Toxic Fracking Water & Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority?

A recent Citizen's Voice reported a WVSA and Encana proposal for a new local toxic water treatment facility.  Quote follows.

The plant the Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority is considering would treat and dilute the used fracking water, then sell it back to the gas companies to re-use.

Authority officials believe there is a need for such a facility in the region, Minora said. Asked if the authority could make money from it, he replied, "Certainly - that's why we're doing it. If there isn't, why do it?"

I can answer that:  Because it is beneficial to the people of North East PA and the state of Pennsylvania  as a whole.  But before the WVSA can decide if it's beneficial for our region, they have to remember we're here.  Here are some of the questions officials concerned about something other than money might ask:

What kind of accidents occur at similar toxic waste treatment facilities?  How often do they occur and how far-reaching are the possible aftereffects?  How much water is reused?  Does the transport of toxic waste to the facility endanger an even larger population than current practices?  Numbers, if anyone has bothered to collect them, would be fantastic.

Remember this is not about safety or conservation.  It is about cash.  Fracking is a dangerous, ecologically disastrous operation that puts us all at risk.  Toxic, carcinogenic chemicals will leech into our ground water even in the absence of accidents and accidents themselves abound.  Now we are processing the stuff locally.  What are the risks?

Environmental groups are concerned about the huge amounts of water taken from our fresh water supply.  Encana knows this.  My gut feeling is that this is just another PR move.  One Encana hopes will shut people up.  And having some more local officials on board never hurts.  Especially in Luzerne county.

Luzerne Co: First Frack Gas Well Grand Opening

Quote and photo from today's CV.  Little commentary is needed: 

"Drilling is a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week operation, and Wiedenbeck said Encana's estimate is it will take about 30 days to finish.  People essential to the operation - the "company men," officially known as the rig supervisor and the tool pusher - will stay on the site around-the-clock in personnel trailers. The rest of the crew will stay at local hotels, Wiedenbeck said. They will work in shifts: 12 hours on, 12 off, she said.

The first step in drilling is to set the casings. These are steel pipes about 30 feet to 40 feet long with cement poured around them. The rig drove the pipes into the ground, one after another.  After the well is drilled 800 feet deep, it will be cased, and drilling will continue to 2,500 feet and another layer of cement will be added, Wiedenbeck said.  "It's like a casing within a casing," Bender said.

The casing will go about 50 feet deeper than the aquifer, or water table, and is intended to keep water from getting into the well or well contents from getting into the groundwater."

The safe operation of this well is dependent on technology from our friends at Haluburtin.   Look it up.

Lake Twp. Muncipal Meeting

I attended the Lake Township Municipal Meeting tonight where a new gas drilling emergency management plan was adopted.  The plan itself was absent, having gone to print prior to the meeting and not made it back.  It is intended to address accidents that may occur at Lake Twp's first frack gas well.

As soon as the meeting commenced, township officials attempted to approve the new emergency plan without public questions or comment.  A member of the Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition, Dr. Tom Juinta, objected, saying that the plan should not be adopted without open discussion.

The meeting was then opened up for questions.  Several members of the public asked for specifics of the  plan but, taken as a whole, there was not a lot of information supplied.  Township officials repeatedly stated that it was the Encana emergency plan that we should be concerned with.  They also readily admitted that they were not prepared to handle an event on a par with the explosion in Clearfield county. There was a lot of emphasis on what others would do.  Encana, the EPA, FEMA, the county.

I asked officials what steps would be taken in regard to underground contamination if, and when, an accident occurred and was told that this would be the EPA's area of expertise.  No one knows how far reaching the effects of underground water contamination could be and, even as a resident of Kingston, I'm worried.  While officials seem to have given a great deal of thought to emergency management in general, their emergency response to underground contamination appears to be little more than a phone tree.  Which begs the following questions:

What can we expect as a first response to the release of toxic and carcinogenic fracking fluids into our water supply?  Will any degree of containment even be feasible?  Will the township to notify the public of possible drinking water contamination?   How long will it take until somebody else does?   How much water will be consumed in the interim?  When will safe drinking water to be provided?  Who will get it? 

Should we have our own plan?  I would say yes.  Household by household.  Bottle by bottle.

Corbett on Dimock

This is the comment I left on Steve Corbett's recent article about drilling in Dimock.  I encourage everyone who can to listen to his 3 to 7 pm local talk show on WILK.  Call in with your Anti Frack Gas comments.  Everyone has something to say.

People are coming together in what are still relatively small numbers against the drilling. It concerns me however that so many people are focusing on rural areas and the suburban back mountain. People in Wyoming Valley must learn that what threatens outlying areas threatens us. Huntsville and Ceasville dams are surrounded by leases and very much at risk.

What will be left of Wyoming Valley when our water is toxic? Does anyone believe our elected officials will save us? Water is not a municipal commodity. Dig deep enough and it is all the same water. Some people say that no one in the valley cares. It's my opinion they don't know, that we are poised to be caught unaware. Like Dimock.

Thomas Alan Linzey Speech

Thomas Alan Linzey, Esq. at University of Pittsburgh School of Law: March 4th, 2004:

We’ve never had an environmental movement in this country. What we’ve had is groups and people resisting one hog factory farm at a time, one toxic waste incinerator at a time, one road project at a time, one asphalt plant at a time.

We’ve been playing defense -- and as anyone who plays strategic games like chess will tell  you -- if you’re always reacting, you’re going to lose the game.

Peoples’ Movements, on the other hand, are driven by communities unwilling to accept such a defensive role for themselves. Peoples’ movements are about moving beyond defense.

They focus instead on fixing the problems of governance that consistently shove them onto the defense in the first place. They question why the law is not on their side.  Movements recognize that the current framework of governance has rendered them remediless, and that the only solution available to them is to create new remedies by changing the plan of governance that placed them on the defensive.

It’s not easy work. Our culture makes it that much harder. Awards are given to those who work within the regulatory system to reduce adverse environmental harms from projects; Foundations give money to those groups who can show a track record of "success" by appealing permits and improving regulations.

True peoples’ movements are thus few and far between, and emerge only in response to serious crises that have erupted in this nation -- when the denial of rights to slaves and women was deemed incompatible with "all men are created equal", when an English King and his trading corporations made self-government impossible, and when denial of rights to African-Americans led to the Civil Rights Movement.

Movements thus seek to drive rights into the Constitution -- our framework of governance in these United States. Past Peoples’ movements have thrust groups of people into the protections of our framework of governance.

Mountains, lakes, rivers, whales, trees, raccoons, oceans, salmon, wolves, plants, and ecosystems have no rights under our framework of governance. They have no rights. No legal protections. Under the law, animals, plants, ecological systems, water, air -- they’re property, and are treated as such.

At one time in this nation’s history, people were also property. The Abolitionist movement thrust the rights of slaves into the Constitution via the Fourteenth Amendment , transforming once-property into people.

The womens’ rights movement thrust the rights of women into the Constitution via the Twentieth Amendment, transforming those once considered property into people. Indeed, the American Revolution transformed states that were once private corporations and royal proprietorships -- run and owned as private property by English investors -- into public, constitutionalized  governments.

Securing rights for that considered property means not fiddling around with regulating how that property can be used, but instead, it means changing the very framework of governance that defined those things as property in the first place.