Environmental concerns subject of public forum
Published: September 23, 2009
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With DEP’s Craig Lobins fielding most of the questions at a public forum last Wednesday night in Forest City, Jennifer Means, also of DEP, and Brian Swistock, a water quality specialist at Penn State listen in the wings. STAFF PHOTO/ROBERT BAKER
Dr. Ken Mayers said his first impulse in thinking about gas drilling was “how can we make this go away?”
But, the president of the Wayne and Susquehanna County R.E.S.C.U.E. told a gathering of around 150 residents that he was a realist and knew that wasn’t going to happen.
He acknowledged two points of view which seem to drive the debate on whether it is possible to develop gas drilling and preserve clean water.
It’s going to be extremely wonderful and great for our communities or it’s going to be extremely horrible with the potential for an accident rendering the land uninhabitable.
The truth is that it will likely be somewhere in between, Mayers said.
And with that he introduced the evening’s presenters: two regulators from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection who are involved with permitting along with a water quality specialist from PennState.
Craig Lobins, DEP Northwest Regional Manager for the Oil and Gas Program, addressed DEP’s drilling requirements which the gas companies have to follow.
His office in Meadville, has been responsible for issuing permits for all of the counties north of I-80, and he acknowledged that since 2003 his office has seen about a 25 percent a year increase in permit applications.
He noted that from around 1998 until 2003, DEP issued about 1100 permits a year.
He said that the following year was when the first Marcellus well was drilled.
Some 476 wells were permitted across Pennsylvania in 2008 and he projected that by year’s end 1200 permits would be issued in 2009.
The distinction between the “old” days and at present is that to get to the gas in the Marcellus requires up to 4-5 million gallons of water to be used in a fracking process.
Jennifer Means, the Regional Manager of the Northcentral Office for Oil and Gas Management, located in Williamsport described her new office and the challenges she now faces with bthe rapid development of gas drilling in northeastern Pennsylvania.
She spoke of water management plans and the challenge of finding enough water to be used, and how it’s determined how much water can be removed for use in the drilling process.
She acknowledged the Susquehanna River Basin Commission and Delawater River Basin Commission’s role in designating withdrawals.
She said that with her new office in Williamsport she faces a handful of challenges: including staffing, building a new program, keeping up with the volume and rate of activity and the technology.
Bryan Swistock, Water Resource Extension Specialist, Penn State Cooperative, focused more on the gas drilling process, pollutants in the waste fluids, current regulations to protect groundwater supplies, and strategies homeowners can use to protect their drinking water supply in areas where drilling activity is occurring.
He said it was critical for landowners to have an independent lab test their water supply, as it is entirely possible that things could go wrong.
Among them he identified leaking storage pits, inadequate freshwater supplies, illegal disposal and site spills.
“You don’t plan for them, but they do happen” he said.
He also identified some things that could be in one’s gas lease to protect the local water resources.
The two-hour program stretch for another 90 minutes as audience members asked questions of the experts.
Lobins, for instance, was pointedly asked on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the greatest level, how confident was he that DEP could handle the workload as the industry quickly develops.
He said a ‘5’ was about right, which caused one audience member to ask, “Do you think we could hold off granting permits until you have enough employees?”
Lobins said, “I cannot deny a permit for not having enough staff.”
He acknowledged that the only way the industry could be halted was if the governor issued a moratorium, and he said rather matter oof factly that was very, very unlikely.
Lobins added, “I think we’re all worried about something that is a very rare occurrence.”
At the same time he acknowledged the bottleneck of finding a way to deal with fracked water that is being generated faster than it is being treated.
“Fracking fluid should never touch the groundwater table,” he said.
The words were perhaps prophetic, as just about 20 miles away and earlier in the day in DimockTownship, about 8,000 gallons of a fracking gel spilled onto the ground at a gas drilling site.
