Sootypaws Journal

Drilling Industry Videos

Fri, 11 May 2012 21:03:52 GMT

YouTube has a large number of videos related to oil and gas exploration. Some are from the concerned environmentalist (ShaleShock) or surface owner (WVSORO) perspectives. It didn't take industry long to realize the public relations potential. We'll take a brief look at two industry leaders' videos in this post.

Chesapeake Energy has a set of 6 videos which describe the steps in drilling a well and producing natural gas. There are truly educational moments, such as the description of laying a pipeline. Viewers of these videos, though, should remember that this is advertising, that facts are being withheld, and that certain elements of the process are not shown at all.

Drilling site selection

Preparation and drilling

Natural gas well completion

Natural gas well production

Aqua Renew water recycling

Well site reclamation

These videos are worth watching but they aren't telling the whole story.

Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation has some notoriety because of its activities in the Dimock area in NE Pennsylvania. Their videos are a public relations effort geared especially for residents in that area where the company is currently active in the Marcellus region.

I'll mention just a few videos here. Again, these are advertising and don't tell the whole story.

Well pad tour

Constructing a well pad

Road repair

Cabot and clean water in Dimock

This shows the EPA test results for one water well affected by Cabot drilling in Dimock.

More soon!

The Garden in May

Sun, 06 May 2012 22:16:00 GMT

Our garden survived winter and some of the things Molly planted last year are still producing, such as the snow peas and lettuce. This spring Molly has been getting the garden ready for summer.

		This is shot from outside the garden toward the east side of the fence. A lawn is slowly appearing on the former forest floor outside the fence.

		Molly is preparing to plant pole bean seeds where the tomatoes were last year. This is the north bed of the garden. The south bed is still partially filled with vegetables planted last year.

		Molly started seeds in late winter. Each day she's been setting the plants in the garden to acclimate before transplanting.

		Molly brought back two 60 gallon barrels from a visit to Daria and Jeannene in Ohio. They're both filled with water now and have screens across the top to prevent mosquitos from laying eggs. These are for water during dry periods.

		This winter Molly transplanted some Jerusalem Artichokes from our neighbor, Wanda Lane. Wanda's large patch is filled with tall plants with pretty yellow flowers in October.

		Molly also transplanted some horse radish of Wanda's. Both are doing well, though the deer appear to like the Jerusalem Artichokes.

More soon!

The Garden in February

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 22:28:36 GMT

We've had a bit of snow twice so far this year, not much. The conduit hoops have done well to support the plastic covering under the snow's weight. We've begun making plans for summer's garden while still picking greens from the winter garden. Yummm!

Gas Well Study, 2011

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 22:23:59 GMT

We've completed our Gas Well Study report for 2011. We completely changed the layout of the report and how we organized the material. We think it's a lot better looking and the presentation makes the material more accessible. The report can be downloaded from our website and we have pages on the website that provide more information and photographs.

We've already begun our work for 2012. We've had domestic water supply samples from three locations near wells tested by a laboratory. Each test result is helping us better understand the possible (and actual) negative effects of gas well drilling and fracturing.

Winter Garden

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 22:32:21 GMT

Our first attempt at a winter vegetable garden is going well. Molly was able to harvest greens, carrots and radishes on New Year's Day.

The cats normally aren't allowed in the garden. Molly let them in while she was cleaning up the tomato bed for next summer. Kitty Boy explored the winter vegetable bed.

The beds are 16 feet long. This one is 8 feet wide. The winter bed is 4 feet wide, with metal tubing hoops bent to support the plastic cover. We keep the bed covered with plastic when the temperature drops below 35 degrees. When it is very cold (below about 25 degrees) we also cover the plants with spun row cover. When it gets extremely cold, Molly will cover the plants with leaves, then row cover and finally the plastic over the hoops.

It's not all work in the garden. Here Molly is texting while gardening. She's wearing a blaze vest because hunting season didn't end until New Year's.

More soon!

Bobo's Passing

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 02:59:51 GMT

Bobo passed away quietly early Tuesday morning, October 11th. He was in his spot between us, his head on a pillow. He's been such an important part of our lives since 2000 that it's hard to write this, even a month later.

He made it through last winter and even at the end had an amazing spirit. This photo was taken on Sunday when we were out in the "old" garden. We miss him.

The other cats have reorganized their lives without him relatively painlessly. Little Peach Blossom has discovered a new place to go to in the house. She likes to walk from the loft, on the beams above the kitchen, to either the bookshelf above the sink where Molly keeps some of her cookbooks or to a child's chair hanging high overhead.

Before we started this version of Sootypaws News it was entirely on our website. You can still see the old pages from years ago. There are lots of photos of Bobo, too.

More soon!

Gas Well Study Updates

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:40:33 GMT

I've fallen behind in our updates so I'll combine everything into one post.

First off, there's a great article from the New York Timesthat we highly recommend: "The Fracturing of Pennsylvania" by Eliza Griswold. The article appeared in last Sunday's Magazine. It's about the problems some people who have leased their minerals have experienced with Range Resources in southwest Pennsylvania. The health issues are similar to those we've heard about occurring in this state and elsewhere. The company's run-around is also typical.

We've posted a couple of new videos on YouTube (www.youtube.com/GasWellStudy).The most recent is You Get Used To It. We include more of our recorded interview with Paul Phillips (a Kanawha county resident) in this video and for that alone we believe it's worth watching.

In September we presented our comments to the state for the proposed new regulationcovering horizontal natural gas wells. We're disappointed with what the Department of Environmental Protection has come up with. What's happening in this state is that while members of the legislature are attempting to create new regulations for oil and gas, industry and the political establishment (e.g., the governor) are blocking it. What we're getting instead are regulations written (more or less, more than less) by industry that do nothing to protect the health and safety of the state's citizens or the environment. Our comments have the state's proposed regulation appended.

We've created a document called ThirtyWells that tabulates the problems we've seen in our area with regulatory compliance and environmental issues such as contaminated drinking water supplies. Industry's awful compliance record in our area is nothing unusual. It's sad that it's these people who get to write their own regulations in this state.

And we've written an interim report titled Fracture Gel's Possible Synergistic Influence for Chloride's Effects on Vegetation. Last summer we made some trial applications on vegetation of fracture gel we made using kerosene, guar gum and water. Those applications with the gel alone showed no adverse effects. When we added 5000 mg/l chloride the adverse effects were much worse than we'd expect from chloride alone. It's possible that fracture gel enhances the negative effects of chloride. We'll be looking at this again next summer. The report discusses the types of organic solvents used in making fracture gel (such as kerosene, diesel, and 2-BE). In West Virginia fracture flowback (including gel) is land applied, except for Marcellus wells.

More soon!

A Visit to the Kanawha State Forest

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 22:59:11 GMT

Last Monday Molly and I took a day trip to the Kanawha State Forest. Molly and her parents had been there years ago but I never had. The Forest is about 8 miles south of Charleston and is beautiful. The CCC set up a camp there (Camp Kanawha) back in 1938 and built trails and buildings in the Forest. We wanted to have a day off, but we also wanted to look at some of the gas wells in the Kanawha State Forest. Just like us, the state, in the case of many of its state parks,owns only the surface. This is true also for the U.S. forest system in this state. Gas companies want to drill in the Monongahela National Forest.

		The Kanawha State Forest is noted for its wildflowers. This is cardinal flower which blooms in late summer. We saw them growing along a well road that was in a hollow running next to (sometimes through) a stream. Cardinal flower likes marshy wet places.

		At the end of the well road were two gas wells drilled in the 1960s. One of the wells had a sign warning of hydrogen sulfide, a poisonous gas that sometimes comes up with the natural gas.

		Molly took this of me while I was making a video record of the site. The second well is visible to the left. None of the wells we saw had any kind of security, like fencing. That's surprising because of the inherent dangers at these sites, including an unsecured 20 foot high ladder up a tank at this well site.

		We left the well road and walked up out of the hollow on the Beech Glen Trail. Mountain bikes can use this trail going in this direction (up hill). Further ahead we went through a tumble of boulders. At the top of the ridge we took another trail.

		This is a well drilled only a few years ago. Molly is barely visible standing on the edge of the pad in a bare area. We took samples and there was elevated chloride where Molly is standing.

		We noted signs of animal visits to the bare area. These are deep scratches made by wild turkey claws. We also saw deer tracks. While we were at the site we saw a group of three finches pecking the dirt in this area, the first time we've seen finches do this, though it's been that members of the finch family like salt.

		After seeing our last well we took the Wildcat Ridge Trail back to the car. This is another trail used by mountain bikes.The tree lying across the trail is close to 2 feet in diameter. A ramp has been constructed for cyclists to get their bikes over. Cyclists who really like a thrill probably speed up one side of the ramp and down the other. Since it was a quiet day in the park we didn't get to see anyone do this.

More soon!

Two New YouTube Videos

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 23:41:40 GMT

We've added two new videos to the GasWellStudy channel at YouTube (youtube.com/gaswellstudy). In the first, Gas Well Study Cooking Class: Making Fracking Gel, we make a gallon of liquid gel fracking fluid. This results from part of our continuing study of the effects of chloride on vegetation. This year we began applying other components in waste that is normally land applied, in this case fracture gel alone and then with chloride.

The second video consists of two interviews with West Virginians who have lost their domestic water supplies due to the effects of Marcellus drilling. It is titled Bottled Water because once their supplies were poisoned, the only solution now for them is buying their water. The state doesn't seem to intervene when a driller contaminates water. Affected persons must seek redress through the courts.

We're working on more videos and have lots of great interview material from both Bonnie and Paul who appear in Bottled Water.

Once I can figure out how to configure the YouTube embedding for size, I'll start put in the normal video links. Until then, clicking on the titles will get you there, or go to www.youtube.com/gaswellstudy.

Our Garden

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 23:37:22 GMT

It's been such a whir around here the past couple of months I haven't had a chance to write or post anything about a really important addition to our home -- the new vegetable garden. We began clearing just after the first of the year. Originally we thought we'd have to clear a half acre or so but we seem to have been lucky and have achieved our desires with the cutting of a lot less trees.

We have photos of the stages of clearing and creating the garden, but there's not time to present them right now.

This was taken the beginning of July and shows Molly standing between the two raised beds in the garden. To her right are the marigolds and standing even taller are the tomatoes. In front of Molly is the large bed with about 100 square feet planted with soybeans (Molly's harvested the last of these recently and they're drying on the porch before shelling). This large bed will be our fall and winter garden. Molly's already planting seeds.

We'll be having more about the garden and the new space we've cleared. It's become a favorite of the cats and we now have a place where we can watch the sky at night in the summer. Plus we're getting fresh organic vegetables!

More soon!

New YouTube Video

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 23:56:58 GMT

We put up another YouTube video yesterday, titled Natural Gas: Blunders and Numbers.

The state was not able to pass new regulations for the oil and gas industry in the most recent session earlier this winter. That's not really a huge surprise, considering how much pressure the industry was putting on both the legislative and executive branches to do nothing. It's always putting pressure so that nothing is done which is why things are in the shape they are now: contaminated streams and rivers, contaminated ground water, well site accidents, and more.

Our newest video is about what we've seen in our area in respect to industry's compliance to the state's laws. It's not a pretty picture, especially when the numbers get totaled and compared to the 55,000 producing wells in this state. West Virginia has a serious problem.

Attempts now are being made to pass new regulations during an interim session. Our fears are that whatever happens it will be more of the same.

More soon!

Song of the Wood Thrush

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 22:33:07 GMT

We have birds singing in our yard and the surrounding woods year-round, though it is awfully quiet in the winter in comparison to late spring and early summer when migratory songbirds fill our woods.

The slowly changing song of the wood thrush is enchanting. They've been singing for about a month now. For a week or two, one would serenade me from a tree close by while I worked in the shop. Usually they're more reclusive and not that readily seen.

I've used our video camera to record a wood thrush singing in early evening. This one was high in a tree in the woods just west of our home. It was windy when I recorded this and it's impossible to hear other wood thrushes responding, frogs at the small "pond" between our home and the new vegetable garden, or other singing birds.

The segment here is about 90 seconds long (2.3 MB file size).

More soon!

Our First YouTube Video

Sat, 07 May 2011 23:05:44 GMT

The end of March Molly and I purchased an inexpensive used video camera on eBay along with software so that we can edit what we shoot. We want to make advocacy videos in support of the effort in this state to have oil and gas operations better regulated and also in order to show the problems we are seeing when we look at gas wells.

Of course we'll also be making videos of cats and the woods, too! And we're hoping to make some videos showing how we do things in the blacksmith shop for Horton Brasses' blog where we've been posting.

Yesterday we uploaded our first video on YouTube, titled Three Natural Gas Wells. I shot footage while I was looking at gas well sites on 14 April. I gave an impromptu narrative while filming. We're still novices with the camera and the sound quality isn't what we hope for. And we're learning the ropes for the editing software. We've since gotten microphones which work great (we bought a camera which had jacks for a microphone and earphones).

We had the camera along with us when we visited the site in the following post and Molly filmed a great interview.

More soon!

Flowback

Sat, 07 May 2011 23:01:17 GMT

Last Saturday Molly and I drove to a gas well site several miles east of us. The surface owner met us part way there and led us over narrow twisty roads past farms and houses.

The well we visited was drilled and completed in autumn 2008. This is one of a number of recently drilled wells that have adversely affected local groundwater and soil.

The pad was covered with lush tall clover, except for large bare areas. The owner said the clover is a recent attempt after a number of unsuccessful tries to get something to grow. He didn't expect it to last.

He pointed out the lack of deer trails through the clover, said that the local deer population dropped dramatically after the well was fractured, with dead bodies being found in the hollow below the well.

Molly noticed right off the numerous dead trees at two edges of the pad. He said that was where the gas drilling crew blew the fracture flowback while they sat in their trucks around a curve, away from the pad. He said that some of the trees' bark began to fall off within a day.

When there was a forest fire that burned some acres of our woods in the 1980s, it was so hot that all the organic matter in the soil was destroyed. In spite of this, sassafras trees were springing up in the bare soil a year later.

There were no sassafras trees in the blighted area at this well site.

At the well site on Saturday, we took soil samples and in the bare areas on the pad found chloride at 595 parts per million. In one of the bare areas pit liner was visible along about 35 feet.

The surface owner is angry, understandably so. He's become disabled due to heavy metal poisoning, which he attributes to his tainted water supply.

Flowback is what drillers call the liquid that comes up out of a well after it's been fractured -- a mixture of chemicals, brine, crude petroleum, and naturally occurring substances (like radium and arsenic).

Flowback is also the anger individuals and communities feel because of how they've been treated by an oil and gas industry that is more interested in money than people and the environment.

Shale Gas Drilling in the News

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 22:56:12 GMT

There's been increased focus on natural gas drilling in a variety of news venues recently. The focus has been on environmental problems and environmental justice issues rather than how great industry is.

In early March the New York Times published a series of articles by Ian Urbina called Drilling Down. The first can be found here (there's a link to the whole series on that page). The three articles deal with the problem of contaminants in fracture flowback, including radioactive ones brought up from underground. This is especially a problem with the Marcellus shale in the northeast. Regulators and industry seem to have a difficulty finding a way to adequately deal with the huge volumes of waste water. At this point in time a lot of this waste is released, after totally inadequate "treatment," into surface water used as drinking water sources for millions of people.

Supporting the New York Times' articles are interactive features, a huge library of documents (over 1,100 pages culled from EPA, industry, and state regulatory sources), and a great 7 minute long video about the issue of air emissions from wells and compressor stations. The video, library and interactive features best can be seen if you have high speed.

Also worthwhile checking out is National Geographic's series of articles which can be seen here.

The West Virginia legislature has been working on a bill devoted to regulate oil and gas drilling. There were two versions, a Senate and House bill. The House ended up stopping work on their bill and took up the passed Senate version. There's been a tremendous amount of pressure from oil and gas industry folks to quash these bills or any form of regulation and it seems to have been successful. The Senate bill died in the House and what was passed instead was a bill offering state tax breaks for the industry. You can read about it here.

Needless to say we are both discouraged by the, not unexpected, turn of events.

A Harrison county, West Virginia resident has recently uploaded some videos of a Marcellus drilling operation across the road from her house. You can see one here and while you're on Youtube, check out her other videos about Marcellus drilling.

More soon!

Big Kittens Now

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 04:00:44 GMT

Little Blondie and Grey are big kittens now, both in age and in size. They've grown so much since last May when we found them under our house addition and began feeding them by hand. They now are the biggest cats in our house now, surpassing Mamma Cat, Kitty Boy, Peach Blossom and Bobo in size and weight.

		Little Blondie fills a chair seat. I wish we had a recent photo showing his face, which is adorable.

		Little Grey is muscular and active. When the kittens had their first adventures out doors a few weeks ago, Grey made sure he knew where every tree in the yard was. He loves to run while at the same time staying close to home.

		Blondie and Grey together.

		Kitty Boy relaxing in the yard nearby. The kittens don't go out unless there is a big cat with them. Blondie and Bobo seem to have a special bond. Kitty Boy loves everybody and everybody loves Kitty Boy.

Mamma Cat was spayed two weeks ago and once her third kitten, Peach Blossom, is spayed they'll be going outdoors too.

More soon!

2010 Gas Well Study

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 00:49:59 GMT

We've completed the text for our Gas Well Study, 2010 and it is now available for download.

This year we went back to some of the wells we first looked at in 2008. We wanted to see if there had been any changes, for better or worse, and we wanted to examine the sites for potential pollution, something we weren't able to do in 2008.

We've already written a post about one of the wells we revisited. This well was in some ways a good example of what we found. There are still a number of wells without API numbers, but the operator had, for most of the wells, put in the required secondary containment dikes for condensate storage tanks. There were still maintenance problems, even though most of the wells had recently painted metalwork. There were still problems with the well access roads and the sites' vegetation in a number of cases. And we found two sites with surface contamination showing elevated chloride.

The second part of the Gas Well Study provides a summary of our experiment where we applied various concentrations of chloride to a single species of woodland vegetation. We've written a post about that with a link to the report.

One disturbing thing we saw this year was severe corrosion of the steel condensate storage tanks. Condensate is crude petroleum and brine that comes up with the gas. Several tanks' trap doors were entirely rusted through.

It's impossible to say how long these tanks will safely hold the condensate before leaking.

More soon!

Forest Service Report

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 20:39:32 GMT

The U.S. Forest Service has just released a technical report titled Effects of development of a natural gas well and associated pipeline on the natural and scientific resources of the Fernow Experimental Forest. It can be downloaded from this page or you can download it directly.

The report deals with the expected and unexpected effects resulting from a natural gas well drilled in the Fernow Experimental Forest in Tucker County, West Virginia in 2008. The site is on karst, a problematic location for a well, and is located close to a cave where endangered Indiana Bats overwinter and in an area with other endangered species.

This well is a vertical well into formations below the Marcellus and shows some of the limitations of West Virginia's regulatory program. We have serious issues with erosion and sediment control at sites. The state requires the use of a 1993 Erosion and Sediment Control Field Manual which is sorely in need of revision. We've found that operators after almost 20 years still don't understand the requirements of the manual. The report documents sediment control overwhelmed on the site, including sediment going into a sinkhole (sinkholes and caverns are features in karst limestone formations).

While drilling out a fracture plug the operator lost control of the well and flowback sprayed onto the pad and into the surrounding woods, killing vegetation. The state has a history of spills, blowouts and other events not being reported to the regulatory agency and that appears to have happened this time also. PEER obtained some documents related to the well by FOIA request and a scientist stated that the area the spray hit had a burned appearance.

This state allows the land application of liquid drill waste and fracture flowback using a permit created in the 1980s (it's currently being revised, at long last). In this case the liquid waste killed vegetation and trees and that is documented by Forest Service scientists. The state also allows solid waste to be buried on site. At this well, the waste is leaching to the surface through the action of several seeps where it was buried. As far as I know (the report doesn't explicitly state this) the state has had no response to either the death of vegetation nor the leaching of waste.

We have a section on our website dealing with the Fernow land application debacle. We'll be updating it and including material from this report. We've been able to reproduce, on a small scale, some of the effects seen on vegetation at Fernow using chloride solutions. We have not been able to reproduce the high soil concentration of chloride found by scientists after the application was done in 2008, nor have we been able to reproduce the effects on a broad spectrum of species. It's entirely possible that other factors were involved in the death of even large trees, but the land application permit requires analysis of only a few constituents, such as iron, aluminum, chloride, etc. No heavy metals, and there is no load factor for chloride.

Articles are appearing in various venues on the web based on this Forest Service report. A good one is on the ProPublica site.

Chloride Application Study

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 17:56:42 GMT

Last summer we conducted a small study in our woods applying various concentrations of a chloride solution to a single species of vegetation. This continues our investigation into the effects of land application of drill and fracture flowback waste as permitted in West Virginia. There have been instances where application has killed vegetation, including large trees (a 24" oak, for instance, at the Fernow Experimental Forest).

Our report is now available for download. What we found was that for the species examined there were clear negative effects from the chloride in these instances: when the solution touched the leaves or in uptake in concentrations above 3,000 mg/l. We also found that load is a factor and that multiple gallons of solution even at 3,000 mg/l had negative effects.

The state's General Permit that operators work under has a maximum chloride concentration of 12,500 mg/l, no limitation for heavy metals, allows land application of fracture flowback along with drill waste, has no requirement for prior testing of the soil before application, nor for testing of the soil after application. Recently the state did prohibit the land application of Marcellus fracture flowback.

		Land application of drill and fracture flowback in West Virginia is done by spraying the liquid over a vegetated area. It can be done, as here, by laying out perforated pipe or it can be done by a crew member holding a large diameter hose and moving about as the liquid pours out over the application area.

		This photograph shows a study plant a day after application of a 5,000 mg/l chloride solution. The leaves within the red box were not touched by the solution. Some of the leaves outside the red box already show the effects from chloride by their color changes.

		This photograph shows the same plant two weeks after application. Many of the leaves, especially those touched by the fluid, have fallen and most of the surviving leaves are showing signs of chlorosis.

		This is another plant that also received a 5,000 mg/l chloride solution, except three times as much as the plant in the previous two photos. Signs of chlorosis are plain a week after application. A smaller plant in the same application area was dead two weeks later and this plant had lost most of its leaves.

We learned as much from variables we had not considered when we created the study as we did from the study itself. We had not considered site slope and that appears in retrospect to be an important consideration. In one case the plants within an application area shows minimal effects while those nearby but downslope showed more severe effects. We were not careful in selecting plants of a similar size for application and in retrospect the size of the plant in this study influenced the effects we saw. We'll be continuing the study with applications carried out in different seasons.

We still have not been able to reproduce the broadly negative effects on vegetation land application can have but that may be due to scale. In real life 100,000 gallons may be applied to a relatively small area (the state doesn't have limitations based on receiving soil's permeability or other factor such as load).

More soon!

Problem Well

Sun, 21 Nov 2010 22:33:42 GMT

Molly and I have been revisiting gas well sites we looked at in 2008. We've seen mostly positive changes -- for instance, many of the wells' condensate storage tanks now have the required secondary containment dikes.

Something we weren't able to do in 2008 was examine sites more closely for pollution. This time we performed quick environmental assessments and have collected samples or tested surface water at three sites.

One well we revisited, 47-079-01314, has a number of problems. It was originally drilled as a deep well to the Newburg and Lockport formations but because of brine problems was plugged back to the bottom of the Onondaga limestone formation. It's still a deep well, by law, but the gas producing formations are Marcellus and Huron Shale above the Onondaga. (Here's a copy of the well's completion report filed by the operator with the state.)

Operators have to file production figures annually with the state's Office of Oil and Gas. When the state doesn't receive production figures within a period of time, the well is considered abandoned and must be plugged. West Virginia bases its severance tax on these production figures.

Production figures for this well haven't been reported to the state since 2005 and the state's databases show this producing well as "abandoned." Since no production has been reported, it's hard for us to tell if the operator paid the severance tax for years on this well.

When we visited this well last week we noticed pieces of black pit liner sticking up from the soil in various spots along a 85 foot long line. Near one end of this area was a small pothole filled with water and we took a sample from it to test for chloride. Using a Hach low range chloride test strip we found a concentration of 356 mg/l. Another location on the pad with standing water, well away from the exposed black plastic area, showed just a trace of chloride, which is what we'd expect from soil or water not contaminated.

We'll return to this site when it is drier and do a complete assessment.

		Molly is on the barely vegetated pad looking for black plastic pit liner. A piece is circled in red.

		A piece of pit liner is on the left and in the right foreground is the small pothole we took the sample from.

		More pieces of pit liner. Because the soil was wet it wasn't easy to spot exposed pit waste. The gray patch of soil between the two clumps of liner may be pit waste.

		The Hach test strip in a plastic cup with sample. It takes only a few minutes to do a test in the field this way.

More soon!

Cats in Baskets

Sun, 14 Nov 2010 22:09:39 GMT

Mama Cat and Peach Blossom have been settling into our household with lots of help from the kittens and Kitty Boy. Bobo enjoys his much enlarged family, but it's Kitty Boy's duty to keep everything smooth going. Just like he did with the kittens months ago.

		This was taken on July 4th. Molly had put out baskets for the kittens and needed to add another for Kitty Boy. The third basket is off to the left where it can't be seen in this photo. The baskets were the center of play and rest for the kittens (and Kitty Boy) and they're still used for play now.

		Peach Blossom has been using the largest basket to sleep in at night. Both Peach Blossom and her mom are a lot less shy now.

		Here's Peach Blossom in her basket and her mom sitting close by. Mama Cat doesn't run now when one of us has to walk by. Everyone eats breakfast and dinner in the kitchen and everyone loves their treats. Mama Cat sometimes sleeps in the large basket at night when Peach Blossom is up in the loft with us or on the rug in front of the woodstove.

More soon!

Mama Cat and Peach Blossom Indoors

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 21:54:09 GMT

The big news is that we were able to trap the feral mama cat and her kitten on our front screened in porch last Tuesday. We'd been feeding them deeper and deeper into the porch for the past couple of weeks and creating a maze to get to the food bowls so there wasn't a straight shot to the door. I'd hooked up a rope to the screen door that went to the shop where I sat and waited for Molly's signal since I couldn't see into the porch to make sure both cats were at the other end. She gave the signal, I gave the rope a yank, and the door closed shut.

Both cats freaked out, cannoning into the screens to get out. We opened the door to the house, Bobo went out onto the porch, and the mama cat and kitten both immediately calmed down. It took an hour or so for them to venture inside the house and that's where they've remained since then. Eventually we'll get both neutered and, if they prefer, they can go back outside full time. But I think with winter coming, and the company of the other cats, they'll decide they like it inside sometimes.

Mama cat is watching from the step down into the addition. Blondie can't be easily seen, but he's lying and looking out the window to her right.

All of the cats have been having a great time with each other. Little Blondie seems to be special friends with the feral kitten. Both the kitten and mama cat remain hidden for most of the day, but as time has gone on they've ventured out more and more -- to scamper and hide if we walk by or come too close. Getting them into carriers to take to the vet is going to be a challenge.

More soon!

Mama Cat and Peach Blossom

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 22:11:24 GMT

When the three kittens were born, the Mama Cat was infrequently seen in the yard. We ended up with two and except for a brief sighting of the third in June we weren't sure at all how the third was doing -- until August. We'd been feeding the Mama at the edge of the yard and she made a point of going to the food from different directions, moving along the perimeter of the yard. If she thought we were near (25 feet was too close) she took off, no matter how hungry she was.

In August we began to have sightings of the third kitten, which Molly named Peach Blossom, and the Mama together. They were living under the house. We moved the food bowl closer to the house where they could reach it easier but Mama was doing all the eating, Peach Blossom wasn't weaned yet. (We're glad Grey and Blondie take so long!)

In late August we tried to trap the Mama and failed utterly. We want to take her to the vet, and the kitten too, to have them neutered. We made more attempts but she stayed clear of the trap, no matter what enticing food was inside. No luck on Peach Blossom either.

Once we were sure that Peach Blossom was weaned or nearly weaned, we let the big guys out and they made quick friends with Mama Cat and Peach Blossom. Mama Cat adores Kitty Boy and it's fun watching Peach Blossom play with Kitty Boy's tail. The Mama and kitten have slightly relaxed their vigilance and have been eating on the porch now. The Mama is less likely to run away if she sees us in a window or through the panes in the door.

We still hope to catch them one of these days -- hopefully before Mama becomes pregnant again!

Here are photos of Peach Blossom on the back porch visiting with Grey (who is still kept inside for now until he has all his shots).

And Mama Cat and Peach Blossom eating on the front porch. Peach Blossom gets so he waits, looking in the door, when it's dinner time.

More soon!

Fracture Waste

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 22:24:57 GMT

In West Virginia, under the current General Permit, wastes from fracturing a well can be land applied. This waste comes in two forms -- unused fracturing chemicals dumped into the pit and fracture flowback discharged from the well into the pit.

According to the General Permit unused fracture chemicals cannot be dumped into a pit but it's hard to tell if the operators' crews know this. The state's Discharge Monitoring Report (DMR) shows the decision tree for determining under which pit category pit waste falls and indicates that chemicals and flowback can be in a pit:

Only category 1 pits do not have fracture flowback or chemicals. Of the small number of DMRs we've examined, all have been for category 2 or 4 pits.

The EPA's exemption of oil and gas wastes does allow the land application of drill waste, flowback, and even chemicals, but the exemption does not allow the addition of unused chemicals to production waste that is covered by the exemption (drill waste and flowback) if the chemicals exhibit certain hazardous characteristics and if the pit waste then assumes those characteristics. These hazardous characteristics are reactivity, corrosivity, ignitability and toxicity. Or, if the chemicals are listed in 40CFR261, subpart D, then the waste is no longer exempt.

Almost nothing is known about the chemicals used for fracturing in West Virginia. The Office of Oil and Gas website publishes an incomplete list of chemicals. The list is incomplete in that it does not show all the chemicals used in a typical fracture job (the biocide is missing, for instance), nor does it show the proprietary chemicals which manufacturers won't disclose. For the Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs) I've seen, these proprietary, unnamed chemicals, can form 10% to 60% of a product.

Proprietary chemicals may be innocuous or they may be toxic. They may be those listed in 40CFR261, which makes disposal costly because the waste is no longer exempt.

These unknown proprietary chemicals must be assumed to fall in a worst case scenario -- are hazardous in one way (by their characteristic) or another (are listed).

The Office of Oil and Gas has allowed this waste to be land applied without knowing what makes up this waste -- the products or chemicals used. But even if the Office had full disclosure from the operators, it would not be getting full disclosure from the manufacturers.

It's our belief that fracture flowback should not be land applied and that fracture chemicals should not be dumped into drill waste pits. Unused fracture chemicals should be disposed of otherwise and properly.

The MSDS evidence is, as I mentioned above, sparse. Three products known to have been used in West Virginia create particular concern. These Halliburton products (though Halliburton is not the only company making fracturing and drilling products) are: BC-140 (a cross linker); BE-3S Bactericide; and SP Breaker (a post-fracture gel breaker). Clicking on the product names will produce the applicable MSDS Adobe Acrobat document. We have a page on our website that explains the purpose of some of these chemicals.

These products weren't used in exceptionally large quantities. Their hazards are noted on the MSDS sheets (sections 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 11, 12 and 15) and include ecological, human health, storage and regulatory issues. Only the SP Breaker exhibits a hazardous characteristic (two in the MSDS version when the product was used -- ignitability and reactivity). Waste should, if exposed to this product, according to the EPA exemption, be tested to determine if it is still exempt.

A quick addendum: The Office of Oil and Gas has just decided that fracture flowback from Marcellus wells cannot be land applied.

Sootypaws Journal

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Song of the Wood Thrush

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Flowback

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Big Kittens Now

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Mama Cat and Peach Blossom Indoors

Mama Cat and Peach Blossom

Fracture Waste