Our feature story revisits plans for the "Atlantic Sunrise" pipeline and sheds some light on the absurd possibility it will cross through the land of old burning coal mines. Not to worry though, it is not burning where they plan to bury the pipeline... YET! Read further for recently released information on PA frackwater ponds, now numbering more than 500 statewide.

"In other news" brings new plans for tracking fracking, and sadly finds the town of Denton, TX being sued by the State and the Energy Industry over their recent fracking ban. On a more positive note, the Sierra Club has compiled 5 simple things Governor Wolf can do for Pennsylvania's environment. There are also a couple new "Action Points" presented in the sidebar.

Thank you for caring & staying informed. Grab a blanket & stay warm!

Sincerely,

Brooke Woodside

Managing Editor

www.rdapa.org

"Excerpted from http://coalcorncountry.com/mine-fires-gas-lines/" 

11/14/14 - When Pete Tipka first learned a company wanted to run a natural gas pipeline through his property in Bear Gap, PA, he was into it.  

"When the pipeline letter came in the mail, I knew nothing about it. I thought-- oh, I'll make some money... then I did some research."

It wasn't easy. He couldn't get much out of the government. "People were apprehensive about giving information. They clam up and don't say nothing." The company sent a landman, but, according to Pete, "he was a typical land person. An employee of a huge corporation, there to make landowners happy."

The "Atlantic Sunrise" pipeline would run through 10 PA Counties, connecting to other pipelines and moving natural gas for export. It's a proposal from Williams Partners, a Tulsa-based Fortune 200 Company. 

As of November 2014, the pipeline is in a "public input" stage, before the federal government approves or denies the project. They will also apply for eminent domain, which would give them power to take the land if landowners won't sign.

Pete started to worry about this splitting his land in half. Land that his family has owned for over 175 years. He went to public meetings held by the company, but his concerns were quickly dismissed.

His bigger concern, though, is the mountain to the south of his land, where is great grandpappy used to mill timbers for the mines.

Smoke rising from the Luke Fiddler  (Coal Run) underground mine fire. Photo by www.daladophotography.com

The abandoned coal lands near Shamokin look scraggly and unnatural. There's mounds, ditches and barren patches all over. Coal and other rock is littered everywhere. They are the scars of mining, above and below ground, over many years.

Those lands were home to the Glen Burn Colliery, which ran for 130+ years. It was once the second largest anthracite coal mine in the world. The waste produced by the mine - rock and coal dust - now sits as the world's largest man-made mountain. There are three active fires inside the old tunnels.

The most famous place like this is Centralia - the town-on-fire, where the coal under town has been burning since 1962. There's been books and documentaries about Centralia, but there are more than 30 other mine fires in PA that most people don't know about. Like the fires where the Glen Burn Colliery used to be.

Would you run a pipeline through Centralia? No way. But the pipeline is set to run right through the area of the Glen Burn fires.

Here's what the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources said about the fire in their December 2013 newsletter:

The Glen Burn Mine Fire has started wildfires for as long as locals in Northumberland County can remember. A part of the Glen Burn Fire called the Hickory Corner Fire which started in 1975 has been giving VFDs and DCNR problems during dry conditions over the past few years. The Spring of 2013 was no exception when the mine fire started a wildfire April 9th around 2400 hours. While doing the investigation in daylight it became apparent that we should not be fighting fire in this area due to numerous hazards, especially between dusk and dawn.

The government doesn't really know the extent of the fires. The last time they tried to check was 1987, when they put in vent pipes to monitor it.

The pipeline isn't going directly over a fire. It's going half a mile from the last known location of 2 of them. It does run inside the natural limits where the fire could spread.

Fire or not, the old tunnels run under the whole mountain, and sometimes collapse. That causes surface cave-ins called subsidence. Williams' has said, "the pipeline will be designed to maximize its intrinsic ability to span mine subsidence features." As in, they expect that if the land falls away, the pipeline will not move. If you walk around the area, though, you can see subsidence holes anywhere from 10 to 100 feet deep. Roads and homes are often destroyed.

The pipeline path (yellow), crossing the Glen Burn Mine Fire's "natural limits" (red) Source: Williams, DEP

Leaking pipelines can also be destructive. Last year, only five miles away, a leaking Sunoco gas pipeline destroyed 350 acres of land and groundwater. Williams themselves have a long history of leaks and cover-up attempts.

If the pipeline runs through the old Glen Burn, there's a real chance of two environmental disasters colliding.

PIPELINE RESISTANCE

Because of all these reasons, now Pete's fighting the pipeline.

"If they wanna come through here for $50,000, they'll have to run me over with a bulldozer," said Pete.

Speaking up at local meetings, he's convinced the township supervisors. They voted 5-0 to oppose the pipeline.

Pete's township isn't the only one opposing it. Martic Township is against it. Over half the registered voters in Conestoga Township have signed a petition. Schuylkill County farmers are fighting it. Pine Grove Borough is considering it. Though it only passes nearby, Lancaster City and Millersville Borough passed resolutions against it.

200 person sit-in at Williams open house in Lancaster.

If you live along the pipeline route and want to know more about what's happening in your area, contact Sam Koplinka-Loehr, Shale Gas Organizer with the Clean Air Council, for info. (215)567-4004 ext 115, or email skl@cleanair.org. 

Source: http://coalcorncountry.com/mine-fires-gas-lines/

by Susan Phillips, Reporter, StateImpact Pennsylvania

Frackwater pond, Bradford County - Photo credit: Barb Jarmoska

Brian Schwartz, an environmental epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and his colleagues have teamed up with Geisinger Health System, a health services organization in Pennsylvania, to analyze the digital medical records of more than 400,000 patients in the state in order to assess the impacts of fracking on neonatal and respiratory health.

 

While the scientists will track where these people live, says Schwartz, state regulators cannot tell them where the active well pads and waste pits are located. Officials at Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) say that they have simply never compiled a comprehensive list.

A spokesman for DEP told the Observer-Reporter that the department can't produce a list of impoundments that include smaller wastewater storage sites because they have a different classification. The DEP sent the reporter to another nonprofit that tries to fill the state's data and information gap - FracTracker. But FrackTracker says the data they get from DEP on the location of frack ponds is "woefully incomplete."

"We are big fans of the SkyTruth dataset here at FracTracker, but it is a shame that it is needed," said Matt Kelso, manager of data and technology at FracTracker Alliance.  "We wish that the PA DEP would publish better data about this aspect of the oil and gas extraction business."

Since state environmental regulators have no reliable knowledge of where these sites are located, volunteers from across the globe studied the aerial images from 2005, 2008, 2010 and 2013. The accuracy of the data was carefully vetted by SkyTruth's methodology, which included training on how to distinguish a frack pond from a duck pond. But the organization has not yet figured out how to distinguish the toxic from the non-toxic fresh water holding ponds.

"It is an important distinction that we're looking into," wrote SkyTruth's David Manthos in an email, "but not one we were ready to make yet."

Manthos continued:

"Between the backlog of reporting, and these smaller impoundments that also hold toxic chemicals but which DEP classifies differently, the location of these features is effectively a mystery to the general public and researchers who are trying to measure the potential health impacts of [those] living near drilling sites and drilling-waste impoundments.

Skytruth researchers also documented the increase in the size of these impoundments over the last eight years.

From 2010 to 2013 the median area of drilling impoundments more than tripled, and the average area (which also includes small fluid reserve pits located right on the wellpad) more than doubled. As of 2013, the total impoundment surface area measures nearly four million square meters, scattered across the Commonwealth. (New York's Central Park measures 3.4 million square meters.)

Many of these impoundments are reclaimed after a period of time. For example, the 2010 maps showed 581 frack water storage facilities, while in 2013, Skytruth documented 529. The data is now searchable through an interactive map on the Skytruth website. The project was conceived to help Hopkins researchers link possible health impacts to the wastewater ponds, which contain toxic chemicals that can emit dangerous air pollutants. The Department of Environmental Protection has also documented leaks from these sites. In October, the DEP announced it was seeking to fine EQT corporation a record $4.5 million dollars for a leaking impoundment. The Attorney General has also filed criminal charges against the driller. In September, DEP handed Range Resources a $4.15 million fine for violations at six wastewater impoundments in Washington County.

Centralized open storage pits containing gas drilling waste water have to be double-lined in Pennsylvania, and include a leak-detection system. The smaller, on-site ponds do not have to be double-lined. The industry standard advocated by the Center for Sustainable Shale Development, whose members include the recently sanctioned shale driller EQT, says hydrocarbons should be removed from the wastewater before storage.

Frackwater Pond, Bradford County - Photo Credit: Barb Jarmoska

https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2014/11/11/pennsylvanias-frack-ponds-now-number-more-than-500/ 

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