BREAKING NEWS !
Government Accounting Office Report to Congress on Drinking Water
EPA Program to Protect Underground Sources from Injection of Fluids Associated with Oil and Gas Production Needs Improvement. Highlights of GAO-14-555,
a report to congressional requesters
Why GAO Did This Study. Every day in the United States, at least 2 billion gallons of fluids are injected into over 172,000 wells to enhance oil and gas production, or to dispose of fluids brought to the surface during the extraction of oil and gas resources. These wells are subject to regulation to protect drinking water sources under EPA’s UIC class II program and approved state class II programs. Because much of the population relies on underground sources for drinking water, these wells have raised concerns about the safety of the nation’s drinking water.
GAO was asked to review EPA’s oversight of the class II program. This report examines (1) EPA and state roles, responsibilities, and resources for the program, (2) safeguards to protect drinking water, (3) EPA oversight and enforcement of class II programs, and (4) the reliability of program data for reporting. GAO reviewed federal and state laws and regulations. GAO interviewed EPA and state officials and reviewed class II programs from a nongeneralizable sample of eight states selected on the basis of shale oil and gas regions and the highest number of class II wells.
What GAO Recommends
GAO recommends that, among other things, EPA review emerging risks related to class II program safeguards and ensure that it can effectively oversee and efficiently enforce class II programs. EPA agreed with all but the enforcement recommendation. GAO continues to believe that EPA should take actions to ensure it can enforce state class II regulations, as discussed in the report. Read More.
Why GAO Did This Study. Every day in the United States, at least 2 billion gallons of fluids are injected into over 172,000 wells to enhance oil and gas production, or to dispose of fluids brought to the surface during the extraction of oil and gas resources. These wells are subject to regulation to protect drinking water sources under EPA’s UIC class II program and approved state class II programs. Because much of the population relies on underground sources for drinking water, these wells have raised concerns about the safety of the nation’s drinking water.
GAO was asked to review EPA’s oversight of the class II program. This report examines (1) EPA and state roles, responsibilities, and resources for the program, (2) safeguards to protect drinking water, (3) EPA oversight and enforcement of class II programs, and (4) the reliability of program data for reporting. GAO reviewed federal and state laws and regulations. GAO interviewed EPA and state officials and reviewed class II programs from a nongeneralizable sample of eight states selected on the basis of shale oil and gas regions and the highest number of class II wells.
What GAO Recommends
GAO recommends that, among other things, EPA review emerging risks related to class II program safeguards and ensure that it can effectively oversee and efficiently enforce class II programs. EPA agreed with all but the enforcement recommendation. GAO continues to believe that EPA should take actions to ensure it can enforce state class II regulations, as discussed in the report. Read More.
Seven Earthquakes Hit Oklahoma in 14 Hours, Raising Fracking Concerns
Published on Monday, July 14, 2014 by Common Dreams. Studies have linked wastewater injection to increasing seismic activity- Deirdre Fulton, staff writer. Seven small earthquakes shook Oklahoma within 14 hours this weekend, lending further credence to the claim that fracking increases seismic hazards. This weekend's quakes registered between 2.6 and 4.3 on the Richter scale. Last month, Oklahoma passed California as the state with the most earthquakes, and scientists believe the increase is man-made. In a joint statement earlier this year, the US Geological Survey and the Oklahoma Geological survey noted that the changes in earthquake rates "do not seem to be due to typical, random fluctuations in natural seismicity rates." The statement continued: "The analysis suggests that a likely contributing factor to the increase in earthquakes is triggering by wastewater injected into deep geologic formations. This phenomenon is known as injection-induced seismicity, which has been documented for nearly half a century, with new cases identified recently in Arkansas, Ohio, Texas and Colorado." Read more.
Group Representing Half A Billion Christians Says It Will No Longer Support Fossil Fuels
BY EMILY ATKIN JULY 11, 2014 AT 9:21 AM. The World Council of Churches, a global coalition of 345 churches, made the decision to no longer fund oil, gas, or coal at its central committee meeting in Geneva, and recommended that its members do the same. “The committee discussed the ethical investment criteria, and considered that the list of sectors in which the WCC does not invest should be extended to include fossil fuels,” read the finance policy committee report. Read more.
The Turning Point: New Hope for the Climate. It's time to accelerate the shift toward a low-carbon future. . . . .Our ability to convert sunshine into usable energy has become much cheaper far more rapidly than anyone had predicted. The cost of electricity from photovoltaic, or PV, solar cells is now equal to or less than the cost of electricity from other sources powering electric grids in at least 79 countries. By 2020 – as the scale of deployments grows and the costs continue to decline – more than 80 percent of the world's people will live in regions where solar will be competitive with electricity from other sources. . . .Germany, Europe's industrial powerhouse, where renewable subsidies have been especially high, now generates 37 percent of its daily electricity from wind and solar; and analysts predict that number will rise to 50 percent by 2020. Read more here.
NEW: Waste Injection Wells - Talk by Teresa Mills at the Kent Environmental Council 4/28/14. Click here to see the talk.
Pipeline Workshop. What you should know if a "landman" comes to your door asking you to sign an easement or threatens eminent domain for a pipeline. Why you should find out if you have a pipeline in your community. More information here.
Why should Ohio worry about waste injection wells? Two alarming stories:
FIRST: "Ohio annually processes thousands of tons of radioactive waste from hydraulic-fracturing, sending it through treatment facilities, injecting it into its old and unused gas wells and dumping it in landfills. . . . .the legislature, lobbied by the fracking industry, undid the governor's bid to have the testing of the waste done by the state's Department of Health — the agency acknowledged by many to possess the most expertise with radioactive material. The testing is now the responsibility of the Department of Natural Resources, the agency that oversees the permitting and inspection of oil and gas drilling sites, but that has no track record for dealing with radioactive waste." Read More.
SECOND: In Donna Young’s 19 years as a midwife, she’s made house calls to hundreds of mothers in Utah’s Uintah Basin, and never delivered a stillbirth—until last May. She was startled. “Everything seemed to be normal, everything seemed to be good. [But] when the baby was born, she never even tried to take her first breath. It wasn’t a struggle or anything, it just wasn’t there.” When Young attended the child’s memorial at a cemetery in the town of Vernal a few days later, a woman pointed out a few other fresh graves. The headstones were engraved with baby feet, or just one date—markers for infants who either were stillbirths or were born and died the same day. Read more.
FIRST: "Ohio annually processes thousands of tons of radioactive waste from hydraulic-fracturing, sending it through treatment facilities, injecting it into its old and unused gas wells and dumping it in landfills. . . . .the legislature, lobbied by the fracking industry, undid the governor's bid to have the testing of the waste done by the state's Department of Health — the agency acknowledged by many to possess the most expertise with radioactive material. The testing is now the responsibility of the Department of Natural Resources, the agency that oversees the permitting and inspection of oil and gas drilling sites, but that has no track record for dealing with radioactive waste." Read More.
SECOND: In Donna Young’s 19 years as a midwife, she’s made house calls to hundreds of mothers in Utah’s Uintah Basin, and never delivered a stillbirth—until last May. She was startled. “Everything seemed to be normal, everything seemed to be good. [But] when the baby was born, she never even tried to take her first breath. It wasn’t a struggle or anything, it just wasn’t there.” When Young attended the child’s memorial at a cemetery in the town of Vernal a few days later, a woman pointed out a few other fresh graves. The headstones were engraved with baby feet, or just one date—markers for infants who either were stillbirths or were born and died the same day. Read more.
Check out Earth Justice's Fraccidents Map. FRACKING ACROSS THE UNITED STATES. The United States is in the midst of an unprecedented oil and gas drilling rush—brought on by a controversial technology called hydraulic fracturing, or FRACKING. Along with this fracking-enabled rush have come troubling reports of poisoned drinking water, polluted air, mysterious animal deaths, industrial disasters and explosions. We call them FRACCIDENTS. For an interactive map where the drilling has been heaviest, you can see what we can expect in Ohio once the industry starts drilling seriously, click here.
Don't Buy Koch Products: They're the largest holders of TAR SANDS land. If you haven't seen photographs of tar sands extraction and don't know what it is doing to the boreal forests in Canada, check out Garth Lenz's 17 min.TED talk. Click here for a list of Koch products.
Climate impacts 'overwhelming' - UN. The impacts of global warming are likely to be "severe, pervasive and irreversible", a major report by the UN has warned. Scientists and officials meeting in Japan say the document is the most comprehensive assessment to date of the impacts of climate change on the world. Some impacts of climate change include a higher risk of flooding and changes to crop yields and water availability. Humans may be able to adapt to some of these changes, but only within limits. An example of an adaptation strategy would be the construction of sea walls and levees to protect against flooding. Another might be introducing more efficient irrigation for farmers in areas where water is scarce. Natural systems are currently bearing the brunt of climatic changes, but a growing impact on humans is feared. Members of the UN's climate panel say it provides overwhelming evidence of the scale of these effects. Read more here.
Municipal & Rural Water Systems. Where does your water come from? Whether you live in a city or rural area, your water comes from ground or surface water. You can help your city develop a water monitoring program. Check out Garrettsville's Water Monitoring Program checklist.
If you live in the country, read how How to Take Care of Your Water Well. Read about Concerned Citizens Ohio's Neighbors Helping Neighbors water monitoring program.
If you live in the country, read how How to Take Care of Your Water Well. Read about Concerned Citizens Ohio's Neighbors Helping Neighbors water monitoring program.
Officials not keeping track of oil trains. With oil being produced in new areas that don’t have pipelines, more crude is heading to refineries in rail cars. Yet neither federal nor state regulators track the shipments that are increasingly crisscrossing the country – potentially cutting through neighborhoods and business districts nationwide. . . .“Regulators across North America simply have not kept up with the boom in moving oil by train,” said Keith Stewart, a Canadian-based researcher for the environmental group Greenpeace. “You would be shocked how little governments know how much and where and when this oil is moving by rail.” Read more here.
There is already a natural gas depot for exporting American natural gas. There are 26 more applications on the table to be approved. If these are indeed approved, then big oil will move forward and sign LONG TERM CONTRACTS to guarantee American natural gas to foreign countries. This industry will have to make good on these contracts. That will mean more drilling at any cost, and at the expense of Americans. That will mean tens of thousands of more wells. Hundreds of billions of gallons of fresh drinking water polluted. And the attempted disposal of hundreds of billions of gallons of toxic waste water. Read here.
Mountaineer Keystone's Plans for NE Portage County. NE Portage County has had only a few High Volume Horizontal Shale (HVHS) wells drilled, and those were drilled by Mountaineer Keystone. Because gas or oil is everywhere in shale, productive drilling requires well pads to be placed as frequently as possible (in many heavily drilled states, every square mile). Our members have been looking up public records to discover which parts of Portage County have been leased for drilling and have discovered that Mt. Keystone has also obtained easements for pipelines. The parcels of land in NE Portage (red, green and blue) on which Mt. Keystone has leases or easements have now been mapped by FracTracker. Click here to see large Map and Explanation.
Pipelines proposed across the United States. FracTracker is digitizing data about proposed pipelines across the U.S. They are still working on 10-12 proposals out west; they hope to have those pipelines mapped by next week. Check FracTracker. Or click here to look at the interactive U.S. Map.
SOLAR SHINGLES MADE FROM COMMON METALS OFFER CHEAPER ENERGY OPTION
U.S. scientists say that emerging photovoltaic technologies will enable the production of solar shingles made from abundantly available elementsrather than rare-earth metals, an innovation that would make solar energy cheaper and more sustainable. Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society, a team of researchers described advances in solar cells made with abundant metals, such as copper and zinc. While the market already offers solar shingles that convert the sun’s energy into electricity, producers typically must use elements that are scarce and expensive, such as indium and gallium. High-tech products increasingly make use of rare metals, and mining those resources can have devastating environmental consequences. But two experts look at the consequences of blocking projects like the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska. Read More. READ THE e360 REPORT
U.S. scientists say that emerging photovoltaic technologies will enable the production of solar shingles made from abundantly available elementsrather than rare-earth metals, an innovation that would make solar energy cheaper and more sustainable. Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society, a team of researchers described advances in solar cells made with abundant metals, such as copper and zinc. While the market already offers solar shingles that convert the sun’s energy into electricity, producers typically must use elements that are scarce and expensive, such as indium and gallium. High-tech products increasingly make use of rare metals, and mining those resources can have devastating environmental consequences. But two experts look at the consequences of blocking projects like the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska. Read More. READ THE e360 REPORT
Durango TX Pipeline Explosion (6.7.10)
FRIDAY, JAN 31, 2014 08:00 AM EST
The scariest thing about fracking is the risk nobody is talking about: A dense, poorly regulated network of pipelines [emphasis added] carries explosive gas hundreds of miles away drilling sites. . . . According to former Mobil Oil executive Lou Allstadt, the greatest danger of fracking is the methane it adds to the atmosphere through leaks from wells, pipelines, and other associated infrastructure. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has found leakage rates of 2.3% to 17% of annual production at gas and oil fields in California, Colorado, and Utah. Moreover, no technology can guarantee long-term safety decades into the future when it comes to well casings (there are hundreds of thousands of frack wells in the U.S. to date) or in the millions of miles of pipelines that crisscross this country. . . . Carl Weimer, executive director of Pipeline Safety Trust, a non-profit watchdog organization, says that, on average, there is “a significant incident — somewhere — about every other day. And someone ends up in the hospital or dead about every nine or ten days.” This begs the question: are pipelines carrying shale gas different in their explosive potential than other pipelines?
“There isn’t any database that allows you to get at that,” says Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline safety expert and consultant of 40 years’ experience. “If it’s a steel pipeline and it has enough gas in it under enough pressure, it can leak or rupture.” Read More.
The scariest thing about fracking is the risk nobody is talking about: A dense, poorly regulated network of pipelines [emphasis added] carries explosive gas hundreds of miles away drilling sites. . . . According to former Mobil Oil executive Lou Allstadt, the greatest danger of fracking is the methane it adds to the atmosphere through leaks from wells, pipelines, and other associated infrastructure. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has found leakage rates of 2.3% to 17% of annual production at gas and oil fields in California, Colorado, and Utah. Moreover, no technology can guarantee long-term safety decades into the future when it comes to well casings (there are hundreds of thousands of frack wells in the U.S. to date) or in the millions of miles of pipelines that crisscross this country. . . . Carl Weimer, executive director of Pipeline Safety Trust, a non-profit watchdog organization, says that, on average, there is “a significant incident — somewhere — about every other day. And someone ends up in the hospital or dead about every nine or ten days.” This begs the question: are pipelines carrying shale gas different in their explosive potential than other pipelines?
“There isn’t any database that allows you to get at that,” says Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline safety expert and consultant of 40 years’ experience. “If it’s a steel pipeline and it has enough gas in it under enough pressure, it can leak or rupture.” Read More.
Industry Awakens to Threat of Climate Change
Coral Davenport
New York Times January 24, 2014
WASHINGTON — Coca-Cola has always been more focused on its economic bottom line than on global warming, but when the company lost a lucrative operating license in India because of a serious water shortage there in 2004, things began to change.
Today, after a decade of increasing damage to Coke’s balance sheet as global droughts dried up the water needed to produce its soda, the company has embraced the idea of climate change as an economically disruptive force.
“Increased droughts, more unpredictable variability, 100-year floods every two years,” said Jeffrey Seabright, Coke’s vice president for environment and water resources, listing the problems that he said were also disrupting the company’s supply of sugar cane and sugar beets, as well as citrus for its fruit juices. “When we look at our most essential ingredients, we see those events as threats.”
Coke reflects a growing view among American business leaders and mainstream economists who see global warming as a force that contributes to lower gross domestic products, higher food and commodity costs, broken supply chains and increased financial risk. Their position is at striking odds with the longstanding argument, advanced by the coal industry and others, that policies to curb carbon emissions are more economically harmful than the impact of climate change. Read Whole Article. Click here for larger image and more information about the evidence for climate change.
Coral Davenport
New York Times January 24, 2014
WASHINGTON — Coca-Cola has always been more focused on its economic bottom line than on global warming, but when the company lost a lucrative operating license in India because of a serious water shortage there in 2004, things began to change.
Today, after a decade of increasing damage to Coke’s balance sheet as global droughts dried up the water needed to produce its soda, the company has embraced the idea of climate change as an economically disruptive force.
“Increased droughts, more unpredictable variability, 100-year floods every two years,” said Jeffrey Seabright, Coke’s vice president for environment and water resources, listing the problems that he said were also disrupting the company’s supply of sugar cane and sugar beets, as well as citrus for its fruit juices. “When we look at our most essential ingredients, we see those events as threats.”
Coke reflects a growing view among American business leaders and mainstream economists who see global warming as a force that contributes to lower gross domestic products, higher food and commodity costs, broken supply chains and increased financial risk. Their position is at striking odds with the longstanding argument, advanced by the coal industry and others, that policies to curb carbon emissions are more economically harmful than the impact of climate change. Read Whole Article. Click here for larger image and more information about the evidence for climate change.
