West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Telling West Virginia's Story
The parent company of the Special Metals alloy plant in Huntington is laying off about 100 workers.
Portland, Oregon-based Precision Castparts Corp. didn’t specify in a statement whether the layoffs would be temporary or permanent.
The company says it will evaluate its staffing in the future as business conditions warrant.
The 130-acre plant manufactures high-performance nickel alloys for the aerospace, gas well and other industries and employs more than 500 hourly workers.
When natural gas drillers use extreme pressures to drill and crack rocks thousands of feet underground – when they frack for natural gas, for example – sometimes nearby conventional gas wells will suddenly see production double, or triple.
When drilling processes of a new well affects an already existing one, it’s called well communication. Sometimes it’s a good thing. Sometimes it isn’t.
Swiss Cheese, West Virginia
In West Virginia, over 1,500 horizontal wells exist on some 400 well pads. That’s in addition to roughly 50-thousand conventional wells spread throughout many back yards and hillsides. Then there are another 12,000 wells that are abandoned (many of which were drilled prior to 1929 when the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection started to keep track of such things).
One thing is fairly certain about all of these wells: they are all conduits underground, through the water table. Nowhere is the Swiss cheese that is West Virginia more apparent than in Doddridge County where gas wells new and old are a common as cows.
Abandoned Hiss
Lyndia Ervolina is not an industry expert, but she knows what it’s like to live surrounded by horizontal drilling operations. Not only is the industry moving around Ervolina on wheels, Big Gas has moved in to Ervolina’s yard, literally. It comes from across the street.
“I have a condensate tank up there that they blow off right across the road that they put in when they put the pipeline in. So when it gets blown off into the air it comes to my house,” Ervolina said.
The troubling fact is that the smell of treated gas isn’t the only indicator of air pollution Ervolina worries about. There’s also a noise.
Right next to the condensate tank, an abandoned well that was drilled in the ’60s is making this noise. That sound is gas venting into the air from some underground rock formation. Neither Ervolina nor the DEP knows who is responsible for it. It’s been making this sound for years.
“I came out one day and there were pieces of the thing laying all over the place and it was just pouring gas out, pouring gas out,” she said.
She can’t say for sure what happened to the well. There was some pipeline construction in the immediate vicinity. In the last few years, her area of Doddridge county has seen a lot of fracking, which is when drillers use liquid, sand, and extreme pressure to crack rock thousands of feet underground.
“The casing is gone. It’s completely busted up. So let’s get out of here.”
Ervolina says she already gets so much exposure to gas and pollutants from the condensate tank that she won’t linger around it for long.
Untreated natural gas doesn’t have an odor, but there is actual video footage taken with special filters that clearly reveals this particular well venting gas. Ervolina says when nearby horizontal wells are being fracked, the well hiss is louder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ70MsrM1j0
Well Communication
The phenomenon Ervolina is describing, when one well affects pressure or production of another well, is an example of wells communicating. Research at West Virginia University is just getting underway now at a horizontal gas well in Morgantown to determine if any gas is migrating from the Marcellus shale rock formation there into overlying formations or underground sources of drinking water.
One Morgantown scientist, Marc Glass, says the possibility of migrating liquids and gasses is something scientists have been concerned about for years. Glass is in charge of the Environmental Monitoring and Remediation Program at Downstream Strategies, the Morgantown-based environmental consulting firm. Like Ervolina and other residents, Glass says he’s concerned about potential contamination associated with well communication. He explains that plenty of demonstrations of well communication exist. But he says predicting how wells will communicate is beyond us.
Technology exists today where, just by listening carefully during the fracking process, we can pinpoint where the rocks underground are cracking. It’s called microseismic monitoring. But Glass says it has limitations.
“Microseismic tells you where the fracture has occurred. It does not tell you where the fluid that was required to generate the pressure actually is, was or will be,” Glass said. “It only tells you that there was enough fluid present to create enough pressure to induce a fracture.”
Antero Resources is a gas company doing a lot of horizontal drilling in the state. Antero’s regional vice president and chief administrative officer, Al Schoppe, explained that well communication isn’t always a bad thing. It’s an indicator that an area has been thoroughly “developed,” he said. But it is something Antero operators are also concerned with. Schoppe says mostly, Antero has safety concerns should older equipment in the area give way under greater pressures. He says it’s common for horizontal drillers to map all the wells in the vicinity of their operation. And if they can, his operators try to communicate with any local operators who might be affected by the drilling process.
Unfortunately, there’s no policy or law where they have to also talk to residents in the vicinity.
The DEP confirms there have been at least two incidents where, as a direct result of horizontal drilling activities, conventional gas wells have seen increased pressures. There was an incident in 2012 in Ritchie County. And more recently, after horizontal drilling activity in Ohio, conventional wells were affected on the others de of the Ohio River in West Virginia. DEP says that so long as it doesn’t break equipment, increases in pressure are often a good thing for these conventional gas wells because they see increases in production. But for people living near abandoned wells, it seems more like bad luck.
Plugging Wells
The hissing, broken well at Ervolina’s house is a conduit for underground pollutants into our atmosphere, and the DEP says it should be plugged. That’s essentially when you pour cement into the well. As simple pouring some cement into a hole sounds, DEP officials say the process costs anywhere from $25,000 to more than $50,000 per well. Even by conservative estimates, plugging all the abandoned wells in West Virginia (there are about 12-thousand that we know of) would cost the state $300-million. And experts agree that the abandoned wells are hardly the problem when you consider the 50,000 aging conventional gas wells in the state owned and operated by families and small companies who simply do not have the means to plug their wells. The price tag to plug those wells is $1.25 billion.
From the West Virginia DEP, this map shows the locations of the approximately 11,000 abandoned wells that have been permitted in West Virginia. To meet the “abandoned” criteria, it means that no production data for these wells has been submitted for 12 or more consecutive months.
Blowing a Cement Cork out of the Ground
So while the DEP tries to figure out who is responsible for the abandoned well in Doddridge County, the Ervolinas have to continue to deal with the air pollution. But should they also worry about their water?
Industry advocates claim that liquid communication between wells is so unlikely that no one needs to worry. But many residents are worried and many are living with contaminated water as a direct result of horizontal drilling activity.
Suellen Hill and her husband Dave are surface owners in Harrison County who have been living with the reality of horizontal drilling since 2008. A complicated reverse osmosis water system was installed in their home and every two weeks bottled water is delivered to them after several surface spills contaminated their water well. Their water was not contaminated as a result of well communication.
But they are concerned about the threat of contamination throughout the region from conventional gas wells and water wells being pressurized by drilling operations.
“I don’t want to be a doomsayer, but I think our legislature and all of the agencies have opened a Pandora’s Box of pollution that is really beyond all of our imagination,” Sue Hill said.
These concerns rose after witnessing strange and surprising things happen on their property.
A site of an old South Penn shallow oil well exists on the Hill farm, about a third of a mile from a horizontal well pad. The oil well there is long-retired.
“It was probably drilled around 1910. It had been plugged. I’m not sure what date. And we discovered in about 2010 or 2011 that this plug was actually blown out of the ground.”
It’s a troubling thought because abandoned and conventional wells can be full of carcinogenic toxins. Their casings that cut through the water table, if they are still intact, are not built for pressures applied in horizontal wells. Many experts admit that these potential conduits pose threats to the health of watersheds, air, and the people who exist in the vicinity.
Bayer CropScience says it plans to sell its Institute Industrial Park to Union Carbide. But the company will continue to operate its thiodicarb unit at the site as a tenant.
Terms of the transaction announced Monday weren’t disclosed.
Bayer says in a statement to media outlets that the plant’s operations, including utilities and security, will be transferred to Union Carbide in a phased turnover. Union Carbide is expected to assume full operation of the site by mid-2016.
The Institute site’s head, Jim Covington, says it is no longer economically viable because of a decision in 2011 to close units dedicated to carbamate chemistries.
Bayer took over the site in 2002 as part of its acquisition of Aventis CropScience.
Covington says about 150 Bayer employees work at the site.
Momentum continues to mount behind local food and local economic development efforts in the Northern panhandle. Wheeling was one of the top picks in a national Local Foods, Local Places Competition. As a result, local organizations are receiving technical assistance from multiple state and federal agencies to help capitalize on the growing demand for local foods. Meetings with federal agency representatives began last week.
Local Places Protecting the Environment?
The Environmental Protection Agency initiated the national Local Food, Local Places program. The idea is to bring federal, regional, and state agencies together to help find and support existing local food and economic development efforts. Why would the EPA get in on the local movement?
EPA policy analyst Melissa Kramer explains that one reason is to promote lifestyles that rely less heavily on automobiles and all their emissions. She says the local life could go a long way toward that end.
“When you have a downtown that’s vibrant, that people want to live in, that has all the services that people need, ” Kramer said, “people have options for getting around that don’t involve driving. You find that there are a lot of people who want to walk, who want to bike.”
Kramer says that is healthier for community members, healthier for the environment, and healthier for the economy because dollar wind up staying with local businesses.
Federal, Regional, State, and Local Converge
Folks came in to Wheeling last week from Charleston, West Virginia, Durham, North Carolina, and Washington D.C. representing EPA, the US Department of Agriculture, the Appalachian Regional Commission, the State Department of Highways, and US Department of Transportation. These partners met with local Wheeling groups to talk about how to promote a local food system and grow the local economy in general.
It all started with a city tour from one of Wheeling’s trolley busses …
One of the tour guides was the director of the nonprofit Reinvent Wheeling, Jake Dougherty. He heads up one of three organizations that joined together to apply for the federal Local Foods, Local Places Grant. Others organizations include Grow Ohio Valley and the Wheeling National Heritage Area Foundation.
“Of the over 90 applications just in the Appalachian region, Wheeling stood out among all of them,” said Wilson Paine, a program analyst from the Appalachian Regional Commission who was involved in reviewing applications for the Local Foods Local Places Grant.
“Wheeling is emblematic of what a lot of Appalachian towns are going through right now which is searching for what their identity is going to be in the 21st century and how they can focus on the local aspects of building an identity,” Paine said.
“Wheeling is emblematic of what a lot of Appalachian towns are going through right now which is searching for what their identity is going to be in the 21st century and how they can focus on the local aspects of building an identity,” Paine said.
A Perfect Storm
Paine says there’s a perfect storm in Wheeling, combining youthful leadership, local food and area revitalization efforts, and ongoing region-wide partnerships. He says the existing infrastructure in Wheeling, combined with an engaged community, made Wheeling an ideal candidate for technical assistance.
Growing the Ohio Valley’s Local Food System
Executive director of Grow Ohio Valley, Ken Peralta, took a lot of questions during the tour of Wheeling. GrowOV is already deeply engaged in laying groundwork for a local food system in the region. In addition to the greenhouse, GrowOV has built multiple community gardens and a small organic farm inside the city. They’ve also got wheels in motion, so to speak, for a mobile vegetable market that will serve several counties in the region starting in June.
In addition to visiting some local food initiatives that are well on their way, federal and local partners visited a few areas of town that have been abandoned because they’re too steep to develop residentially or commercially. One hillside is slated to be planted with fruit trees and berries. Another, that overlooks all of downtown Wheeling and the Ohio Valley, will be a green, public space of some kind. Action plans that detail what, when and how are being developed.
Peralta is hoping for help testing water as well as engineering ideas or resources to help manage stormwater that flows off of these steep hillsides. He and his colleagues are enthusiastic about the raw resources that seem abundant in Wheeling.
And the Enthusiasm is Contagious
Jake Dougherty of Reinvent Wheeling says there’s now a critical mass of people in and around Wheeling who are dedicated to turning their “dying city” into a thriving Appalachian town. He also admits that new industrial development in the region could be playing a role in bolstering the economy over the last five years, perhaps adding to that growing sense of hopefulness.
“But what I think is great, and what I think we have learned most about our economy from the past,” Dougherty said, “the conversations we are having are not centered around a single industry; it’s centered around the diversification of our economy.”
Overall, West Virginia continues to see a decline in population since 2012. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that, while the state’s population grew from 2010 (1,854,176) to 2012 (1,856,313) the state has seen a drop-off in consecutive years since–with the last estimate from July 1, 2014 putting West Virginia’s population at 1,850,326.
Last week, The Charleston Gazette reported that West Virginia is losing population faster than any other state, with about 3,300 total residents lost from July 1, 2013 to July 1, 2014. That translates to about 0.2 percent total population loss in just the one year. Those numbers are ahead of the only other states that saw population loss, based on 2013 to 2014 records: Alaska, Connecticut, Illinois, New Mexico and Vermont.
From 2010 to 2014, 39 of the state’s counties lost residents, while 16 showed an increase. Southern West Virginia continues to see sharp population decline, while the Eastern Panhandle and Monongalia County have seen a boom in recent years. However, the increase of natural gas production in the north central and Northern Panhandle regions hasn’t kept some of those counties from seeing a decline in population in recent years.
U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s Clean Air and Nuclear Safety Subcommittee, held a field hearing this week in Beckley, regarding the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Clean Power Plan. The carbon pollution standards are the first of their kind and aim is to reduce carbon emissions 30 percent nationwide by reducing carbon pollution from power plants. Senator Capito held a hearing in southern West Virginia where tightening regulations might be felt most acutely.
Representatives
Sen. Capito and U.S. Rep. Evan Jenkins, both Republicans, expressed grave concern for West Virginia’s economic future in light of the EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan.
“We’re going to hear the voices of West Virginians on the devastating impact of the regulation of our fellow West Virginians, because we know we receive 95 percent of our power from coal-fired power plants,” Capito said.
Capito pointed to recent announcements that three more coal-fired plants in West Virginia are scheduled to close in the coming months, blaming the closures on the EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxins rule.
Rep. Jenkins also spoke about the economic perils of scaling back coal-fired power in West Virginia.
“Coal is an abundant resource in America,” Jenkins said, “Why are we forsaking one of our largest sources of affordable energy to put ourselves at an economic disadvantage?”
Witnesses who discussed the negative economic impacts of proposed carbon regulations in Appalachia included an attorney for the United Mine Workers of America, Eugene Trisko.
“This regulation is a neutron bomb,” said Trisko during his prepared statement.
President of Appalachian Power, Charles Patton, and a local businessman Chuck Farmer also testified that an increasingly difficult business climate is making life tougher for rate payers and employees.
Literally and figuratively on the other side of the aisle sat the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Senior Energy Analyst, and West Virginia native, Jeremy Richardson.
“92 percent of our coal reserves must stay in the ground to give us any hope of avoiding the worst consequences of climate change,” Richardson said.
"What I'm here to tell you today is that [climate change] is a clear and present danger to not only this country but to countries around the world." – Jeremy Richardson, Union of Concerned Scientists' Senior Energy Analyst, son of a West Virginia coal miner
“Thankfully West Virginia has many assets that it can leverage to diversify its economy,” Richardson said. “But we must let go of the idea that coal is all we’ve got.”
Along with Richardson, Director of the Center for Energy and Sustainable Development at WVU College of Law, James Van Nostrand testified about inevitable changes we face both here and around the globe. He said West Virginia needs to take a more proactive stance legislatively in dealing with this challenging reality, if we hope to mitigate the economic impacts.
