linked to conventional vertical drilling rather than horizontal hydraulic fracturing, Lifton said these cases indicate that the state is not prepared to regulate the drilling industry.
"It belies the statement that the DEC keeps making that there aren't problems, that the process is safe," she said. "(The Ferrugias) have been on bottled water since 2005. Imagine what that does for your property value."
The DEC responded to questions from this newspaper about how the agency responds to claims of drinking water contamination due to natural gas drilling.
"DEC takes claims of possible drinking water contamination very seriously," said Emily DeSantis, assistant director of public information. DeSantis said the DEC staff reviews files and well records, performs site inspections, speaks with landowners and reviews water well testing information when it is available, as well as contact water well drillers. Additional tests may be performed as needed.
However, the incidence of that kind of contamination is rare, according to DEC records. Of 14,642 total spills reported in 2009, eight were determined to be related to oil and gas activities, or 0.05 percent. Of 13,486 in 2010, six were related to oil and gas activities, and of 12,297 in 2011, five were related to oil and gas activities, or 0.04 percent in each year.
Ignitable water
Fred Mayer, a long-time resident of Back West Creek Road in Candor, said his well was drilled in 1962, the same year he moved onto the property.
Three years ago, a gas exploration company dynamited a hill on his property searching for gas. He had signed a lease on the land for drilling, he said, though right now the nearest gas well is several miles away.
Around the same time as the dynamiting, Mayer noticed air would be forced out of faucets in the house. His father suspected it was a faulty pump, but one day Mayer tried to light it. The gas burned.
"I suspect it's from drilling, because we never had the gas in our water," he said.
Mayer spoke with a representative of the state attorney general's office in early 2010. But Mayer said he has been unable to elicit an investigation, acknowledgement of responsibility, or other plausible explanation for the contamination from the company, the DEC, or the Tioga County Department of Health.
DEC disputes connection
DeSantis said DEC staff did not visit Mayer's home due to the distance of his property from adjacent gas wells, which are five and seven miles away from his home, and both of which are dry. There is also a record of naturally occurring methane in his area, she said. The DEC determined this was the cause of the contamination of his water well.
"Mayer's reference to dynamite is most likely related to seismic data acquisition," DeSantis said. "Seismic data acquisition is not associated with any drilling or production method ... The timing and location of seismic surveys is independent of drilling activity. Surveys may be conducted years and sometimes longer in advance of any drilling. It is also not a DEC-regulated activity."
Without a baseline water analysis of Mayer's well, it cannot be determined if seismic data acquisition caused methane to appear in his well, DeSantis said.
Water and gas wells
The Ferrugias built a house in Kiantone, Chautauqua County in 2000. The couple collects royalty checks from 10 vertical wells around the property, two of them within 1,000 feet of the Ferrugias' water well. The closest well was completed in September 2005, 330 feet from the water well, according to the Chautaqua County Department of Health.
Nornew Inc. sampled the Ferrugias' water before drilling the well. David Ferrugia said the water was very soft.
Within a few weeks of the gas well's completion, David Ferrugia said the couple began noticing a difference in their water. Changes included pitting in glasses in the dishwasher, brown mineral staining of water fixtures and tubs, a salty taste, and an intermittent sulfur smell.
"It wasn't an abrupt change," Ferrugia said. "It was a gradual change. We started noticing a slight smell. In the following weeks it started getting worse and worse."
Tests show increases
Nornew Inc. tested the water again in April 2007.
According to the results from Microbac Labs independent of Nornew Inc., chloride, barium, sodium, magnesium, potassium, and calcium levels all increased, some of them by factors close to 10. Total dissolved solids increased from 250 parts per million to 600 parts per million. Barium increased from 0.181 ppm to 1.12 ppm, while sodium increased from 76.4 ppm to 111 ppm. Chloride went from 3.8 ppm to 223 ppm.
The Ferrugias filed their complaint with the Chautauqua County Department of Health in May 2007. David Ferrugia said they went to the Health Department after approaching Nornew Inc., but the company representative they spoke to attributed the problem either to the Ferrugias' septic system or road de-icing material. The change in water quality was not due to drilling, he told them.
Other causes suggested
Chautauqua County Water Resource Specialist William Boria wrote to DEC Director of the Bureau of Oil and Gas Regulation Jack Dahl in June 2009, stating he doubted other causes for the contamination.
"In the Ferrugias' case, the evidence strongly indicates the contamination is from brine," he said in the letter.
"This is a well-documented case showing drinking water impacts that are seemingly related to gas well development. Based on our (memorandum of understanding) with NYS DEC, the Chautauqua County Department of Health requests that your Division thoroughly investigate to identify the cause of contamination and assist the Ferrugias in correcting their water quality problems."
Last week, Boria said he is not totally convinced the cause of the contamination was the well drilling, but that there is enough evidence that the case bears further investigation.
"I pushed for more investigation," he said. "It's very difficult to conclude that the gas well did cause the problem with the information at hand. I wanted a little bit more invasive investigation at the well head."
Boria said he suspects mud from the drilling process seeped along via cracks in the surface of the bedrock. He said there are some ways the DEC could investigate that possibility.
But Dahl suggested in a letter in response to Chautauqua County that several issues could have caused the Ferrugias' well contamination. Possible causes included hydraulic fracturing of the water well, leading to a pathway for contaminants to come from greater distances to the well, from the Ferrugias' septic system, or from neighboring water wells.
DEC doubts drilling impact
DeSantis said DEC records indicate site inspections following the Ferrugias' complaint showed no evidence of a spill or violation. The DEC also spoke to adjacent landowners and examined baseline water well testing data. Interviews with landowners revealed that "mineralized 'bad water'" was present in wells in the area before the nearby gas well was drilled. Testing did reveal coliform bacteria in the Ferrugia's well, and two of their neighbors' water supply wells. Recent testing shows the chloride level in the Ferrugias' well has dropped 45 percent, DeSantis noted.
DeSantis said the investigation ended with a determination that the contamination was due to the way the water well was drilled -- using hydrofracking in shale.
"DEC concluded the well water has the characteristics of mineralized shale waters, because the water well was drilled and fractured in shale," DeSantis said. The well was not contaminated with brine, she said.
DeSantis also noted that the DEC does not propose to permit drilling where the shale target layer is in the drinking water aquifer or less than 1,000 feet below it.
Nornew responds
Nornew Inc. Executive Vice President Dennis Holbrook said any claims about contaminated wells not supported by the DEC should be viewed with skepticism.
He said, "Our experience has been -- and I know it seems the industry is always saying, 'Oh don't worry about it' -- people have problems with their wells that have nothing to do with oil and gas drilling."
Holbrook said the company's policy is to test an area within 1,000 feet of a drinking water well, using a third-party company such as Microbac Labs to do the testing. In addition, he said the DEC did spend some time investigating the matter.
Holbrook said in his experience the DEC is "pretty conscientious in going out and investigating these things. They have the technology to base these decisions on science, not on emotions." He said the investigation concluded there may have been an issue with the way the couple's water well was completed.
"But typically, if there was a problem, we would take responsibility, no different than we take responsibility to restore the surface after drilling," he said.
Close to 500 wells were drilled by Nornew in the region around Chautauqua County, Holbrook said. He questioned why the Ferrugias' neighbors wouldn't have had the same problems they reported, and why it took so long for the problems to develop after the well was drilled -- about 18 months.
A red flag?
However, contamination expert Walter Hang, president of Toxics Targeting in Ithaca, said he is convinced the contamination should be attributed to the vertical gas well just 110 yards from the water well. Most importantly, he said, the record of water well contaminations possibly caused by drilling in Chautauqua County, most of them dating to the 1980s, "directly refutes the DEC's assertions that we have just never had problems."
Boria notes that the county had no water well complaints during the 1990s, when there was no drilling activity in the county. In 2000, when drilling started again, so did complaints, about one to two a year, he said.
Hang said, "I think the key thing is that the local health department, which has investigated this matter, essentially said this is a well-documented case showing drinking water impacts that are seemingly related to gas well development, but the DEC simply refuses to acknowledge the concern, investigate the concern, or provide clean water to the family."
Liz Thomas, a member of the Tompkins County Council of Governments' Gas Drilling Task Force, said one of the great frustrations of those working on gas drilling issues in the county is that it's very difficult to know where problems exist.
The DEC keeps records of drilling violations in paper form rather than electronically, and older, abandoned wells aren't mapped, Thomas said.
"It's hard for homeowners to know even to test because they can't find records of violations," she said.
Health Departments' role
The Ferrugias and Mayer are stuck -- despite having their well tested by the company before and after drilling, and despite having their county health department's support in approaching the DEC for help, they have received no acknowledgement from either Nornew, Inc. or the DEC that the degradation of their water may have been caused by drilling.
Tompkins County Health Director Frank Kruppa said the authority of county health departments in cases of potential water well contamination due to drilling will depend on the state's draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement.
"The well drilling issue is still very much up in the air," he said. "The main message is we are here to take any complaints ... but specific to well drilling, we are still trying to get through our review of the impact statement and regulations to be sure there are authority and resources available to local health departments."
Kruppa said a funding mechanism to help in clean-up efforts is another priority. As for whether testing water before and after drilling can be considered a dependable protection, considering the Ferrugias' situation, Kruppa said he could not comment on their specific situation.Documents related to the Ferrugias' case and water well contamination reports in Chautauqua County can be found at www.toxicstargeting.com/node/7084.
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Rush to Drill for Natural Gas Creates Conflicts With Mortgages
As natural gas drilling has spread across the country, energy industry representatives have sat down at kitchen tables in states like Texas, Pennsylvania and New York to offer homeowners leases that give companies the right to drill on their land.
And over the past 10 years, as natural gas has become increasingly important to the nation’s energy future, Americans have signed more than a million of these leases.
But bankers and real estate executives, especially in New York, are starting to pay closer attention to the fine print and are raising provocative questions, such as: What happens if they lend money for a piece of land that ends up storing the equivalent of an Olympic-size swimming pool filled with toxic wastewater from drilling?
Fearful of just such a possibility, some banks have become reluctant to grant mortgages on properties leased for gas drilling. At least eight local or national banks do not typically issue mortgages on such properties, lenders say.
A credit union in upstate New York has started requiring gas companies to promise to pay for any damage caused by drilling that may lead to devaluation of its mortgaged properties. Another will make home loans only to people who expressly agree not to sign a gas lease as long as they hold the mortgage.
More generally, bankers are concerned because many leases allow drillers to operate in ways that violate rules in landowners’ mortgages. These rules also require homeowners to get permission from their mortgage banker before they sign a lease — a fact that most landowners do not know.
Last year, Jack and Carol Pyhtila spent several weeks working to refinance the mortgage on their roughly 30 acres in Tompkins County, N.Y. But when they arrived to sign the mortgage, the lender, Visions Federal Credit Union, had taken a closer look at the lease on their land and revoked its offer, said Mr. Pyhtila, 72.
“They told us there was not enough information yet to know how the lease would affect the property value and they were not sure if it followed the mortgage rules,” he said. Another bank agreed to refinance their loan several months later.
Lenders predict that the conflicts between leases and mortgage rules are not likely to cause foreclosures, nor have they resulted in broad litigation or legislation. But many of the leases do constitute “technical defaults” on the mortgages, lenders say, and will likely result in new rules from local banks and additional hurdles to getting a home loan or refinancing a mortgage.
Some real estate agents have started raising red flags.
“When you decide to sell your house you may find it difficult to do so because many banks, here and elsewhere, will not mortgage properties with gas leases, which, in turn, limits the number of buyers willing and able to buy your property,” wrote Linda Hirvonen, an agent in Ithaca, N.Y., in a newsletter last month.
Banks establish rules for how mortgaged properties can be used, to help ensure that they will hold their value. Banks also need to guarantee that their mortgages meet certain standards so that they can sell them to institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which bundle and sell these mortgages to investors.
“In terms of litigation, there is a real potential for a domino effect here if lenders at each step of the way made guarantees that are invalid,” said Greg May, vice president of residential mortgage lending at Tompkins Trust Company, headquartered in Ithaca.
Banks resell more than 90 percent of new residential mortgages in the United States to institutions like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. It is not clear how many mortgages held by major secondary lenders or investors have oil or gas leases on them that do not comply with mortgage rules.
But if even a small percentage do, tens of billions of dollars in mortgages might be affected, raising new concerns for an industry that has suffered in recent years from home loans that proved much riskier than expected.
Some lawyers who specialize in oil and gas leases said they were not worried.
“The leases have not created any practical conflict or issue with mortgages,” said Adam J. Schultz, a lawyer in Syracuse, adding that there are thousands of gas leases on mortgaged properties in New York and Pennsylvania and that state environmental regulations helped protect property values.
Most of the bankers and mortgage experts interviewed also emphasized that they were not opposed to expanded drilling. The surge in such drilling has created thousands of jobs, bolstered American energy supplies and turned some landowners into millionaires, they said.
However, the banking industry is only starting to appreciate the complexity and possible consequences, they added.
“It’s truly Pandora’s box,” said Cosimo Manzo, a vice president of First Heritage Financial, a mortgage services company in Philadelphia, during a presentation to Pennsylvania lenders posted online in July by a state credit union association. He also compared getting leases to comply with mortgage rules to solving a Rubik’s Cube.
If local banks do not require that leases comport with mortgage rules, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may stop buying mortgages from these banks, Mr. Manzo said. Other experts warned that the two institutions, or investors who bought mortgage-backed securities, may also force local lenders to buy back noncompliant mortgages.
Real estate experts said the chances for conflicts between leases and mortgages were growing as drilling increased in more populated areas. The issue has garnered the most attention among lawmakers and lenders in New York, partly because the state’s rules for how close to homes drilling may be undertaken are more lax than in some Western states where there has been drilling for years.
Attention From Lawmakers
Lawmakers have started asking more questions about the interplay of leases and mortgages.
In September, after The New York Times asked them about the issue, two Democratic congressmen, Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and Maurice D. Hinchey of New York, asked Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac how they intended to rectify any breaches of their standards caused by drilling leases. State legislators from New York, Ohio and Maryland have also sent letters to regulators seeking more information.
In October, Mr. May published a report after a Tompkins County legislator, Carol Chock, asked him to look into the issue. The report described various conflicts between leases and mortgages over such things as minimum distances between gas wells and homes and the construction of wastewater ponds.
Mr. May said the issue was causing “a high level of concern for prudent banks and lenders.” He and other bankers have also questioned how the growing grid of buried pipelines that carry natural gas from wells to consumers will comply with mortgage rules. A separate report from the Congressional Research Service, the research arm of Congress, said signing a drilling lease without prior approval on a property with a mortgage owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac “generally will be considered an act of default under the mortgage.”
That could give either of the federally run companies the right to demand immediate payment of the full loan and even foreclose on the property if the owner cannot pay, the report said.
Representatives for Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, declined to comment.
Other officials at Fannie Mae, who were not authorized to speak to reporters, said it was unclear how many mortgaged properties with noncompliant leases Fannie Mae owned or had unwittingly sold to investors. Since drilling leases are frequently on farms and Farmer Mac, which purchases farm, ranch and rural homeowner mortgages, has many of the same rules as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, potential conflicts between mortgages and leases exist there, too.
A spokesman for Farmer Mac said he did not believe leases posed a significant financial risk.
Some bankers have emphasized that the conflicts between mortgages and leases can be resolved. But that first requires more guidance from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other secondary lenders about what types of appraisals and title insurance are appropriate for mortgaged properties with leases, and whether the risks and values of these properties need to be reassessed, said Bill Crane, a senior vice president of CFCU Community Credit Union in Ithaca.
Other lenders said they needed mortgage rules relating to leased properties to be followed uniformly so that bankers who enforced these higher hurdles were not left at a competitive disadvantage.
In New York, these lenders added, regulators need to change regulations to require a larger buffer zone between homes and wells so that drilling complies with mortgage rules.
“New York needs the drilling jobs,” said Ralph Kelsey, a senior vice president of Tioga State Bank in Tioga County, N.Y. “We also need a lot more answers to these questions.”
Last year, Mr. Kelsey gave a presentation warning that since intensive drilling is relatively new in New York and Pennsylvania, there is a lack of historical data about how drilling affects property values, which in turn raises questions about whether appraisals will meet mortgage guidelines.
Rare Requests for Clearance
Data is scarce on how often landowners or drilling companies are getting written permission from lenders before putting leases on mortgaged properties. Most mortgage experts said the requests were rare.
Bank of America receives roughly 100 requests per month nationwide, a company spokesman said. Fewer than a dozen such requests are sent directly to Fannie Mae each year, according to Fannie Mae officials.
Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, GMAC Mortgage and the Mortgage Bankers Association declined to comment beyond saying they decided mortgages case by case and noting that the landowner or the gas company is responsible for ensuring leases do not violate mortgages.
In private e-mails, some lenders said drilling leases could create problems for getting a mortgage.
It is “very difficult to obtain financing due to the potential hazard” as well as “unknowns,” an official at Wells Fargo wrote to a mortgage broker in northeastern Pennsylvania in April 2010.
Drilling officials offered a different view. They said that the income from lease bonuses and gas royalties actually enhanced property values, and that mortgage lenders welcomed gas drilling because it provided borrowers with extra income that could be used to pay off their mortgages.
New York environmental regulators recently published a report indicating that property values go up regionally with an influx of drilling jobs. But the report also said research showed the value of properties closest to drilling would likely decrease.
Chesapeake Energy, a major natural gas producer, does not seek approval from lenders before finalizing leases on mortgaged properties but asks permission later for properties where wells will be drilled and withholds royalties until consent is obtained, said Jim Gipson, a company spokesman.
However, lenders warned that mortgage rules required approvals from lenders before drilling leases were signed. They also noted that such approvals were required on all leases, not just those where wells are drilled.
Landowners said they were unaware of the rules set by their mortgages.
“It never even dawned on me to talk to the bank before I signed my lease,” said Marie McRae, 67, who raises horses in Freeville, N.Y., outside Ithaca. She leased 13 acres of her farm in 2008, but came to regret her decision and has publicly criticized drilling.
Asked by The Times to review the mortgage regulations and a collection of leases, Shaun Goho, a lecturer in the Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School and co-author of a guide to natural gas leasing, said he was alarmed by various potential conflicts between leases and mortgages. He added that the clinic planned to revise the guide this fall to include a discussion of these conflicts.
Officials from Exxon Mobil, the largest natural gas producer in the United States, and America’s Natural Gas Alliance, a trade association, declined to comment.
This is not the first time that questions have been raised about whether mortgages comply with standards set by major lenders.
The assembly-line way that mortgages are sold and resold makes it difficult to track liability and risk and to ensure that guidelines are being followed, said Eric Forster, a real estate and mortgage expert who is the managing principal in Forster Realty Advisors of Los Angeles, which often consults on real estate litigation.
“The subprime mortgage mess was the first symptom of this larger problem,” he said. “And these leasing issues represent a second symptom.”
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
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Caution Urged Over Treating Fracking Waste In Niagara Falls
NIAGARA FALLS, NY - Two On Your Side's confirmation that the Niagara Falls Water Board is moving forward with plans to possibly treat "fracking fluid" at its waste water treatment plant, brought up a lot of concern about the potential impact on our environment from Western New Yorkers, including a number of postings from our Facebook fans.
On Friday, the Executive Director of the Water Board, Paul Drof, said he simply didn't have time in his schedule to sit down for an interview until next week, but urged people not to jump to conclusions in the meantime.
Drof told WGRZ-TV that at this point, all the Water Board is doing is exploring whether its Buffalo Avenue waste water treatment plant could possibly be of use in treating the byproducts of hydraulic fracturing...if or when the state gives approval of using that mining method to extract natural gas from the Marcellus Shale in the state's Southern Tier.
"Until the state finalizes their guidelines on the treatment of fracking waste , we can't say for sure even if we can do it", Drof said.
He also told us part of the reason they are even considering this, is economics.
The waste water treatment plant was built in the late 1970's, to treat the waste water from the numerous chemical plants which once crowded Buffalo Avenue, as well as other part of the city.
Fees for doing so once generated millions of dollars in annual income.
However, Drof says that over the past 25 years, as a number of those plants have closed, industrial revenues for waste water treatment have fallen 48%.
Treating "frack water", if possible, could help make up for the losses and help prevent drastic rate increases for remaining customers.
"Frankly, we have a responsibility to our rate payers to at least look at this as a possibility," Drof said.
Walter Hang, a nationally recognized expert in the field of waste water management who has studied the Niagara Falls waste water plant in the past, believes the answer to whether it can handle frack water can be summed up in two words: No way.
"The waste waters generated by the chemical manufacturing facilities in Niagara Falls are vastly different from the gas drilling waste water that could be generated by horizontal hydrofracking in the Marcellus Shale. The waste water treatment plant in Niagara Falls is simply not designed, constructed, or maintained to take out all of the toxic and radioactive constituents found in gas drilling waste water," Hang said.
Drof says part of what the Water Board is also looking into involves whether the plant could be improved or renovated to handle those substances.
Hang, whose environmental data firm Toxics Targeting Inc. has consulted many municipalities on their waste water treatment needs, has his doubts.
"In theory it could be retrofitted...no question about it. However, the cost would be enormous," he said.
In the meantime, some fifty scientists from universities throughout the nation have attached their names to a letter to Governor Cuomo urging him not to allow the discharge of any frack water, even treated, into any rivers like the Niagara which provide a source of drinking water.
The letter states: "The presumption appears to be that municipal water filtration plants provide protection from potential contaminants. The best available scientific information does not support this presumption."
NYS Senator Mark Grisanti, who chairs the state senate's committee on the environment, told Channel 2 news that he has seen no plan or study or any sort regarding the treatment of hydraulic fracking waste at the Niagara Falls waste water plant, and until he does it would difficult to comment.
"The fracking waste water must be treated properly to avoid any risks to our health or danger to our Great Lakes. At this time no proposals have been submitted to our office. We are confident that the government will not allow anyone to poison our water. We will keep the public updated and informed on these matters," Grisanti said in a statement released through a spokesperson.
NYS Senator George Maziarz, whose district represents other areas along the Niagara River downstream from where the Niagara Falls plant currently discharges treated waste water, also declined comment citing the need for more information and his desire to hear the thoughts of local officials regarding the plant's possible use in treating frack water.
Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster declined to speak on the topic as well, deferring to the Water Board.
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Report says natural gas drilling wastewater spread across NY roads including Chenango
ITHACA –Toxics Targeting, Inc., an environmental database firm in Ithaca released government information Thursday documenting that the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation authorized millions of gallons of natural gas drilling wastewater to be spread on thousands of miles of roads in New York, including in Chenango County, for dust control, winter de-icing or roadbed stabilization.
The dumping involves gas drilling brine or produced water, that, according to the company’s president Walter Hang, is documented to be contaminated with high levels of chloride and other Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), including toxic metals, as well as petroleum hydrocarbons and radionuclides.
"This gas drilling wastewater dumping should have been banned decades ago when spraying waste oil on dusty roads was outlawed along with burying garbage in open pits," he said. "It is inconceivable that DEC still authorizes spreading potentially toxic and radioactive gas drilling wastewater on roadways in watersheds all over the Central, Southwestern and Leatherstockings regions of New York.”
Hang’s release included a county-by-county map showing areas where spreading applications were approved. Areas in Pitcher, German, McDonough, Preston, Otselic, Smyrna and Columbus were highlighted. Toxics Targeting made available a free Internet map that allows concerned citizens to type in their addresses or town names to see if gas drilling wastewater has been approved to be spread near their homes or drinking water sources. See Overview Map at: toxicstargeting.com