Friday, December 2, 2011

Man charged in spill near PA gas-drilling site (With Update)

You can read all about it here. (There's a picture here which says it ALL.)

In essence, a Georgia man has admitted to PA State Police that he dumped approximately 800 gallons of dangerous materials from a Bradford County gas well site onto  state game lands early Thursday morning.  He now sits in a West Burlington correctional facility with bail set at $100,000.

The discovery was made by a man as he pulled out of his driveway and saw the pool of viscous black liquid.  It was described as a gooey, black material which was about 3 inches deep, covering approximately 100 X 30 feet.  The man who discovered the problem said he believes the liquid was dumped Wednesday night.
Tire tracks likely tell the story, he said. What it looks like to me is a tanker truck pulled out in there.  It looks to me like they were going to go out into a field and dump, and they got stuck, so they just dumped it there and just left.

This will be happening more and more in gas fields everywhere.

Latest Update:  (12/03/2011)
http://thedailyreview.com/news/cleanup-continues-of-dumped-sludge-in-state-gamelands-in-bradford-county-1.1240352

2 comments:

smurfette said...

He was charged with SCATTERING RUBBISH? That sounds like he threw a gum wrapper there or a McDonald's coffee cup. The charge should be endangering the welfare of a child/adult or intentional pollution of government land. This isn't rubbish- it's toxic waste.I know that government officials are, in general, in the pockets of big gas and oil companies, but are they going to let the whole state of PA go the way of Love Canal in Niagara Falls? Are the very old and very young going to start having cancer problems in much higher percentages than the national average? When is somebody going to notice that fracking fluid cannot be accurately called "brine". It's toxic waste; not some substance like salt water in which you grow teeny sea monkeys.And whose backyard is all this toxicity going to wind up in? It looks like the toss of the dice (or the intentional emptying of a truck)and once it's dumped, it's a tremendous job to clean up (remember the guy who had THREE FEET DEEP of soil from his whole front yard carted away by the gas company? They said it was nontoxic, but then why did they cart it away to who-knows-where?)and the eco-system is compromised.When we saw the pipeline being installed right through a place with a sign "PROTECTED WETLANDS" I realized that nothing is sacred to corporations. It's dollars and cents with no sense.

TRenick said...

I'm sure that is why the gas company nearby, not even sure if it was their mess to clean up was the first to respond and to notify DEP. And if you read the articles available online it was a result of their internal investigation that revealed the culprit who, by the way works for a local company, and reported this to the state police. And I am also aware that it was the gas company that paid for the cleanup and provided the manpower and resources.