Ban Improper Natural Gas Wastewater Disposal

Greetings:

My name is Terry C and I live at __ Ave. in Auburn, New York. I am currently an Auburn City Councilor. I write today because five years ago, before I was elected, Auburn was one of the few municipalities in New York State that accepted natural gas drilling wastewater at its publicly-owned sewage treatment plant. In the New York Times article Regulation Lax as Gas Wells’ Tainted Water Hits Rivers written by Ian Urbina (published Feb. 26, 2011) my hometown was cited as a site that releases “treated” natural gas drilling wastewater into the Owasco Outlet. This raised several red flags especially when set against the current New York State moratorium on horizontal drilling in the Marcellus shale. Immediately a small group of concerned citizens including myself started asking local officials if this was true. The response was defensive and wrought with contentious assurances that this was permitted by the NYS DEC and was a safe practice. We were not assured that this was the case.

Shortly after we started asking questions, the city cited six natural gas drilling companies in a Public Notice of Significant Non-Compliance (April 1, 2011) for not submitting self-monitoring reports required by existing permits. Once it became apparent that there was more to the New York Times story, more documents began to surface that demonstrated Auburn was neither prepared nor equipped to take in natural gas drilling wastewater. A letter sent in January 2009 to Ms. Valerie Ellis of the DEC from Auburn Assistant Civil Engineer Bruce Ross stated “the highly variable nature of well development wastewaters makes it impossible to make an all inclusive determination on whether any specific well production wastewaters impact WPCP in terms of pass through/SPDES permit compliance, receiving water quality, sludge quality, or process inhibition or interference.”

Auburn’s suggested solution was to issue short-term 12 month permits. Instead, the city issued four-year permits to several of these companies that continually failed to meet the basic specifications of the permits.

How did this come to be? How was Auburn able to operate with such little oversight amidst the awareness of the potential risks associated with high volume gas drilling wastewater? A FOIL provided by the City of Auburn obtained by our local citizens group yielded the following information:

• Chesapeake did not have an Attachment A. An Attachment A is a list of source wells that they are permitted to dispose wastewater from. There is an e-mail from Chesapeake that states that they need to change their descriptions of their wells to comply with the city’s revised permit.

• In many cases, like with Anschutz, the companies disposed wastewater from wells not listed in their Attachment A. According to the permit, in order for them to do that, they needed to provide lab analysis. This should have resulted in 70 or so reports based on the discharge records. This was not done. Lab analysis was only provided when the city published the notice of noncompliance, after the companies already disposed millions of gallons of wastewater.

• City and county officials insisted that the wastewater they received was all from vertical wells. Using the NYS DEC searchable well database, we discovered many of the wells were horizontal wells. Anschutz’s four wells on the Attachment A were all horizontal even though the company submitted a certificate attesting that they were not.

• Lab analyses, when provided 18 months after the fact, consistently showed that the pollutant parameters set in the permit had been exceeded, especially Total Dissolved Solids.

• The city was taking water from Chesapeake’s Bartlett well which is listed in the NYSDEC searchable well database as being in the Marcellus formation.

In a different FOIL provided by the NYS DEC, secured by Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy, it is stated that Auburn took in nitrified hydraulic fracturing wastewater in 2008 from the Talisman Frost F2 well. The city was taking wastewater from the Frost wells in 2010. Regardless I want to focus on natural gas drilling wastewater in the most general terms. I do not want to belabor the horizontal and vertical well debate. The key point I want to make is that in one year’s time (July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010) Auburn’s POTW plant took in 16,446,669 gallons to the tune of $815,821.60. This seems to indicate that high volume wastewater was brought to the Auburn plant. The “produced water” contains certain contaminants such as Total Dissolved Solids, heavy metals, petroleum hydrocarbons and radionuclides.

Auburn’s POTW plant was not designed, nor built to treat the contaminants named above. Yet it was given the go-ahead by the state DEC to dispose of the waste with next to no oversight. And we were expected to feel reassured that an evidently understaffed and underfunded DEC will be able to regulate the anticipated drilling boom. The DEC allowed contaminants to pass through the plant into the Owasco Outlet with little or no treatment for this kind of wastewater. We were most concerned with the high salinity of the wastewater being released into the Owasco Outlet, and its effect on the environment. In 2009, Pennsylvania’s South Fork Ten-Mile Creek had saline levels consistent with salt-water bodies. This was the result of the wastewater treatment plant “treating” effluent from a natural gas drilling.

The small group of concerned citizens turned into a coalition that collected 1,300 signatures for a petition asking the Auburn City Council at the time to stop taking in natural gas drilling wastewater. A rally was organized that brought 200 citizens to City Hall asking for the same. In recognition of this public outcry of the risks posed by the natural gas drilling wastewater, on July 7, 2011 the Auburn City Council resolved that due to “concerns that [natural gas development waste] water contains hazardous chemicals which may not all be removed during the process of disposal at the wastewater treatment plant, and the final product is discharged into a public waterway adjacent to the wastewater treatment plant, and may be harmful to the environment,” “the Auburn Wastewater Treatment Plant prohibits the acceptance of any water produced as a byproduct from natural gas well drilling.” Then less than a year later, when the majority of council shifted, and despite overwhelming public opposition, the City of Auburn reversed course and passed a resolution to rescind the prior prohibition. Therefore they attempted to allow the wastewater treatment plant “to immediately begin accepting water only from vertical natural gas well drilling” but specifically not “any water from horizontal well drilling.” But they were ordered by the EPA and DEC not to accept this wastewater, until an independent study was conducted.

In an independent report released in 2014 by GHD, a wastewater engineering firm commissioned by the City of Auburn, it was determined that Auburn's wastewater treatment plant indeed could not properly treat the wastewater coming from any gas drilling extraction due to high chloride concentrations. Our group was right all along, and we were validated by an independent source.

I also write because I now represent 26,000 people who did not want to pollute the Owasco River for those that lived downstream. I know first hand how it was a long and difficult battle to right a wrong that was imposed onto us by a powerful industry.

During your administration, High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (fracking) expanded dramatically across America. This natural gas and oil extraction process has caused unprecedented toxic hazards because it is not regulated on a comprehensive basis in order to safeguard public health and the environment.

While federal authority is limited regarding regulating the actual process of shale fracking, you enjoy ample authority to regulate disposal of the immense quantities of highly toxic and radioactive wastewaters generated by fracking.

That is why I respectfully request that you ban five outmoded and toxic-polluting oil and natural gas wastewater disposal methods associated with both fracking and conventional petroleum extraction. These historic practices should have been halted decades ago.

Toxic fracking wastewater disposal

Greetings:

My name is Elsa L and I live at __ Street, Hudson, NY 12534 .

I write because I am very concerned about the toxic effects of unregulated disposal of the immense quantities of highly toxic and radioactive wastewaters generated by fracking. I am immediately threatened because our local town council is uneducatedly considering using this hazardous wastewater on our roads, but this is minor compared with the massive volume which, in the methods of disposal listed below, is being let loose to pollute our drinking water for eons to come.

During your administration, High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (fracking) expanded dramatically across America. This natural gas and oil extraction process has caused unprecedented toxic hazards because it is not regulated on a comprehensive basis in order to safeguard public health and the environment.

While federal authority is limited regarding regulating the actual process of shale fracking, you enjoy ample authority to regulate disposal of the immense quantities of highly toxic and radioactive wastewaters generated by fracking.

That is why I respectfully request that you ban five outmoded and toxic-polluting oil and natural gas wastewater disposal methods associated with both fracking and conventional petroleum extraction. These historic practices should have been halted decades ago.

Please regulate fracking wastewater!!

Hello:

My name is Judith H. I live at __ Road, Ithaca, NY 14850. While my address is Ithaca, I actually live in the rural township of Enfield, about 5 miles west of Ithaca. We are at the northern edge of the Marcellus Shale sweet spot and realized about 6 or 7 years ago that we needed to fight this highly toxic process, defend our property and way of life, and help turn the country away from fossil fuels and toward renewables. To that end my husband and I have bought a solar array, are looking at geothermal, and have done quite a bit to promote "remote net metering". We're so proud that fracking is illegal in New York State. Many people where we live are taking similar steps to reduce and eliminate their fossil fuel footprint. We hope the country will look to NYS as a model.

I am very much a supporter of yours ... a proud liberal progressive Democrat. However, I've been disappointed that during your administration, High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (fracking) expanded dramatically across America. This natural gas and oil extraction process has caused unprecedented toxic hazards because it is not regulated on a comprehensive basis in order to safeguard public health and the environment.

While federal authority is limited regarding regulating the actual process of shale fracking, you enjoy ample authority to regulate disposal of the immense quantities of highly toxic and radioactive wastewaters generated by fracking.

That is why I respectfully request that you ban five outmoded and toxic-polluting oil and natural gas wastewater disposal methods associated with both fracking and conventional petroleum extraction. These historic practices should have been halted decades ago.

President Obama Please Ban Toxic-Polluting Disposal of Fracking and Conventional Oil and Natural Gas Wastewater

Greetings:

My name is Adrianna H and I live at __ Street, Ithaca, NY, though I have worked for 12 summer seasons as a ranger naturalist in Yosemite National Park.

I write because I care deeply about my home in the Northeastern United states. I live in a land of abundant clean water and natural areas. Each fall when i return to the Finger Lakes Region of New York after working for the summer in Yosemite where everyone walks with a reverence for the ecosystems that surround them, I always find it hard to believe that this place is sometimes treated so differently. I strongly believe that our natural heritage is our greatest American cultural asset, as is reflected in our amazing National Park system and as ought to be protected in any way possible throughout our amazing land. I am very grateful that the state that i live in has, at least for the moment, banned the use of High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (fracking) for natural gas, though we have witnessed some of the tragic impacts on natural ecosystems of this technology across the border in Pennsylvania and it is my understanding that New York still receives fracking waste.

During your administration, High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (fracking) expanded dramatically across America. This natural gas and oil extraction process has caused unprecedented toxic hazards because it is not regulated on a comprehensive basis in order to safeguard public health and the environment.

While federal authority is limited regarding regulating the actual process of shale fracking, you enjoy ample authority to regulate disposal of the immense quantities of highly toxic and radioactive wastewaters generated by fracking.

That is why I respectfully request that you ban five outmoded and toxic-polluting oil and natural gas wastewater disposal methods associated with both fracking and conventional petroleum extraction. These historic practices should have been halted decades ago.

Environmental and health

Dear President Obama:

My name is Mary M and we live in Margaretville, NY.

I write because we need you to make a stand against hydro-fracking our water supplies all around our country. Our Governor Cuomo heard New Yorkers and has banned this terrible process for our health - of ourselves, our community, our water, and future generations who will still find fresh, clean water the only thing that will sustain the earth for all people. Many EU countries have banned this procedure including Belgium, Bulgaria and The Netherlands. There are many other nations that are protesting this process - France is just one that comes to mind.

During your administration, High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (fracking) expanded dramatically across America. This natural gas and oil extraction process has caused unprecedented toxic hazards because it is not regulated on a comprehensive basis in order to safeguard public health and the environment.
While federal authority is limited regarding regulating the actual process of shale fracking, you have ample authority to regulate disposal of the immense quantities of highly toxic and radioactive wastewaters generated by fracking.

I respectfully request that you ban five outmoded and toxic-polluting oil and natural gas wastewater disposal methods associated with both fracking and conventional petroleum extraction. These historic practices should have been halted decades ago.

Fracking

Greetings:

My name is Margaret G and I live at ___ , Glen Mills, PA 19342. I am a Democratic committeewoman who has contributed to you, worked in your campaign, and voted for you.

I write because I want you to do everything in your power to stop fracking. The more good you do, the more Trump will have to undo.

During your administration, High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (fracking) expanded dramatically across America. This natural gas and oil extraction process has caused unprecedented toxic hazards because it is not regulated on a comprehensive basis in order to safeguard public health and the environment.

While federal authority is limited regarding regulating the actual process of shale fracking, you enjoy ample authority to regulate disposal of the immense quantities of highly toxic and radioactive wastewaters generated by fracking.

That is why I respectfully request that you ban five outmoded and toxic-polluting oil and natural gas wastewater disposal methods associated with both fracking and conventional petroleum extraction. These historic practices should have been halted decades ago.

President Obama Please Ban Toxic-Polluting Disposal of Fracking and Conventional Oil and Natural Gas Wastewater

Greetings:

My name is Joel C and I live at 5__ W __ St, New York, NY .

I write to urge you to be a leader of the future, the President of the environment, that saves the United State's environment and the communities and economies that depend on it being healthy - and ensure that there is a decent world for future generations.

During your administration, High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (fracking) expanded dramatically across America. This natural gas and oil extraction process has caused unprecedented toxic hazards because it is not regulated on a comprehensive basis in order to safeguard public health and the environment.
While federal authority is limited regarding regulating the actual process of shale fracking, you enjoy ample authority to regulate disposal of the immense quantities of highly toxic and radioactive wastewaters generated by fracking.

That is why I respectfully request that you ban five outmoded and toxic-polluting oil and natural gas wastewater disposal methods associated with both fracking and conventional petroleum extraction. These historic practices should have been halted decades ago.

Ban on Toxic-Polluting Disposal of Fracking and Conventional Oil and Natural Gas Wastewater

Greetings:

My name is Margaret T and I live at 5__ St, New York, NY

I write because we need to save our environment for future generations - and this depends on the work you do between now and the 2017 inauguration.

During your administration, High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (fracking) expanded dramatically across America. This natural gas and oil extraction process has caused unprecedented toxic hazards because it is not regulated on a comprehensive basis in order to safeguard public health and the environment.
While federal authority is limited regarding regulating the actual process of shale fracking, you enjoy ample authority to regulate disposal of the immense quantities of highly toxic and radioactive wastewaters generated by fracking.

That is why I respectfully request that you ban five outmoded and toxic-polluting oil and natural gas wastewater disposal methods associated with both fracking and conventional petroleum extraction. These historic practices should have been halted decades ago.

Please Protect the Health of the American Public

Greetings:

My name is John M and I live at __ St. Mosherville, Bradford County, PA.

I write because I live in Bradford County, PA, which has produced more Marcellus shale gas than any other PA county, and am very concerned about the current and long term pollution of air, water, and soil associated with gas production and combustion.

During your administration, High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (fracking) expanded dramatically across America. This natural gas and oil extraction process has caused unprecedented toxic hazards because it is not regulated on a comprehensive basis in order to safeguard public health and the environment.
While federal authority is limited regarding regulating the actual process of shale fracking, you enjoy ample authority to regulate disposal of the immense quantities of highly toxic and radioactive wastewaters generated by fracking.

That is why I respectfully request that you ban five outmoded and toxic-polluting oil and natural gas wastewater disposal methods associated with both fracking and conventional petroleum extraction. These historic practices should have been halted decades ago.

Protect Our Drinking Water Before You Leave - Please

Greetings:

My name is Linda S , and I live in New York State, which has so far avoided the evils of fracking.

I write because I have seen what fracking has done to family and friends in nearby Pennsylvania, where many families now have a 'water-buffalo' [a large water tank] in the yard, which they must import clean water to fill - because their own wells have turned bad. Also because we now know so much more about the harm this process is wreaking on the environment.

During your administration, High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (fracking) expanded dramatically across America. This natural gas and oil extraction process has caused unprecedented toxic hazards because it is not regulated on a comprehensive basis in order to safeguard public health and the environment.

While federal authority is limited regarding regulating the actual process of shale fracking, you enjoy ample authority to regulate disposal of the immense quantities of highly toxic and radioactive wastewaters generated by fracking.

That is why I respectfully request that you ban five outmoded and toxic-polluting oil and natural gas wastewater disposal methods associated with both fracking and conventional petroleum extraction. These historic practices should have been halted decades ago.

President Obama Please Ban Toxic-Polluting Disposal of Fracking and Conventional Oil and Natural Gas Wastewater

Greetings:

My name is Karen G and I live at __., Middlebury, VT.

I write because I have seen first hand the catastrophic damage from fracking, and feel it is urgent that we ban High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing for the sake of clean water to preserve the health of our children and families now and in years to come.

During your administration, High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (fracking) expanded dramatically across America. This natural gas and oil extraction process has caused unprecedented toxic hazards because it is not regulated on a comprehensive basis in order to safeguard public health and the environment.
While federal authority is limited regarding regulating the actual process of shale fracking, you enjoy ample authority to regulate disposal of the immense quantities of highly toxic and radioactive wastewaters generated by fracking.

That is why I respectfully request that you ban five outmoded and toxic-polluting oil and natural gas wastewater disposal methods associated with both fracking and conventional petroleum extraction. These historic practices should have been halted decades ago.

Please strongly regulate fracking before you leave office

Greetings:

My name is M A and I live in Walden, New York.

I'm writing because I am extremely concerned about President-Elect Trump's promise to remove restrictions on fracking once he's in office.

During your administration, High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (fracking) expanded dramatically across America. This natural gas and oil extraction process has caused unprecedented toxic hazards because it is not regulated on a comprehensive basis.

While federal authority is limited regarding regulating the actual process of shale fracking, you enjoy ample authority to regulate disposal of the immense quantities of highly toxic and radioactive wastewaters generated by fracking.

That is why I respectfully request that you ban five outmoded and toxic-polluting oil and natural gas wastewater disposal methods associated with both fracking and conventional petroleum extraction. These historic practices should have been halted decades ago.

Fracking in NY

Greetings:

My name is Gerrit C and I live in Nyack, NY.

I write because: Walter Hang Toxics Targeting activist alert.

During your administration, High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (fracking) expanded dramatically across America. This natural gas and oil extraction process has caused unprecedented toxic hazards because it is not regulated on a comprehensive basis in order to safeguard public health and the environment.
While federal authority is limited regarding regulating the actual process of shale fracking, you enjoy ample authority to regulate disposal of the immense quantities of highly toxic and radioactive wastewaters generated by fracking.

That is why I respectfully request that you ban 5 outmoded and toxic-polluting oil and natural gas wastewater disposal methods associated with both fracking and conventional petroleum extraction. These historic practices should have been halted decades ago.