Zoning Boards says No, judge says Yes

Let's get this investigation under immediately! Now, who do we investigate?
 
JackM wrote:
Let's get this investigation under immediately! Now, who do we investigate?

Think I am an alarmist? Why not just tell me, instead of these snarky comments.
 
You mention an investigation, but don't identify anyone "under suspicion." Alarmist? Not necessarily. But the article doesn't help one understand the situation and your comments didn't add anything to the mix. So where do we start digging for someone to blame?
 
JackM wrote:
You mention an investigation, but don't identify anyone "under suspicion." Alarmist? Not necessarily. But the article doesn't help one understand the situation and your comments didn't add anything to the mix. So where do we start digging for someone to blame?

I meant investigate as in research, not a literal criminal investigation. If someone is on a zoning board or plans on getting involved with some of these zoning meetings they could potentially research this instance for experience.
 
I'd be interested in the details of the judges ruling if anyone digs into this.
 
The Drillers wish to draw 750,000 gallons of water a day from the Susky River across the road from Hyner Run State Park entrance Road and beside the Gold Star Mothers bridge. I wrote in objection to the variance in which the drillers (Anadarko) wanted from Chapman Township. Route 120 is the main travel route in the area and homes are close by. I just read in The Record, the local paper, that the judge over turned the ruling. In the another article, a tanker hauling water on Hyner Run Road hit a bridge and got hung up on the structure, needing other heavy equipment to free the vehicle. Don't worry, your tax dollars will repair the bridge. The roads in the North Central part of the state can not handle the thousand truck loads of water needed for each well or eight thousand loads per well pad and your tax dollars will fix the roads as well. The driller (Anadarko), has to meet twelve conditions to use the facility including putting up a six foot tall fence, permitting only seven tankers at a time at the facility and a traffic signal if PennDot decides safety is an issue. Anadarko was part of the Gulf disaster also so what could possibly go wrong? Tongue in cheek of course.
Jim Kearney
 
Just to add to my post above, I have a friend that works for the PFBC and he works with the gas drillers on pipe line right of ways and withdrawal sites from streams and rivers. The gas industry has asked about three different sites on Pine Creek in the northern tier, they have requested 5 million gallons a day from Big Fishing Creek and up to 500,000 gallons from Larry's Creek. I have a cabin on Fishing Creek and the water is incredibly low right now. He also told me that the industry has brought "minimum flow" information to his meetings. For instance, Big Fishing Creek "only" needs 25% of normal flow for the fish so that leaves millions of gallons for withdrawal purposes. That don't pay for the water, just right of ways when getting water from private owned lands.
Jim Kearney
 
The state should sell off the top 1 foot of water on local lakes to the drillers. I did a quick calculation and between Little Pine, Kettle Creek, Sinemahoning, and Sayer there is 1 billion gallons on the top 1 foot water among the four lakes. No one would miss each lake being lowered by 1 foot.
 
Here's something that makes you go hmmmm (made me go hmmm, anyway). Let's say the state did "sell" the top foot of water from the 4 lakes and lets say it roughly equals a billion gallons.

Then let's say (just for calculation purposes) that the 3 sites inquired about on Big Pine would involve the withdrawal of 5 million gallons/day between them (likely conservative given the amount they want to take out of Big Fishing Creek and the comparative size of the streams).

OK...

Total the daily proposed withdrawals from the three streams at 8.5 million/gpd and assume this water would come from the lakes.

Do the math..

The lake withdrawal would replace the need for withdrawals from the 3 streams for 117 and 2/3 days of operations.

That's all it would do. A little less than 4 months. And this is based only on the 3 streams listed (God knows how many other withdrawals are in progress/proposed from streams throughout the region) as well as on the likely conservative hypothetical that they would only be asking for 5 million gpd from Pine.

That's spooky. And speaking only for myself, it really makes me go hmmm.

This is rape. There has to be a better way.
 
They could make the permission to withdraw contingent upon adequate flows. Farmers must await rain for the crop to grow, let the drillers await rain to cool their bits. If the water is going to run down hill to the Chesapeak Bay or the Mississippi delta anyhow, they might as well pull it out while it is still in the Commonwealth, but if it is going to be absorbed into our own water table then there is reason to restrict its being diverted.
 
A least 20 trucks a day pull water from the tunkhannock creek every day.WHEN WILL IT Stop and whos watching them and i can already tell you KNOW ONE.
 
RLeep2 wrote:
Here's something that makes you go hmmmm (made me go hmmm, anyway). Let's say the state did "sell" the top foot of water from the 4 lakes and lets say it roughly equals a billion gallons.

Then let's say (just for calculation purposes) that the 3 sites inquired about on Big Pine would involve the withdrawal of 5 million gallons/day between them (likely conservative given the amount they want to take out of Big Fishing Creek and the comparative size of the streams).

OK...

Total the daily proposed withdrawals from the three streams at 8.5 million/gpd and assume this water would come from the lakes.

Do the math..

The lake withdrawal would replace the need for withdrawals from the 3 streams for 117 and 2/3 days of operations.

That's all it would do. A little less than 4 months. And this is based only on the 3 streams listed (God knows how many other withdrawals are in progress/proposed from streams throughout the region) as well as on the likely conservative hypothetical that they would only be asking for 5 million gpd from Pine.

That's spooky. And speaking only for myself, it really makes me go hmmm.

This is rape. There has to be a better way.

I'm guessing we get rain sometime during the 117 days. I would use this to get by during periods of low flows. If we don't get rain to get the flows up and we use up x amount out of the lakes then as Jack says the drills slow down. Or they could then spend more and haul it in from further away. There are more than 4 lakes in Pa. I just chose a couple close ones.
 
Franklin: I may not have phrased what I had to say as well as I might have.

I'm not poo-pooing your idea. I believe it to be a good plan.

I'm just using the notion to allow me to consider the enormity of what is going on.

Jack: What you had to say is true, but there's also the fact that a lot of farmers (depending on what they are growing) don't wait for the rain. They irrigate with water withdrawals by permit or whatever. So, to a certain extent, we're right back where we started..
 
OK, lets do some math.
As of last Friday, there were 89 active rigs in PA. 10 conventional, vertical rigs and 79 horizontal rigs. Each horizontal rig can drill 6 wells over a 9-12 month period. Each well requires 5 million gallons of water. In 9-12 months they will drill 474 wells using 2,370 million gallons of water or about 6.5-8.6 million gallons a day.

The equivalent of 10-13.3 cfs.

That supplies all the water needed for every Marcellus well being drilled across the entire state. I'm starting to think this whole water thing is a red herring being used to scare the crap out of people. And it seems to be working nicely.
 
I didn't check your math, but I also didn't see the source for a lot of your assumptions. Particularly how you arrived at a translation to cfs in a given stream. Maybe if you can flesh that out a bit....
 
JackM wrote:
I didn't check your math, but I also didn't see the source for a lot of your assumptions. Particularly how you arrived at a translation to cfs in a given stream. Maybe if you can flesh that out a bit....

Fair enough.

Just to make it easier, assume one horizontal drilling rig takes a full year to drill six horizontal wells. Each one of those wells is about 10-12,000 feet long remember. It takes a bit of time to drill that far.

Here's the logic:

1 cubic foot = 7.48 gallons
Therefor 1 cubic foot per second = 7.48 gallons per second
there's 60 seconds in a minute,
60 minutes in an hour,
24 hours in a day and
365 days in a year.

That adds up to 236 million gallons of water.
Therefore, 10 times that is 2,360 million gallons of water.

Rig count courtesy of these guys:

http://extension.psu.edu/naturalgas/maps

79 rigs X 6 wells X 5 million gallons = 2,370 million gallons.

I don't believe it myself, but there it is.
 
Gone4Day wrote:
OK, lets do some math.
As of last Friday, there were 89 active rigs in PA. 10 conventional, vertical rigs and 79 horizontal rigs. Each horizontal rig can drill 6 wells over a 9-12 month period. Each well requires 5 million gallons of water. In 9-12 months they will drill 474 wells using 2,370 million gallons of water or about 6.5-8.6 million gallons a day.

The equivalent of 10-13.3 cfs.

That supplies all the water needed for every Marcellus well being drilled across the entire state. I'm starting to think this whole water thing is a red herring being used to scare the crap out of people. And it seems to be working nicely.

I think you stating that the volume of water being used is the primary reason for concern is a red herring. If we were building a water park with all the water, obviously there would be less alarm. People want to know what it is being mixed with, and how many of these toxins will find their way into all water supplies. The water initiates the process and the problems that follow, such as air pollution from processing and movement of gas, and deforestation and run-off. The sheer tonnage of initial water removal would only scare the crap out of fisherman, if they happened to be fishing for a fish that was particular about its environment.
 
Tell the people of dimock pa about the red herring idea.
 
Brownout wrote:
Gone4Day wrote:
OK, lets do some math.
As of last Friday, there were 89 active rigs in PA. 10 conventional, vertical rigs and 79 horizontal rigs. Each horizontal rig can drill 6 wells over a 9-12 month period. Each well requires 5 million gallons of water. In 9-12 months they will drill 474 wells using 2,370 million gallons of water or about 6.5-8.6 million gallons a day.

The equivalent of 10-13.3 cfs.

That supplies all the water needed for every Marcellus well being drilled across the entire state. I'm starting to think this whole water thing is a red herring being used to scare the crap out of people. And it seems to be working nicely.

I think you stating that the volume of water being used is the primary reason for concern is a red herring. If we were building a water park with all the water, obviously there would be less alarm. People want to know what it is being mixed with, and how many of these toxins will find their way into all water supplies. The water initiates the process and the problems that follow, such as air pollution from processing and movement of gas, and deforestation and run-off. The sheer tonnage of initial water removal would only scare the crap out of fisherman, if they happened to be fishing for a fish that was particular about its environment.

My post was in response to some comments in this and other threads about the seemingly large amount of water needed and the concern it would have on streams to take out that much water. As I and Gone4day (he did a better job than I) have shown it's really not that much water relative to what's available if some common sense is used to extract it. Neither one of us said this was the sole issue. Only that this issue is far and away overstated.
 
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