Environmental Must-Reads – July 28, 2014

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Instead of DEQ fines, plant sees tax breaks after explosion

Multi-Chem, a Halliburton-owned business that blends chemicals for oilfield production, including fracking, paid no state environmental fines when its New Iberia plant exploded in 2011.

Instead, the company received an expedited environmental permit to build a new plant in Vermilion Parish without public notice or a public hearing and was granted $1.8 million in state property tax exemptions over a 10-year period to build the new plant.

Florida gets tough on oil driller in the Everglades

State officials have driven a Texas wildcatter out of Florida, signaling tougher restrictions on oil drilling in the Everglades.

Prodded by environmentalists and community activists, the state yanked all drilling permits held by the Dan A. Hughes Co. seven months after it was caught using fracking-like methods to blast open rock near underground aquifers.

Oil, gas boom taps rush of ordinances and bans across the U.S.

Development of oil and gas shale formations has sparked drilling from Pennsylvania to California, and that is leading to a new wave of local oil and gas ordinances and bans.

Towns and cities — from Robinson Township, Pa., population 13,354, to Dallas, population 1.2 million — are enacting rules to limit or control oil and gas development.

Oil drilling in North Dakota raises concerns about radioactive waste

Every weekday, about a dozen large garbage trucks peel away from the oil boom that has spread through western North Dakota to bump along a gravel road to the McKenzie County landfill.

The trucks drive up to a scale flanked by something seldom found in rural dumps — two 8-foot-tall yellow panels that essentially form a giant Geiger counter.

Two or three times a day, the radiation detector blares like a squad car, because under tons of refuse someone has stashed yard-long filters clotted with radioactive dirt from drilling sites.

Colorado: Judge Strikes Down Town’s Fracking Ban

A Colorado court has ruled that the city of Longmont’s ban on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is invalid.

The Boulder suburb—and the affiliated local and environmental groups that later joined the case—now have 44 days to appeal the decision. During that time, fracking will be prohibited across Longmont’s 22 square miles.

Halliburton Fracking Spill Mystery: What Chemicals Polluted an Ohio Waterway?

On the morning of June 28, a fire broke out at a Halliburton fracking site in Monroe County, Ohio. As flames engulfed the area, trucks began exploding and thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals spilled into a tributary of the Ohio River, which supplies drinking water for millions of residents. More than 70,000 fish died. Nevertheless, it took five days for the Environmental Protection Agency and its Ohio counterpart to get a full list of the chemicals polluting the waterway. “We knew there was something toxic in the water,” says an environmental official who was on the scene. “But we had no way of assessing whether it was a threat to human health or how best to protect the public.”

Steam Injection Fracking Caused Major Alberta Bitumen Leak

A new independent technical review on the cause of a large and costly 2013 bitumen leak in northern Alberta found a form of hydraulic fracturing that injects steam into the ground to be the main culprit.

The panel, appointed by Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. to review its initial findings on the cause of the leak at its Primrose facility, also documented that industry frack jobs, contrary to industry claims, can break caprock, shoot out of zone, link to natural fractures and penetrate into groundwater.

Can your town ban fracking? Depends on the state

A judge struck down a fracking ban in Longmont, Colo. Thursday – a victory for oil and gas companies, and a blow to environmentalists trying to halt fracking at the local level. As more and more cities and towns mull fracking bans, courts are weighing in with decisions that vary widely by state.

Texas Border Fracking Standoff: NY Court Ruling May Affect Outcome

The Big Bend of Texas, so named for the way the region hugs a massive bend in the Rio Grande, is renown for its desert landscapes, open spaces and tranquility. But parts of it lie within the oil-rich Permian Basin, the nation’s highest producing oil field thanks to fracking technology.

Now, Mexico is drilling at least 29 exploratory wells across the border from the Big Bend and saying it wants to jumpstart fracking operations there.

Pennsylvania’s Complicated Groundwater Contamination

In places in Pennsylvania, well water is unfit to drink, polluted with iron and manganese, but the source of the contamination is complex. Reid Frazier of the Allegheny Front reports that fracking, coal mining, and natural methane formations in the ground combine to muddle the picture.

Study warns U.S. power grid will become too reliant on gas

A study by the energy research firm IHS warns the U.S. power grid stands to become far too reliant on natural gas in the decades ahead, as economic factors and new environmental regulations stand to push out power sources like coal and nuclear.

The study comes as new EPA regulations on carbon dioxide stand to dramatically shift the power industry, pushing natural gas and alternative energy sources like solar and wind over coal.

Fracking should be put on hold to allow for more study

Hydraulic fracturing should not proceed in Nova Scotia until a broader public discussion is held and more research is completed, says the head of an expert panel reviewing the industry’s potential in the province.

David Wheeler, president of Cape Breton University, said Friday the province needs more time to get up to speed with the rapidly expanding unconventional oil and gas industry.

Fracking licences to be granted by government

The government has opened the bidding process for new licences to extract shale gas, using the controversial fracking process.

About half the UK is open to exploration, but tightened rules cover areas of outstanding beauty.

Companies granted a licence to begin test drilling will also need planning permission and environmental permits.

An Indigenous Resistance Community Evicted a Fracked Gas Pipeline Crew From Its Territories

The Unist’ot’en Camp, a pipeline blockade on unsurrendered indigenous land in the interior of British Columbia (BC), peacefully evicted a pipeline crew that was found trespassing in their territories earlier this week. The crew was conducting preliminary work for TransCanada’s Coastal GasLink pipeline project, which the company hopes will carry fracked gas from north eastern BC to Canada’s pacific coast.

BP oil spill dispersants still in environment

A common ingredient in human laxatives and in the controversial dispersants that was used to break down oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill is still being found in tar balls four years later along Gulf Coast beaches including Perdido Key.

This finding in a new study contradicts the message that the chemical dispersant quickly evaporated from the environment, which BP and EPA officials were telling a public who grew outraged over the widespread use of the chemicals in the Gulf of Mexico in the weeks following the April 20, 2010, oil spill disaster.

BP executive charged with obstruction in oil spill probe to get trial date

A judge is getting ready to set a new trial date for a former BP executive charged with obstructing a congressional investigation into the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt has scheduled an Aug. 11 conference where lawyers will discuss a trial date in the case of David Rainey.

Katrina and BP oil spill on researcher’s list of top five ‘government failures’ 2001-2014

Two of the top five “government failures” based on news coverage from 2001 to 2014 were Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill, according to a new report by a Brookings Institution researcher.

Enbridge oil spill: Four years later

Saturday marked the four-year anniversary of the Enbridge Energy oil spill.

At the time it was the largest and most costly inland oil spill in American history. It happened literally in the backyards of hundreds of homes and spread 20 miles throughout the Kalamazoo River and its tributaries.

Some 800,000 gallons of crude oil seeped out of Enbridge pipeline 6B.

Oil company sues Utah county over pipeline rules

A Texas oil company is suing a Utah county over its new ordinances imposing restrictions on underground pipelines.

Tesoro Corp. based in San Antonio wants to build a 135-mile pipeline to carry crude oil from the Uinta Basin to Salt Lake City refineries.

New Mexico Residents Fighting Back Against Kinder Morgan CO2 Pipeline With Their Own Health Impact Assessment

Not many locals even knew the Bureau of Land Management was holding a scoping meeting in Mountainair, New Mexico last December for the proposed Lobos CO2 Pipeline that would run through their community.

When the people of Mountainair did find out about what was proposed that day, many had concerns. BLM officials had laid out the route preferred by Kinder Morgan, which aims to build the 213-mile-long pipeline to get CO2 from Apache County, Arizona to Torrance County, New Mexico. From there, the Lobos CO2 pipeline would connect with the Cortez pipeline to deliver CO2 to oil wells in Texas. The route crosses tribal, private, state, and federal lands.

National Energy Board orders Enbridge to cease work on Manitoba pipeline

The National Energy Board has ordered Enbridge Inc. to stop work along its Line 3 oil pipeline in Manitoba after an inspection earlier this month revealed numerous environmental and safety concerns.

Line 3 has been carrying crude between Alberta and Wisconsin for nearly half a century. Enbridge announced plans earlier this year to replace the pipeline in its entirety – a $7.5-billion undertaking that would be the largest project in the company’s history.

Arctic Oil Well Blowout Could Spread More than 1,000 Km

Oil from a spill or oil well blowout in the Arctic waters of Canada’s Beaufort Sea could easily become trapped in sea ice and potentially spread more than 1,000 kilometers to the west coast of Alaska, a World Wildlife Fund study showed on Friday.

The WWF contracted RPS Applied Science Associates to model 22 different oil spill scenarios and map the spread of the oil, potential impact on the water and shoreline, and interaction with sea ice, wildlife and the surrounding ecology.

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Stuart H. Smith is an attorney based in New Orleans fighting major oil companies and other polluters.
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