DRINKING WATER - WASTED, POLLUTED AND AT RISK by John P. Flannery

How long before the faucet dries up? (Photo by John P. Flannery)

We’ve all been taught that we are mostly made of water, how we need it to live, to drink, to clean, to grow anything we eat, to nourish the trees that produce the air we breathe, and yet our world right down to the county level where we live fails to protect this precious life resource – like we could survive without water.

300,000 men, women and children in West Virginia found that the water in their home faucets from the Elk River made them ill and smelled something like licorice.  It was the scent of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol.  A negligent coal mining company, Freedom Industries, earning 30 million dollars last year, had 13 tanks all sixty years old and one 35,000 gallon tank leaked 7,500 gallons of this chemical through cracks in the containment wall into the Elk River. Incidentally, the wastewater treatment plant’s intake pipe took in the tainted water even after it had notice of the chemical spill, and pumped it out to its customers.  Needless to say, the treatment had not removed the chemical waste.

In Virginia, on January 8, 2014, State Senator Charles W. Carrico, Sr. (R-40SD), perhaps eager to mimic West Virginia’s careless regulatory system, offered a bill, SB 217, in the General Assembly that, if it passes, shall increase the likelihood that we’ll have coal waste in our rivers polluting our drinking water.  Presently, the Director of the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy must provide a copy of any application by the coal industry for a permit to discharge sewage, and industrial waste from coal surface mining operations to the State Water Control Board.  When that happens, the Water Board may object if the discharge impermissibly pollutes our water.  Senator Carrico seeks to strike any notice the Water Board may receive and preclude any objection they might interpose.

70% of the earth is water but only 2.5% of that water is fresh water that we can use, and less than 1% of that fresh water is liquid – meaning not frozen.

The water that we drink comes from our rivers, lakes, reservoirs and, if you have a well, from under the ground in an aquifer if there is one close enough to the surface to reach by drilling.  The water we have is limited. 

If you want to think of how that is true, then consider how, if you are on a well, you’re sticking a straw into the same pool as your neighbor and his neighbor and so on.  The more straws, the more risk there’s not enough for “you all,” not if you draw water from the aquifer faster than it can recharge; then you have to ration, or do without. 

One good local example of this is Purcellville’s public water system.  In the summer, they put up warning signs to ration water use.  Unrestrained development increases the uncertainty there’s enough water for everyone.  Recently, the Town of Purcellville annexed a new development called Autumn Hill/Mayfair of 257 single family and town homes that presumably will suck up hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a year more in a public water and waste system that already rations water. 

There’s this misunderstanding that the water above and below ground are unrelated and separate.  Some pour all manner of poison on their grass, rather than safer pest control methods, unconcerned that what we do above ground, affects our streams, and the waters that run underground in our aquifers. 

Others are unconcerned to maintain their septic systems that can discharge pathogens and present a public health hazard if not well maintained. 

Driveways, sidewalks, and pavement prevent rain water from soaking into the ground, so we have storm water runoff that picks up debris, chemicals, dirt and other pollutants that can find their way into rivers, ponds, streams.

We can put a man on the moon but we can’t keep our water clean here on earth.

GAZETTE COLUMN: WHAT A GAS! by John P. Flannery

We have a lot of folk who wouldn’t see it -- if they didn’t already believe it

We are talking about those who believe the Oil and Gas Energy Industry’s PR hogwash – that the Industry is there to help us - even as the Industry misleads and exploits homeowners by contaminating their water with their deep well gas drilling. 

Let’s consider a few facts.

Fact: The Oil and Gas Industry is shattering the earth two miles beneath our feet, “fracturing” they call it, a recent drilling “innovation,” that pumps two to seven million gallons of water as well as sand and toxic chemicals including diesel fuel, into the earth below, at 13,500 pounds of pressure per square inch, to shatter the shale that is trapping bubbles of natural gas that industry is harvesting for a profit; incidentally, industry denies the use of diesel but it has been repeatedly confirmed. 

Fact: When the Oil and Gas industry fought to pass the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Congressman Joe Barton of Texas wrote a provision for oil and gas that excluded “hydraulic fracture” from any regulations that would protect underground sources of drinking water.

Fact: When the industry drives those drill bits into the earth, at the rate of 35,000 wells a year, they are making new migration pathways for natural gas, and they are compromising the aquifers, our drinking water, the air we breathe, therefore the homes we can inhabit, bringing on headaches from the evaporated gases, nausea, possible brain damage, and risking life itself.

Fact: There are thousands of families with contaminated water across the nation including those found in Garfield County, Colorado; Pavilion, Wyoming; DISH, Texas; Dimock in Bradford County, Pennsylvania; and Hickory, also in Pennsylvania. 

Fact: Oil and gas companies are giving these families hauled “replacement water” -- if they’ll agree to keep their mouths shut about their contaminated wells. 

Fact: One dramatic illustration of contamination is that fire may result when you light a match near your faucet’s water.  Deeper gas (thermogenic methane) appears to be pushing the surface natural gas (biogenic methane) into the water wells.  That’s what appears to have happened in Colorado.  In Dimock, Pennsylvania, the state agency first said that the methane in the water was surface gas as well (biogenic methane), but then, when forced to test it again, they admitted it was from the deepest layers (thermogenic).  It is possible that Pennsylvania got it right both times, and the surface gas had been pushed out of the way by the deeper gases.  The state agencies also admit that they’re not only finding natural gas but also contaminants related to oil and gas production in these water wells. 

Fact: These same wells had no contaminants, gas or other toxic materials in the waters, before the fracturing wells were drilled.

Conclusion: we’ve got to stop this toxic drilling before we contaminate our underground water system for good as we don’t know how aquifers work well enough to know that we can fix them again if we contaminate them.  If we get this wrong, we’ll all be hauling replacement water from some other smarter nation.

GAZETTE COLUMN: FIRE WATER IN YOUR SINK by John P. Flannery

Perhaps you’ve seen those videos where a person turns on the faucet and fire spills into the sink.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMS8VsG2LSY

There’s something unsettling about a lit match that ignites water. 

Water ordinarily quenches fire.

So why is this happening? 

It’s because the energy industry is mining natural gas in a new and perilous way – and the pipe to that faucet carries an unexpected mixture of water and natural gas.

Energy moguls have been trying to capture and collect bubbles of natural gas, as much as 516 trillion cubic feet worth, found in a 573 square mile expanse of shale 8,000 feet below the surface running from Alabama to New York, and running along Virginia’s western border.  

Energy CEOs are getting a rush at new technology that can shatter the shale so they can harvest the gas and huge profits as well.

The rub is how do they do it – how they get at the gas.

They’ve found a cheap method of extraction called “fracking” – short for hydraulic fracturing. 

They drill down vertically as far as two miles into the earth and then the drill turns at right angles (horizontal drilling) parallel to the surface (and perhaps even under your retirement ski cottage off I-81). 

They then put a high pressure pump with a mixture of crushing sand, hazardous materials, chemicals that are carcinogens, and millions of gallons of water, and force fractures in the shale so that gas may escape into the drill bore.

There have been complaints from Alabama, Virginia and West Virginia of impaired or polluted drinking water near these gas wells. 

The wastewater contains terrible by-products including reproductive toxicants, arsenic, hydrogen sulfide, mercury, barium, radium, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) including benzene and xylene – so we are haunted by the possibility of a latter day disaster like the Hooker Chemical Company’s Love Canal - if we don’t get smarter.

Worse, this drilling takes millions of gallons of water from existing streams, compromising farmers and the ecosystem. 

There’s no good way to handle the highly salted toxic wastewater that comes up with the drill. 

Normal municipal treatment facilities don’t treat for carcinogens or remove radioactive materials. 

Dumping wastewater into streams used by nearby communities is no answer. 

Pumping wastewater back into the earth is very likely to compromise our underground aquifers. 

As a matter of law, we are almost defenseless.

We are not protected by the Clean Water Act, the Superfund law (CERCLA), the Safe Drinking Water Act, or the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.  The Oil and Gas Industry lobbied and won exemptions from all these safety regulations.  Nor does the public have any right to know what these gas companies are doing under the Federal Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Acts.

How did we do to this to ourselves?  Nothing new here!  Our public officials are “too compliant,” compromised by their large contributors, and covering up the health hazards with a goulash of industry disinformation and false promises to reassure curious constituents.

The most important question we should ask ourselves about this industry debacle is simple.

Is our health more important than a 10 year supply of natural gas? 

I think it is! 

But there are those taking profits who heartily disagree.