New Jersey wants to ban Fracking wastewater treatment and transport

[martybegan]

NJ Senate Environment Committee Considers Ban On Shipping, Transporting, Treating Or Disposing Of Wastewater From Hydraulic Fracturing « CBS New York

I find this funny as alot of the fracking fluids are petroleum distillate products, and New Jersey is the biggest refining state on the east coast.

They better word it right if they go though with it, or they may end up shutting down thier entire petrochemical industry.

 

[Two Thumbs]

NJ Senate Environment Committee Considers Ban On Shipping, Transporting, Treating Or Disposing Of Wastewater From Hydraulic Fracturing « CBS New York

I find this funny as alot of the fracking fluids are petroleum distillate products, and New Jersey is the biggest refining state on the east coast.

They better word it right if they go though with it, or they may end up shutting down thier entire petrochemical industry.

bunch of job killing morons run Jersey.


ooo, we saw a movie and it scared us, so it must be true that fracking kills, and and the BIG OIL is just hiding the bodies!!!!!!

Actually, this may be good for PA.

 

[waltky]

Fracking caused earthquakes...

Expert: Wastewater well in Ohio triggered quakes
Mon Jan 2,`12 – A northeast Ohio well used to dispose of wastewater from oil and gas drilling almost certainly caused a series of 11 minor quakes in the Youngstown area since last spring, a seismologist investigating the quakes said Monday.

Research is continuing on the now-shuttered injection well at Youngstown and seismic activity, but it might take a year for the wastewater-related rumblings in the earth to dissipate, said John Armbruster of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y. Brine wastewater dumped in wells comes from drilling operations, including the so-called fracking process to extract gas from underground shale that has been a source of concern among environmental groups and some property owners. Injection wells have also been suspected in quakes in Ashtabula in far northeast Ohio, and in Arkansas, Colorado, and Oklahoma, Armbruster said. Thousands of gallons of brine were injected daily into the Youngstown well that opened in 2010 until its owner, Northstar Disposal Services LLC, agreed Friday to stop injecting the waste into the earth as a precaution while authorities assessed any potential links to the quakes.

After the latest and largest quake Saturday at 4.0 magnitude, state officials announced their beliefs that injecting wastewater near a fault line had created enough pressure to cause seismic activity. They said four inactive wells within a five-mile radius of the Youngstown well would remain closed. But they also stressed that injection wells are different from drilling wells that employ fracking. Armbruster said Monday he expects more quakes will occur despite the shutdown of the Youngstown well. "The earthquakes will trickle on as a kind of a cascading process once you've caused them to occur," he said. "This one year of pumping is a pulse that has been pushed into the ground, and it's going to be spreading out for at least a year." The quakes began last March with the most recent on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve each occurring within 100 meters of the injection well. The Saturday quake in McDonald, outside of Youngstown, caused no serious injuries or property damage.

Youngstown Democrat Rep. Robert Hagan on Monday renewed his call for a moratorium on fracking and well injection disposal to allow a review of safety issues. "If it's safe, I want to do it," he said in a telephone interview. "If it's not, I don't want to be part and parcel to destruction of the environment and the fake promise of jobs." He said a moratorium "really is what we should be doing, mostly toward the injection wells, but we should be asking questions on drilling itself." A spokesman for Gov. John Kasich, an outspoken supporter of the growing oil and natural gas industry in Ohio, said the shale industry shouldn't be punished for a fracking byproduct. "That would be the equivalent of shutting down the auto industry because a scrap tire dump caught fire somewhere," said Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols. He said 177 deep injection wells have operated without incident in Ohio for decades and the Youngstown well was closed within 24 hours of a study detailing how close a Christmas Eve quake was to the well.

The industry-supported Ohio Oil and Gas Association said the rash of quakes was "a rare and isolated event that should not cast doubt about the effectiveness" of injection wells. Such wells "have been used safely and reliably as a disposal method for wastewater from oil and gas operations in the U.S. since the 1930s," the association's executive vice president, Thomas E. Stewart, said in a statement Monday. Environmentalists are critical of the hydraulic fracturing process, called fracking, which utilizes chemical-laced water and sand to blast deep into the ground and free the shale gas. Critics fear the process itself or the drilling liquid, which can contain carcinogens, could contaminate water supplies, either below ground, by spills, or in disposed wastewater. Permits allowing hydraulic fracturing in Ohio's portion of the Marcellus and the deeper Utica Shale formations rose from one in 2006 to at least 32 in 2011.

Source

 

[waltky]

Critical year in the debate over “fracking” safety...

It’s year for ‘fracking’ to break up or break through
Sunday, January 8, 2012 - The natural gas industry and its opponents are readying their final arguments for what many think will be a critical year in the debate over “fracking” safety.

Supporters of the hydraulic fracturing process - the use of water, sand and chemicals to break underground rock and release huge amounts of gas - boast of recent economic growth, with hundreds of thousands of jobs created in the past several years and small, sleepy communities in Pennsylvania, North Dakota and elsewhere transformed into boomtowns. Skeptics point to reports of suspected water contamination and links to earthquakes that some consider too high a price to pay.

Both sides of the debate eagerly await an Environmental Protection Agency report due out later this year that observers generally expect to call for harsh crackdowns and new federal regulations on the practice. Whatever the report says, it’s likely to have a big effect on the attitudes of average Americans and, in the process, affect the future of U.S. energy policy. “It’s a make-or-break year in the public arena,” said Ken von Schaumburg, who served as deputy general counsel at the EPA during the Bush administration. “And when you can’t beat someone with cold, hard facts, you’re going to need public opinion.”

Mr. von Schaumburg said he expects the EPA to follow the wishes of the White House and demonize fracking as an unsafe practice that should be, at minimum, heavily regulated and, at most, shut down entirely to focus on development of non-fossil fuels, such as wind and solar power. “It’s based on a predetermination. That’s what they want it to say,” he said of the report. The EPA already has fired its opening shot.

Last month, the agency released a report that blamed fracking for water contamination in the small town of Pavillion, Wyo. The industry has denied those charges, and an independent third-party review is expected to begin soon. Water pollution used to be the most common concern cited by fracking critics, but another potential danger tied to the practice in the past nine months is the risk of earthquakes. Ohio has experienced at least 11 tremors since March linked to the disposal of wastewater created during fracking. State officials have shut down all disposal wells in the area while investigations continue.

The quakes have given more ammunition to opponents, who sense an opportunity this year to crush the fracking practice for good. “I think 2012 is a critical year for us to decide as a country what direction we want to go. Natural gas might be a clean energy source, but right now we’re seeing a lot of evidence of pollution,” said Levana Layendecker, a spokeswoman for Democracy for America, the liberal political action committee founded by former Vermont governor and one-time presidential hopeful Howard Dean. The organization has become one of the most vocal critics of the industry and operates the website stopfrackingnow.com.

MORE

 

[OohPooPahDoo]

NJ Senate Environment Committee Considers Ban On Shipping, Transporting, Treating Or Disposing Of Wastewater From Hydraulic Fracturing « CBS New York

I find this funny as alot of the fracking fluids are petroleum distillate products, and New Jersey is the biggest refining state on the east coast.

They better word it right if they go though with it, or they may end up shutting down thier entire petrochemical industry.

I don't see what's funny about that.

By your logic any state that has a nuclear power plant should be fine with becoming Yucca mountain.

 

[editec]

How about we dump all the FRACKING pollution in your town?

Sound good?