July 9, 2010 | Scientific American
Concerns Spread over Environmental Costs of Producing Shale Gas
The extent to which utilities will burn natural gas to slash carbon dioxide emissions tied to global warming is a national issue. But on the ground, where it's being produced, the issues become very local.
By Joel Kirkland and ClimateWire:
Concerns Spread over
Environmental Costs of Producing Shale Gas
The extent to which utilities will burn natural gas to slash carbon dioxide emissions tied to global warming is a national issue. But on the ground, where it's being produced, the issues become very local.
By Joel
Kirkland and ClimateWire
Pa., a geyser of natural gas
and sludge began shooting out of a well called Punxsutawney Hunting Club 36. The
toxic stew of gas, salt water, mud and chemicals went 75 feet into the air for
16 hours. Some of this mess seeped into a stream northeast of
Pittsburgh.
Four days later, as authorities were cleaning up the debris
in Pennsylvania, an explosion burned seven workers at a gas well on the site of
an abandoned coal mine outside of Moundsville, W.Va., just southwest of
Pittsburgh.
The back-to-back emergencies were like a five-alarm fire for
John Hanger, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental
Protection. For a brief moment, the cable news channels turned their attention
away from the BP PLC oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico to the apparent trouble in
the nation's expanding onshore natur al gas fields.
The events added force to a tough
public debate in Pennsylvania and New York and across northern Appalachia about
how the environmental impacts of gas drilling balance against the economic
benefits of gas and the role it could play in helping electric utilities
transition to cleaner fuels.
When used to fire up a power plant, natural
gas produces less air pollutants and half of the greenhouse gas emissions
produced by conventional coal plants. But extracting the gas from deep
sedimentary rock and shipping it to consumers is an industrial process. It
requires massive amounts of water and reliable cement and pipe jobs. It also has
wastewater-disposal issues and generates air pollution.
"This is a test
for people in public life," Hanger says. "Do you get into public service to
treat the gas industry fairly and protect our resources, or not? You don't have
to choose between producing the gas and protecting our water."
The extent
to w hich U.S. utilities will burn natural gas to slash carbon dioxide emissions
tied to global warming is a national issue. But on the ground, where it's being
produced, all politics is very local.
Regulators 'over their heads and
drowning'?
Hanger is a contentious figure in
Pennsylvania. He personifies the state's willingness, or lack thereof, to police
drillers operating in the Marcellus Shale natural gas basin under Pennsylvania.
At public forums where residents bring their environmental concerns, Hanger's
name and the administration of Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) attract a mixed
bag of praise and frustration.
"They need to admit that they're over
their heads and drowning," says Jon Bogle, founder of the Responsible Drilling
Alliance, a citizens group in northeastern Pennsylvania, the epicenter of
Marcellus drilling activity so far t his year. "They are trying. They've
toughened their position. They just don't have the personnel to do the
job."
To some residents, Hanger has shown in recent months he's serious
about getting compliance from drillers by fining companies and forcing them to
plug poorly constructed wells. To others, development is rapidly outpacing
environmental safeguards. The geyser in Clearfield County, the fire in West
Virginia and high-profile cases of groundwater contamination in Dimock, Pa.,
underscore their belief that regulators in the Northeast have been outmanned and
outmaneuvered by a powerful industry imported from the friendlier confines of
Fort Worth, Texas.
"We're not running a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil
regulatory apparatus here," Hanger responds. "We're working on rules and
regulations that should have been addressed a decade
ago."
A
hangover from the impacts of coal mining
Pennsylvania'
"One of the greatest
challenges is convincing people that we are not the second coming of coal," says
Matt Pitzarella, spokesman for gas producer Range Resources.
Coal informs
discussions about the gas rigs and leases cut into the forests and farmland. And
the recent flurry of environmental disasters in oil and coal fields has fueled
fears about the impact the gas boom will have on aquifers, fragile ecosystems
and public health.
BP's Gulf disaster stiffened the resolve of
environmental groups in Pennsylvania and New York to challenge industry
guarantees about the safety of modern hydraulic fracturing ("fracking")
technology used to crack deep deposits of gas-rich shale rock.
The
collapsed coal-ash containment pond at the Tennessee Valley Authority power
plant in Kingston, Tenn., raised questions about leaks at similar waste pits
located on gas drilling sites. And the explosion in April that killed 29 people
at the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia offered a bleak reminder of
the dangers of this kind of work.
Gas producers maintain that the use of
horizontal drills to extract gas from under neighboring plots
means drillers require less land for well pads and equipment. They argue that
chemicals pumped into the ground are benign, aquifers are protected by steel and concrete, drilling requires less water
than nuclear power or a coal-fired power plant, and companies can dispose of
salt water without poisoning streams.
The hotbed of environmental protest
about the potential impact of drilling is in New York, where the source of New
York City's drinking water is the Catskill Mountains and Delaware River
watershed on the eastern edge of the Marcellus Shale. The water supply is fed by
underground aquifers and the area's rivers and streams, and the water is
pristine enough to flow unfiltered through a system of aqueducts to 9 million
New York residents.
There,
public distrust of gas companies has engendered less tolerance for political
equanimity. Polluting the aquifer and using too much of the water are the
central concerns. A de facto moratorium on drilling the shale already exists,
but lawmakers in Albany are considering codifying a one-year moratorium until
regulators finish environmental impact studies.
As public protests
mounted last fall, Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon extended an olive
branch and promised not to drill his leases in the watershed. In January, New
York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged Gov. David Paterson (D) to put the water
supply ahead of the economic benefits to a state $7 billion in the
red.
"July 14 may be the most important date this summer in the Delaware
River Watershed!" shouts a recent e-mail blast from the Delaware Riverkeeper
Network. "Moratorium is needed on all gas projects!"
The group, which
targets water pollution in the basin at the confluence of New York,
Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delawar e, regularly petitions the Delaware River
Basin Commission. July 14 is the date of the commission's upcoming meeting. The
region's governors are members of the commission, and it sits far enough from
politics and the day-to-day lobbying in Harrisburg and Albany to act boldly on
petitions to stop drilling in protected areas of the water basin.
In the
past few months, the commission has done just that. One pending project, a Stone
Energy Corp. plan to develop a gas well in Wayne County, Pa., garnered 2,000
written comments, many of which urged the panel to call a development time-out.
To that end, the commission has issued sweeping directives since May forcing gas
project sponsors, including Stone, to be permitted before drilling production or
exploratory wells. And the panel has said it plans to set aside most
applications until it adopts regulations for gas drilling in the
Marcellus.
Regulate first, dri ll
later
"Your
pro-gas drilling forces might see us as impeding the process, and state
regulations are sufficient," said commission spokeswoman Katharine O'Hara. "But
we are the states," she added. "We're not trying to stymie the industry or
overstep. Our goal is to ensure this is done in a responsible way and that it
doesn't harm or degrade the resources in the basin."
Pennsylvania
politics doesn't separate pro-growth politicians from their environmental
opponents with neat lines of demarcation. The state continues the search to find
middle ground.
But increasingly, in some corners, the measured debate in
Penn's Woods has been drowned out by hyperbole and accusations that the other
side is being disingenuous. And the New York glare from "Gasland," an HBO
documentary by filmmaker Josh Fox, has stirred passions on both sides.
In
it, Fox raises the specter of unchecked corporate power as ga s rigs proliferate
across the Pennsylvania landscape, poisoning the groundwater and ruining
people's lives. The gas industry has condemned the film as environmental
propaganda and wildly exaggerated.
The tone of the film aside, the
Marcellus debate in Pennsylvania still rests in the middle and is almost
entirely about the still-evolving science of hydrology.
"We're all
affected by what happens in the watersheds," said Jeanne VanBriesen, a professor
at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the Center for Water Quality in
Urban Environmental Systems. "Water here moves in and out of urban and rural
environments.
Climate
change and recent gas drilling-related events have illuminated the difficulties
scientists face in pinpointing sources of pollution and the way water flows
through the complex wat ershed.
"Water predictions are based on
historical records on what's happened in a watershed," she explained. "Global
climate change is really a game changer for hydro-modeling. The climate is
changing in a way that is unsuitable for future predictions.
Like
coal, the rapid industrial development of natural gas adds to concerns about
water usage and disposal. "To understand what it means to use the water for
Marcellus development,
In September 2009, a toxic algae bloom killed a massive amount of
fish and aquatic life along a 43-mile stretch of Dunkard Creek on the
Pennsylvania-
Discharges into the creek, according to EPA, included a high level
of total dissolved solids (TDS) that probably created the salty conditions
needed for the poisonous algae to bloom. TDS measures amounts of sodium,
chlorides, sulfates, nitrates, carbonates and other minerals, and while they
aren't considered major pollutants, they can foul fresh water. Water quality
specialists consider TDS levels to be an indicator that other chemical
contaminants are in the water.
After the fish kill, environmental
activists said the high TDS levels could just as likely come from gas drilling
in the area, which also extracts huge amounts of salt-laden, high-TDS water from
the ground. As much as half of the millions of gallons of water injected into
the earth when companies drill or fracture the shale returns to the surface
contaminated and extremely salty. Coal and gas companies ar e supposed to strip
out the metals before disposing of the water. The region's geology makes it
difficult to re-inject water, and recycling is not yet widespread, in part
because of the cost of the process.
Investigators are still looking at
what caused the fish slaughter at Dunkard Creek, but VanBriesen said there's
strong support for the conclusion that algae thrive in salty
conditions.
"The impact of total dissolved solids more broadly on
watersheds and ecosystems is less well understood," she said. Still, she
asserted, "allowing rivers and creeks to get very salty is not good for the
ecosystem."
Dimock, a northeastern Pennsylvania township where residents
accused Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. of poisoning their water wells, has become a
well-known symbol of the troubles in gas country.
Busted gas wells and
the migration of methane into water wells put the challenge to Hanger. In April,
the DEP ordered Cabot to plug three wells believed to be the s ource of
migrating gas. The agency ordered Cabot to suspend the drilling of new wells for
a year in and around Dimock, and it fined Cabot $240,000.
'What legacy will we
leave?'
Gas
industry groups have defended Cabot. They argue that shallow methane is a
naturally occurring phenomenon in Pennsylvania, a pre-existing condition that
shouldn't be laid at the feet of a new industry.
In Pennsylvania, unlike
in New York, there are legal limits to actions a regulator can take to stop a
company from operating. Hanger has asked the Legislature for clear authority to
withhold new permits for companies that repeatedly violate
rules.
Hanger's DEP has hired more inspectors this year. With the support
of environmental groups and some gas companies, the DEP also pushed for water
quality regulatory reforms that a few weeks ago received the go-ahead from an
independent review board in Pennsylvania. The new rules require gas producers to
treat wastewater to the same quality as drinking water before du mping it into a
stream. That means ensuring TDS levels don't exceed 500 milligrams per liter.
The new rules also establish buffer zones for drilling around critical
waterways.
On Tuesday, Gov. Rendell signed a $28 billion state budget
that, as part of an agreement among legislative leaders, includes a pledge to
develop a severance tax on gas production by Oct. 1. It has been among the
stickiest issues for lawmakers. Few in Harrisburg said they wanted to slow the
economic growth, but in recent months, broad support grew for crafting a tax to
help pay for environmental cleanup and local costs incurred because of the
drilling.
Rendell, who tends to emphasize both the economic opportunity
and the environmental hazards, gave Hanger and another member of the governor's
inner circle, John Quigley, secretary of the Department of Conservation and
Natural Resources, the green light this year to sharpen their tone against the
gas industry.
The three have kept the p ressure on with regard to the tax
on gas. "It is difficult for me to swallow the argument that an industry led by
the likes of Exxon, one of the largest companies in the world, is in fact an
infant industry," Quigley said at a conference in Pittsburgh in May. "To suggest
we should wait to tax the industry strains credulity."
The Marcellus
Shale Coalition, which represents the major Marcellus gas producers, has opposed
the tax, arguing that saddling producers with a tax on production of anywhere
from 4 to 8 percent could stifle development in the early stages.
The
group's president, Kathryn Klaber, has crisscrossed the state to press the
industry's case. "If you tax something, you get less," she says. "Not everyone
takes this economic argument to heart."
More than 7 million Pennsylvania
acres is now under lease for gas exploration, about one-quarter of the state's
landmass. At a conference in Pittsburgh in May, Quigley called on citizens
groups to protest proposals to expand leasing in state parks. "There are those
who would ignore the questions of balance and sustainability, who would look to
the public lands to balance the budget without regard to consequence,
