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Day 1 of EPA meeting served its point, officials say
BINGHAMTON -- About 200 people spoke Monday during the first day of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's final public meeting on its hydraulic fracturing study, but did the agency get the feedback it desired?
An EPA official said Tuesday it did.
The Binghamton meeting marks the last of four across the country meant to solicit input on the scope of EPA's multi-million-dollar study, which is to take a look at the potential relationship between groundwater and hydrofracking, a natural gas drilling technique.
"One of the things I try to emphasize in my opening presentation is the kind of information we would like to get from people for the study," said Ann Codrington, acting director of the EPA's Drinking Water Protection Division. "I was happy to hear a fair number of people respond directly to the questions I asked. People did do what I asked them to do, so that was great."
Still, many speakers used the opportunity to make passionate pleas for or against the hydrofracking process, an issue that has divided much of the Southern Tier for the better part of three years.
Others took the opportunity to elaborate on exactly what the EPA should study.
"I think there are a number of different perspectives," said Codrington, who sat on a panel for all of the EPA's fracking meetings. "One was that the study should focus on drinking water. Another was the study should cover the entire process from the very beginning, including trucking into the facility, to the very end, including waste disposal. Those are two things that I heard over and over and over again."
Yvette Akel, a Town of Binghamton resident who spoke against fracking during the Monday afternoon session, said she hopes the agency is listening intently to the public's input.
"I hope they were listening, because it was such a struggle to get it here," Akel said. "I hope they didn't just tune us out after a certain point, because if they did, what's the point of even having the hearing?"
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Drilling opponents, supporters butt heads at EPA Forum
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Meeting draws 900 to downtown Binghamton
By Jon Campbell
jcampbell1@gannett.com
BINGHAMTON -- About 900 stakeholders and public officials -- a far cry from the 8,000 originally estimated -- came to downtown Binghamton Monday for a daylong meeting that often became a showcase for the controversial natural gas drilling debate.
Two-hundred people got the chance to speak during the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's meeting, which was organized to gather input on the scope of a multi-million-dollar study of hydraulic fracturing.
Those at the meeting cheered and groaned as public officials and stakeholders spoke about their concerns or support for hydrofracking, a controversial drilling technique in which a mix of water, sand and chemicals is blasted deep underground to break up rock structures and release natural gas.
U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-Hurley, was first at the microphone. He asked the agency to take over regulation of the practice and urged a comprehensive approach to the study, which is supposed to look at the potential effects of hydrofracking on groundwater.
Hinchey, the sponsor of a federal bill that would require natural gas companies to disclose the chemicals they use in the drilling process, called hydrofracking an "unconventional, harm-causing drilling technique." His speech lasted about eight minutes longer than the two-minute time limit.
"The results of this study will guide the federal government's policies, and perhaps, governments abroad," said Hinchey, who was the only non-EPA speaker to speak from the stage. "This study needs to be comprehensive, and it has to look at all of the different ways drinking water supplies, and non-drinking water supplies, can be impacted."
Several speakers touted a 2004 EPA study that found the fracking process to be safe. Critics say the study was wrought with political influence and have panned the results.
"There are almost 14,000 producing wells in New York state, many of which have been hydrofracked," said Brad Gill, president of the Independent Oil & Gas Association of New York. "Despite claims to the contrary, there hasn't been one case of groundwater being contaminated by the hydraulic fracturing process."
Speakers were urged to keep their comments centered on the scope of the EPA's study, although most took the opportunity to express their concern or support for natural gas drilling.
"High-volume hydraulic fracturing builds wealth, saves jobs and gives hope," said Aaron Price, the filmmaker behind the pro-drilling documentary "Gas Odyssey."
Others applauded the EPA's recent decision to ask gas companies for full disclosure of the chemicals used in the process.
"We need to know about the types of chemicals that are used and the effects of chemicals, not just individually but when you put them all together," said Katherine Nadeau, a program director for Environmental Advocates of New York.
While the afternoon session was split between those for and against hydrofracking, the evening session leaned toward the latter.
Filmmaker Josh Fox received a loud ovation as he approached the podium during the evening session. Fox produced "Gasland," an anti-fracking documentary that aired on HBO.
"My most ardent recommendation is that we stop this process now," Fox said. "People are suffering across the country and cannot wait any longer."
Victoria Switzer, a Dimock, Pa., resident whose water well was ruined by Cabot Oil and Gas, echoed Fox's call.
"EPA, do your job," said Switzer. "EPA must order a cessation of drilling activity in the Marcellus until an investigation is ordered and completed."
A few people heckled Vestal Gas Coalition member Thomas Gorman as he delivered his testimony, with one woman saying he was "ridiculous" when he defended the chemical solution used in the process.
"I know it can be done in an entirely safe manner, and I say that because I visited a well in Pennsylvania and saw the best industry practices," Gorman said. "I urge those who mock me to visit a well site instead of coming out here and shelling out garbled nonsense."
The meeting was largely civil, though some audience members grew testy when speakers went over the two-minute time limit, which was displayed on a large onstage screen. Some began yelling "two minutes" and "time's up" as the clock clicked down, including during Hinchey's opening speech.
Before the hearing began, a few hundred protesters on both sides of the natural gas drilling debate made their voices heard on Washington Street in front of the theater. Opposing rallies were restricted to barricaded areas on opposite ends of the street.
Emotions were high, but Binghamton police -- which provided 12 officers and two supervisors at a cost of about $13,000 to the EPA -- reported no issues.
Concerns about potential rallies led in part to the moving and subsequent postponement of the meeting. It was originally scheduled for Aug. 12 at Binghamton University, but was moved to Syracuse's Oncenter Complex three days before it was set to take place after the EPA and BU couldn't come to an agreement on security and service costs for the meeting. University officials estimated the meeting could attract up to 8,000 to the BU campus.
The meeting was postponed the next day, after Onondaga County officials said they could not come up with a security plan on short notice.
About 1,600 people have registered to attend the meeting, which was split into four sessions -- two each on Monday and Wednesday.
Others who spoke included Binghamton Mayor Matthew Ryan, Tompkins County Legislature Chair Martha Robertson, Broome County Attorney Joseph Sluzar, and Broome County Executive Barbara J. Fiala.
"It is our hope the EPA is not going to study the entire natural gas development cycle," Fiala said. "Otherwise, the study will lack focus, it will not be timely, and EPA will infringe on the rights of the states to regulate this industry."
High-volume hydrofracking is on hold in New York as the state Department of Environmental Conservation updates its policies and regulations.
Additional Facts
What's next?
The EPA's public meeting on its hydraulic fracturing study will conclude Wednesday with a pair of four-hour sessions. The first will run from noon to 4 p.m., with the second running from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. About 100 people will be able to speak at each session. Doors will open 90 minutes prior to each session, and parking will be available at the Regency Hotel, City of Binghamton parking lots and NYSEG Stadium.
'No Fracking Way' serves as theme for anti-drilling faction
BINGHAMTON -- They beat on bongos and shook tambourines as they danced to their own song. Decorations could be seen from down the block.
It wasn't a party, but an anti-drilling rally outside The Forum before and during parts of Monday's EPA meeting.
Their song? "No Fracking Way," which began as a chant but, as the day continued, morphed into a rhythmic melody echoing down Washington Street.
Their props? A mock drilling rig adorned with a roulette wheel offering the two chances of gas or water, a skull and hazard signs. There were costumes, too, like the man clad in a HAZMAT suit and gas mask. Oh, and there was Frackin'stein.
Though Craig Sautner wore jeans and a T-shirt, he brought a prop -- a half-full gallon jug of murky water to the event. It was labeled Dimock, Pa., and came from his well -- the well he and his family drank from for a year, and though it was filtered at the time, he said it was unsafe.
"My kids were getting sick," Sautner said of the contaminated water resulting from extensive drilling nearby. "They were getting eczema over their elbows, down their legs and everything from the well water. My daughter would get in the shower in the morning and she would have to get out and lay on the floor because she thought she was going to pass out cause of all the methane sucking the oxygen out of the air."
Sautner said his family isn't anti-drilling or pro-drilling, but just wants to educate people on the possible repercussions of hydraulic fracturing -- something he hoped to do at Monday's event.
Politicians who spoke during their allotted two minutes inside The Forum also took the opportunity beforehand to get anti-drillers revved up.
Binghamton Mayor Matthew Ryan said more money should have spent on a green alternative to fracking.
"This is about environmental justice, this is about environmental racism," Ryan said. "It's about protecting our ecology, it's about making sure our infrastructure's protected if drilling ever does come to this area. It's about making sure the EPA (does) the types of things they're supposed to do. The Environmental Protection Agency: that's what they're called."
Martha Robertson, chair of the Tompkins County Legislature, argued the economic benefit has been overplayed.
"They say it'll bring prosperity to upstate New York," Robertson said. "But you know what? In Pennsylvania, 90 percent of the jobs are going to out-of-state workers."
Susan Multer, a social worker from Horseheads, came to voice her opinion, and said she was glad to see the turnout from many in areas where drilling has gone wrong, such as Dimock.
"I think the public is waking up, and maybe some public officials," Multer said. "Sad to say, but the more accidents that happen ... when you read about these real events, you can't ignore it anymore."
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Shale-Drilling Fight Comes To Head At EPA Forum In NY
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. (Dow Jones)--Hundreds of people gathered as here Monday to debate the safety of a gas drilling method called hydraulic fracturing, with critics campaigning against the industry and urging federal regulators to halt the practice.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which organized the forum, said that the depth at which the practice occurs in the East Coast -- thousands of feet below the surface -- provides protection against contamination of groundwater. But the agency also warned about the volume of water used in shale-gas drilling and said that it would evaluate the integrity of some individual wells as part of a high-profile study -- a shot across the bow to the industry, which has been pushing the agency to keep the study narrowly focused.
"Depending on the type of well that is used for a hydraulic fracturing operation -- particularly these newer horizontal wells -- you can use as many as five million gallons per well," said Robert Puls, the EPA's technical lead on the hydraulic-fracturing study. With companies drilling as many as 16 wells from a single well pad, "that's 80 million gallons of water. Where is that water coming from? Is it competing with other uses, in particular drinking water?"
The gas industry says that golf courses use more water in New York state than shale drilling would.
"If all the wells expected to be drilled are drilled, water usage for natural gas operations in the state could grow to 28 million gallons a day," said Cathy Landry, a spokeswoman for the American Petroleum Institute. "In contrast, golf courses in New York state use more than double the water -- or a seasonal average of 58 million gallons a day."
The EPA's stated purpose is to get input on its study of hydrofracking in the U.S. shale regions, which are home to gas resources that the energy industry estimates could last a century. Accessing shale gas has become a growth area thanks to technological advancements, including more sophisticated uses of hydraulic fracturing. The technique involves pumping water, sand and chemicals underground to crack open the rock, releasing the gas within.
A big concern is that the chemicals used in fracturing could taint water supplies, through spills at the surface or through faulty wells or problems in processing spent fracturing fluid. But the forum on Monday also provided evidence that the concern is broadening beyond chemicals and touching on the entire process of high-volume shale drilling.
"Over the last few years I've developed many serious concerns about hydrofracking in tight shale," said Lou Allstadt, who described himself as a former vice president of Mobil Oil Corp. Shale-gas wells "are going to have to be fracked many times over their lives," he said. One problem: "such successive fracking increases the risk that the frack will break out of the target shale zone and into fissures that communicate with aquifers."
Perhaps nowhere is skepticism as deep as in New York. New York City draws fresh water from reservoirs in the Catskills, which sit atop a swath of the Marcellus Shale. High-volume shale gas drilling has yet to come to New York, as it has to other states, amid concern about contaminating the city's water supplies.
"There's a big difference between a 100,000 gallon hydrofrack and a three million to five million gallon hydrofrack," said Neil Woodworth, executive director of the Adirondack Mountain Club. He warned that the Northeast probably lacks the capacity to clean up the chemical-laden hydrofracking fluids. "Water in New York State is the most precious resource we have and we can't afford to contaminate it," he said. Applause broke out in the theater.
The industry is increasingly concerned by signs that the EPA is taking seriously the concerns of drilling critics that fracking puts drinking water at risk. On Friday, the API organized a conference call and publicized a study highlighting that if drilling in the Marcellus Shale -- which stretches from New York to West Virginia -- begins in 2011 under a middle-range scenario, production could reach 9.5 billion cubic feet a day in 2020, generating more than 180,000 jobs and almost $4 billion in additional tax revenue.
The forecasts resonate with some people in the southern tier of New York, where jobs are in short supply.
"Rich people do not want gas drilling or any economic development in their backyard," complained Douglas Lee, a resident who spoke at the forum. "They have no concern about how our people make a living. Our communities are poor. We have a high unemployment. Our young people are forced to move away to find work."
Brad Gill, executive director of the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York, said that "there hasn't been a single case of groundwater contaminated by frack fluid in New York" and complained that "fear-mongering and emotion will always trump science."
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Fracking for natural gas: EPA hearings bring protests
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a controversial process for extracting natural gas from shale. Critics of fracking question the environmental and health effects of pumping thousands of gallons of water and chemicals underground.
Public hearings over hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" brought hundreds of protesters to Binghamton, N.Y., Monday, carrying signs and shouting slogans either opposing or favoring expansion of the controversial process for extracting natural gas from shale.
The Environmental Protection Agency's public hearings are part of a broad investigation, begun in March, into the human health and environmental effects of fracking – focusing on air pollution and water pollution. The chemical effects that fracking fluids may have on water supplies after being injected into the ground to extract gas are a special focus.
But a new study conducted for the American Public Power Association (APPA) suggests that if wider use of natural gas in electric power production comes to pass nationwide – as many analysts now expect – such controversies may be just beginning.
"Even if fracturing continues, serving a much larger market will require even more drilling that is already at record levels," the APPA study found.
In Pennsylvania, for instance, at least 1,600 fracking wells have been drilled with about 4,000 permits granted, the Associated Press reported Monday. But the new study suggests that as the flood of gas drives prices down, electric power generators will increasingly see it as a good alternative to burning coal. That, in turn, would mean vastly expanded fracking.
Lying beneath New York, Pennsylvania, and other parts of the Northeast, the rich Marcellus shale beds could supply the region with trillions of cubic feet of natural gas for decades, according to some estimates. But opponents say the process that involves pumping tons of toxic chemicals into the ground under pressure can pollute groundwater and greatly increase air pollution.
Thanks to expanded use of fracking, however, US natural-gas reserves have soared. Proven natural gas reserves have increased by more than enough to cover annual production for each of the last 15 or so years, the APPA report says. Natural-gas reserves now total 245 trillion cubic feet – enough to meet 2009-level demand for more than 10 years, it says.
The APPA study also recounts environmental impacts found by other groups. It said a recent study by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, for instance, found that fracturing a single well could involve “pumping three to eight million gallons of water and 80 to 300 tons of chemicals" into it at high pressure over several days.
"Half or so of the injected solution returns back up the well," the New York City study said. "The water that flows back up the well also tends to contain hydrocarbons and dissolved solids such that it must be disposed of via underground injection or industrial treatment." Conventional wastewater treatment was "not feasible," it said.
With injection water typically trucked in, the NYC study estimated "1,000 or more truck trips per well to haul in water and equipment and then haul out wastewater." But that's not the end of it, since as production falls off, the fracturing process is repeated on a well. Some shale gas wells need fracking every five years over a period of 20 to 40 years. The New York study calls fracturing "an ongoing process rather than something that occurs only when the wells are originally drilled."
The EPA hearings are likely to increase debate as more information about the chemistry of the fracking process emerges, environmentalists and energy analysts say.
"They have never done a hydraulic fracking study as comprehensive as the one now beginning," says Scott Anderson, a senior policy adviser for the Environment Defense Fund. "The results of this study will inform future congressional decisions on whether to continue to exempt hydraulic fracturing from the federal Safe Drinking Water Act."
Little is known about the chemical composition of fracking fluids – and the state of New York has held up permitting until more information emerges. While the natural-gas industry says many of the chemicals in such fluids can be found under a kitchen sink, the industry has long resisted identifying those chemicals. That could be changing soon, too.
That's because the EPA hearings could cause Congress to require that fracking fluid chemicals be identified, and could remove fracking's exemption from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act, according to Kevin Book, an energy analyst with energy market research firm ClearView Energy Partners.
"On August 31, EPA quietly released interim results of its ongoing review of possible drinking water contamination at several sites near Pavilion, Wyoming," he writes in a new analysis. "Although EPA’s latest data did not conclusively link contamination to fracking, EPA’s guidance that residents should avoid drinking their water may offer Congressional fracking opponents a valuable sound bite to use when calling for mandatory disclosure rules."
While the Energy Policy Act of 2005 prevents the EPA from explicitly regulating fracking wells under the Safe Drinking Water Act, "the Agency already possesses considerable regulatory authority under other existing laws," writes Mr. Book. As a result, he contends, even without Congressional action, the EPA could, under other federal laws, "investigate other reports of fracking-linked contamination."
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