SRBC: OM- We Honor the River

Another way we can honor the Susquehanna River and try to change the hearts and minds of the people who sit on the Susquehanna River Basin Commission. This Commission is not listening to the citizens of New York, Maryland, and New Jersey. When will they start listening?

SRBC Hearing: Citizens Oppose Water Withdrawals, Then Commission Approves Permits Anyway!

The Susquehanna River in French Azilum, Bradford County, PA
Photo: Carol Manuel

Jay Sweeney's testimony before the members of the Susquehanna River Basin Commission at the hearing in Wilkes-Barre, PA, December 15th:

"The mission of the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC), which is defined in the Compact, is to enhance public welfare through comprehensive planning, water supply allocation, and management of the water resources of the Susquehanna River Basin.

 DEP reports over 1300 wells were drilled in 2010 and over 300 in the first quarter of this year. At 5 million gallons per fracked well, that is approximately 8 billion gallons of water used in the hydrofracking process in 16 months. The International Lake Environment Committee estimates the volume of Harvey’s Lake at .03 cubic kilometers or 8 billion gallons. In less that 2 years time, the equivalent of Pennsylvania’s largest natural lake by volume will have been squandered, turned into untreatable radioactive wastewater. This does not enhance the public welfare. It is a threat to the public welfare. This is unconscionable!

 We are tired of hearing pandering politicians, insulting industry insiders and radio, television and print advertizing trying to convince us that the natural gas industry is here to create jobs and benefit our community when in reality, they are here to rape, pillage and plunder our natural resources. make their profits and leave a devastated environment in their wake.

 The SRBC has been culpable in this travesty. Pennsylvania’s water is our commonwealth property. It is time for SRBC to live up to its mission.

We the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania say, stop stealing our water! Stop selling it to an industry that turns it into radioactive sludge! Stop dumping it into our rivers and streams! No more permits! No more withdrawals!

From The Times Leader report:

"Opponents of hydraulic fracturing, the controversial process used to extract natural gas from the Marcellus Shale, urged SRBC not to approve 26 applications for water withdrawal permits within the Susquehanna River Basin on its agenda, most of which were submitted by gas drillers.

SRBC regulates water withdrawals within the basin through permitting.

The commissioners approved 24 of those applications, denying one driller’s application and deferring another from an individual, and in doing so prompted angry shouts:

This proceeding is a joke! You’re not taking our water!

The meeting closed with protestors chanting an apparently prepared statement read from cards and nearly chasing commission members from the room.

“Members of the Susquehanna River community, this is a crisis,” they chanted.

The Susquehanna River is being sacrificed. Natural gas drilling is poisoning our water. We know this. We will stop this. We have no choice. We will protect our water. We are here to help, and everyone must help. Our future depends on it. We honor the river; we honor our lives.

Read more: http://www.timesleader.com/news/SRBC-meets-in-Wilkes-Barre-Twp-gas-opponents-protest.html#ixzz1giES5Mf1

Click here to see photos of the members of the SRBC.

The SRBC is a rubber stamper .

They are not protecting the Susquehanna River or the people who live near it. It's shameful!

How Much Water?

Kayaking at Wysox, PA
Photo: Don Williams

The gas drilling industry is crafty at presenting facts to the public.  For instance, it tries to downplay how many chemicals and how much is put into the ground during drilling and fracking.  You'd think it was nothing to worry about- just stuff you find underneath your sink!  This article by Wes Skillings of the Rocket-Courier writes about the calculations of Dan Barrett, Bradford County District Attorney, who likes to play around with numbers in his spare time.  He set out to help readers visualize how much water two million gallons is.  He concludes that

two million gallons would fill a one-acre pond to the depth of six feet, two inches.

How many tanker trucks would be required to haul two million gallons of water?  Barrett estimates it would take 400 loads, each carrying 5,000 gallons (20 tons).  Here's another visual:  A million gallons would fill a football field surrounded by a wall 3.71 feet high and filled to the top with water.

Wikipedia says it takes 660,000 gallons of water to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool.  You could fill that pool more than three times every day with a reservoir of two million gallons, Barrett calculates.

Now think of how many gas companies are all lined up day after day, night after night, sucking water from our rivers, streams, and lakes.  In Bradford County, PA, there are many water withdrawal sites in operation.  Companies apply to the Susquehanna River Basin Commission and get permission to steal withdraw millions upon millions of gallons of perfectly good water every day.  After the gas industry gets a hold of this precious resource, it soon becomes toxic waste and must be disposed of, never to be returned to the Earth again, except as unusable, poison waste.

Do we want to take all this water, a finite resource,  and throw it away by the millions of gallons every single day in thousands of places?  The scale, the enormity, of this situation is mind-boggling.  So those who would minimize the impact of consumptive water use are not thinking about the big picture.  I think it is the seduction of the Almight Dollar at work.

Here is the Rocket-Courier article:  LINK

Susquehanna River: Gas Industry Sucking Up Millions of Gallons Of Fresh Water

Our Dear Susquehanna

A workshop was held yesterday, July 20, in Tioga County, N.Y., to explain and receive input on a real-time water quality monitoring network that is now expanding into the Southern Tier Region of New York.  The Susquehanna River Basin Commission recently opened a new satellite office in Athens Township, PA.  The office is staffed by individuals working to monitor and enforce compliance with laws that protect water resources in the Susquehanna River Basin which includes areas of New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.

The demand for water from smaller rivers and streams is steadily increasing, mostly due to the natural gas industry, so this issue of water extraction is a serious one.  Gas drilling corporations pay an application fee and then a fee of $0.20 per thousand gallons of water up to a limit of two million gallons per day. I'm not a math wizard, but I think that comes out to $400 per day.  I am assuming that any and all gas drillers who want water can take that amount daily.  Other energy production companies are allowed much more water.   For example, the nuclear power plant in Berwick, PA, is allowed to take 40 million gallons every day.  The operation doesn't use that much, but they could.

I think it is important to bear in mind that water stolen taken from our rivers and streams for the purpose of drilling and hydrofracking is water that will never be returned to us in usuable form.  It is transformed into toxic waste.  Much of it never comes to the surface again, but remains deep inside the earth still laden with toxic chemicals which can and do migrate in unpredictable ways to unpredicatable places, including precious watersheds.

Read the whole article from the Towanda Daily Review here.

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!

WATER IS PRECIOUS

WE CANNOT DRINK GAS

SRBC Takes Enforcement Action Against Natural Gas Driller

In April the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, through the Office of the Director of Communications, Susan Obleski, initiated enforcement action against Ohio-based Belden & Blake Corporation, a natural gas drilling company, for using water without approval from SRBC. The water was used to hydraulically fracture the Marcellus shale formation in Smithfield Township, Bradford County, PA.

Just one more example of how the gas industry violates the few regulations they do have to follow. Read the press release here.

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!