B-CAUSE (Bucks Concerned About Unsafe Shale-gas Extraction)

Blog

  • No Surprise

    Spotlight PA reports:

    SINK HOLES: Chester County commissioners want Pennsylvania regulators to shut down a portion of the Mariner East pipeline, saying at least seven sinkholes have developed since January in one township, per WHYY. The push comes days after Pennsylvania’s Public Utility Commission unveiled a raft of proposed pipeline safety regulations, some inspired by ongoing issues along the Mariner East route.

    Your legislators are constantly being pressed by lobbyists to let the industry get by with less regulatory scrutiny, or to cut funding for inspection and enforcement. Utilities are supposed to operate for the public convenience and necessity, not to make it easy for private interests to cut corners.

  • “Forever” Fracking Chemicals

    Drillers and those who supply the chemicals they use are secretive about the magic sauce they inject to open the fissures and free the gas. Spotlight PA in Harrisburg and WHYY in Philadelphia are investigating reports that those chemicals may include toxic PFAS.

    Nothing that fracking companies do improves the quality of air and water, or the health of Pennsylvanians, NOTHING!

    Fracking is not in the public interest, it produces economic benefits to companies that buy political influence and corrupt the legislative process.

    FRACK CHECK

    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allowed oil and gas companies to use toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS in their fracking wells despite warnings from government scientists, new reporting finds.

    Records obtained by the nonprofit Physicians for Social Responsibility found PFAS were approved for fracking in 2011, despite grave concerns about the risk to human health.

    Read more at Spotlight PA

  • Accountable?

    Political winds change. As unprecidented weather extremes become the rule, and other events make climate change real for most rational people, those who fostered disinformation and propaganda in a effort to delay action may be held accountable.

    Big oil and gas kept a dirty secret for decades. Now they may pay the price
    With an unprecedented wave of lawsuits, America’s petroleum giants face a reckoning for the environmental devastation caused by fossil fuels

  • Keystone XL Pipeline Project Dead

    The abandonment of the project by its developer is good news. But the economic environment that made it attractive to big oil hasn’t changed much. Because the cost of oil is low thanks to many hidden subsidies and costs born by the public at large, there is still plenty of incentive to burn the fuel and delay switching to renewable non-polluting sources. So don’t go to sleep.

    Keystone XL pipeline developer pulls plug on controversial project
    The project became a flash point for climate activists during the Obama administration. President Trump backed the pipeline’s construction during his term, but Biden pledged during the campaign to block it.

  • $20 Billion

    US Taxpayers provide more than twenty billion dollars ($20B) is direct subsidies to the Fossil Fuel Industry year in and year out. That does not include an estimated six trillion ($6T) in indirect subsidies that represent the externalized costs of our use of fossil fuel products. Damage to property, people’s health, and the environment is permitted explicitly or implicitly by our failure to hold the industry accountable.

    We may have grown accoustomed to this and accepted it in service of cheap gas, and “disposable” plastic items, but the reality of the impact isn’t mitigated by acceptance.

    Renewable energy is competitively handicapped by these direct and indirect subsidies to the detriment of the public good and the wellbeing of all. Shouldn’t they end?

  • Bad for Horses Too!

    Fracking waste contaminated water harms foals.

  • It Costs Big Bucks just to Leave it in the Ground

    Pennsylvania collects very little when it permits private companies to tap the commonwealth’s fossil fuels. If the well owner goes bankrupt, who pays to close the well?

    Well, Damn

    [from NumLock News]

    When an oil and gas extraction company goes belly up, they can leave behind wells that will seep methane and other hydrocarbons into the atmosphere for decades to come, if not longer. In the past five years, 207 such businesses failed in the United States, leaving the states holding the bag in terms of plugging the wells, and 190 more companies could file for bankruptcy by 2022. There are 3.2 million deserted oil and gas wells in the United States and 29 million globally. Until very recently scientists did not incorporate those abandoned wells into their greenhouse gas estimates, but that turned out to be a mistake, as post-abandonment the wells are leaking some of the worst emissions possible. A study of 88 abandoned wells in Pennsylvania found 90 percent leaked methane, a measurement of 43 wells in Texas found significant leaks in 28, and in the U.K. researchers found methane emissions in 30 percent of 102 wells checked. Plugging a well — clearing it of any obstructions and then filling it with cement — can cost $20,000 to $145,000, and for a modern shale well the cost can hit $300,000. If companies see the red ink of filling a well exceeds the black gold coming out of it, they can just abandon it in bankruptcy, leaving taxpayers holding the bag and a massive legal mess in their methane-choked wake.

    Mya Frazier, Bloomberg

    It must be mighty tempting to those energy moguls to drain away all the liquid assets and then declare bankruptcy.

    Nothing good comes of fracking.

  • This Should NOT be News

    There are serious consequences to climate change. Looks like they are finally getting the attention of the financial world.

    Wildfires Could Signal Coming Climate Change Financial Crisis
    California’s August Complex is now the biggest wildfire event in state history

  • Elcon Withdraws!

    Citing unfavorable business climate and COVID-19 Elcon has withdrawn its application for a toxic wastewater facility on the banks of the Delaware. Many of us voiced out protests repeatedly at hearings and public meetings. The siting of the facility was seriously flawed and the the application had many serious deficiencies.

    We should remember that the permitting process exists to allow things to be done that are generally not allowed. Often private interests seek permits that are clearly not in public interest, and which, if granted, would degrade the quality of life and impose risks to the environment. We celebrate the decision to withdraw, it was an ill conceived project from its inception.

    Elcon withdraws application for large hazardous wastewater plant in Bucks County
    Elcon Recycling Services will withdraw an application to build a large facility in Fairless Hills that would have processed up to 210,000 tons of liquid chemical waste annually for recycling.

  • No Regard for Public Interest

    Legislators are still serving private interests over public well-being. Spotlight PA is accountable high-integrity investigative reporting – I trust them to be honest and forthright. Our public servants, on the other hand, are too vulnerable to political winds, and the blandishments of the fossil energy lobby to be trusted, as these pages amply document. When your paycheck depends on not speaking with candor, nothing good happens.

    “After all the evidence was heard … this was [the grand jury’s] conclusion — the giant fracking companies were given free passes by unprepared agencies, and the public was harmed,” said Jacklin Rhoads, a spokesperson for Shapiro.

    – Spotlight PA
    Damning report on Pa.’s failure to protect residents from fracking unlikely to result in major reform | Spotlight PA
    State agencies implicated in the report dismissed it outright, calling the recommendations outdated and ill-informed.