Posts Tagged ‘Trout Unlimited’

Drilling industry concerns anglers, hunters

By Tom Veneskytvenesky@timesleader.com
Sports Reporter

The talk inside Giles Evans’ sporting goods shop has changed recently.

For years hunters and anglers have come into Brady and Cavany Sporting Goods, in the heart of Tunkhannock, to swap stories about where the fish are biting and the big bucks are roaming. And every day, Evans leans on the counter and takes it all in.

But recently, in addition to hunting and fishing, a new topic has sprung to the forefront: gas drilling.

Evans said he hears more and more hunters and anglers expressing concerns about how the drilling boom will affect the streams they fish and the woods they hunt. It’s a concern that continues to grow as quickly as the well pads dotting the ground in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

“This is a big event up here,” Evans said. “A lot of people are making money, but a lot of people are concerned about the land and the water.”

Anglers, Evans said, are worried about the pristine trout streams in the area – Tunkhannock, Meshoppen, Mehoopany and Bowman’s creeks to name a few. They wonder if the streams can withstand the water withdrawals needed for the drilling process or, worse yet, what happens if they become contaminated.

“Anglers consider these places as pristine and they’re really concerned for the creeks,” Evans said. “The gas drillers are putting a lot of pads in around Meshoppen, near Whites Creek. That is a fantastic little trout stream. God forbid something happens there.”

Or anywhere else for that matter, according to Joe Ackourey, an avid fly fisherman and member of the Stanley Cooper Sr. Chapter of Trout Unlimited.

Ackourey said the area of Wyoming County and northern Luzerne County that is targeted for drilling is home to numerous high-quality wild trout streams. The majority of those streams, he said, flow through remote mountainous areas and could be easily damaged.

The disturbance created by gas drilling – clear-cutting for pads, erosion, increased water temperatures and water withdrawals – can be fatal to the wild trout and other aquatic life that inhabits the streams.

“I just don’t like the major changes that are going to take place to these ecosystems all for the sake of the mighty dollar,” Ackourey said. “I fear for those streams and the wild trout that inhabit them.”

Lease helps hunting club

Dallas resident Russ Bigus has hunted the mountains and farmlands of Sullivan and Wyoming counties for decades. He enjoys the abundant wildlife in the area and the pristine landscape.

Bigus also supports the gas drilling boom and the economic benefit that comes with it.

If done properly, Bigus feels, gas drilling can actually enhance the region’s natural areas.

The money paid to farmers and landowners who enter into leases with gas companies will make it easier for them to keep their land as open space, Bigus said.

While he admits there is reason to be concerned about environmental degradation, the revenue generated from drilling could prevent open space from becoming something else.

It has happened in other parts of the state, Bigus said.

“In Juniata County it used to be all farms with great habitat for wild pheasants,” he said. “That’s all gone now. Those farms have been sold for development.

“That doesn’t have to happen any more with the income generated from natural gas drilling. Hunting opportunities will remain the same or get better with our open space here remaining open.”

Bigus said his hunting club, the White Ash Landowners Association located in Cherry Township, Sullivan County, currently has a gas lease agreement for its 5,000 acres.

Much of the club’s land has been degraded by strip mining in the past, he said, and the impact from gas drilling is minimal in comparison.

“It’s a very short-lived impact from what I’ve seen,” he said. “And our land is even more financially stable now.”

Still, Bigus cautioned that drilling can be an environmental disaster if not regulated properly.

According to Luzerne County property records, private hunting and fishing clubs that have leased land for drilling include North Mountain Club in Fairmount Township, Mayflower Rod & Gun Club in Ross Township and Rattlesnake Gulch Hunting Club in Ross Township.

“Scary what could happen”

Dr. Tom Jiunta, who resides in Lehman Township, hikes and fishes around the Ricketts Glen area and near his cabin in Laporte, Sullivan County.

Both areas are potential hotspots for gas drilling activity, and Jiunta fears what could happen to the streams and trails, such as the Loyalsock Trail, that he and countless others enjoy.

Aside from the major disruption of clearing land and the potential for pollution, Jiunta said other effects could be devastating, such as noise from drilling, air pollution and the introduction of invasive species as equipment from other states is moved into the remote locations of Northeastern Pennsylvania.

“There’s a lot of subtle impacts that may not be noticed until a few years from now,” Jiunta said.

Despite his concerns, Jiunta said he isn’t totally opposed to drilling if it’s done properly “in the right places with the right regulations in place.” Pennsylvania is lacking as far with the latter, he said. “You can’t depend on the industry to police itself and we don’t have enough DEP (state Department of Environmental Protection) staff to keep on top of this.

“It’s really scary what could happen.”

As far as hunters go, some already have been affected by gas drilling. Evans, the sporting goods store owner, said hunters have told him that they lost their traditional hunting spots in Susquehanna County last deer season when the areas were deemed off limits due to gas drilling activity.

Even in areas where gas companies halted operations for the first week of deer season, Evans said, hunters were affected.

“Customers told me that in the Hop Bottom and Springville areas, the gas companies were out before the season with helicopters laying cables for seismic testing,” Evans said. “It was a noisy process and that scared a lot of deer out of the area and changed their patterns.”

Compromise needed

Bigus agreed that some hunting area will be lost while drilling commences, but believes conflicts can be reduced by an open line of communication between landowners and gas companies.

“For example, make sure they agree that there will be no activity for the first week of deer season, and have them do most of the work in the summer,” he said. “It’s important to establish a good relationship.”

And for all the concerns expressed daily by his customers, Evans said there is at least one example of how drilling can be done with little impact.

A well drilled near Nicholson, he said, was located next to a road and didn’t venture into the woods, lessening the impact on hunters and the environment, according to Evans.

But for that one positive, a looming negative experience continues to leave a sour taste with hunters and anglers.

In 2009, the Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. was fined $120,000 by DEP after methane gas infiltrated into private water wells in Dimock Township. In addition, between 6,000 and 8,000 gallons of fracking fluid leaked from a pipe at a drill site in the area and contaminated a nearby wetland.

This year Cabot was fined an additional $240,000 and ordered to shut down three wells because of methane contamination of water wells.

While DEP has prohibited Cabot from drilling in the area for one year, the damage was already done when it came to the views of hunters and anglers.

“That business in Dimock really has hunters and anglers concerned,” Evans said. “Everybody’s worried about it because there’s so much unknown, and the Cabot incident didn’t help.

“A lot of people that talk about it in the store just hope that they get done, get out and nothing gets harmed. In the meantime, they’re scared to death about what could happen.”

Copyright: Times Leader

Debate rages over Delaware River watershed

Sporting groups, conservationists and anti-drilling neighbors protest the large-scale gas exploration.

MICHAEL RUBINKAM Associated Press Writer

PLEASANT MOUNT, Pa. — A few hundred yards from Louis Matoushek’s farmhouse is a well that could soon produce not only natural gas, but a drilling boom in the wild and scenic Delaware River watershed.

Energy companies have leased thousands of acres of land in Pennsylvania’s unspoiled northeastern tip, hoping to tap vast stores of gas in a sprawling rock formation — the Marcellus Shale — that some experts believe could become the nation’s most productive gas field.

Plenty of folks like Matoushek are eager for the gas, and the royalty checks, to start flowing — including farmers who see Marcellus money as a way to keep their struggling operations afloat.

“It’s a depressed area,” Matoushek said. “This is going to mean new jobs, real jobs, not government jobs.”

Standing in the way is a loose coalition of sporting groups, conservationists and anti-drilling neighbors. They contend that large-scale gas exploration so close to crucial waterways will threaten drinking water, ruin a renowned wild trout fishery, wreck property values, and transform a rural area popular with tourists into an industrial zone with constant noise and truck traffic.

Both sides are furiously lobbying the Delaware River Basin Commission, the powerful federal-interstate compact agency that monitors water supplies for 15 million people, including half the population of New York City. The commission has jurisdiction because the drilling process will require withdrawing huge amounts of water from the watershed’s streams and rivers and because of the potential for groundwater pollution.

The well on Matoushek’s 200-acre spread in the northern Pocono Mountains in Wayne County is up first. The commission is reviewing an application by Stone Energy Corp. of Lafayette, La., to extract gas from the well — the first of what could be thousands of applications by energy companies to sink wells in an area roughly the size of Connecticut.

Stone Energy’s application has already generated more than 1,700 written comments to the DRBC. The company, which paid a $70,000 penalty for drilling the Matoushek well without DRBC approval in 2008, has already received a permit from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

Eager gas companies have leased more than 300 square miles of watershed land, conservation officials estimate.

“This is certainly just the start. There’s a lot of acreage out there, and a lot of people interested in leasing their land,” said Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the anti-drilling Delaware Riverkeeper Network.

The Marcellus Shale is a rock formation 6,000 to 8,000 feet beneath Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Ohio, including about 36 percent of the Delaware River basin. New drilling techniques now allow affordable access to supplies in the Marcellus and other shales in the U.S. that once were too expensive to tap.

Energy companies combine horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” a technique that injects vast amounts of water, along with sand and chemicals, underground to break up the shale and release the gas.

While gas companies refuse to identify the chemicals they use — claiming that is proprietary information — critics cite contamination problems in other natural gas drilling fields. They worry that unregulated fracking can taint drinking water, deplete aquifers and produce briny wastewater that can kill fish. In Dimock, Pa., about 40 miles west of the Matoushek well but outside the Delaware basin, state environmental regulators say that cracked casings on fracked wells have tainted residential water supplies with methane gas.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced last month that it will study the impact of fracking on the environment and human health. The EPA said in 2004 there was no evidence that fracking threatens drinking water quality, but critics, including a veteran engineer in the Denver regional EPA office, argued that report’s methodology was flawed.

The industry contends environmental concerns are overblown. It says the drilling techniques are safe and that there has never been a proven case of groundwater contamination caused by fracking — in part because fracking occurs far below the water table. Congress exempted hydraulic fracturing from federal oversight in 2005.

Dozens of people told the DRBC at a recent public hearing why they oppose the watershed drilling. A few supporters called it an economic boon and a property-rights issue.

Richard Kreznar, who owns property in the Pennsylvania riverfront community of Damascus, said gas drilling primarily benefits large landowners and exploration companies.

“After the Delaware River and the stream next to my house are messed up, what compensation will I get? Who will put it back together again?” he asked DRBC staff.

Lee Hartman, the Delaware River chairman for Trout Unlimited, worries that large water withdrawals required for fracking will create low stream flows in the Delaware’s tributaries, damaging fish habitat. For the Matoushek well, Stone Energy wants to take 700,000 gallons a day from the Lackawaxen River’s narrow west branch.

Hartman and others say the DRBC should first study the cumulative environmental impacts of drilling in the Delaware watershed, and pass drilling regulations, before it allows any gas extraction to take place. The agency has asked for $250,000 in federal funds for a study, but commissioners have not said whether they will wait before voting on Matoushek’s well.

Opponents say they will sue if Stone Energy’s application is approved.

Downstream communities that rely on the Delaware for drinking water are worried about the coming gas boom. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg opposes any drilling in the watershed, while the Philadelphia City Council has asked the basin commission for an environmental study.

New York state regulators have put a moratorium on drilling in the Marcellus region, saying they won’t approve permits until they are finished drafting new regulations.

Back in northeastern Pennsylvania, Matoushek, 68, a semiretired farmer who signed a lease with Stone Energy three years ago, said he is counting on royalty checks from gas production to help fund his golden years and secure the land for future generations of his family. As far he’s concerned, the benefits far outweigh any theoretical harm.

Copyright: Times Leader