I’m shocked:
Mike and Nancy Leighton’s problems began on May 19, just as Mike was settling in to watch the Preakness Stakes. A neighbor in Leroy Township, Pa., called Mike and told him to check the water well located just outside his front door.
“I said, ‘I’ll be down in 15 minutes.’ I wanted to see the race,” Leighton said. But as the horses were racing, Leighton’s well was overflowing. Typically, there’s between 80 to 100 feet of head space between the top of the well and its water supply. But when Leighton went outside, the water was bubbling over the top.
Down the road, Ted and Gale Franklin’s water well had gone dry. When water started coming out later that week, the liquid was “black as coal,” according to Gale.
Since then, both families have been dealing with methane-contaminated water supplies, as well as dozens of mysterious, flammable gas puddles bubbling up on their properties.
Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection blames a nearby hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operation. It says methane gas has leaked out of the well, which is operated by Chesapeake Energy, and into the Leightons’ and Franklins’ water supplies.
The danger goes beyond contaminated water. In a letter to both families detailing test results and preliminary findings, state regulators wrote that “there is a physical danger of fire or explosion due to the migration of natural gas water wells.” Chesapeake has installed ventilation systems at the two water wells, but the letter warns, “it is not possible to completely eliminate the hazards of having natural gas in your water supply by simply venting your well.”
Nancy Leighton said the letter made her “a little nervous,” pointing out that both families heat their homes with wood stoves and plan to do so this winter, regardless of whether the gas leaks have gone away.
We’re not even having to wait decades for the environmental impact to become clear. Hoocoodanode?
Napoleon
John, why do you hate ‘merica’s job creators?
FlipYrWhig
Nothing electing more Republicans won’t fix!
dan
How did Sullivan bet promoted in the blogroll?
Yutsano
Don’t tell me, let me guess: They’re voting for Willard becuz of teh bebehs and teh ghey and argle bargle and screw you hippies you messed up my wells!!
@FlipYrWhig: Tax cuts for Chesapeake. Also. Too.
MikeInSewickley
KDKA Radio on Tuesday Nights from 7:00-8:00 have an hour sponsored by Range Resources on gas, fracking.
Corporate whoring at its best.
They take call-ins 1-866-391-1020.
I’ve called in to discuss things and have had the Range PR guy go semi-ballistic on me when I bring up facts.
Juicers – Call in tonight on this story.
I’m for responsible drilling and well designed fracking – but with this governor in bed with these guys, we’re going to get raped for years to come – and it ain’t legitimate rape…
AC
I POOOP in your milkshake! HMM?
BGinCHI
Energy independence through environmental degradation. It’s the Republican way.
I hope these folks sue the shit out of those frackers.
srv
A well right in your front yard spewing a slurry of expensive chemicals and gas?
Billions of people around the world would count themselves lucky.
Mike E
I wonder if Dick Cheney had a change of heart about this.
phantomist
So how much is Chesapeake charging them for the gas?
Villago Delenda Est
@Yutsano:
No doubt.
These people are too fucking stupid to connect the dots. And the dots are in a straight fucking line.
kindness
How’s Tampa John? Or are you gonna miss that one?
FlipYrWhig
@Yutsano: Unite, free enterprisers of the world! You have nothing to lose but your chains!
Odie Hugh Manatee
Big deal, so their water is now carbonated a bit. Who wouldn’t want sparkling well water? They should pull up their boot straps, put on their free market beanies, bottle that stuff up and sell it as a health drink. Then they could afford to buy a nice home in an area with other wealthy entrepreneurs and turn their old property into their factory. Instead they are whining about it. They must be Democrats because no Republican would pass up a chance to make money with this opportunity.
Seriously, nothing will change because of this. Something drastic has to happen before our pols will even consider
the importance of protecting their constituentscutting off their corporate payola.FlipYrWhig
@Mike E: It’s sure to make his pulse race.
4jkb4ia
I suppose it is possible in a few years to have a combination of both fracking and drought.
——————————————————————————
As of 41 minutes ago, Dolan will give a prayer at the DNC as well.
Also too, buried in the New York section,New York Rabbi to Give Opening Prayer at GOP Convention Rabbi Soloveitchik is considered a possible successor to Rabbi Sacks as chief rabbi of Britain and testified against the contraception mandate. The article also says that he writes for Commentary occasionally.
Elizabelle
Tragic story. Hope a lot of people hear it.
Multimoodia
“No Once Could Have Predicted”
Or, “One.”
jibeaux
@4jkb4ia: Ha, is he the one in that infamous picture of the Congressional hearing?
Schlemizel
I have it on the highest authority – T. Boone himself and several fine, upstanding, lobbying firms that such a thing is simply impossible. Therefore this is not happening and these people are communist agents bent on maintaining our dependance on Saudi oil.
The Dangerman
Per Romney, we won’t need oil imports by 2020 with fracking and Canadian oil sands. I suppose there’s a chance that could happen; since I see in the ad on this page that Holly Madison’s last show in Vegas is on 12/30 (my B’day and I may be there), there’s also a chance that she’ll want to come see me to help celebrate my day. Either is about the same likelihood.
ETA: May be in Vegas; no intention of going to any peep show. Not without a “special invitation” anyway.
kindness
Sorry, I can’t keep track any longer. Life is taking my focus.
I think it was Mark Twain who said:
Whiskey is for drinking.
Water is for fighting over.
It’s still true.
Bort
There’s a good article in the latest issue of Science News about fracking:
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/343202/title/The_Facts_Behind_the_Frack
Publius39
Dumbasses probably supported the shit, so I guess natural selection will take care of their stupidity.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Dangerman: Aren’t the Canadian oil sands in, like, Canada?
gnomedad
Will we hear “Frack, Baby, Frack!” at the gooper convo?
The Dangerman
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not after Romney invades them.
Schlemizel
@dan: FUCK! I thought we all agreed that this useless sack of Siberian Sheep Shit had passed his expiration date. The few times he says something useful/honest are generally when its a gay issue or he is admitting he lied/carried water/fell for the wingnut BS. Those admission never happen till long after his damage is done.
Put this assclown back under “mock as needed” its still too good for him.
ChrisZ
Seems a bit disingenuous to blame this on fracking when it’s a pipe leak. Unless you want to complain about all drilling wells because they have pipes that might leak. But no, you’re blaming this on fracking because that’s the fad thing to scaremonger about these days.
Please use the space below to insult me and my ancestors.
danimal
The free market will work, I tell you. Now that the Leighton well has produced methane, the hard-working American energy companies can sue them for theft and confiscate all their worldly possessions. How dare the Leightons take advantage of the benefits of fracking without renumerating these fine, upstanding American corporation. Stealing methane is a serious offense, and one we had better nip in the bud.
Looters and moochers, indeed.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Dangerman: Oh, yeah, that would do it. On a lot of levels.
Chris
Yeah but it’s an NPR report. Librul bias.
Svensker
@ChrisZ:
So why doesn’t the fracking company fix the leak? That seems much easier and cheaper than enduring the lawsuits about to happen.
Corner Stone
@ChrisZ: You’re a disingenuous idiot and your ancestors fucked goats!
trollhattan
And this, friends, is why the fracking fluid manufacturers should continue hiding the actual ingredients behind a protective shield of “proprietary secrecy.” It’s best if the locals don’t know what’s in it–they’ll worry less.
Corner Stone
That was what made you nervous dearie? The letter? The bubbling crude in your well didn’t bother you any?
Roger Moore
@Mike E:
Why? Has his transplant started to reject its host already?
Chris T.
The sad thing is, this could mostly (not “all” but “mostly”) have been avoided by having the original hearings in the open instead of in secret, and having regulation and testing as the drilling and fracking occurred so that we could know now which wells are OK and which ones are not, and could have made “course corrections” (as the phrase goes) in the past to make sure that almost all wells today would have been OK.
The difference would, of course, be that the CEOs of fracking companies would have only made 300 billion dollars instead of 330 billion dollars, and obviously that’s totally unacceptable.
trollhattan
@ChrisZ:
First, prove you have ancestors.
ChrisZ
@Svensker: I’m not sure I follow. I don’t know why, I don’t know that they aren’t, I don’t know how expensive it would be to do, or what they expect from lawsuits.
I just don’t think that every time a well that happens to be a fracking well is associated with something bad we should be condemning all of fracking. Strikes me as a knee-jerk reaction based on a predetermined bias against the practice, rather than legitimate criticism of it.
@Corner Stone: Thanks for complying!
Shinobi
It’s not enough that we have all kinds of crap in the ocean, now we have to have it on our land too.
Elizabelle
@ChrisZ:
OK, so it’s a pipe leak.
And there may be a lot of pipes at risk, which would not be at risk save for fracking and its after-effects putting pressure and strain on them?
So it’s just pipes. Although we know not which ones, and fracking is still a relatively new technology.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Ryan S.
If you haven’t seen it Gasland is an excellent documentory. Its on netflix instant
dp
These things sound suspiciously like the exact same problem (on a much smaller scale) as the BP Macondo well — piss poor well design and construction that allows the reservoir contents to leak up the well casing.
Mart
Speaking of who coulda predicted, and watching events unfold in New Orleans… I have an emergency hurricane response plan from a large factory in the NO area dated 1984. The first sentence states, As everyone in the New Orleans region knows, any Category 3 or greater hurricane will result in widespread and devastating flooding throughout the area. Of course, knowing this and tracking stories of unfunded critical levee and pumping system repairs for twenty some years… when Bush said who coulda predicted I went into a spastic screaming fit.
Mike E
@trollhattan: “Proprietary” should read benzene: that’s the one they want to conceal from an unsuspecting public. Larger operators know the economy of scale involved in such extractions and steer clear because the margins don’t work for them. Enter smaller, less reputable “go-getters” like Chesapeake who’ll use said benzene because it is a shortcut solvent and gets them to their bottom line much quicker (and especially when it doesn’t have to be disclosed).
Profits first, peoples’ health be damned.
ETA @Roger Moore #37: that’s what the puppy blood was for
Chyron HR
@ChrisZ:
Yeah, maybe Obummer just took a bath and the black washed off.
ChrisZ
@trollhattan: Damn, you’ve found me out; I’m actually a robot trying to pass myself off as human.
Just Some Fuckhead
Hopefully the Leightons and Franklins are Republicans so they understand the price that temporarily embarrassed millionaires like themselves must pay to keep current millionaires in the style to which they’ve become accustomed.
Linda Featheringill
@Roger Moore: #37
Cheney’s change of heart:
:-)
Punchy
And they’ll STILL vote Republicans because, ya know, 2 gay men in Boulder want to get married.
trollhattan
@ChrisZ:
Don’t you have a nomination to accept?
Elizabelle
Last paragraphs of the NPR story.
You feelin’ lucky, punk?
After your retirement savings have been plundered, and jobs are harder to find, and now your real estate isn’t worth what it once was, although the big dogs at Chesapeake are doin’ all right for themselves …
But hoocoodanode?
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris T.:
This right here is what I find to be so totally ridiculous.
They’re making money, but not enough money, and “enough” is defined, pretty much, as infinity.
Never satisfied with making a mere killing, they have to make a mega-killing, or they’re somehow inadequate as capitalist rentier assholes. Unless they are ruining the lives of peasants all around them, they’re not happy.
There is no limit to their greed.
Corner Stone
@ChrisZ: Always happy to assist my friendly son of goatfuckers!
Linda Featheringill
To the people quoted in the article:
Isn’t it time to move? I realize relocating might cause financial difficulties but jeez, isn’t it time to get the hell out of there?
PurpleGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: You’ve heard of the Keystone Pipeline? It’s supposed to bring the Canadian Tar Sands oil to the US for refining. However, it is not intended to be sold here — the Canadian company could sell the refined oil any where they want. The US refineries are just closer to shipping ports.
Mart
@Linda Featheringill: And they can sell their home and property for how much? I am sure they want to flee. Too bad there is no emergency relocation/land restoration fund subsidized by extraction fees to pay for these “accidents”.
Corner Stone
@ChrisZ: Listen, seriously though, if I am next door exterminating rodents by using hand grenades and one day you notice cracks in your foundation that weren’t there a day ago, that’s not cause for legit concern?
And when it’s repeated that where there’s fracking these contaminants continue to appear where they did not exist previously?
That’s “bygones” for you?
trollhattan
@Mike E:
[sigh] Have worked on lots of CERCLA cleanup projects and benzene always sets off the proverbial sirens and red-flashing lights. Nasty, nasty stuff.
It’s hard to communicate how incredibly expensive it is to clean up contamination that has reached the water table, compared to “mere” soil and soil gas contamination. In fracking, they’re skipping the whole “migrating through the vadose zone” bit and injecting the stuff directly into the groundwater.
As Cole said, “hocoodanode?”
Roger Moore
@ChrisZ:
And doing a piss poor job of it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Linda Featheringill:
Here’s the problem.
They own the land, but the value of it has been destroyed.
They have no where else, realistically, to go.
The resources to move are tied up in the land that has been ruined.
I’m sure that someday the courts will compensate them for the land that has been wantonly destroyed by Chesapeake.
Which will fight it every step of the way with an army of paid shysters.
They’re not important enough for anyone in the 1% to worry about them. They’re just peasants.
Fuck them.
Corner Stone
@trollhattan:
But why would they do that?
Linda Featheringill
@Mart: #58
How much is the rest of their life worth? And what portion of their remaining days should they give up because they were trying to find a financially acceptable way out of there?
Punchy
@Mike E: Benzene is what they’re using?
Holy bejesus. Why not throw in some methyl mercury, HF, and selenoius acid and make it a party?
Ajay
And people here voted for a current governor who is/was all for it and makes no bones about it.
There is nothing you can do if population is ignorant/foolish.
Omnes Omnibus
@PurpleGirl: The Canadian oil helps decrease US imports?
? Martin
@Linda Featheringill:
Nothing. They are not job creators.
trollhattan
@Corner Stone:
Targeting the gas-bearing strata, regardless of what’s in the neighborhood. And I’d like to know who’s minding the store? States have the responsibility to monitor and regulate the drillers and operators, and I suspect their oversight is pretty meager. e.g., How many wells is each field inspector responsible for? Where does the burden of proof lie in proving a well is drilled and completed correctly, operated correctly and abandoned correctly, especially with respect to well integrity and cross-contamination prevention and short-circuiting?
Elizabelle
The Leightons better be careful about moving before Election Day.
They don’t want to inadvertently move out of their precinct, or have a problem with their voter registration.
Just saying.
PurpleGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: No it won’t. The Canadian companies can sell it anywhere they want to — nothing in the plans have it slated to be sold in the US. Industry sources think it will be sold to the Asian markets.
PurpleGirl
@trollhattan: Gov. Corbett has specifically exempted the fracking companies from a number of regulations, refuses to oversee the operations and has given them tax relief. Corbett is all for the companies getting everything they want.
trollhattan
@PurpleGirl:
Also, too, it’s shitty quality, heavy oil. Only makes commercial sense when the price per barrel is relatively high.
Omnes Omnibus
@PurpleGirl: My original point was that Romney’s plan to reduce oil imports by importing Canadian oil was bizarre at best.
trollhattan
@PurpleGirl:
What a refreshing take on public-private partnerships.
Mike E
@trollhattan: Did much phone-calling on behalf of a conservation group here in NC and happened upon an oil man who would be working in Venezuela right now (he predicted that big sploshun btw) if they didn’t bar non-nationals from poaching their industry. Very enlightening convo…I learned loads about caprock, limestone, teh peak oil (he sez we’re well past, hence the ever moar desperate measures to frack everything) and the ONLY thing he feared was the benzene/toluene usage. Nasty stuff, and a great way to litigate the hell outa these unscrupulous operators since the science is there on cancer spikes wherever you find said poison. But only if your AG/DA isn’t Tom Corbett though. )-:
Face
Fixed. And yet that is precisely the problem.
Felanius Kootea
@Omnes Omnibus: Naturally, since Canada is the fifty-first US state (maybe we can swap them for South Carolina).
Mike E
@Punchy: Proprietary could mean those things too. Also. Wildcats using wildcards.
trollhattan
@Mike E:
Depressing as hell. Have to wonder how long the depressed natural gas prices are going to last. Am sure lots of folks have plopped rulers on the graph paper and sketched a line decades long. I give it three, four years, and only because we’re not set up to export LNG.
ChrisZ
@trollhattan: That’s fucking hilarious.
@Corner Stone: I honestly don’t know what the evidence shows in terms of the dangers of fracking specifically, it’s not a big issue of mine and I don’t follow it. My only point was that the particular incident described in the article does not seem like a reason to be concerned about fracking, specifically, but rather pipe construction or maintenance or something. Whether or not fracking is bad for the environment, I don’t think this in particular is a good reason to think it is.
Omnes Omnibus
@ChrisZ: Look up the legal doctrine of res ipsa loquitur. It rather applies to CS’s point.
Corner Stone
@ChrisZ: Man, that is some seriously good concern trolling you just pulled off.
Shit, I thought you had an argument to make but really you’re just like, “Maybe so, maybe no. Who can ever really tell?”.
Nicely done amigo.
Mike E
@PurpleGirl:
Free market dictates where anything goes. All that natural gas has depressed market prices so it gets liquified and sold to more lucrative overseas markets. Bottom Line is a cruel taskmaster.
Repub voters are so gullible that they believe whatever they’re told, like Cleen Coal; tar sands are ‘Merkin; and, oil/gas companies provide a public service as opposed to sheer profit taking. Children.
arguingwithsignposts
@Punchy: Don’t give them ideas. Also, who is chrisz and how much of your income is tied to the energy industry?
Corner Stone
@Mike E:
Wait a second now..just hold them horsies podner. Don’t you talk shit about Clean Coal.
trollhattan
@Mike E:
Don’t have a handy link but have seem fracking fluid MSDSs and the list of ingredients can be very long indeed, with many hidden as “proprietary.” By comparison, the ingredient list for Corexit–the dispersant used in the Gulf Oil Spill in an experimental fashion–only has eight. And they still hid behind the proprietary skirt for the first million gallons or so.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
I’ve a hard time believing they’d use benzene as a solvent. Fracking liquids are about opening cracks in a formation and keeping them open with suspended sand particles, not solvent extraction (besides, you’d use supercritical CO2 instead of benzene for that type of recovery anyway. It’s more likely the benzene is associated with hydrocarbons from the formation itself than from the fracking fluids.
trollhattan
@Corner Stone:
Now we’re talking. Just take it from Frosty, the Coalman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5DR1oyr4g8
LanceThruster
It’s sad to keep seeing the clean energy and clean natural gas commerials on TV and on natural gas vehicles. Is there no way to retrieve it w/o all the eco-harm? Can’t we put up with a slightly less efficient (and much less toxic) capture method?
ChrisZ
@Corner Stone: My point is that we shouldn’t jump to predetermined conclusions based on poor evidence just because it confirms what we want to believe, which is what I believe this post does. Is that really a useless argument to be making. Do you only take people who think they already know all the answers seriously?
@Omnes Omnibus: At the risk of further annoying Corner Stone, maybe there is evidence so obvious that it speaks for itself on this issue (though I doubt it), but this article doesn’t provide it and I’m not willing to simply take Corner Stone’s word on what the evidence is.
trollhattan
@Herbal Infusion Bagger:
Found a list from the Marcellus Group.
http://marcellusdrilling.com/2010/06/list-of-78-chemicals-used-in-hydraulic-fracturing-fluid-in-pennsylvania/
And, bog help us, from Halliburton.
http://www.halliburton.com/public/projects/pubsdata/hydraulic_fracturing/fluids_disclosure.html
They’re compilations, not necessarily complete listings.
Elizabelle
@arguingwithsignposts:
chrisz might be spongeworthy.
don’t feed the troll. Or give him/her fracked water to drink.
Ryan S.
@Punchy: They mostly use a lot of HCL acid to digest the shale. Then they are Shocked SHOCKED I tell you when it messes up the hydrology in the area.@ChrisZ: You should watch Gasland it shows at least a half dozen locations where fracking has permanently altered the local hydrology.
Mike E
@Herbal Infusion Bagger: Baby, that shit’ll blow yer mind… but since we may never know what solvents they’re using until it’s too late, it’s unethical NOT to speculate, amirite?
ChrisZ
@Ryan S.: I will watch it tonight, but I will tell you that my understanding is that it’s sensationalistic and unscientific. It makes claims that it can’t support or are simply wrong. I’ll see what I think of it after I watch it.
Arm The Homeless
@trollhattan: Our wellhead protection for potable/heat xchange is patchwork at-best, and our municipality is considered ahead of the game when it comes to Aquifer Protection/Industrial Pretreatment.
I can only imagine the half-assedness with which these things will be abandoned. Too expensive to get a guy with an arc-welder out? Silicone and Zip-ties will work!
Any legal-eagles want to set me straight on PA mineral rights. I was under the impression that the landowner didn’t actually own anything below a few inches. If the gas-producer claims mineral rights, how does that affect a claim from these folks for civil damages?
Roger Moore
@Corner Stone:
We know that Cole is a clean freak, which explains the naked mopping incident.
Corner Stone
@ChrisZ:
Woah, woah…”My point is that we shouldn’t jump to predetermined conclusions”
Do you even bother to ask “how high” anymore?
Corner Stone
@ChrisZ: The word is “amusing” my friend. Not “annoying”. I find you highly amusing.
Zach
On the same topic, Romney got coal miners to pack his event by having their boss force them to go who then went ahead and docked their pay for missed time – http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/08/28/coal-miners-say-they-were-forced-to-attend-romney-event-and-donate/#.UDzYvk0xioI.twitter
Somehow I had an inkling that this was the case when Jonah Goldberg posted this photo of miners queued up for the event with folks who weren’t dressed up to fit the tableau shuffled off to the back. Looks like Romney’s campaign folks got way too full of themselves with successful imagery and people started asking questions.
rikyrah
but hey, it’s the evil libruls trying to stop the job creators with their EPA requirements
ChrisZ
@Corner Stone: Acknowledging pre-existing biases is the first step towards avoiding jumping to predetermined conclusions.
Roger Moore
@Zach:
Wow, that’s some quality doublespeak:
So attendance was mandatory, but nobody was forced to attend. I guess this is the same logic that says pointing a gun at somebody’s head doesn’t force them to do anything because they’re free to choose being shot over obeying.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
I’m saying that it makes no fucking sense for them to use benzene as a solvent.
Firstly, as I pointed out, the point of fracking fluids isn’t solvent extraction. It’s to open up a tight formation. Personally, it’s more likely you’ll see additives that lead to shear-thinning non-Newtonian behaviour in a fracking fluid like lignosulfonates or polyethene glycol or some other water-soluble polymer, because you need to keep the sand in suspension when the fluid is static but have good flow when the fluid is moving.
Secondly, bulk prices for benzene are about a buck a pound. Crude oil costs about 25 cents/lb. CO2 sells for about $20-30/tonne, or ~$0.01/lb. Why the fuck would I use toluene or benzene as a solvent when it’s more expensive than the material I’m seeking to extract, and there’s an alternative that’s two orders of magnitude cheaper and which doesn’t turn the place into a CERCLA site?
But hey, you spoke to Some Guy On A Phone, and so you know better, right?
slag
@Bort: Thanks for that link. I found it very informative.
Personally, I’m a regulate first–frack second kinda person, but apparently, we don’t do that here in the ol US of A.
mainmati
@MikeInSewickley: KDKA was the first commercial radio station in this country, set up by George Westinghouse in 1920 and when I was growing up they had a good news program (for the time, at least). Like everything else I guess they’ve gone down hill too (don’t live in Pgh. anymore).