Hunting Club Contends with Spring Contaminations from Drilling
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
5 June 2011
By Don Hopey,
Spring water, cold as winter and clear as a windowpane, gushes out of
mossy ground in a clearing sprinkled with blooms of forget-me-not next
to Stone Camp, the home of the Sykesville Hunting Club in the Moshannon
State Forest.
The bubbling flow has attracted generations of folks from Clearfield
County and beyond, but staked into the ground now is a homemade sign
bearing the warning: "Contaminated Water."
The sign seems out of place. Larry Righi certainly thinks so, even
though he had a hand in putting it up months after a torn liner under
one or more EOG Resources Marcellus Shale drill cuttings pits allowed
leakage that contaminated groundwater feeding the spring almost two
years ago.
Mr. Righi, a longtime member of the local landmark Sykesville Hunting
Club like his father before him, hopes new water test results will soon
give a clean bill of health to the spring, which is the club's only
water source.
"We just want to be made whole, to get assurances that the
contamination is gone and won't be back and the water is good to drink
again," said Mr. Righi, whose hunting club has held a "permanent camp"
lease since 1920 on a fraction of an acre in the 300-square-mile state
forest.
"And we want to get the word out because there's lots of camps up here
in the woods. ... because these drilling rigs are going to be in your
backyard sooner or later."
Local watering hole
It's known as Reeds Spring on maps detailing the green expanses of
the Moshannon State Forest, and it boils out of the ground into a large
pothole of a pool before sloshing down a 1-foot-wide, 50-yard-long
channel to a small creek, Alex Branch. The Alex Branch is a tributary
of Trout Run, one of the area's better fishing creeks, which flows into
the West Branch of the Susquehanna River.
"The spring was a major stopping point. Surrounding hunting camps came
here to fill their water jugs, and it was a way to meet guys from other
camps," said Tony Zaffuto, a Sykesville Hunting Club member who is
originally from that Jefferson County town and now lives in DuBois,
Clearfield County. "It was not unusual for people to be lined up for
the water with their plastic jugs."
The spring's contamination brings into focus the concerns of many
hunting camp owners, rural residents and environmentalists about the
potential for groundwater contamination from development of the gassy
Marcellus Shale.
That thick layer of black, 400-million-year-old sedimentary rock
underlies about two-thirds of Pennsylvania and holds the potential to
provide heretofore untapped energy, job growth and economic benefits.
But its development also comes with significant risks to the state's
water resources. Hundreds of spills, leaks, seeps, overflows and
blowouts at Marcellus Shale well drilling sites and wastewater
reservoirs over the last five years have contaminated groundwater and
streams with chemicals and gases.
Sometimes those risks are hard to ignore. In June 2010, a "blowout" at
a Marcellus gas well operated by EOG Resources (formerly Enron Oil and
Gas), less than a mile from Stone Camp on forested land owned by the
Punxsutawney Hunting Camp and in the same well field where the drill
cutting pit leaked, spewed at least 35,000 gallons of brine and toxic
fluids from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, into the air for 16
hours. The DEP shut down the company's drilling operations for 40 days
statewide, and six weeks later, fined EOG and a drilling contractor a
total of $400,000.
But often the leaks, overflows and spills are much less obvious, though
still locally devastating.
In August 2009, Nancy Potts' brother, Sam, a stonemason, was hired by
the Sykesville Hunting Club to re-point the 90-year-old, two-story
flagstone cabin built by the grandfathers and fathers of many of the
current club members on the permanent camp lease in the state forest.
"After working at the camp, Sam called me up and said the water tasted
funny," said Ms. Potts, who has tested water affected by acid mine
drainage in Clearfield County for 10 years as part of the Senior
Environmental Corps and now is on the lookout for new threats to the
water in the woodlands she calls the "Marcellus State Forest," in
reference to Moshannon.
"They found out about the spring's contamination by accident," she
said, "No one -- from the driller or the state Department of
Environmental Protection -- came to tell them."
Oily water
Shortly after the stonemason's alert, Mr. Righi also noticed
something different in the water at Stone Camp. "I was washing dishes
and discovered an oily substance," he said. "I couldn't get them clean."
Mr. Righi called the DEP and on Aug. 25, 2009, the agency performed the
first of eight water quality tests it would do at the spring over the
next 16 months. The tests found higher than healthy levels of
manganese, aluminum, barium, sodium, strontium, chloride and total
dissolved solids. The test results show those chemical pollutants
spiked to as much as 200 times safe drinking water standards in the
fall of 2009 before starting to gradually decline.
But the DEP still didn't know what caused the contamination.
In September, Mr. Zaffuto said he was talking to an EOG driller who
told him the rocky ground on the Punxsutawney Hunting Camp property had
caused pit liners to tear under three of five ponds that held drilling
waste.
"They knew, but EOG didn't notify the camp members or the DEP," said
Mr. Zaffuto, who notes that he continues to support Marcellus Shale
development if it's done right.
Investigations by the DEP and the state Fish and Boat Commission
subsequently determined that several accidental discharges of
contaminated water and fluids at EOG's Marcellus operations --
including leakage from the pit over a two-month period from August
through October 2009 -- had caused the contamination of Reeds Spring.
A small hole in a drilling wastewater hose that, according to the Fish
and Boat Commission settlement report, allowed gas and flowback water
to leak and percolate onto the ground and into Little Laurel Run from
June 3 through Aug. 16 also may have contributed to the contamination
at the spring and in the creek. EOG reported another accident on Oct.
12, 2009, when almost 8,000 gallons of water and fracking fluids leaked
from a tank and into the Alex Branch and Trout Run.
In a DEP consent agreement of Aug. 31, 2010, settling the pollution
charges from all three accidental discharges, EOG paid a penalty of
$30,000. Just five weeks ago, EOG agreed to pay the Fish and Boat
Commission a $208,625 settlement in lieu of civil damages for its
pollution of Alex Run, Little Laurel Run, both designated "High
Quality" trout waters, and Reeds Spring. EOG paid $99,125 of that for
damaging the spring.
K Leonard, an EOG spokeswoman, declined to provide information on the
company's Marcellus drilling operations in Clearfield county, but
issued a statement that says the company is "committed to conducting
its operations in a safe and environmental responsible manner," and "if
issues arise, the company proactively works with the regulatory
agencies to address the issue in ways that are appropriate and
reasonable."
Since the problems in Clearfield County, EOG has changed the way it
stores drilling cuttings and contaminated flowback water. EOG dug up
the contaminated soil around the leaking waste pit and filled in
others. It has stopped using in-ground pits to store drilling cuttings
and employs a "closed loop" drilling process that stores cuttings in
metal containers that are trucked to state-approved landfills, and
collects drilling mud and fluids in above-ground metal containers then
reuses it at other wells.
EOG operates approximately 265 active wells in Pennsylvania, 117 of
which are in the Marcellus Shale formation.
A long history
Inside the Stone Camp, where mounted deer heads, grainy group
portraits of club members and topographic maps are the preferred wall
art, the framed, original lease for the camp is displayed in a place of
honor on the mantle above the big stone fireplace. The lease bears the
signature of Gifford Pinchot, then the state's forest commissioner, who
had been the first supervisor of the U.S. Forest Service from 1905
through 1910 under President Theodore Roosevelt and later served two
terms as governor of Pennsylvania.
But the report detailing the latest DEP water sampling results at Reeds
Spring in February is at least as valuable. It found sodium, calcium,
manganese and aluminum in much reduced concentrations, though still
slightly above drinking water standards in the spring.
Outside, in the clearing rimmed by white pine and hemlock, the spring
appears to be well on its way to washing through the contaminated slug
of groundwater, but Mr. Zaffuto said other springs could be at risk.
"A $100,000 penalty is nothing to drilling firms," he said. "Drillers
spill and it's ignored or goes undiscovered. What are the assurances
this isn't happening elsewhere?"
Mr. Righi said he recommended at a recent meeting of the Four Mile Road
Camp Owners Association that camp owners get their water tested before
drilling begins.
"They should be testing for everything so they have a baseline in case
something happens to their wells or springs," he said.
As he walked around the spring, a pickup truck stopped on the forest
road nearby. Fred Fletcher, who belongs to three hunting camps in the
forest nearby and closer to where new well drilling is about to start,
ambled over to the spring, and noticed the sign.
"We're a little concerned, too," said Mr. Fletcher, 73, adding that an
EOG well is planned for 250 yards from the camp that bears his family's
name.
"The drilling is happening all over the place and people are concerned
about the water."
Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983.