Tag: Energy & Environment

West Virginia Official: People Are Inhaling Formaldehyde

By now, you’ve probably heard of crude MCHM, the chemical that spilled into the Elk River in early January contaminating the drinking water of 300 thousand West Virginians.

And may be you’ve even heard of PPH, the second chemical contained in the leaky tank at the Freedom Industries site.

But almost three weeks after the leak, how much do we really know about these chemicals?

Scott Simonton, vice chair of the West Virginia Environmental Quality Board, told a Joint Commission on Water Resources Wednesday, they still don’t know much, and they certainly don’t know enough.

Simonton said one of the biggest questions is what happens to these chemicals when they begin to react with the environment.

What happens when they mix with chlorine in the water treatment facility?

What happens when they mix with soaps or detergents in your home?

What happens when the human body metabolizes them?

Those questions, he says, don’t have answers.

But Simonton is starting to find the answers to some of those questions as he tests the water quality throughout the West Virginia American Water distribution system in the Kanawha Valley.

The testing is funded by a Charleston law firm, Thompson Barney LLC, which is also representing businesses that lost money because they couldn’t use water for days.

“Our concern was these breakdown products. We know for example that methanol can break down into formaldehyde,” he told the commission.

“Formaldehyde is a known human carcinogen. That’s important and so we thought, ‘wow, we should be looking for formaldehyde.’ Sure enough we have found formaldehyde in the water system.”

Test results were positive for the water at the Vandalia Grille in downtown Charleston.

Simonton said formaldehyde is most dangerous and most toxic when inhaled. Formaldehyde often leads to respiratory cancers. State health officials and representative of West Virginia American Water have refuted Simonton’s research on the matter, calling his remarks “mileading” and “unfounded.”

“We don’t know what the concentration of it is in air, but I can guarantee you that the citizens of this valley are at least in some instances breathing formaldehyde,” he said.

“They’re taking a hot shower, this stuff is breaking down to formaldehyde in the water system and they’re inhaling it.”

The new revelations and new information Simonton provided the commission is something Senate Majority Leader Senator John Unger said shocked him and his fellow lawmakers.

“The testimony today was quite disturbing and I think the entire commission was kind of put back quite a bit because that’s not the information we’ve been hearing as far as the news media,” Unger said, “and what he was testifying today was the hard truth and it definitely was difficult.”

Simonton told the commission the information state officials released in the days during the chemical leak, information about when the water was safe for use and consumption, he can’t find what evidence they had to back it.

“What concerns me is the information they were giving out as if they did know. They were saying ‘go ahead and drink it, it’s okay, it’s safe now.’ Well, we heard both on Friday from the Chemical Safety Board and from Dr. Simonton that it’s not safe to drink,” Unger said.

 “I think that’s where the disappointment is that these authorities are saying things without the proper science to back it up.”

Unger said by allowing people to continue to consume and use the water without having that evidence could possibly be exposing more people to the chemical.

Tuesday, Senators passed Senate Bill 373 creating new regulations for similar above ground storage facilities and called it step one in preventing future water contamination, but Unger said figuring out the health effects, that has to be part of step one as well.

 “We need to do it simultaneously. We need to be moving forward. The whole idea of Senate Bill 373 was to make sure that this doesn’t again anywhere in West Virginia,” he said. “Now we have to look at what do we do in response now that it’s happened and this is an ongoing situation that’s unraveling as we get more and more information and how do we help those people that have been exposed to it, which is all of us here in Charleston and the Kanawha Valley.”

Going forward, Unger said lawmakers will rely on the medical community to monitor and figure out ways to treat anyone exposed to the chemical.

His commission hopes to hear from the Department of Health and Human Resources on monitoring in the next week.
 

Lecture Series Explores Coal History and Legacy

Since the recent chemical spill in Charleston, the issue of clean water in West Virginia is a topic that many Southern West Virginians are discussing.  The Coal Heritage Lecture Series, an annual program presented by Concord University’s Beckley Center and the Coal Heritage Highway Authority, kicks off the 2014 programs with a look at this critical issue. 

Each spring, the Coal Heritage Public Lecture Series explores the legacy of coal in West Virginia. The series is a part of an academic class offered at Concord University called, Coal Culture in West Virginia.

The first lecture explores Industry and the Environment and Responsible Development.  Eric Autenrith and members of the Plateau Action Network, are expected to discuss their take on how industries can create responsible economic development. Speakers are expected to address past situations in the state and examine how to maintain a sustainable environment.

Plateau Action Network, based in Fayetteville, is an advocate for clean water issues.

Lectures take place on the first Tuesday of February, March, April and May at the Erma Byrd Center. located in Raleigh County, in Room E 10 at 7:00 p.m. 

Students taking the course for credit hear lectures, watch films and participate in field trips that help them better understand the rich history of coal in the state, but all lectures are free and open to the public.

The lecture series will continue on March 4 with singer/songwriter Kate Long as she performs Songs of the Coalfields.  April 1, National Park Service Interpretive Ranger, Billy Strasser, will discuss the recent work the New River Gorge National River has completed in the town of Nuttallburg in the lecture Nuttalburg: Then and Now. 

The series will conclude on May 6 when Gordon Simmons, historian and Marshall University Instructor, will explore the culture of resistance in coal miners.  The Miner’s Freedom considers the history of coal miners and their ability to exert some control in the workforce, despite the autocracy of the coal camps.

Fracking Waste: What Is It & What Do We Do About It

The natural gas boom continues to sound in what have become the northern gas fields of West Virginia. State lawmakers are working on ways to take maximum advantage of the economic benefits that are coming with it. The other byproduct authorities are grappling with is an excess of waste products, which, without proper disposal, can threaten public health.

The Horizontal Well Control Act of 2011 allocated funding to study the impacts of horizontal drilling. Legislators reached out to West Virginia University’s Water Research Institute. Director Paul Ziemkiewicz managed a study that looked at liquid and solid waste streams. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO2XlXyhFTA

Liquid Waste

Horizontal wells produce two kinds of wastewater: flowback, and what’s referred to as “produced water.” Ziemkiewicz explains, once a well is fracked—meaning once operators take fracking fluid (5 million gallons of water mixed with sand and additives) and blast it deep into this hard, black, non-porous rock called Marcellus shale—the pressure is released and the first thing that happens is a regurgitation of some of that fluid.

“The stuff that comes out over the initial 60 days or so is called flowback,” Ziemkiewicz explains. “You have to get that flowback out of the system before you can start producing gas. You start producing a little bit of gas as soon as you release the pressure but when it gets to the point where you can start commercially producing gas you switch over to something called ‘produced water.'”

Ziemkiewicz goes on to explain that the longer the fracking fluid mingles with the rock formation the more stuff from that formation flows back out with the fluid like organic compounds, lots of salts, and yes, radioactive material.

“Sodium chloride, bromide, mainly chloride salts of one kind or another,” Ziemkiewicz says. “Strontium chloride, barium chloride. These things start pushing back up out of the hole and the concentration of those salts almost everything, including radioactivity starts to go up during the flowback cycle. So the longer you go into flowback and then produced water the higher the concentrations get.”

Ziemkiewicz  adds that while many people seemed to be very concerned with the initial fracking fluid being injected into the wells, he is much more concerned with the produced water that comes up afterward.

“The stuff that comes back out is almost always more concentrated,” he says.

Ziemkiewicz says in some cases this briny water produced a concentration of about 250,000 milligrams per liter of dissolved solids–which he explains is essentially 25 percent solid.

Where does it go from there?

Well Ziemkiewicz says about 25 percent of the fluid is pumped back into deep wells classified as injection waste disposal wells, while the other 75 percent of flowback is being recycled. That recycled portion has to be processed. Solids like clays, metals, and rock are filtered and precipitated out, leaving cakes behind. These cakes are then dumped into solid waste landfills, the same place that the mud and rock produced during the drilling process are dumped.  

Solid Waste

Under the Resource Conservation Recovery Act (RCRA) hazardous waste is differentiated from industrial solid waste based on tests that determine chemical properties. Interestingly, federal laws exempt drilling waste from regulation as hazardous waste. But the WV Department of Environmental Protection is proceeding with some caution, nevertheless.

Scott Mandirola Director of the DEP’s Division of Water and Waste Management explains horizontal well operators were just sort of spreading this waste on properties, or dumping it, burying it, whatever, wherever. By all estimations, a bad idea. The Horizontal Well Control Act of 2011 specified that instead the waste should be disposed of in appropriate landfills. That’s when municipal landfills started accepting the waste. And we’re talking about a lot of waste.

So DEP Cabinet Secretary Randy Huffman sent a memo out to solid waste landfill operators in July of last year saying that they could continue accepting waste if they took one of two actions: apply to expand their operation, or construct separate cells specifically for these waste products.

Bill Hughes is the chairman of the Wetzel County Solid Waste Authority. He’s concerned about new practices.

“Wetzel County which is legally permitted for up to 9,999 tons, round it off to 10, times 12, 120,000 tons per year? Our landfill last year took in about 330,000 tons. Of that, about a quarter million tons was drill waste, drill cuttings.”

Mandirola says Wetzel County—one of the most heavily drilled counties in the state—has seen one of the largest influxes of waste because of its proximity to so many well sites. This concerns residents for reasons such as the amount of space available in landfills, and also because there’s still so little known about the chemical characterization of the waste.

Enter Paul Ziemkiewicz, who, again, was tasked to look into that.

“I don’t think we’ve characterized this material adequately enough to determine whether or not it really belongs in solid waste landfills or whether it belongs in a higher standard landfill,” Ziemkiewicz says.

Ziemkiewicz did look at drilling mud. But he explains that a combination of bad luck, low response times from companies and the WV Department of Environmental Protection, bad weather, and an aggressive timeframe to report results contributed to the lack of access to drilling samples from the actual rock formation where Marcellus gas exists—the shale.  So unfortunately, it’s still something of a mystery.

“They’re black shales,” Ziemkiewicz explains. “And black shales tend to accumulate uranium. Uranium breaks down into radium.”

While Ziemkiewicz  wasn’t able to test drill muds from the Marcellus itself, he says the tests results from drilling samples of vertical sections turned up exceeding amounts of toxins considered safe by federal drinking water standards.

“Whether or not [comparing to federal drinking water standards] was the right approach I’m still not sure. Nevertheless, a lot of these drill cuttings and muds came out being well excess of drinking water standards.”

Recommendations

Ziemkiewicz is calling for an additional study to test these solid waste streams.

“By the time this stuff gets to the landfill and is diluted it may or may not even be a problem,” he says. “It may be that we’re focusing on radioactivity when that’s not a problem at all, but the real problem is organic contamination like benzene.”

Ziemkiewicz’s other recommendations include what he calls common sense measures like proper containment of drill sites to guard against spills, and thorough inspection and enforcement by well-trained authorities. He also suggests tracking liquid wastes to have clear knowledge of where it ends up.

Ziemkiewicz and other experts say it’s hard to predict the future of oil and gas development, but everyone seems certain that significantly more drilling is the most likely scenario, and therefore, more insight into the science and practices of the industry is the best course of action to safeguard not only communities, but also employees and first responders.

Garbage-to-Fuel Plant Coming to W.Va.

A European method for converting garbage to fuel is coming to West Virginia. The Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority has signed an agreement to lease part of its property to the Italian company Entsorga. The company will build a $19 million facility there.

The mixed waste resource recovery facility will sit on 12 acres next to the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority’s Grapevine Rd. recycling center.

“Entsorga has a patented technology where waste that’s picked up at the curb and normally would be taken to the landfill is redirected to a building,” Clint Hogbin, BCSWA chairman, said.

The garbage is then sorted and processed into a product that can be burned like coal and natural gas to create BTU’s. According to Entsorga’s web site the product is a clean-burning alternative that large energy consumers like steel mills, power plants and cement plants can use in place of or with fossil fuels.

Hogbin estimates the mixed waste resource recovery facility will reduce the amount of trash from Berkeley, Jefferson and Morgan counties sent to the landfill by 65 to 75 percent.

Hogbin said the facility will separate out recyclables and items that won’t generate high BTU’s, things like glass bottles and aluminum cans.

“What are left after those items that are pulled out are the items that are cleaned, dried and shredded and ready to be used as a substitute to coal,” he said.

Hogbin said Entsorga is coming to Berkeley County because there are several locations within a couple hundred miles where the fuel can be sold, including the Italian-owned ESSROC cement plant in Martinsburg, which already burns coal.

Hogbin said the Entsorga facility will employ up to nine people and there will be additional spinoff jobs once it’s open.

Hogbin hopes the new facility will demonstrate it’s possible to find new ways to deal with garbage and everything doesn’t have to go to a landfill. Entsorga plans to begin building sometime in the spring or summer.

Dunkard Creek Restoring Itself Faster Than Expected

A fisheries biologist with the Division of Natural Resources, says the water body Dunkard Creek is doing an excellent job of restoring itself with aquatic life. This is the site of a massive fish kill back in 2009.

Almost five years ago, a golden algae bloom killed just about everything in the stream Dunkard Creek, which meanders through West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania. Among the victims were muskies and bass, but more importantly perhaps, the creek’s mussel population. Fisheries biologist Frank Jernejcic with the DNR says it’s going to take decades and decades for those to come back.

“We have stocked five species of mussels in the last two years. It will be a number of years before we can assess how successful they will be because reproduction is relatively slow. Mussels have a very unique reproductive cycle,” he said.

But the good news is that the creek is restoring itself. In fact, it’s happening at a much faster pace than even Jernejcic estimated. Jernejcic says 35 total species were wiped out in the kill. Almost that many various species are back.

“We’ve seen the small mouth and the muskies reproduce, muskies have returned in fairly good numbers, and we haven’t made the decision yet whether we will stock muskies in the next year or two. We may not have to, although our original program was to stock them every two or three years,” Jernejcic said.

The muskies are a key element to the creek, because it was a main attraction for local fishermen, according to Jernejcic. He says fishing enthusiasts aren’t using the stream as much as they were before, but he expects that to change, since the population is coming back.

“Muskies are a top predator, they are also a very desirable sport fish. I look at fish as being the final product that these streams produce. Dunkard Creek was certainly in the top 15 or 20 of muskie streams that we stock in West Virginia. It should be a destination now for muskie and small mouth fishermen,” said Jernejcic.

However, Jernejcic says the DNR isn’t seeing any new species enter Dunkard Creek.

Governor Tomblin Orders Freedom Industries to Dismantle All Above-Ground Storage Tanks

  West Virginia’s governor has ordered the company at the center of a chemical spill that tainted the water supply for the state capital to begin the process of removing all above-ground storage tanks from the Charleston operation.

A statement released Saturday by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s office says Freedom Industries must start the dismantling process by March 15.

The Jan. 9 spill at Freedom Industries contaminated the water supply for 300,000 West Virginians.

The order to dismantle and properly dispose of the tanks also includes associated piping and machinery. The facility currently has 17 tanks.

The governor’s order was included in a consent order issued Friday by the state Department of Environmental Protection and signed by Freedom Industries. The company has already been ordered to remove almost 1 million gallons of chemicals from the plant.

The order is signed by Freedom Industries president Gary Southern and states that the company will not contest the state’s jurisdiction with regards to the order.

The Order is subject to a 30-day public comment period.  

U.S. Senator Joe Manchin called for similar action in a news release Friday.

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