COFFMAN: Frack Fighting - The Safety of Fracturing Fluids

[Oscar]

The Safety of Fracturing Fluids – A Quantitative Assessment

by Steve Coffman, member of the Committee to Preserve the Finger Lakes -- August 4, 2009

In response to a FOIL request to New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation, the Committee to Preserve the Finger Lakes received a list of 48 toxic substances (as defined by the DEC or EPA) permitted for use in hydraulic fracture drilling of gas wells in the Marcellus Shale formation in Yates, Schuyler, Steuben, Broome and Cortland Counties. The received materials came in the form of documents submitted by the drilling companies themselves: Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) and Company Drilling Data Sheets.

The Hazardous Materials Identification System was developed to help employers comply with OSHA standards. The MSDS documents have the Hazardous Materials Identification System (HMIS) ratings for most of the 48 products. Additionally, extensive data is presented for each product about its chemical composition.

Some of the products listed in the documents are antimicrobials, microbiocides, corrosion inhibitors, surfactants, hydrochloric acid, and liquid nitrogen. Very low doses of some of them can cause cancer, damage kidney and immune systems and affect reproductive development. Some of them are very harmful to plant and marine life. Many are highly flammable.

Gas drilling companies say they use such tiny amounts of chemicals in the drilling---of the million or so gallons of liquid pumped into a well, only one percent or so are chemicals, andthat they are diluted beyond harmful levels. But on some fracturing sites that tiny percentage of one percent translates to 5,000 or more gallons of chemicals highly concentrated in a few acres.

Method

While all 48 products received from DEC are toxic to some degree, this analysis limits its scope to 34 materials that are highly toxic in one or more ways, or that have specific relevance to the drilling operations in Part II.

Part I describes these products in terms the toxic chemicals they contain, their use, precautions, decomposition dangers, and methods of disposal. [Numbered “NOTES” provide additional information on toxicity of certain chemicals within these described products.]

Part II describes the use of toxic chemicals, also information about water use and disposal, as reported from the 12 gas drilling operations that, according to DEC, have taken place in the Marcellus Shale formation in Yates, Schuyler, Steuben, Broome and Cortland Counties.

Part III provides a brief summary and poses some of the obvious questions prompted by this information.

Disclaimer: While several members of the Committee to Preserve the Finger Lakes have strong industrial engineering backgrounds, none of the members is a chemist, geologist or a gas drilling expert. The purpose here is not to present ultimate answers, but rather to pose important and necessary questions about the safety of these products; not only to the humans directly exposed to these materials, but also in the air and water of our region’s environment. All of the information presented herein comes from the companies themselves, either from the DEC or from other Material Safety Data Sheets.

Note: The “Composition” of products refers only to listed toxic ingredients as supplied in company MSDS.

PART I -- HIGHLY HAZARDOUS PRODUCTS LISTED BY DEC FOR USE IN FRACKING FLUIDS IN YATES, SCHUYLER, STEUBEN, BROOME AND CORTLAND COUNTIES

1. BIO CLEAR 200

Composition: 2,2Dibromo-3-Nitrilopropionamide; Polyethelene Glycol Mixture.

Precautions: Corrosive. Will cause eye burns and permanent tissue damage. Ingestion may be fatal.

Decomposition: May include hazardous carbon dioxide, bromine, cyanogen bromide.

Highly toxic to aquatic organisms. Disposal in streams or sewers may be prohibited by Federal, State and Local laws.

Disposal: Consult local, state, federal agencies for acceptable procedures and locations. http://www.epa.gov/enviro/html/emci/che ... 22012.html

NOTE 1. Cyanogen bromide

May be fatal if swallowed, inhaled or absorbed through skin. Corrosive. Vapors cause severe irritation to eyes and respiratory tract. Causes burns to any area of contact. contact with acids liberates poisonous gas. Affects blood, cardiovascular system, central nervous system and thyroid. Impure material may explode.

Health Rating: 4 - Extreme (Poison); Reactivity Rating: 3 - Severe (Explosive); Contact Rating: 4 - Extreme (Corrosive) -- MSDS Number: C6600

2. CL-14

Composition: Methanol, Propargyl alcohol

Precautions: Highly Flammable. Toxic: may be absorbed through skin in harmful amounts. Inhalation of high levels of vapors my affect central nervous system or cause unconsciousness. Ingestion may be harmful. Chronic Overexposure can adversely affect liver, eyes, lungs brain and nervous system. Probable human carcinogen.

Decomposition: Highly toxic gases may be generated by thermal decomposition or combustion. Vapors may form explosive mixture with air. Decomposition may create hazardous amounts of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.

Disposal: According to RCRA Hazardous Waste Code D001 (ignitable waste).

NOTE 2. Methanol

Methanol is released to the environment during industrial uses and naturally from volcanic gases, vegetation, and microbes. Exposure may occur from ambient air and during the use of solvents. Acute (short-term) or chronic (long-term) exposure of humans to methanol by inhalation or ingestion may result in blurred vision, headache, dizziness, and nausea. No information is available on the reproductive, developmental, or carcinogenic effects of methanol in humans. Birth defects have been observed in the offspring of rats and mice exposed to methanol by inhalation. EPA has not classified methanol with respect to carcinogenicity.

http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/hlthef/methanol.html

NOTE 3. Propargyl alcohol

Flammable, potentially explosive. The substance may be toxic to blood, kidneys, liver, brain, cardiovascular system, upper respiratory tract, skin, central nervous system.

Repeated or prolonged exposure to the substance can produce target organs damage. Prolonged contact with spray mist may produce chronic eye irritation and severe skin irritation, respiratory tract irritation leading to frequent attacks of bronchial infection, general deterioration of health by an accumulation in one or many organs.

http://www.sciencelab.com/xMSDS-Proparg ... ol-9924728

3. CORROSION INHIBITOR A261

Composition: Aromatic keytones, Aliphatic alcohol polyglycol ether, Methanol, Aliphatic acid, Prop-2-yn-1-ol, Aromatic hydrocarbon, Formaldehyde, Propan-2-ol

Precautions: Highly Flammable. Corrosive. Eye contact may cause permanent damage or blindness, Skin contact may cause tissue damage and cause illness. Inhalation may cause illness. Ingestion causes severe pain, burns, swelling, may cause illness. Probable human carcinogen. Toxic to aquatic organisms.

Decomposition: When heated or burned creates oxides of carbon and sulfur, harmful organic chemical fumes.

Disposal: By injection or other acceptable method in accordance with local regulations.

NOTE 4. Aromatic ketones

Several ketones and aldehydes have been classified as known or likely carcinogens. Aldehydes and ketones are widely used industrial chemicals both as solvents and as chemical intermediates (ingredients for other chemicals). Most can be classified as volatile organic compounds meaning that their vapors may be easily inhaled or ignited.
http://www.ilpi.com/msds/ref/ketone.html

NOTE 5. Prop-2-yn-1-ol

Because dermal lethality data in rabbits indicate that prop-2-yn-1-ol is
readily absorbed through the skin, a skin notation is recommended.

http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/
search/r?dbs+hsdb:@term+@rn+@rel+107-19-7

NOTE 6. Formaldehyde

Studies have shown that even low levels of formaldehyde can have health effects. Low levels of exposure can irritate the eyes, nose and throat, cause skin problems, serious breathing problems and can increase risk of certain kinds of cancer. OSHA regulates formaldehyde as a cancer-causing substance. (NYCOSH)

http://www.nycosh.org/workplace_hazards/formal.html

NOTE 7. Propan-2-ol

Causes respiratory tract, eye and skin irritation. contains material which causes damage to the following organs: respiratory tract, skin, central nervous system, eye, lens or cornea. Flammable liquid and vapor. Vapor may cause flash fire. (MSDS)

http://nanosafeguard.com/images/msds/
Marine_Sealing_Component2_msds.pdf

NOTE 8. Aromatic hydrocarbons

U.S. Public Health Service statement “How can polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons [PAHs] affect my health?”-- PAHs can be harmful to your health under some circumstances. Several of the PAHs . . . have caused tumors in laboratory animals when they breathed these substances in the air, when they ate them, or when they had long periods of skin contact with them. Studies of people show that individuals exposed by breathing or skin contact for long periods to mixtures that contain PAHs and other compounds can also develop cancer. Mice fed high levels of benzo[a]pyrene during pregnancy had difficulty reproducing and so did their offspring.

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp69.pdf

4. FAW-5

Composition: 2-butoxyethyanol, Methanol, Ethyl alcohol, Aqueous ammonia

Precautions: Combustible hazard. May be absorbed through skin in toxic amounts. Inhalation may cause collapse, unconsciousness, even death. Ingestion may cause blindness, mental confusion, stupor. Chronic overexposure may damage liver, kidneys, eyes, lungs and central nervous system. May be teratogenic and fetotoxic.

Thermal decomposition or combustion may produce carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide.

Disposal: According to RCRA* Hazardous Waste Code D001 (ignitable waste). [*RCRA -- Resource Conservation Recovery Act]

NOTE 9. 2-butoxyethyanol

(CCOHS) Emergency overview: Combustible liquid and vapor. Very toxic. Fatal if inhaled. Harmful if absorbed through the skin. Central nervous system depressant. Causes severe eye and skin irritation.

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/phs118.html

NOTE 10. Aqueous ammonia

Corrosive alkaline solution. Causes burns to any area of contact. Harmful if swallowed, inhaled or absorbed through skin. Inhalation may be fatal as a result of spasm inflammation and edema of the larynx and bronchi, chemical pneumonitis and pulmonary edema. May be absorbed through the skin with possible systemic effects. Eye Contact can cause temporary or permanent blindness. Prolonged or repeated skin exposure may cause dermatitis. Prolonged or repeated exposure may cause eye, liver, kidney, or lung damage. Health Rating: 4 - extreme (poison) Contact Rating: 3 - severe (corrosive)

http://www.jtbaker.com/msds/englishhtml/A5472.htm

[Methanol -- See Note 2.]

5. FDP-S819-05

Composition: Sodium perborate tetrahydrate

Precautions: Skin disorders, lung disorders, eye ailments; prolonged exposure may cause gastrointestinal effects and muscular dysfunction.

Accidental release: Prevent from entering sewers or, waterways or low areas.

Disposal: In accordance with local, state, federal regulations.

NOTE 11. Sodium perborate tetrahydrate

(MSDS English) Harmful if swallowed, inhaled or absorbed through skin. causes irritation to skin, eyes and respiratory tract. Health Rating: 3 - Severe Contact Rating: 3 - Severe MSDS #S4634

http://www.jtbaker.com/msds/englishhtml/S4634.htm

Inhalation: May be caustic to nasal and lung tissues. Ingestion: May cause convulsions, collapse, coma, and death. Skin Contact: Absorption of large amounts may cause symptoms similar to those of ingestion. Eye Contact may cause corrosion.

6. FE-1A

Composition: Acetic Acid; Acetic anhydride

Precautions: Contact with skin or eyes causes severe burns. Inhalation causes severe respiratory irritation. Ingestion causes burns to mouth, throat and stomach. Prolonged exposure may cause erosion of the teeth.

Decomposition products: Toxic gases and vapors (such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, various hydrocarbons, and acid aerosols) may be released when acetic anhydride is heated or decomposes.

Accidental spills: Prevent from entering sewers, waterways, or low areas.

Disposal: In accordance with federal, state and local regulations.

http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/healthguidelin ... anhydride/
recognition.html

7. FLOMAX 50 MSDS

Composition: Secondary alcohol, proprietary, proprietary.

Precautions: Extremely flammable & Explosion hazard

Can cause permanent eye damage if not removed promptly. Ingestion harmful.

Disposal Method: Recycle if possible, otherwise use licensed disposal contractor.

8. FLOMAX 50 UWS -- Same as #7.

9. GAS PERM 1000

Composition: Isopropanol

Precautions: Highly flammable. Inhalation or ingestion may cause central nervous system depression, unconsciousness. May be absorbed through the skin. May cause severe eye ailments. Overexposure may affect liver and kidneys.

Decomposition: In fire may produce toxic gases.

Disposal: In accordance with federal, state, and local regulations.

http://www.techni-tool.com/content/reso ... 4CH122.pdf

Note 12. Isopropanol: Inhalation can cause ulceration of the respiratory tract with bronchitis, pneumonia, palpitations, dental erosion, cyanosis, asphyxiation, gastric hemorrhage, and death. Absorption through skin can cause similar effects to inhalation. Ingestion can cause stomach and esophageal perforation, circulatory collapse leading to renal, liver, or heart failure. Ecological Information: No information found. Vapors hazardous in drains, sewers, low level enclosures or wells. MSDS Feb. 21, 1998

http://www.labchem.net/msds/75222.pdf

Decomposition Products: Carbon Monoxide, Carbon dioxide, possibly HF, other organic compounds. Spill Procedures: Avoid inhalation, touching, ignition sources. Contain spill from entering waterways. Disposal: according to RCRA Hazardous Waste Code D001 (ignitable waste).

10. HAI-OS ACID INHIBITOR

Composition: Methanol, Propargyl alcohol

Precautions: Highly flammable. May be absorbed through skin. May cause eye damage. Inhalation may cause chemical pneumonia, depress central nervous system, cause unconsciousness. Ingestion may cause blindness or death. Prolonged exposure may damage eyes, blood, liver, kidneys, nervous system, spleen. Acute fish toxicity, may cause long-term adverse effects in aquatic environment.

Accidental Release: Prevent for entering sewers, waterways, low areas.

Disposal: In accordance with federal, state, and local regulations.

[Methanol, Propargyl alcohol, see Notes 2 and 3.]

11. HC-2

Composition: Sodium chloride, Inner salt of alkyl amines

Precautions: May cause severe eye irritation, corneal damage

Accidental Release: Prevent for entering sewers, waterways, low areas.

Disposal: In accordance with federal, state, and local regulations.

12. HYDROCHLORIC ACID 15% DTC-Canada

Precautions: May burn skin, eyes, respiratory system.

Disposal Method: Injection or other acceptable method according to local regulations.

13. HYDROCHLORIC ACID 15% H15 STC-USA -- Same as #12

14. HYDROCHLORIC ACID [30 - 60%]

Precautions: May burn skin, eyes, respiratory system.

Accidental Release: Prevent from entering sewers, waterways, low areas.

Disposal Method: In accordance with federal, state, and local regulations.

15. INFLO-102

Composition: Methanol, 2-butoxyethanol, Isopropanol

Precautions: Highly Flammable. Skin absorption may cause systemic poisoning; vapors irritate eyes. Inhalation may cause respiratory irritation, unconsciousness. Prolonged concentrated exposure can cause unconsciousness and death; ingestion of 100-200 mls can be fatal.

Decomposition Products: Carbon Monoxide, Carbon dioxide, possibly HF, other organic compounds.

Spill Procedures: Avoid inhalation, touching, ignition sources. Contain spill from entering waterways.

Disposal: According to RCRA Hazardous Waste Code D001 (ignitable waste).

[Methanol, 2-butoxyethanol, Isopropanol, see notes 2, 9 and 12.]

16. MULTIFUNCTIONAL SURFACTANT F105

Composition: Polyethoxylated alkanol, 2butoxyethanol, Butan-1-ol

Precautions: Highly combustible. Hazardous to skin, eyes; inhalation can cause CNS-depression, narcosis. Ingestion may cause defects to central nervous system.

Accidental release: Keep out of sewage and waterways. Toxic to aquatic organisms.

Disposal Method: Injection or other acceptable method in accordance with local regulations.

NOTE 13. Butan-1-ol (CAS# 71-36-3)

Flammable liquid and vapor. May cause adverse reproductive effects based upon animal studies. May be harmful if absorbed through the skin. Ecological Information: Data not yet available.

Decomposition products: toxic fumes of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide. Butanol should not bind strongly to soil and so is expected to leach into groundwater.

Disposal: RCRA U-Series:: waste number U031 (Ignitable waste).

http://avogadro.chem.iastate.edu/MSDS/1-butanol.htm

[2butoxyethanol -- see Note 9.]

17. NITROGEN REFRIGERATED LIQUID

Composition: Formula N2 -- CAS: 7727-37-9 (Nitrogen (acetaldehyde)

Precautions: May cause tissue freezing. Inhalation may affect mental and physical capacities. Prolonged inhalation may lead to convulsions, coma and death.

Accidental Release: Evacuate all personnel from affected area.

Disposal: Do not attempt to dispose of residual waste. Return in shipping container.

18. SANDWEDGE WF

Composition: Methanol, Isopropanol

Precautions: Highly Flammable. May be absorbed through skin. May damage eye tissue. Inhalation may cause respiratory irritation, unconsciousness. Ingestion may cause convulsions, blindness, death. Prolonged exposure may damage eyes, liver, kidneys, blood, heart, nervous system, spleen.

Accidental Release: Prevent from entering sewers, waterways, low areas.

Disposal: In accordance with federal, state, and local regulations.

[Methanol and Isopropanol -- see Notes 2 and 12.]

19. TEMPORARY CLAY STABILIZER L64

Composition: Tetramethylammonium chloride

Precautions: Contact harmful to skin and eyes. Avoid inhaling. Ingestion may cause death.

Decomposition: Heating or burning will release harmful carbon/nitrogen oxides, ammonia and organic chemical fumes.

Disposal: Injection or other acceptable method in accordance with local regulations.

http://www.sciencelab.com/
xMSDS-Tetramethylammonium_chloride-9925214

20: MAGNACIDE 575

Composition: phosphonium, tetrakis(hydroxymethyl)-,sulfate

Precautions: Toxic to aquatic organisms, may cause adverse effects in the aquatic environment. (MSDS Japan)

http://www.nippon-chem.com/msds/msds_thps.pdf

21. SCALHEHIB 100

Composition: Ethylene Glycol

Precautions: Flammable and combustible. Absorbed through skin. Mutagenic for mammalian somatic cells. May cause damage to the following organs: kidneys, liver, central nervous system.

Decomposition: Explosive decomposition may occur if combined with strong acids or strong bases and subjected to elevated temperatures. This product may release Formaldehyde

Disposal: Prevent entry into sewers, basements or confined areas. Waste must be disposed of in accordance with federal, state and local environmental control regulations.

http://www.sciencelab.com/xMSDS-Ethylene_glycol-9927167

22. ACTIVATOR 78-ACTW

Composition: C12-14 Secondary alcohol, Ethoxylated; Methanol

Precautions: Liquid or vapor may cause a flash fire or ignite explosively. Ingestion may cause blindness. Inhalation can irritate lungs, cause central nervous system depression. May be absorbed through skin. Ecological information not determined.

Disposal: Recover free liquid. Absorb residue and dispose according to local, state and federal requirements. Empty container. Since empty containers retain waste residue, follow warnings even after container is empty. DO NOT drill, grind, puncture or weld on or nearby.

Decomposition: Hazardous oxides of carbon. This produce may release Formaldehyde.

NOTE 14. C12-14 Secondary alcohol, Ethoxylated

May cause severe burns.

Spills: Avoid uncontrolled releases of this material. Where spills are possible a comprehensive spill response plan should be developed and implemented.

Disposal: All recovered material should be packaged, labeled, transported, and disposed or reclaimed in conformance with applicable laws and regulations and in conformance with good engineering practices. Avoid landfilling of liquids.

http://www.anatrace.com/msds/APO138.pdf

[Methanol, Formaldehyde, Ethoxylated alcohol -- see Notes 2 and 6, 14.]

23. BORATE CROSSLINKER J532 (CAS: 1303-96-4)

Composition: Aliphatic alcohol; Sodium tetraborate decahydrate.

Precautions: MSDS: “Caution! The toxicological properties of this material have not been fully investigated.” Mutagenic effect observed in insect studies. Reproductive toxicity on laboratory animals.

Disposal: By injection or other acceptable method in accordance with local regulations.

NOTE 15: Sodium tetraborate decahydrate. May impair fertility. May cause harm to the unborn child. Ingestion: Human fatalities reported from acute poisoning. Chronic exposure may cause reproductive disorders and teratogenic effects.

Decomposition: Hazardous oxides of boron.

http://research.amnh.org/molecular/hist ... logy_msds/
sodium_tetraborate_decahydrate.pdf

NOTE 16: Aliphatic alcohol

Precautions: Flammable. May cause flash fire. Harmful if inhaled or swallowed. May be absorbed through the skin.

Disposal: Avoid dispersal of spilled material and runoff and contact with soil, waterways, drains and sewers.

http://vpracingfuels.com/PDF/MSDS_LC6_Sep08.pdf

24. FERROTROL 300L

Composition: Citric Acid

Precautions: Irritant to eyes, skin, mucous membranes and respiratory system. Acute fish toxicity; pH will decrease in water close to the discharge and can have local effects on water living organisms.

(English MSDS, manufactured by BP Drilling Chemicals) http://logichem.netpower.no/datasheet.a ... DepId=5523]

Spills: Prevent from entering sewers or waterways.

Disposal: In accordance with federal and local regulations.

25. BC-140

Composition: Monoethanolamine, Ethylene glycol, Boric acid

Precautions: Corrosive. May cause eye ailments; skin, liver and kidney disorders. Ingestion may be harmful to heart, kidney, brain. Prolonged or repeated exposure may cause embryo or fetus toxicity. Ecological information not determined.

Decomposition: Toxic fumes. Carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.

Disposal: In accordance with federal, state and local regulations.

26. Aldacide G

Composition: Glutaraldehyde

Precautions: Harmful if inhaled. May be absorbed through skin. May cause permanent eye damage. Aspiration into lungs may cause chemical pneumonia, which can be fatal. May be highly toxic to aquatic life. (MSDS Sheet, July 5, 2006).

Decomposition: Carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.

Disposal: In accordance with federal and local regulations.

27. FE-5A

Composition: Thioglycolic acid

Precautions: May cause severe skin and respiratory burns. May be absorbed through skin. Ingestion may cause severe burns, dyspnea and coma.

Spills: Prevent from entering sewers, waterways or low areas.

Decomposition: May produce Hydrogen sulfide. Oxides or sulfur. Carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.

Disposal: In accordance with federal and local regulations.

28. LP-65

Composition: Ammonium chloride

Precautions: Causes irritation to skin, eyes and respiratory tract. Harmful if swallowed or inhaled. Ecological information not determined.

Spills: Prevent from entering sewers, waterways or low areas.

Decomposition: Hydrogen chloride. Oxides of nitrogen. Ammonia. Carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.

Disposal: In accordance with federal, state and local regulations.

29. LGC-35 CBM

Composition: Paraffinic solvent; Polysaccharide

Precautions: Combustible. Inhalation may cause respiratory irritation or chemical pneumonia, which can be fatal. Ingestion may be fatal. Chronic exposure may be carcinogenic. Ecological information not determined.

Decomposition: Carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.

Disposal: In accordance with federal and local regulations.

30. FR-46

Composition: Ammonium bisulfate

Precautions: Corrosive. Chronic effect may cause damage to lungs, mucous membranes. Extremely hazardous in case of skin contact or ingestion.

Hazardous in case of eye contact or inhalation. Ecological information not determined.

http://www.sciencelab.com/xMSDS-Ammoniu ... te-9922913

Spills: Prevent from entering sewers, waterways or low areas.

Decomposition: Carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, Oxides of nitrogen

Disposal: In accordance with federal and local regulations.

31. BE-3S

Composition: 2-Monobromo-3-nitrilopropionamide; 2,2Dibromo-3-nitrilopropionamide

Precautions: Flammable. Causes severe respiratory irritation Vapors cyanogen bromide (see Note 1) and dibromoacetynitrile may form ion the drum head space. Causes severe skin and eye irritation. May be toxic to aquatic life.

Spills: Prevent from entering sewers, waterways or low areas.

Decomposition: Oxides of nitrogen, Bromide; Hydrogen bromide; Methyl and ethyl bromide; Cyanogen bromide; Hydrogen cyanide; Carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.

Disposal: In accordance with federal and local regulations.

32. BE-6

Composition: 2-Bromo-2nitro 1,3-propanediol

Precautions: May cause serious eye damage, may be harmful to skin or if ingested. Possible carcinogen. Very toxic to aquatic organisms. Avoid release to environment. (Halliburton MSDS Jan. 5, 2006)

Spills: Prevent from entering sewers, waterways or low areas.

Decomposition: Oxides of nitrogen; Bromine; Hydrogen bromide; Carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.

Disposal: In accordance with federal and local regulations.

33. ClaSta XP

Contains: Polyepichlorohydrin timethylamine quaternized

Precautions: Flammable. May cause severe skin and respiratory irritation, severe eye irritation. Ecological information not determined.

Spills: Prevent from entering sewers, waterways, or low areas.

Decomposition: Oxides of oxygen. Carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.

Disposal: In accordance with federal and local regulations.

34. FDP-S798

Composition: Sodium perborate tetrahydrate

Precautions: May cause severe eye irritation, skin and respiratory irritation. Harmful if swallowed.

Incompatible materials: Avoid contact with water, organic matter, all flammables. Acute fish toxicity.

Spills: Prevent from entering sewers, waterways or low areas.

Disposal: In accordance with federal and local regulations.


OVERVIEW ANALYSIS OF 34 HIGHLY HAZARDOUS PRODUCTS

WATER ISSUES

Products known to be toxic to aquatic environment: (21): Nos. 1, 3, 5, 6, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 24, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34.

Products whose toxicity to aquatic environment is yet to be determined: (11): Nos. 2, 4, 9, 12, 13, 19, 22, 25, 29, 30, 33.

AIR ISSUES

Chemicals dangerous to breathe (24): Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 14, 15, 16, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32.

Chemicals whose decomposition may release toxicity into the air (20): Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 15, 16, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33.

Chemicals highly flammable or explosive (13): 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 15, 16, 18, 21, 22, 29, 31.

NOTE ON DISPOSAL --- Of these 34 toxic/hazardous products, the MSDS sheets only call for 4 of them (Nos. 2, 4, 15, 17) to be disposed of in any special way. The other 30 may be disposed of “according to federal, state, and local regulations,” despite the limitations of localities to understand or have facilities to deal with many of these substances, and despite the numerous dangers that many of these substances could pose for local public waters.
____________________________

PART II ANALYSIS OF GAS DRILLING SHEETS FOR MARCELLUS SHALE WELLS IN YATES, SCHUYLER, STEUBEN, BROOME AND CORTLAND COUNTIES

For the five counties requested, DEC provided Drilling Sheets for 14 gas drilling operations in the Marcellus Shale formation. Of the 14, only 12 were hydraulically fractured, and only one of those 12 was “slickwater” fractured.

In this analysis, all hydraulically fractured wells are analyzed for: 1) Amount of fresh water used; 2) Water source; 3) Additives used; 4) Amount of return fluid; 5) Percentage of return fluid; 6) Method of disposal; 7) Time of drilling operation from site construction to site reclamation.

In addition, several notes have been added for chemical products used that were not included on DEC’s supplied list. (The numbering of these products continues from the list in Part I.)

1. HOUSEL 2 -- (EOG Resources) drilled but never stimulated

2. SCHIAVONE 2 (EOG Resources)

Fresh water used: 34,062 gal. Water Source: Watkins Glen

Additives: Ferrotrol 300L(2 gal.); Claytreat 3C (136 gal.); Magnacide 575 (2 gal.); Inflo102 (40 gal.); FRW 14 (19 gal.); CL-14 (1 gal.)

[For Ferrotrol 300L, Magnacide 575, Inflo 102, CL-14, see Nos. 24, 20, 15 and 2.]

3. WGI 10 (EOG Resources)

Fresh water used: 111,720 gal. Water Source: Big Flats

Additives: Magnacide 575 -- 6 gal.; FRW -14 -- 54 gal.

[For Magnacide 575, see No. 20.]

4. WGI 11 (EOG Resources)

Fresh water used: 10,920 gal. Water Source: Watkins Glen

Additives: Ferrotrol 300L, 2 gal.; FRW-14 -- 12 gal.; Inflo-2, 8 gal.; FAW-5, 35 gal.; CL-14, 1 gal.

[For Ferrotrol 300L, Inflo-2, FAW-5, Cl-14, see Nos., 24, 15, 4 and 2.]

Return Fluids: Shiavone -- Contained in tank; WGI 10 -- Contained in tank; WGI 11 -- Not fractured with water, but a nitrogen foam. Return fluids were contained in tank.

Disposal: Shiavone, WGI 10, WGI 11 --- all return fluids temporarily stored in empty Frac tanks. “Water haulers used to take return fluids to disposal locations. Such disposal locations include: Bath Treatment Plant; Valley Joint Sewer Plant - Athens, PA; City of Auburn Water Pollution Control Plant.”

Time from site construction to reclamation: Schiavone -- 45 days; Housel 2 -- 18 days; WGI 10 -- 60 days; WGI 11 -- 52 days.

5. BEAGELL 2-B (Chesapeake Energy -- date of sheet August 15, 2008)

Fresh water used: 263,000 gal. Source: Susquehanna River

Additives: Held by drillers as proprietary information. (MSDS sheets supplied to DEC but not included in FOIL response).

From supplied chemical code numbers, the following were among the products used: HCL 15% (1,000 gal.); Corrosion Inhibitor A261 (1 gal.); Clay Stabilizer L084 (335 gal.); Surfactant F105 (323 gal.); Scale Inhibitor L065 (155 gal.). Friction Reducer J313 (122 gal.); Hexion AcTivator 78 ACTW.

[For Corrosion inhibitor A261, Surfactant F105, Scale Inhibitor L065, Hexion AcTivator 78 ACTW, see Nos. 3, 16, 21, 22.]

Return Fluids: 116,550 gal. Disposal: POTW, Athens, PA

Percentage of water returned -- 44%

Time from site construction to reclamation: 63 days

6. BUTKOWSKY 1-B (Chesapeake Energy)

Fresh water used: 263,340 gallons Source: Susquehanna River

Additives: Held by drillers as proprietary information. (MSDS sheets supplied to DEC but not included in FOIL response).

From supplied chemical code numbers, the following were among the products used: HLC 15% (5,000 gal.); Surfactant F108 (3 gal.); Surfactant F105 (450 gal.); Clay Stabilizer L084 (326 gal.); Corrosion Inhibitor A261 -- (6 gal.); Borate Crosslinker J532 (411 gal.); Hexion AcTivator 78 ACTW (138 gal.)

[Same as #5 Beagell 2B.]

Return Fluids: 94,164 gal. Disposal: POTW, Athens, PA

Percentage of water returned -- 36%

Time from site construction to reclamation: 63 days

7. MCDANIELS 1A (Eastern American Energy -- Feb-Mar 2008)

Fresh water used: 2 frackings -- approx. 200,000 gal. (total)

Water Source: Glen Brook (a creek near the site)

Additives (Feb. fracking): HC-2 (27 gal.); Gas Perm 1000 (28 gal.); Aldacide G ((3 gal.); LP-65 (1 gal.); HAI-OS (1 gal.); FE-5A (1 gal.); SandWedge WF (3 gal.); HCL(30 gal.); FE-1A (50 gal.)

[For Gas Perm 1000, Hai-OS, SandWedge WF, HCL, see Nos. 9, 10, 18, 12.]

Additives (Mar. fracking): FR-46 (131 gal.); Gas Perm 1000 ( 131 gal.) LGC-35 CBM (131 gal.); BC-140 (48 gal.); Aldacide G (3 gal.); LP-65 (28 gal.); HC-2 (28 gal.); SandWedge WF (185)); Hai-OS (1 gal.); HCI (30 gal.); FE-1A (50 gal.)

[For Gas Perm 100, HC-2, SandWedge WF, Hai-OS, FE-1A, see Nos. 9, 11, 18, 10, 6.]

Return Fluids: 131,985 gal.

Percentage of water returned: 66%

Disposal: Valley Joint Sewer Plant -- Athens, PA

Time table: Site Construction Feb. 24, 2008 -- Fluid Disposal April 26, 2008 -- Site Reclamation still ongoing as of August 29, 2008 -- Total so far 6 months . . .

8. FROST 2 -1 (Nitrified)

NOTE: Frost 2 was fracked twice, the first time “Nitrified” in April 2006, the second time “Slickwater fractured” in July 2006 (the only instance of “Slickwater Fracturing” in the drilling sheets received from our DEC FOIL request).

Fresh water used: 35,406 gal. Source: Local water source

NOTE: Nine residences were within 1,000 feet of the wellbore. Fortuna tested the water for these nine residences before drilling, but not after.

Additives: HC-2 (94 gal.); LGC-35 CBM (130 gal.); BC-140 (30 gal.); ClaSta XP (2 gal.); Hai-OS (1 gal.); HCL (75 gal.); FE-1A (5 gal.); BE-3S (6 lbs.); GBW-30 (20 lbs.).

[For HC-2, LGC-35 CVBM, BC-140, Hai-OS, HCL, FE-1A, BE-3S, see Nos. 11, 29, 25, 10, 12, 6, 31, 33.]

Recovered Frac Fluid: 7,686 gal.

Percent of Frac fluid recovered: 22%.

Time from site construction to reclamation -- 80 days.

9. FROST 2 - 2 (Slickwater Fractured)

Fresh water used: 640,550 gal. Water source: Catatonk Creek, Tioga County

Additives: FRP-121 (3,300) lbs.; Flomax 50 (551 gal.); Unicide 2000 (209 gal.); ScaleHib 100 (55 gal).

[For ScaleHib 100, see No. 21.]

Return Fluids: 285,264

Percentage of Frac fluid recovered: 44.5%

Disposal: PA Brine Treatment Plant, Franklin, PA

Radioactivity testing was done at wellsite: Normal reading were recorded.

Time from site construction to reclamation: 108 days.

10. WEBSTER T1 “Nitrified Frac” (Fortuna)

Fresh water used: 68,700 Source -- unknown local source

Additives: FDP-S819 (80 gal.); FR-48 (50 gal.); ClaSta XP (2 gal.); HAI-OS (1 gal.); HCL (975 gal.); FE-2A (5 gal.); FE-1A (5 gal.); BE-6 (10 lbs.); FDP-S798 (33 lbs.).

[For FDP-S819, ClaStaXP, Hai-OS, HCL, FE-2A ((same CAS# 77-92-9 as Ferrotrol), FE 1-A, BE-6, FDP-S798, see Nos. 5,19, 10, 12, 24, 6, 32, 34.]

Returned frac fluid: 25,200 gal.

Percentage of frac fluid returned: 37%

Disposal: Valley Joint Sewer Plant, Sayre, PA

Time from site construction to reclamation: 77 days

11. WEBSTER T1 “Slickwater Frac” -- [permitted but not yet drilled]

Amt. of Fresh water permitted -- 646,000 gal. Source: Catatonk Creek, Tioga Co.

12. CALABRO T1 (Fortuna)

Fresh water used: 20,244 gal. Source: unknown local source

Additives: HC-2 (56 gal.); LGC-35 CBM (71 gal.); BC-140 (3 gal.); ClaSta XP (2 gal.); HAI-OS (1 gal.); HCL (75 gal.); FE-1A (5 gal.); BE-3S (6 lbs.); GBW-30 (5 lbs.).

[For HC-2, LGC-35 CBM, BC-140, CLaSta XP, HAi-OS, HCL, FE-1A, BE-3S, see Nos. 11, 29, 25, 33, 10, 6, 31.]

Recovered frac fluids: 8,232

Percentage of frac fluids returned: 41%

Disposal: Valley Joint Sewer Plant, Sayre PA.

Time from site construction to reclamation: 80 days.

13. CALABRO T2

Fresh water used: 15,078 gal. Source: unknown local source

Additives: same as Calabro T1 (approx. same amts.)

Recovered frac fluids: 4,326

Percentage of frac fluids recovered: 29%

Disposal: Valley Joint Sewer Plant, Sayre PA.

Time from site construction to reclamation: 79 days.

14. DRUMM G2 (Fortuna)

Fresh water used: 34,860 gal. Source: unknown local source

Additives: same as Calabro T1 & Calabro T2 (approx. same amts.)

Recovered frac fluids: 17,766

Percentage of frac fluids recovered: 51%

Disposal: Valley Joint Sewer Plant, Sayre PA.

Time from site construction to reclamation: 65 days.

--------------------------------------------------

PART III -- SUMMARY & QUESTIONS

SUMMARY

Drilling sheets on 14 wells were received. 12 of the 14 were stimulated (11 were “Nitrified,” one, Frost 2-2, was “Slickwater fractured.”).

Average amount of fresh water used for the 11 non-slickwater wells: 93,163 gal. (Range: 15,078 gal. - 263,340 gal.)

Amount of fresh water used for “slickwater” fractured well: 640,550 gal. (690% increase over non-slickwater wells)

Average amount of frac water returned (from 9 wells providing that information): 41%.

Number of different toxic chemical products used: 34.

Number of products (in MSDS) hazardous to aquatic environments: 21.

Number of products (in MSDS) whose aquatic toxicity is undetermined: 11.

Average time from site construction to site reclamation: 75.

QUESTIONS (by no means meant as an exhaustive list)

1. QUESTION: How is it that Multifunctional Surfactant F-15 [No. 16] can be disposed of via “Injection or other acceptable method in accordance with local regulations” when one of its ingredients, butan-1-ol entails the caution: “Avoid runoff into storm sewers and ditches which lead to waterways. Butanol should not bind strongly to soil and so is expected to leach into groundwater . . . RCRA U-Series:: waste number U031 (Ignitable waste)”?

2. QUESTION: (similar to Q. 1) Why is it that FE-105 and Gas Perm 1000 can be disposed of “according to federal, state and local regulations,” when both contain Isopropanol (See Note 12), which is separately required to be disposed of according to RCRA Hazardous Waste Code D001 (ignitable waste)?

3. QUESTION: How adequately can the local and regional treatment plants remove the toxicity (and brine) from millions of gallons of frack fluid before returning it benignly to local water supplies?

4. QUESTION: If only 41% of fracking fluid is recovered, what happens to the other 59%? Is it contained? Flowing loosely underground? Seeping out?

5. QUESTION: Given the strong suspicion of a connection between gas drilling in the Texas Barnett Shale and seismic activity [See work of Dr. Chris Hayward, geophysics research projects director at SMU], what surety can there be that contained fluids will remain contained and not eventually infect area aquifers and waterways?

6. QUESTION: As to the recovered fracking fluids---given that, according to MSDSs, 30 of the 34 toxic products in this report may be disposed of “according to local regulations,” what uniformity is there among “local regulations” that would give confidence that those 30 products will be adequately treated before being released back into public waters?

7. QUESTION: Given that, of the 13 hydrofracked wells in this report, 11 of them disposed of their returned fracking fluids in Pennsylvania, who is responsible for proper oversight of these toxic materials? The localities of Athens, Franklin and Sayre PA? The lead agency NYS DEC? PA DEP? EPA---despite exemption of hydraulic fracturing from EPA oversight, is this not interstate commerce? Susquehanna River Basin Commission? Who is responsible for making sure that these water treatment facilities are capable of treating all the chemicals contained in fracking fluids, as well as the brine and other contaminants in the return waters? Who is responsible for their quality control?

8. QUESTION: For the 11 products whose aquatic toxicity has yet to be determined, should the determination not be made before they are disposed to water treatment plants for ultimate return into the aquatic environment?

This report was prepared by Steve Coffman, a member of the Committee To Preserve The Finger Lakes -- August 4, 2009.

Steve Coffman
Email: stevecoffman@frontiernet.net

[Oscar]

WHILE MARCELLUS SHALE GAS STILL SLEEPS BENEATH MY SWEET COUNTRY HOME

An Assessment of Coming High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing in the Finger Lakes Region of New York State --- and Cautionary Reading of DEC’s dSGEIS

by Steve Coffman October 10, 2009

New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is in the last sweep up phase of processing public comments before convening a secret bureaucratic conclave to beget the Final Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement that will rule the coming Natural Gas Boom that is about to storm across much of the western and southern tier regions of New York State.

This upcoming gusher is all about the “Marcellus Shale,” an untapped ocean of natural gas that underlies my home, county and region of New York (as well as considerable portions of West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania). The reason that this gas remains untapped is that the technology for profitably extracting it did not exist until the late 1980s when a viable process was developed in Texas, spurred by an enormous gas field called the Barnett Shale. Previously, the impediment to drilling was that the gas was locked in shale 100 to 400 feet thick and, more or less, a mile deep.

The Texas process, most accurately called “High-Volume, Horizontal, Hydraulic Fracturing," (or “Slickwater Fracturing”) entails forcing millions of gallons of fresh water, sand and various chemicals into the shale under sufficient pressure to “frac” it and unbind the gas in numerous places along the strata’s horizontal plane.

The Barnett Shale was considered the largest natural gas reservoir in the United States. In 2003, the U.S. Geological Survey’s assessment estimated that the Barnett Shale held a remaining volume of 26 trillion cubic feet of recoverable unconventional gas, and perhaps as much as 200 trillion cubic feet overall. Eric Potter, associate director of the Bureau of Economic Geology at UT Austin, said that “It compares favorably with the biggest of the old oil booms of the early 20th century.”

How does the Marcellus Shale compare to the Barnett?

A July 2009 study from Penn State’s College of Earth & Mineral Sciences increased a 2002 U.S. Geological Survey assessment of undiscovered gas in the Marcellus Shale from 1.9 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of gas to 2,445 trillion cubic feet, with recoverable reserves amounting to 489 trillion cubic feet. “This remarkable, almost unbelievable, increase in estimated reserves,” the study says, “is due to technological advancements in horizontal drilling technology and techniques, multi-dimensional
seismology, and the implementation of hydrofracturing.”

This suggests that Marcellus Shale contains over ten times as much gas as Barnett Shale!

Despite the fluctuating price of natural gas, the big boys with the big wallets and big eyes are imagining the value in trillions of dollars. In anticipation, NiSource, the Fortune 500 energy service company has recently completed the Millennium Pipeline in New York State, calling its pipeline “the centerpiece of a $1 billion investment in new energy infrastructure.”

Gas servicing giant Schlumberger is planning an 88 acre, $30 million industrial site in tiny Horseheads, NY (pop. 6,500), including a cement plant, chemical mixing station, storehouse for explosives and radioactive materials, and a facility for truck fuel, acid wash, truck maintenance and storage. “Eventually,” says William Coates, President of Schlumberger' s North American Division, “the company's investment in drilling hardware on site will exceed $100 million.”

As of June 2009, over five million acres of Marcellus Shale land has been leased by just six companies (a growing figure that does not include leasing by several other significant players).

What does all this mean for beautiful counties in the Finger Lakes like my own sleepy Yates County? It means that the starting pistol is loaded and raised. Drilling permits have been issued and the rush to drill only awaits completion of DEC’s FSGEIS regulations, which should be finalized in a matter of months.

“The analog would be like a 19th century gold rush,” said Ed Ratchford, geology supervisor for the Arkansas Geological Commission, speaking of recent development in the Fayetteville Shale, “Everyone stakes a claim. You don’t say this place is going to be better than this place. You don’t have time. People were leasing thousands of acres a day.”

What this also means is that New York State’s dairy, wine, and burgeoning tourist industries are at risk (Sherman’s Travel ranked the Finger Lakes as the #1 “lakeside Retreat” in the world, ahead of Lake Kawaguchi in view of Mt. Fuji, Lake Como and Lake Tahoe). Perhaps more importantly, the Finger Lakes themselves, which embody the nation’s second largest reserve of fresh water (only the Great Lakes, shared with Canada, is larger) may be at serious risk, as well.

The Finger Lakes Region is about to be invaded and plumbed by an extremely avaricious and largely-unaccountable Industry, wielding the Big Energy Wildcard that apparently trumps all else.

Presently, with land, milk and wine prices down (and with visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads), most local residents still don’t (or won’t) believe what is at stake.

However, one does not need to wait for DEC’s pronouncement (that all is in good hands) to see what is coming. One has only to look west, at the last decade of shale gas extraction in the Texas’ Barnett Shale (and in the gas-rich shales in Wyoming, Colorado, Arkansas, Louisiana) to transpose the likely effects: water problems, earthquake problems, poisoned farm animals, radioactivity problems, toxic drinking water, bucolic countryside turned industrial, pristine air turned into big city air, the essential character of rural communities suddenly divided and debased.

In 2007, my wife and I drove south from New Orleans to Pelican Island and took coastal LA 82 for a hundred or so miles to Port Arthur, Texas, curious to see the effects of Rita and Katrina on the Gulf coast and to enjoy the natural wonders of “The Pelican State.” We did see wonderful birds and wildlife on our way back through Louisiana’s bayou country, but the wreckage of Louisiana’s Gulf coast was a shock--- some of the wreckage due to hurricane damage, but the preponderance resulting
from the ubiquitous offshore drilling and onshore industrial support structure. No more swimming beaches. No more fishing piers. No more quaint motels or seafood shacks. No more juke joints with patrons dancing into sunset and moonrise over the shimmering Gulf. God’s Country had become God’s Own Junkyard. This was a manmade level 5 hurricane, from its bath tub ring of oil-and-debris-littered beaches to its
endless chemical tanks, drilling stations and mountains of rusty pipes and rig parts on both sides of the road. One national treasure destroyed in order to dig for another.

I’m sure it must look like a “money garden” to the rich investors and corporate execs who own it, but what’s also certain is that they live somewhere else.

Yes, of course I know that we as a nation are addicted to fossil fuels, and addicts of every kind often live in dumps, or, at the very least, make wrecks of their lives and the lives of their children and children’s children. Drilling proponents like to say that everyone has to make certain sacrifices for the common good, and, while I certainly agree with that, too---before doling out the sacrifices, we might just want to slow down a little---take a commercial time-out, as it were---to inventory exactly what and whose those “common goods” are.

So far, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has been emblematic of the American, New York State and Yates County divide. Through no fault of its own, the agency has become seriously compromised, split between two antithetical missions in the service of two incompatible masters.

Mission 1. Original 1972 DEC Mission Statement:

To conserve, improve, and protect New York's natural resources and
environment, and control water, air, and land pollution, in order to enhance the health, safety and welfare of the people of the state and their overall economic and social well being."

Mission 2. As redefined in its own 1992 F1992 GEIS (1.E-1):

In 1963 the State Legislature repealed all previous oil and gas legislation and amended the Conservation Law to give DEC greater authority over wells drilled in the fields developed after 1963. The purpose of this law was to foster, encourage, and promote the development, production, and utilization of the natural resources of oil and gas in a manner that would prevent waste, increase ultimate recovery, and protect correlative rights of all the interests involved.

The consequence is that NYDEC presently has a conflict of interest by statute, a split personality by definition. No wonder, when it comes to Marcellus Shale gas drilling, its science seems subordinate to an underlying agenda that often seems intent on justifying a foregone conclusion. DEC cannot be fairly blamed for duplicity when duplicity is endemic to its mission.

The fault here is with the state legislature that has hamstrung DEC with this double bind. The federal government does not task the Environmental Protection Agency to “foster, encourage and promote” the energy, mining and lumber industries. If such activities are to be legitimately governmental, at least put them under the likes of the departments of Energy, Interior and Commerce, and leave the DEC to its hard-enough
job of defending the environment and public health, without also legislating a Trojan Horse into the center of its mission.

This hobbling---drawn even tighter by recent staff and budget cuts---has caused DEC to fall back to a triage strategy of claiming that this new kind of gas drilling is nothing new, just a modest permutation of what is already permitted and regulated, as defined in “The 1992 Generic Environmental Impact Statement on the Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Regulatory Program.”

The 1992 GEIS

In every scope and draft and supplement of its upcoming FGEIS, DEC has remained adamant on one central point, as stated here in its Final Scoping document (released February 6, 2009):

The Department evaluated its oil and gas regulatory program through
development of a Generic Environmental Impact Statement (“GEIS”) which was finalized in 1992 and which sets parameters that are applicable statewide for SEQRA review of gas well permitting. This Final Scope describes the topics related to well permit issuance for high-volume hydraulic fracturing that the Department has identified for review in a draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (“dSGEIS”).

In short, the base for the new regulations and permits will be the 1992 GEIS, and only certain department-sanctioned topics concerning “high-volume hydraulic fracturing” will be reviewed or considered for change in the new rules.

The draft Supplement, now released, goes further -- dSGEIS (1.4) :

After a comprehensive review of all the potential environmental impacts of oil and gas drilling and production in New York, the Department found in 1992 that issuance of a standard, individual oil or gas well drilling permit anywhere in the state, when no other permits are involved, does not have a significant environmental impact. . . .

Well stimulation, including hydraulic fracturing, was expressly identified and discussed in the GEIS as part of the action of drilling a well, and the GEIS does not recommend any additional regulatory controls or find a significant environmental impact associated with this technology, which has been in use in New York State for at least 50 years.

In other words, all essential scientific investigation has been done and still stands.

No significant environmental impacts should be expected. Hydraulic fracturing in New York State is old hat and “high-volume” hydraulic fracturing just more of the same.

A closer look at this conclusion, however, reveals some disturbing inconsistencies.

For instance, under Section F (Stimulation), the 1992 GEIS describes hydraulic fracturing:

Water-gel fracs are the most common stimulation technique. Twenty to
eighty thousand gallons of fluid are injected into the producing formation
under high pressure. Approximately 20 pounds of gel are added to every
thousand gallons of water.

But high-volume hydraulic fracturing typically uses between 2 to 5 million gallons of fresh water per well, and adds a variety of new toxic chemicals to the drilling fluids in addition to the gels, surfactants and acids described in 1992. While the industry claims that these chemical additives only amount to about .5% of the total drilling fluid, (100-400 gallons in 1992), in high-volume drilling those amounts rise to 10,000-25,000 gallons per well. And after becoming contaminated by the additives and drilled into the earth, the 2 to 5 million gallons of toxic fluid must be sucked back out, and somehow dealt with.

[Note: The wide disparity of water used varies according to the number of horizontal frackings connected to the main vertical well bore. Each well site can include as many as 16 horizontal frackings, each of which uses a minimum of 500,000+ gallons of water per fracking. As a result, minimum water use for a high-volume well would be 500,000+ gallons (1 fracking), and maximum use (for 16 frackings) could be as much as 8 million+ gallons. According to the Final Scope (1.4.3): “Well operators have suggested that as many as 16 horizontal wells could be drilled at a single well site, or pad.”

To the point, all of these spectacular increases in amounts are only per well. These amounts must also be multiplied by the expected rise in the number of wells, which, if the history of shale drilling in western states hold true, will dramatically increase each year.

No one can say for how long (because the rise in those states is still continuing) but in the Barnett Shale, from 1997 to 2007 (the period after high-volume hydrofracking was developed), the number of wells increased from 400 to 9000 (now close to 13,000 and still rising).

At an average of 3.5 million gallons per well, 9000 wells would require 31.5 billion gallons of fresh water, and would produce 31.5 billion gallons of toxic water to be accounted for.

A further complication is that the “flowback” or “return water” (the water pumped back out after fracking) is not only contaminated by the additives, but also picks up a variety of additional contaminants from a mile deep---arsenic, mercury, iron, lead, salt, radioactive elements, for instance. And the amounts of these substances has likewise increased by a hundred fold and must be dealt with, as well.

I use the term “dealt with” advisedly, because only about half of the contaminated fluid is, in fact, returned. The other half remains a bit of a mystery. That it is somewhere flowing in the ground is sure. But where? And for how long? How much might it migrate, those multi-millions of poisoned gallons? What will be their long-term destination? Aquifers? Surface waters? Evaporation into toxic fog? Or will they merely settle down in the depths and innocently sleep for another 300 million years?

Wouldn’t it be prudent to know this before drilling permits for this technology are issued?

And, of the water that is returned, wouldn’t it be prudent to know how and where it will be treated to safely remove and dispose of the salt and numerous toxins before they are left to dot the countryside in plastic-lined holding pits while awaiting those answers?

And don’t these voluminous increases also demand the mega-questions: How much would be too much? How much increase would it take to qualify as a “significant environmental impact”?

DEC comes to the opposite conclusion.

The GEIS does not recommend any additional regulatory controls or find a
significant environmental impact associated with this technology, which has been in use in New York State for at least 50 years. ---dSGEIS, September 30, 2009 (1.4.1)

In fact, this statement is doubly deceptive.

THE HISTORY OF HIGH-VOLUME HYDRAULIC FRACTURING

In 1992, no high-volume wells had been drilled in New York, and even the Barnett Shale was still only in the experimental phase and would not be in full use for another five years. [See: Powell Barnett Shale Newsletter Research 03/27/2008.]

In an article of the history of high-volume hydraulic-fracture horizontal gas drilling, Eric Potter, associate director of the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin, writes:

By the late 1990s, they [Four Sevens Oil Company] had perfected the technique in vertical wells and started applying it to several hundred wells. That’s when it came to the attention of industry.

Potter quotes Larry Brogdon, partner and chief geologist for Four Sevens Oil: It took George Mitchell 18 years to make it work. He is the father of the Barnett Shale. He was tenacious. He started in 1981 and it really didn’t take off until 1999. And even then, it took a long time to develop it.

In one of its latest website posting “Hydraulic Fracturing Considerations for Natural Gas Wells of the Marcellus Shale” DEC states:

Hydraulic Fracturing of the Marcellus Shale has been used in the Appalachia area since the early 1960s.

DEC’s reference for this statement comes from a 2008 article “The Marcellus Shale—An Old ‘New’ Gas Reservoir in Pennsylvania” by Penn State geologist John A. Harper in Pennsylvania Geology (2008), which does indeed say:

“Since the early 1960s, Pennsylvania’s oil and gas industry has used hydraulic fracturing . . . to enhance the recovery of oil and natural gas.”

But the same article goes on to say:

“But it was not until development of the Barnett Shale play in the 1990s that a technique suitable for frac[k]ing shales was developed.”

In fact, Harper’s article is highly instructive on the history of gas drilling techniques in this region, and clearly distinguishes between these drilling techniques:

Five wells [were] drilled and cored during the Eastern Gas Shales Project study of the 1970s and 1980s. . . . The furor over the Devonian shales faded during the early 1980s due to . . . lack of sufficiently useful technologies for extracting the gas. . . . Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale play began in 2003. . . . Through experimentation with drilling and hydraulic fracturing techniques borrowed and revised from those used on the Mississippian Barnett Shale gas play in Texas, it [Pennsylvania] began producing Marcellus gas in 2005.

Clearly, from DEC’s own source, high-volume drilling has NOT been used “in thousands of wells across the state during the past 50 or more years, has NOT been “common in New York, has NOT “been used in New York since at least the 1950s,” has NOT “been used in the Appalachia area since the early 1960s.”

The disparity is crucial because DEC uses this manipulated timeline as the lynch pin of its conclusion that “high-volume hydraulic-fracture horizontal gas drilling” is an old process, one that DEC has already exhaustively studied in its 1992 GEIS base document, one which the agency has decades of experience in regulating.

Thus, concluding that its long and benign history with this process in New York requires little more scientific study (certainly nothing like a new technology to NY, with a trail of significant environmental damage elsewhere, would normally demand) DEC is putting Marcellus Shale gas drilling on the fast track---with energy companies, investors and politicians champing at the bit.

The contention is not that energy companies, investors and landowners shouldn’t have the right to pursue their economic interests. But that there is a vital need for the DEC (or some regulatory agency) to counterbalance those interests in order to:

“protect New York's natural resources and environment, and control water, air, and land pollution, in order to enhance the health, safety and welfare of the people of the state.”

Unfortunately, there is no other regulatory agency that can step up. One of the legacies of Dick Cheney’s 2001 “Secret Energy Task Force” was the specific exemption of hydraulic fracture gas drilling from the federal Clean Drinking Water Act an the Clean Air Act, effectually removing the EPA and any federal oversight of the process, thus relinquishing it to the states and beneficence of the energy companies.

Compounding federal loss of accountability, New York State’s long tradition of Home Rule has also been gutted by preemptive State law:
FGEIS 1-1 B. 3)

Lead Agency - In 1981, the Legislature gave exclusive authority to the
Department to regulate the oil, gas and solution mining industries: "The
provisions shall supersede all local laws or ordinances relating to the
regulation of the oil, gas and solution mining industries; but shall not
supersede local government jurisdiction over local roads or the rights of local governments under the real property tax law." (section 23-0303(2))

Reiterated in the September 2009 dSGEIS:

ECL §23-0303(2) provides that DEC’s Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Law
supersedes all local laws relating to the regulation of oil and gas development except for local government jurisdiction over local roads and the right to collect real property taxes.

Likewise, ECL §23- 1901(2) provides for supercedure of all other laws enacted by local governments or agencies concerning the imposition of a fee on activities regulated by Article 23. thus shrinking local control of the gas drilling process to little more than road permitting, road bonding, local taxes and emergency safety training.

Local entities have otherwise lost all power: to protect their own water, air and soil; to control the traffic, storage or use of toxic substances; to prevent eminent domain land grabs for gathering lines and pipe networks; to limit the number of gas wells or where they can be placed; to limit the amount of water that can be taken from any source; even to ensure adequate treatment of the millions of gallons of poisoned drill water before its ultimate return to local land and local waters. All of these protections---inalienable, one would think---have been usurped and now belong only to DEC, as Lead Agency and to their corporate permittees.

HEDGING ALL BETS

In its October 2008 announcement “Public Meetings Set for Developing Scope of Environmental Review for Horizontal Drilling in the Marcellus Shale,”DEC Commissioner Pete Grannis wrote:

This is just the first step in what will be a careful process designed to look at environmental issues unique to the high-volume hydraulic fracturing of
horizontal wells in these deep rock layers.

Horizontal drilling is not new. Hydraulic fracturing is not new. And drilling into the Marcellus Shale is not new. But the drilling operations proposed involve all three of these elements, along with greatly increased water use. This review is designed to ensure that if the drilling goes forward, it takes place in the most environmentally responsible way possible.

So what are we to think? A piece from here a piece from there. Is this process “old” or “new?” “Common” or “unique?”

If you have three elements used separately, is that the same thing as using them together. Is hydrofracking using 80,000 gallons of water the same process when using five million gallons? Is a half-acre drill pad the same as a 5-8 acre drill pad?

And what would you pay a surveyor who said so?

In the Final Scope of SGEIS, Commissioner Grannis’ Executive Summary further expands the differences of “old” and “new”:

Aspects of high-volume hydraulic fracturing identified in this Final Scope for further review include the potential impacts of (1) water withdrawals, (2) transportation of water to the site, (3) the use of additives in the water to enhance the hydraulic fracturing process, (4) space and facilities required at the well site to ensure proper handling of water and additives, (5) removal of spent fracturing fluid from the well site and its ultimate disposition and (6) potential impacts at well sites where multiple wells will be drilled during a three-year period. Noise, visual and air quality considerations are noted, along with the potential for cumulative and community impacts.

Surely, this must either mean that this list of factors was not part of the
“comprehensive review” in the 1992 GEIS, or that “high-volume hydraulic fracturing” involves a significantly different technology from what was described in the 1992 GEIS and, therefore, cannot simply be viewed as more of the same.

Yet, this is exactly the tightwire that the agency continues to balance upon:

Well stimulation, including hydraulic fracturing, was expressly identified and discussed in the GEIS as part of the action of drilling a well, and the GEIS does not recommend any additional regulatory controls or find a significant environmental impact associated with this technology. ---dSGEIS, Sept. 30, 2009 (1.4)

A look at the Commissioner’s new list of reviewable factors sheds even greater doubt on these conclusions.

1) WATER WITHDRAWALS - - From the 1992 GEIS to the new process, the maximum water use per well increases from a maximum of 80,000 gallons to a maximum of 8 million gallons. How many wells will be drilled in NYS? 1000-10,000?

This commonly estimated range would translate into 5 to 8 billion gallons of fresh water.

Considering such a dramatic increase in the use of fresh water resources, one would think there would be clear open answers to the questions: Where will this water come from? Who will be responsible for deciding?

However, the available answers to such questions are about as clear as the Mississippi.

Not long ago, a friend of mine passed by a tanker truck backed up to Keuka Lake and being filled with water. My friend asked what the water was for and what kind of permit had been obtained for the water withdrawal. The truck driver responded that he didn’t need a permit. When asked who had told him that, the man replied that it was from local officials.

My friend got the driver’s name and company and, for several weeks, set out on a goose chase to see if any of that was true and, in fact, who would have authority to permit a withdrawal of 80,000 gallons of water from Keuka Lake. What my friend discovered was that nobody knew! That every agency named somebody else. Wasn’t it the DEC? The Susquehanna River Basin Commission? The Great Lakes Commission? The EPA? Some local water commissioner? Permit? I don’t think anyone needs a permit for taking water from the lake, just for dumping stuff into it.

You need permission from the lake property owners, DEC told him, before you could back your tanker trucks up their docks. And that a permit was required to take more than 100,000 gallons per day average (over a 30 day period). Over 36.5 million gallons a year. If anyone’s checking.

But does “100,00 gallons” mean: Per truck? Per company? Per project? Could 50 different truckers (or companies) take 99,999 gallons a day each---in perpetuity---with no permit required? And again---who is measuring? Who would know? Metering and reporting of water withdrawals is only triggered by self-reporting of a taker exceeding
the 3 million gallon a month benchmark. The effectiveness of the “Honor System” in monitoring gas company haulers would seem worthy of doubt.

From DEC’s 2009 dSGEIS:

4.2.1 Water for hydraulic fracturing may be obtained from groundwater
withdrawals or withdrawals from surface water bodies away from the well site. . . . Withdrawal from surface water bodies such as rivers and streams . . . may require permits.

May require permits?

4.2.1.4 The dSGEIS’s proposed parameters for well-specific review of water sources in the Susquehanna and Delaware River Basins will be based upon the Department’s conclusions regarding the adequacy of the reviews done, respectively, by SRBC and DRBC.

To buttress the administrative determination noted above, the SRBC also
undertook a final rulemaking change, effective January 15, 2009, that
established a new Approval by Rule process to regulate all consumptive use activity associated with development of the Marcellus and Utica Shales. Under the new rule, consumptive use approvals are issued on a drilling pad basis.

Finally, in accordance with SRBC policy to not duplicate State programs, SRBC does not regulate the disposition of the hydraulic fracturing fluids that flow back after well stimulation, which have commingled with deep connate water.

4.2.1.3 Great Lakes Basin

In New York [in parts of 34 counties] the Great Lakes Basin is the watershed . . . Effective December 8, 2008, the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact . . . prohibits any new or increased diversion of any amount of water out of the Great Lakes Basin of New York with certain exceptions.

The Great Lakes Commission does not have regulatory authority similar to that held by SRBC and DRBC to review water withdrawals and uses and require mitigation of environmental impacts. However, the new Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Water Resources Council has specific authority for the review and/or approval of certain new and increased water withdrawals. Review by this Compact Council will require compliance with the Compact’s Decision-Making Standard and Standard for Exceptions.

Whatever that means!

from October 2008 Draft Scope for the dSGEIS

4.2.1.3 Great Lakes Basin

[U]nder the federal Water Resources Development Act of 1986 ("WRDA"), any diversion of Great Lakes water out of the basin must be approved by the Governor of each Great Lakes state. The approval process for New York is set forth in ECL §15-1613, and the diversion also requires approval of the Legislature.

But when Sue Heavenrich of Shaleshock queried Don Zelazny of NYDEC on the subject, he said: “Under current NYS Water Resources law, companies drilling for gas are not required to get permits for water withdrawals from within the Great Lakes Basin.” ---- which includes all the Finger Lakes and the St. Lawrence River.

At the end of the goose chase, my friend gave up in exasperation. Nobody, at any level, wanted to know the name of the driver or company or how much water was taken or what it was going to be used for. Every agency or official suggested someone else he needed to call, and the circle of non-oversight went round and round until the goose finally got tired of the chase and flew away.

Back to the Commissioner’s list of topics still open for review in the dSGEIS:

2. WATER TRANSPORT - - the 1992 GEIS: maximum 80,000 gallons, which can be transported by 8.3 tanker truck loads.

In comparison, five million gallons for a high-volume fracking well would require 522 truck loads.

3. ADDITIVES --- Under “Additives,” the 1992 GEIS described: gelling agents, surfactants, acid and sand (GEIS 9.d-h):

d. Most wells in New York State are drilled on compressed air. If formation
water does not occur naturally in the well, a small amount of fresh water is
sometimes added at the blooie line to control dust. Surfactants and small
quantities of additives are also regularly added to the well during drilling.

Soaps are also sometimes added to maintain circulation when water intrusion becomes a problem. The components of greatest environmental concern in the waste fluids from drilling are the chlorides (salt), trace metals and surfactants.

e. Frac Fluid - Most wells in New York need to be fraced (pronounced fracked) before then can produce economic quantities of oil or gas. The frac fluid base may be brine, freshwater or oil. Gelling agents are often added to the frac fluid to make it viscous enough to carry sand or some other proppant into the producing formation. Other chemicals similar to those used in drilling fluids are also added. The components of greatest environmental concern in the spent frac fluid are the gelling agents, surfactants, and chlorides.

f. During rock formation, some water (connate water) is trapped inside the
rock's pore spaces. When a well is later drilled into the rock, some formation water may be released and mix with the drilling fluid present in the wellbore. It is usually the largest component of pit waste fluids. In addition to chloride and low concentrations heavy metals, the production fluid may also contain small amounts of corrosion inhibitors, bactericides and other additives used.

Now, however, the new dSGEIS (Table 6.1) lists 197 chemical products comprising 260 unique chemicals used or proposed for high-volume drilling in NYS, including 78 chemicals found in Marcellus Shale flowback water.

Other than that, the “additives” are pretty much the same. Except that most of the new additives are also known to be highly toxic to both humans and aquatic life, and some are so new that they have yet to be evaluated.

4. SPACE AND FACILITIES REQUIRED AT THE WELL SITE --- 1992 GEIS (XVI

B-1): “Generally access road and site construction disturb less than two acres of land.”

High-volume wells average about 5 acres per site, but that does not include access roads. The new dSGEIS describes access roads (5.1.1):

The proposed disturbed access road acreage for these sites ranges from 0.1 acres to 2.75 acres, with the access roads ranging from 130 feet to
approximately 3,000 feet in length. Widths would range from 20 to 40 feet
during the drilling and fracturing phase to 10 to 20 feet during the production phase.

This not only adds to the drilling site but describes a 20 to 40 foot swath of
disfigurement over half a mile long, per well. Access roads will also be needed for the centralized compression facilities. And high-volume drilling requires significantly more fluid storage space, truck space, supply space, truck garage space, pit space for returned toxic water, heavy equipment space, worker housing camp space, etc.

But in dizzying combination of funny math and statistical prestidigitation, the new dSGEIS (5.1.3.2) concludes that the anticipated high-volume wells will actually only disturb one sixth as much land as the 1992 conventional wells.

How could this be?

Well---because horizontal drilling could allow high-volume sites to drill 6-8 wells from each pad site---it would only need 10 wells to cover a 6400-acre (ten square mile) unit, while and single-well vertical drilling would require 160 wells. Thus, the 10 highvolume well pads would only disturb 50 acres (@ 5 ac. per pad), while the 160 single well pads would disturb 480 acres( @ 3 acres per pad).

1. Note how the 1992 GEIS: “Generally access road and site construction disturb less than two acres of land” has suddenly morphed into 3 acres per pad, not including access roads.

2. 10 pads @ 5 acres per pad would be 50 acres. 6-8 wells per pad, would be 60-80 wells. 60-80 single-well pads @ 2 acres per pad, would be 120-160 acres, not 480.

3. Moreover, in the same section (5.1.3.2) dSGEIS states:

“Nine, instead of 16, [horizontal drilling] spacing units would fit within a square mile. . . . Vertical infill wells [wells drilled between known producing wells to better exploit the reservoir] may be drilled, with justification, from separate surface locations in the unit. However, a far smaller proportion of vertical infill wells than 15 per 640-acre unit is expected.”

The prose here is somewhat turbid, but not so murky as to completely obscure these “up-to-15 additional infill wells,” that presumably would also take up space and create some additional “disturbance” of their own, despite the fact that this is not mentioned in the Table 5.1 analysis.

4. Most importantly: When Table 5.1 hypothesizes 160 single-well pads in 10 square miles, this totally ignores reality. In Yates County, for instance, DEC’s Gas & Oil Database lists only 15 gas wells active in the whole county. 160 single-well pads per ten square miles is an imaginary number never even contemplated in the pre-Marcellus Shale world.

In devastating contrast, the suppositions of high-volume well density in Table 5.1 are not only being contemplated but specifically being planned for. Not only planned for, but sugarcoated for public over-consumption, as evidenced by Table 5.1 itself. Again illustrating that---even more destructive than high-volume drilling may be---is the danger from its overwhelming scale.

5. REMOVAL OF SPENT FRACTURING FLUID FROM THE WELL SITE AND ITS ULTIMATE DISPOSITION --- 1992 GEIS (7a): “The remainder of the wastes produced during drilling operations are disposed of at special, industrial treatment plants in Pennsylvania and Ohio or other out-of-state disposal facilities. On occasion, a local sewage treatment plant may elect to accept drilling wastes if they will not upset the plant's operations. There are no economical treatment methods presently available for removal of large scale chloride contamination. Citizens are encouraged to report any leaks, so the Department can order timely repairs.”

How will “citizens” have access to this inspection, and how can it be their
responsibility---given that all of their rights of control and oversight have been negated?

Is it not irresponsible (if not absurd) to think that trucking toxic water to Pennsylvania and Ohio is a reasonable water treatment plan? Because of its Marcellus Shale drilling (still only in its early-stages), Pennsylvania is already experiencing a watertreatment crisis of its own. (Maybe its plan will be to truck its toxic waste to NY.)

The ultimate disposition of X millions of gallons of highly toxic brine is not only problematic because treatment plants adequate for dealing with such combinations and quantities do not yet exist and are exorbitantly expensive to build, but the history of gas drilling (in both NY and PA) has often been that less-than-adequate facilities have been used in their absence---the environmental effects of which have been insufficiently studied, but can hardly be good.

According to Joaquin Sapien of ProPublica: "’Cha-ching!’ is how Francis Geletko, financial director for the municipal sewage treatment plant in Clairton, PA, described his first thought when he learned that drillers would pay 5 cents a gallon to get their wastewater processed at his plant.”

But are local treatment plants (intended to break down sewage) equipped to desalinate brine that, according to Pennsylvania’s DEP, contains “so much TDS [Total Dissolved Solids] that it can be five times as salty as sea water?”

Not to mention the mixture from the dSGEIS’ list of 78 other chemicals known to be in flowback fluid.

6. POTENTIAL IMPACTS AT WELL SITES WHERE MULTIPLE WELLS WILL BE DRILLED DURING A THREE-YEAR PERIOD. NOISE, VISUAL AND AIR QUALITY CONSIDERATIONS ARE NOTED, ALONG WITH THE POTENTIAL FOR CUMULATIVE AND COMMUNITY IMPACTS

It appears that, at this point, the Commissioner was either running out of patience or wanted all of these additional factors to fit on one page.

NOISE: while the 1992 GEIS (4.1.1) suggests “Temporary, short-term noise impacts” during the “several days” of drilling.

Under high-volume drilling, that period often extends to several months or longer and may be refracked several times, each operation usually continuing 24 hours a day---24/7 of hammering, pumping, trucking, flaring---in areas used to being disturbed only by the likes of Canada geese and barking dogs.

VISUAL: the dSGEIS Summary says that it “will propose thresholds for site-specific reviews of potential visual impacts in close proximity to the Catskill Forest Preserve, the Upper Delaware Scenic Byway and the Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River.”

Which is laudable. But why is the scenic beauty of the Finger Lakes region any less essential to its identity, history and well-being than those downstate areas? Any less obnoxious for our rolling farmland and lovely woods to be crisscrossed by trucking roads, pipeline routes, fifteen acre industrial sites including plastic-lined pits of stinking goop? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, of course (especially when it’s big-money green).

AIR QUALITY: turning country air into city air (see below) . . .

COMMUNITY IMPACTS: the 1992 GEIS does not cover this, likely because the kind of drilling being done in 1992 did not involve the importation of an army of rugged, young, out-of-state men into quiet rural counties, working them 80 hour weeks under difficult, hazardous conditions at low pay. In analogous drilling shales, methamphetamine use in order to fight fatigue is a serious problem, while increases in crime, school overcrowding, stressed social services and other community impacts are legion.

Using truck traffic as an example: In the 1992 GEIS, this was such a minor
disturbance as to remain unmentioned. But concerning high-volume drilling, in the dSGEIS high-volume drilling truck traffic necessitates a whole section, and no wonder:

dSGEIS (6.13.1) [truck traffic for a single pad with eight wells]:

Drill Pad and Road Construction Equipment 10 – 45 Truckloads

Drilling Rig 60 Truckloads

Drilling Fluid and Materials 200 – 400 Truckloads

Drilling Equipment (casing, drill pipe, etc.) 200 – 400 Truckloads

Completion Rig 30 Truckloads

Completion Fluid and Materials 80 – 160 Truckloads

Completion Equipment – (pipe, wellhead) 10 Truckloads

Hydraulic Fracture Equipment (pump trucks, tanks) 300 – 400 Truckloads

Hydraulic Fracture Water 3,200 – 4,800 Tanker Trucks

Hydraulic Fracture Sand 160 – 200 Trucks

Flow Back Water Removal 1,600 – 2,400 Tanker Trucks

As many as 8900 truckloads. That’s not crossing the George Washington Bridge into New York City---that’s on two-lane macadam roads in formerly peaceful and picturesque Yates County, pop. 24,603. And that’s one pad!

What all ten of the Commissioner’s newly-reviewable impacts share is that they all very much beg the same question:

At what point does a matter of SCALE cross over to a matter of KIND?

Are a whisper and a scream the same thing except for scale? A tear and an ocean are both salt water. A tabby and a tiger are both cats. A flooded basement and a flood that devastates several counties are both water. But are their differences only a matter of SCALE? No, because in certain cases SCALE is sufficiently transforming as to also necessitate distinguishing such seemingly homologous entities in KIND---because,
in terms of societal and environmental impacts, they unequivocally are.

Similarly, the most essential difference between the kind of hydraulic fracturing described in the 1992 GEIS and the high-volume hydraulic fracturing now in question may be a matter of SCALE, but, in terms of societal and environmental impacts, the difference in SCALE has also crossed over into a difference in KIND---from a tabby into a tiger, from a basement leak into a flood.

The evidence for this is the ongoing history of high-volume hydrofracking in other states. From its point of going full-bore in the Barnett Shale in 1997 to its present proliferation through Pennsylvania and up to New York borders, there has been and continues to be one mess after another of societal and environmental problems in its wake.

WATER SAFETY --- Despite DEC’s assurance (dSGEIS -- 2.4.6) that “no documented instances of groundwater contamination are recorded in the NYSDEC files from previous horizontal drilling or hydraulic fracturing projects in New York,” the strong likelihood of water contamination being caused by high-volume hydraulicfracture
horizontal gas drilling follows the industry like oily footprints.

In the Denver Post (April 22, 2009), Abrahm Lustgarten of ProPublic reported on a Garfield County, Colorado study that concluded that gas drilling has degraded water in dozens of water wells:

The three-year study used sophisticated scientific techniques to match
methane from water to the same rock layer---a mile and a half underground---where gas companies are drilling. The scientists didn't determine which gas wells caused the problem or say exactly how the gas reached the water, but they indicated with more clarity than ever before that a system of interconnected natural fractures and faults could stretch from deep underground gas layers to the surface. They called for more research into how the industry's practice of forcefully fracturing those deep layers might increase the risk of contaminants making their way up into an aquifer.

Despite the difficulty and expense of definitively proving a cause and effect between a mile-deep fracking and nearby water contamination, such instances of extreme coincidence have occurred from Cleburne, Texas to Pavilion, Wyoming to Dimock, Pennsylvania, etc. According to ProPublica, over 1500 water contamination complaints have been documented in Colorado alone.

Says New Mexico rancher, Tweeti Blancett, whose family has operating the same ranch since the 1870s:

“My water when it comes up, ninety-seven percent of the time, it’s deadly,” she said. “It’s full of heavy metals, petroleum products and things you don’t even want to talk about. We didn’t know we were going to have these problems when they started drilling out here. . . . [New York officials] have an open invitation to come to the ranch. You don’t want what we have.” ---quoted by Dusty Horwitt, JD (Senior Analyst for Public Lands) in a presentation to the New York City Council Committee on Environmental Protection, September 10, 2008

Cases of ostensible contamination links in Texas, Colorado and Pennsylvania are currently in the courts Establishing “scientific” and “legal” evidence is further complicated because wells and aquifers have not been tested beforehand, it often being impossible to test them
because the exact chemical formulas of most fracking fluids have been protected by companies as confidential proprietary information, making it impossible to know what to test for.

Predictably, the industry response is cynical and coy. How do we know your well wasn’t already polluted? How do you know it was us? Even if we did use 2-butoxyethanol to frac a well near your home and 2-BE ended up in your well, can you prove that your 2-BE was our 2-BE.

Our 2-BE or not our 2-BE?---that is the question!

Such games are unbecoming by the industry, and even more so when mimicked by environmental protective agencies.

In its Final Scope (4.2.2 Groundwater Quality -- Drilling Through Aquifers), DEC brazenly states:

Standard casing and cementing practices required for every well . . . eliminates the POSSIBILITY of fracturing fluids or naturally occurring contaminants contacting fresh groundwater during any phase of operations. [emphasis mine]

The history of high-volume hydrofracking and common sense dispute this
“impossibility,“ a statement of amazingly unscientific certainty. Accidents do happen.

As do floods, earthquakes and sinkholes. Unknown consequences have had a nasty and hardly uncommon habit of humbling such human hubris.

AIR QUALITY

The 1992 GEIS (XVB-2.g. 16. 9) states: “Most air quality impacts associated with oil and gas, solution mining and gas storage operations are usually short-term and minor.”

But in areas of high-volume hydraulic fracturing like Cleburne, Texas and Sublette, Wyoming, damage to air quality would hardly seem minor.

Wyoming resident Alexandra Fuller writes in “Drilling’s Darker Side,” [CNN Money, October 27, 2008]:

“[T]he air in Sublette County has become so polluted that regular toxic-air alerts warn vulnerable residents to stay indoors. Additionally, more than a dozen water wells on the high plains have recently tested positive for highly carcinogenic hydrocarbons. Cancer rates are now reported to be the highest in the state and, for many days of the year, a thick, brown stain of pollution hangs against the mountains, sometimes obliterating them from sight altogether.”

In DISH, Texas, after a company study showed no detectable air pollution, the town paid for an independent assessment, published in September 2009:

Laboratory reports confirmed the presence of multiple Recognized and
Suspected Human Carcinogens in fugitive air emissions present on several
locations in the town of DISH. The compounds identified are commonly known to emanate from industrial processes directly related to the natural gas industrial processes of exploration, drilling, flaring and compression. . . . In addition, several locations confirmed exceedences in a chemical identified by TCEQ [Texas Commission on Environmental Quality] with the capability for “disaster potential.”

The town of DISH has virtually no heavy industry other than compression
stations. there is no other facility with the capability to produce the volume of air toxins present within miles of the town.

According to an article in the Dallas-Fort Worth Star-Telegram (June 3, 2009):

State environmental officials say that an SMU researcher was correct: Gas
drilling in the Barnett Shale contributes about as much air pollution to the
Dallas-Fort Worth area as car and truck traffic.

But the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality doesn’t plan on taking any action about chemicals released during gas drilling because they typically happen in rural areas, not in the immediate metro area, where the EPA is forcing state and local governments to control air pollution.

In my research, I have oddly come to identify with the town of Cleburne, Texas, an area of beautiful rolling farmland evocative of Yates County (even if less green and without the lakes). Yates County has about 24,000 people, and, before the Barnett drilling boom, Cleburne had about 26,000. In less than a decade of high-volume drilling, though, Cleburne has added 95,000 new jobs, has seen its air quality degraded, seen significant increases in crime and amphetamine use, discovered toxic waste injected into abandoned wells, as well as evaporated and spread onto its farmland.

“The air smells like diesel fuel, and is noxious. it is making me sick and my livestock. The dust is settling on my pasture and my livestock is eating it!!” bemoans, Dick Ross of nearby Itasca, Texas (as quoted on the comprehensive drilling reform site Bluedaze.)

Meanwhile, still on DEC’s Marcellus Shale main page:

Q: Did New York recently approve a new type of drilling?
A: No. Governor David A. Paterson recently approved a bill that extends uniform gas well spacing rules and establishes boundary setbacks to protect the interests of adjacent property owners. This new law has been widely misreported as allowing a new type of drilling, or somehow making it easier to get the environmental permits necessary for drilling. In fact, the new law only addresses well spacing. It authorizes nothing new nor in any way does it reduce the environmental review needed before a drilling permit is issued.

Nothing new. It’s all the same as 1992. Just more. The tiger still just a big calico.

50,000-250,000 gallons of microbicide just a bigger squirt of 409. The Exxon Valdez the same as a dropped quart of oil in your driveway, only more.

The matter of scale is not the only concern over high-volume hydrofracking, but it is the catastrophic multiplier of concern, which needs to be factored in to every study and every part of the plan.

For this to happen, clearly DEC needs to only be the Department of Environmental Conservation, and not also the Department of Environmental Exploitation. Surely, this is a legislative more than an agency failure, and expectations for such a change by the NYS Legislature are less than dim. In the meantime, what is the DEC to do?

I sincerely commiserate with Commissioner Grannis’ untenable and schizoid position. I don’t doubt that he’s doing his best to accommodate the clamoring greed for energy wealth with the careful pace demanded by good environmental science. But the lion and the lamb may well lie down together in peace before we see the Energy Industry make nice with our natural environment.

The Energy Industry’s mission is not split. It is singular---to maximize profits for its investors. And what that singularity guarantees is that the energy industry will only regulate itself (or protect the people and places it uses) to the degree that it would be less profitable not to do so.

Which does not mean that its product is not presently necessary and useful. But it does mean that if other values are to be protected and preserved, that task must also be undertaken in a singular way, as it was in the DEC’s original mission: “You are the Industry and We are your Regulator.” For the DEC to be the Industry’s regulator and also its “promoter” and “fosterer” is impossible for it to do in a responsible way, and it is disingenuous to claim otherwise.

WHAT CAN DEC DO?

1. A helpful first step would be for DEC to openly tell the legislature that its two missions are incompatible---rather than continuing to suggest that the agency can somehow compartmentalize its double-vision into complementary tasks, as if they were two different aspects of environmental regulation, two hands washing each other for the benefit of both and the common good.

2. In the nearer term, as regards gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, DEC (as “conservator”) needs to ignore its avaricious side and necessarily proceed at a credible scientific pace, not at the boomtown pace urged by energy companies, investors and leaseholders. The bloated scale and multiplier effect of boom mentality is a priori the opposite of circumspect objectivity and wise conservation.

3. DEC needs to admit that High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing is a NEW type of drilling in New York State, one that should require incremental implementation suitable to investigation and study. Not in order to stall the permitting process, but rather as a way of proceeding with enough deliberation for the agency to fulfill its original mission: “to conserve, improve and protect New York's natural resources and
environment and to prevent, abate and control water, land and air pollution, in order to enhance the health, safety and welfare of the people of the state and their overall economic and social well-being.”

If that frustrates investors and the industry, the shale gas will wait.

The same can be said for our national energy needs. The gas has been locked in rock a mile deep for 300 million years. If we need it in the future, it will still be there after the questions about its safety have been answered and all prudent preparations have been made. If it turns out that, in the future, we don’t need the gas because alternatives to massive earth disruption and rampant use of fossil fuels have been outmoded and left in the fossilized dust, then that will prove to be an even greater
common good for us to just let it be.

Meanwhile, here in the Finger Lakes, the rustic and beautiful Finger Lakes Region, summer is over, the grapes and apples are being harvested, maple leaves turning their brilliant red and orange. As usual, Labor Day was celebrated on Keuka and Canandaigua lakes by ringing the lakes in fires and flares. For many, it is a last-partyof-summer kind of thing when cottages are closed, school about to start.

For others, it is also a connection to Genundowa, the Seneca Nation’s Festival of Lights, an ancient ritual of giving thanks for peace and in praise of Mother Earth for her bounty and the natural beauty of this place, her legacy to the Senecas as Keepers of the Faith.

Our own legacy is still under construction. A tabby purring by the fire. A tiger snarling at the door.

# # #

Steve Coffman
Dundee, NY
Email: stevecoffman@frontiernet.net

[Oscar]

THE REAL COST OF HYDROFRACKING

by Steve Coffman

Presentation given at the Heights Theater in Elmira Heights, NY on April 3, 2010. Amended May 1, 2010.

Beyond the environmental and economic costs, there is another kind of cost that is less easy to quantify, yet nonetheless real. I’m talking about the humanities---the human costs of hydrofracking in terms of history, esthetics, ethics, community identity and self-determination---all of those connections between what an area has been, its values and history and aspirations, what it is now, and what it hopes to become.

Such things are never singular or static, of course---there are always competing and changing ideas and values---but I would contend that, in a healthy, viable community, those changes occur slowly and deliberately, are informed by an area’s past, and must involve much public input and debate.

When we look at very fast community changes that occur without regard to such rooted values and considered preparations, we generally see upheaval and significant loss of local identity. Sometimes these dramatic changes happen as a result of a war or natural disaster. Recently, New Orleans, Haiti, Baghdad come to mind. Closer to home, the 1972 Elmira flood, from which that city is still recovering.

Equally disruptive to a community can be a great boom or windfall.

Think of gold, oil, diamonds. The Gold Rush in the Black Hills, Diamond mines in Congo, Oil in Nigeria, Ecuador, Iraq---in human and cultural terms, a similar upheaval has occurred: environment degradation, disregard for local people and historical values---accompanied by great displacement, discord, public corruption and often violent conflict.

When it comes to the prospect of the Marcellus Shale Gas Boom, the main question we need to ask is: What is the value that we as a region stand to gain versus the value of what we are likely to lose?

For the Finger Lakes, what are the unpriceable essentials of our history and identity that might be depreciated in exchange for the tens of thousands of forecasted hydrofracked gas wells in our region?

1. The Water

We’re not called the “Finger Lakes Region” without good reason. Our abundant water is not only inseparable from our region’s beauty, agriculture and tourism, but of inestimable value to our wildlife and to the hundreds of thousands of people who depend of the lakes for drinking water.

In fact, our Finger Lakes contain the largest reservoir of fresh water wholly within the United States (the Great Lakes being shared with Canada).

Considering the skirmishes and wars that are already being fought over fresh water, what will that be worth to future generations?

2. Agriculture

For almost 200 years, the most important economic asset of our region has been---and still is---agriculture. 100 years ago, our region was known as the “berry capital of the world.” In 2009, it ranked 2nd nationally in apple production, 3rd in dairy products, 3rd in grapes, 3rd in wine, and it’s one of the nation’s fastest growing areas of organic agriculture, as well.

A 2001 Agricultural Economic Development Plan prepared by Cornell Cooperative Extension and the Broome County Department of Planning put it this way:

Income from agriculture goes further than other sectors in helping the economy. Agriculture produces much higher economic multipliers than any other sector of the Broome County economy. . . . Farms contribute to. . . rural character and protect open spaces essential to the quality of life for both permanent and seasonal residents. Any number of surveys of rural residents and second-home dwellers indicate the primary reasons people live in such areas have to do with their appreciation of the natural resources and open spaces offered.

3. Tourism

Hand in hand with the plentiful water and agriculture, tourism has long been an essential characteristic of our region. From steamboats on the lakes and spas in the 19th Century, from Watkins Glen, Corning and Hammondsport in the early 20th C. to the Wine Trail in the 21st. Clearly, in last decade or so, the influx of Mennonites has also augmented the region’s agriculture and tourism with their prolific farms, flowers, crafts and unique charm.

In 2009, Sherman Travel ranked the Finger Lakes as “the #1 Lakeside Resort Destination in the World” --- not Lake Tahoe, Lake Lucerne, Lake Como or Lake Louise, but our Finger Lakes!

4. Education and Progressive Thought

While our clean water, agriculture and tourism may occasionally be at odds, they are also symbiotic. These values have evolved in harmony to nurture a healthy and vibrant continuity in our region.

This harmony has also stemmed from our region’s emphasis on quality education, progressive social history and religious tolerance.

In 1865, Ezra Cornell wrote: "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study." And the whole Finger Lakes Region has certainly followed his lead.

Compare the quality of our higher education to any similar region in the country.

Universities: Cornell, Rochester, Syracuse, the heart of the SUNY system at Geneseo, Binghamton, Alfred, Brockport, Cortland and Oneonta. Small private colleges: Colgate, Hamilton, Hobart/ William Smith, Ithaca, Elmira, Keuka, Wells, LeMoyne, St. John Fisher, Nazareth, RIT, Eastman School of Music. Augmented by the region’s seven excellent Community Colleges.

These institutions are of inestimable wealth that has also been closely aligned with our region’s equally-amazing history of progressive and independent thinkers.

From women’s rights leaders like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Elizabeth Blackwell (America’s first woman doctor), to abolitionists and leaders of the underground railroad like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, to great writers and progressive orators like Robert Ingersoll and Mark Twain.

This tradition of education and progressive thought in the humanities is as much a part of the richness of our region as our precious lakes.

What are these values worth compared to millions of cubic feet of gas? I couldn’t begin to say.

Nor do I know how to figure the worth of the forests and wildlife in our region, whether it’s wildlife for hunting and fishing or just as food for the soul. How would one put a price on it? Per fish? Per fox? Per great blue heron? I don’t know.

Any more than I could put a price on clean air or starry nights. But just because I can’t quantify the worth of a starry night doesn’t make it worthless.

Last Tuesday (3/29/10), I picked up a copy of the Elmira STAR-GAZETTE.

Its main headline said: COUNTY EXEC OUTLINES ALTERED LANDFILL PACT, which was about the importation of fracking waste from Pennsylvania to be dumped into the Chemung County Landfill.

Right under that, the sub-headline read: OPENING DAY FOR TROUT FISHING IS THURSDAY --- CATHARINE CREEK REMAINS A LURE

Talk about an unsettling juxtaposition!

No, we won’t be able to have it both ways. Water and agriculture, wine and tourism, education and progressive thought all blend to make an enviable and delightful region. But, like oil and water, fracking waste and trout do not mix.

A year ago, our Committee to Preserve the Finger Lakes sent a FOIL request to DEC asking for a list of toxic chemicals that DEC had on record associated with any planned use of fracking fluid additives in our five-county region. Because there had been much talk that such information was proprietary, we did not have high expectations, yet, to our surprise, we received a list of 48 hazardous products along with the Material Safety Data Sheet for each.

When I analyzed this information, I discovered that 34 of these products contained highly-hazardous chemicals. And of those, 21 were known to be toxic to aquatic environments (and 11 others had yet to be tested for environmental toxicity at all).

Hardly great news for the trout.

Here is a sampling:

HAI-OS ACID INHIBITOR --- Precautions: Inhalation may cause chemical pneumonia, depress central nervous system. Prolonged exposure may damage eyes, blood, liver, kidneys, spleen. Acute fish toxicity, may cause long-term adverse effects in aquatic environment.

BE-6 --- May cause serious eye damage, may be harmful to skin or if ingested. Possible carcinogen. Very toxic to aquatic organisms. Avoid release to environment.

FDP-S798 --- Avoid contact with water, organic matter, all flammables. Acute fish toxicity. Prevent from entering sewers, waterways or low areas.

BORATE CROSSLINKER J532 --- Mutagenic effect observed in insect studies. Reproductive toxicity on laboratory animals. May impair fertility. May cause harm to the unborn child. Chronic exposure may cause reproductive disorders and teratogenic effects.

ALDACIDE G --- May cause chemical pneumonia. May be highly toxic to aquatic life.

MULTIFUNCTIONAL SURFACTANT F105 --- Can depress central nervous system. Toxic to aquatic organisms.

CORROSION INHIBITOR A26 --- Probable human carcinogen. Toxic to aquatic organisms.

How compatible will these products be with trout? Or perch? Or us?

The industry likes to point out that these additives only make up one-half of one percent of the fracking fluid, and that many of these chemicals are included in everyday products like antifreeze and bathroom cleanser.

But consider that Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale wells are averaging 5.5 million gals. of fracking fluid; thus, “only one-half of one percent” amounts to 27,500 gals. of such hazardous chemicals per well.

And if, as drilling expert Tony Ingraffea estimates, it is likely that as many as 40,000 such wells will be drilled in our seven counties of Western NY, that amount would jump to 1.1 billion gals. of noxious chemicals added to our environment.

What would that mean for our region’s aquatic life? For the 500,000 people who currently depend on the Finger Lakes for their drinking water? For our region’s reputation as a clean, welcoming environment?

Would you want to buy milk and apples for your family that came from farms surrounded by fracking fluid ponds and diesel-spewing well pads?

If you were a tourist, would you want to drive on torn up roads behind endless lines of fracking trucks? Or through noisy industrial zones one after another? Does that sound like a world class tourist destination to you?

If you were a doctor or professor or other professional, would such a place be #1 on your list of desirable places for you to settle and raise a family?

If you wanted to build you retirement dream home, wouldn’t you want to be sure of the safety of your drinking water and the secure value of your investment?

If you wanted to start a winery or an organic farm, wouldn’t you want to dig in somewhere where the local populace and powers-that-be had a vision more compatible with your own?

In short, we can strive to remain a first class area for all these values that we, as a region, have traditionally cherished. Or we can be a first class producer of natural gas.

But we cannot be both.

To know this, we can look to Cleburne or DISH Texas, Sublette County Wyoming or Garfield County Colorado. We can look to the Louisiana coast that used to call itself “Fisherman’s Paradise” and is now God’s own junkyard for the gas and oil industry, not a fishing boat or tourist in sight. We can look across our southern border to Pennsylvania and wonder why they are suddenly so desperate to send their fracking waste to us.

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Footnotes to the above paragraph:

1. Cleburne, Texas is in the Barnett Shale -- A decade ago, prior to drilling, Cleburne was a lovely rolling cow town of 26,000 residents. Five years later, it had added 95,000 jobs and had become an industrial community, its infrastructure in chaos, its air the same polluted quality as Dallas/Fort Worth. (A recent illumination of this transformation: On June 6, 2010, a massive gasline explosion near Cleburne killed one worked and badly burned seven others.)

2. DISH, Texas is a tiny burg in the Barnett that became a center for multiple compressor stations and eleven different criss-crossing pipelines. When DISH's mayor, Calvin Tillman complained that the air was making people sick, the industry and Texas regulators claimed he was wrong.

DISH raised money to fund an independent study by Wolf Eagle Environmental. Wilma Subra, a MacAuthur (Genius) Award winning chemist, sampled the ambient air in DISH at seven locations on August 17 to 18, 2009. In it’s conclusion, Wolf Eagle states: “Air analysis in the Town of DISH confirmed the presence in high concentrations of carcinogenic and neurotoxin compounds in ambient air near and/or on residential properties.’ The report further indicated that many of the compounds in the air exceeded the Short-term and Long-term Effects Screening Levels (ESLs) according to Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) regulations.

Benzene, a known human cancer causing agent, was detected at all 7 sample locations, three exceeding TCEQ ECLs.

Subsequently, Calvin Tillman has been ignored by Texas authorities and hounded by the gas industry as a self-agrandizing malcontent.

3. The water woes of Garfiled County, Colorado are well documented by Abrahm Lustgarten of ProPublica (2/22/09). To see the full mess there and in Pavillion, Wyoming, I recommend the documentaries: Split Estate by Bull Frog Films, and Gasland by Josh Fox.

4. The reference to Lousiana's coast was written before BP's destruction of Louisiana's eastern coast. Originally, this only referred to the western Louisiana coast from New Orleans to Port Arthur, Texas.

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Or---we can just look around our Finger Lakes Region and think about what it’s really worth to us and what losing its pristine beauty would really mean. To me that’s the real cost/benefit analysis of hydrofracking.

Steve Coffman
Dundee, New York
Email: stovecoffman@frontiernet.net