Pennsylvania

By Alex Lotorto - Energy Justice Network, February 16, 2016

Energy Justice Network is on the cutting edge of fighting fracking and related infrastructure in the northeast.

It's a special organizing challenge to fight pipelines, as we're fighting a line, not a point, on the map. Companies and agencies won't release data listing all impacted landowners. In Pennsylvania, we have enhanced our outreach by using GIS to overlay company pipeline maps with 911 emergency addresses obtained from each county, allowing us to identify impacted landowners.

Along the Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline in northeast Pennsylvania, we used this information to mass-mail and go door-to-door to over 200 landowners in three counties to inform them of their rights and build a landowner coalition that meets quarterly.

Our goal for landowner organizing is to have them each deny survey permission to the company (Williams Partners LLC) so that permit filing can't be completed. Then, we intend to support landowners through eminent domain proceedings by providing referrals to vetted attorneys and appraisers.

Media strategy is just as important and we have had a number of human interest stories published in local and national news about compelling cases where landowners are standing up against Williams and other companies.

In Pike and Northampton Counties, we appealed the PA Department of Environmental Protection's air permits for twin compressor stations meant to pressurize the Columbia Pipeline 1278 line that transports gas to the proposed Cove Point LNG export terminal. Both compressors emit the equivalent of a fleet of idling diesel school buses, making the local air quality especially dangerous for children's developing lungs.

During the compressor appeals, Columbia Pipeline motioned to dismiss our case and Governor Tom Wolf's attorneys agreed. However, the judge dismissed their motion and is allowing us to proceed with our arguments regarding best available control technologies, health impacts, local zoning approval, and other important considerations.

Most urgently, we're leading the cutting edge battle against the 124-mile Constitution Pipeline, a project of Williams and Cabot Oil & Gas, which is proposed to carry fracked gas from Susquehanna County, PA to Albany, NY and beyond.

On January 29, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission permitted tree cutting to begin in Pennsylvania that must be finished by March 31 to comply with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and Endangered Species Act as enforced by the US Fish & Wildlife Service.

We have landowners across Susquehanna County who have given our volunteers and staff permission to monitor the pipeline clearing for violations. On one property, where a sugar maple farm is producing syrup this season, we have set up a picket line where we've turned away tree crews for 16 days straight.

The picket at North Harford Maple has drawn both the attention of national media organizations like NPR and the Associated Press and legal action in federal court by the company. We're pledging to stick to it for the long haul so stay tuned for more updates!

By Mark Hand - CounterPunch, October 20, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Union and environmental activist Alex Lotorto believes environmentalists should be working more closely with organized labor and following the advice of some of labor’s more enlightened leaders.

When Lotorto speaks with his friends and neighbors who work in the shale gas fields of northeast Pennsylvania, they generally do not have favorable things to say about environmental groups. And when he meets with his fellow environmental activists, solidarity with workers is often missing.

“Hardly anywhere in the conversation do you hear the question, ‘How do we bring the workforce into the picture and how do we make sure that the communities that are losing these well-paying, family-sustaining jobs have something in the end?'” Lotorto, who lives in Scranton, Pa., said in an interview.

There have been attempts in recent years to bridge the gap. For example, the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle featured “Turtles and Teamsters” coming together to oppose corporate-managed globalization. The BlueGreen Alliance was created in 2006 to unite large labor unions and Big Green groups in a more lasting manner, with the goal of addressing environmental challenges while maintaining quality jobs.

And yet, the ties forged between labor unions and environmental groups remain fragile. Lotorto sympathizes with extractive industry employees, including coal miners in the bituminous coal fields of southern West Virginia, many of whom blame federal regulators for their worsening job prospects. “There is a war on coal. And it’s been led by Beltway, nongovernmental organizations,” Lotorto emphasized, referring to the Big Green groups who have made shutting down coal-fired power plants a top priority. “We’ve missed the fact that removing coal from the picture in Appalachia is devastating.”

The federal government is offering some help to the hardest-hit communities in coal country. The Obama administration on Oct. 15 announced the federal government will be giving $14.5 million to 36 programs designed to help coal country communities cope with the economic hardships from the coal industry’s decline. The grants will be used to spur economic development and workforce training to move coal communities away from coal reliance.

Lotorto views these efforts as an attempt by he Obama administration to throw a “bone to labor and a bone to Appalachia.”

By Alex Lotorto - Energy Justice Network, September 2, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Riverdale Mobile Home Park was located on the Susquehanna River in Piatt Township, Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania. Residents were ordered to leave the park in March 2012 by Aqua PVR LLC, a project of Aqua America, a private water utility, and Penn Virginia Resources, a natural gas pipeline company.

The property was purchased in order to build a water withdrawal pump station and water line that would withdraw three million gallons per day for use in hydraulic fracturing by Range Resources, a Texas-based Marcellus shale drilling company. Each shale gas well requires five to nine million gallons of water to force open the rock, allowing the gas to flow out.

Aqua America's facility takes 6,000 water truck trips off the road each day, according to Aqua America, which displaced truck drivers, parts suppliers, fuel deliverers, mechanics, and service employees from their jobs in Lycoming County. The Marcellus shale industry hasn't proposed any relief, solution, or alternative to this loss of employment opportunities for Pennsylvania residents.

The facility's two permits were approved by the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, a federal commission made up of Governors Corbett (R-PA), Cuomo (D-NY), O'Malley (D-MD), and President Obama.

The capacity of the park was 37 units and in March 2012, 32 families lived there. The initial offer from Aqua America included $2,500 for residents to move by April 1 and $1,200 for residents to move by May 1.

Immediately after the tragic story of Riverdale hit the press with the help of volunteers, Aqua America extended the deadline for $2,500 in compensation until June 1st.

A series of town halls, vigils, and picnics were organized by residents with some help from volunteers from around northeast and central Pennsylvania in opposition to the project. Residents and allies even held protests at Aqua America's headquarters in Bryn Mawr, at their shareholder meeting, and in front of Aqua's CEO Nick DeBenedictis' mansion in Ardmore.

Unfortunately, many residents felt forced to leave the park for reasons including fear of losing the $2,500 offer, uncertainty of what Aqua would do on June 1, and termination of their leases.

By Allison Petryk, Lee Clark, and  Ray Kemble - Energy Justice Network, January 29, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

“Keeping 700,000 acres of our public lands on the table for the drillers is like letting quarterback Tom Brady keep his deflated footballs for the Super Bowl. This is the Big Game and Tom Wolf is blowing it. I have a front row seat.” – Ray Kemble, Dimock PA.

“The compendium of scientific studies that convinced New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to ban fracking shows that it cannot be done safely. Without further action to reclaim already damaged lands, transition to clean energy, and ban shale development across Pennsylvania, Wolf’s words lack substance.” – Allison Petryk, Energy Justice Network

PHILADELPHIA, Pa. – On Thursday, Governor Tom Wolf will announce a moratorium on new oil and gas leases in state lands, but will leave nearly 700,000 acres of Pennsylvania’s state forests on the table for drilling.

The PA Department of Conservation and Natural Resources states that 385,400 acres have already been leased for Marcellus Shale drilling and 290,000 acres could be developed through private leases.

Thursday’s order does not stop the Department of Environmental Protection from permitting wells, pipelines, or compressor stations on existing leases, where there is room for as many as 6,000 wells, according to PA DCNR. If all of those wells are drilled and developed, approximately 25,000 forested acres would be converted for roads, pipeline right of ways, and well pads. As of October, PA DCNR had approved more than 1,000 Marcellus wells on state forests and nearly 600 of them — clustered on about 230 well pads — had been drilled.

According to the PA DEP online permit report, the Wolf administration permitted 22 shale gas wells for five counties in just three days from January 21-23. One of those well permits, Chief Oil’s Teel 4H, is within a mile of a cluster of 19 water wells in Dimock, PA that were spoiled by gas drilling in 2008.

By Alex Lotorto and Adam Hasz - Frack University, October 30, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Link to the report

Shale gas operators have been cited for a total of 337 well casing violations in Pennsylvania out of an estimated 8,473 wells drilled.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s compliance and well count data, there has been one well casing violation for every twenty-five wells drilled in the decade since unconventional shale gas development began.

Well casing violations are cited when the structural integrity of a shale gas well is lost. Improperly casing the borehole may result in contamination entering groundwater resources such as springs and aquifers. Well casing violations fall under seven categories, some of those categories include; improperly or insufficiently installed cement, failure to report insufficient or improper cement within a twenty-four hour period; and failure to case and cement to prevent migrations into fresh groundwater.

Two companies with the greatest number of casing violations include Chesapeake Energy, with fifty-four violations and Talisman Energy Inc with forty-one violations, each accounting for about six percent of their total well casing violations. Operators with ten or more wells who had the greatest percentage of well casing violations were Chief Oil and Gas and Exxon Mobil, both having approximately 11.5 percent of wells drilled with well casing violations.

The data review was completed by a partnership of environmental groups including Energy Justice Network and SustainUs.  Researchers sourced well count data from the PA DEP Spud Report and the well casing violations were counted using the online PA DEP Compliance Report, both available on the department’s website.

Energy Justice Network mission is to support communities threatened by polluting energy and waste technologies. Taking direction from a grassroots base and the Principles of Environmental Justice, EJN advocates a clean energy, zero-emission, zero-waste future for all.

SustainUS’ mission is “to empower young people to advance sustainable development. Through proactive education, research and advocacy at the policy-making level and at the grassroots, we are building a future in which all people recognize the inherent equality and interdependence of social, economic, and environmental sustainability. We strive to reflect our values through the diversity of members and projects, our ongoing commitment to educating ourselves and others, and the way we live our lives.”