Courts Reviewing Environmental Impact of Natural Gas Drilling

By Kate Winston, Inside EPA, Sept 18, 2009

Key federal courts are backing activists in suits under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to review the impacts of natural gas drilling fluids on underground aquifers, rulings that activists hope will bolster pending bills to restore EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) authority to oversee hydraulic fracturing — a controversial gas drilling procedure that requires injection of chemicals into wells.

Activists also say such precedent will likely spur other groups to use NEPA to challenge the use of chemicals in gas drilling, a practice that is expected to increase as more electricity producers switch to the fuel to comply with upcoming climate change regulations.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit — which includes key gas drilling states of Oklahoma, Wyoming, Kansas, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico — in April ruled in State of New Mexico ex rel. v. Bureau of Land Management that the bureau must conduct further analysis under NEPA of the drilling activities covered by its resource management plan for the Otera Mesa region, including providing more evidence that drilling would not harm the aquifer.

Meanwhile, a federal district court in Colorado Sept. 3 granted environmentalists’ request for a preliminary injunction to block exploratory oil and gas drilling in the Baca National Wildlife Refuge until the resolution of the case, San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council et al. v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [FWS]. In the ruling, Judge Walker Miller found in favor of activists on a number of issues, including activists’ claims that the FWS’ environmental assessment (EA) for the project likely violated NEPA by failing to analyze potential impacts of drilling and failing to analyze alternatives that would have a smaller environmental impact.

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Govt Stands by as Mercury Taints Water

By JASON DEAREN (AP)

NEW IDRIA, Calif. — Abandoned mercury mines throughout central California’s rugged coastal mountains are polluting the state’s major waterways, rendering fish unsafe to eat and risking the health of at least 100,000 impoverished people.

But an Associated Press investigation found that the federal government has tried to clean up fewer than a dozen of the hundreds of mines — and most cleanups have failed to stem the contamination.

Although the mining ceased decades ago, records and interviews show the vast majority of sites have not even been studied to assess the pollution, let alone been touched.

While millions live in the affected Delta region, the pollution disproportionately hurts the poor and immigrants who rely on local fish as part of their diet, according to a study conducted by University of California, Davis ecologist Fraser Shilling. His research found that 100,000 people, which he calls a conservative estimate, regularly eat tainted fish at levels deemed unsafe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

But neither the state nor federal government has studied long-term health effects of mercury on the people who regularly eat fish from these waters.

The legacy of more than a century of mercury mining in California — which produced more of the silvery metal than anywhere else in the nation — harms people and the environment in myriad ways.

Far to the north, American Indians who live atop mine waste on the shores of one of the world’s most mercury-polluted lakes have elevated levels of the heavy metal in their bodies and fears about their health.

And other mercury mines are the biggest sources of the pollution in San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the largest estuary on the Pacific Coast.

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U.S. Marines Dying from Drinking Water Contamination

By William Levesque, St. Petersburg Times

The last years of Marine veteran Ian Colin MacPherson’s life were spent fending off one puzzling ailment after another. Rashes. Headaches. Vertigo. Nausea. And finally, the abnormally aggressive prostate cancer that killed the Riverview man at age 46 in 2004.

MacPherson always figured he must have been poisoned. But by whom?

His widow, Jody MacPherson, believed she found the culprit last year: MacPherson’s beloved Marine Corps. “They killed him,” she said.

Camp Lejeune, a sprawling Marine base on the North Carolina seaboard, is the site of what some scientists call the worst public drinking-water contamination in the nation’s history. Its water wells were tainted with cancer-causing industrial compounds for 30 years, ending in 1987.

An estimated 500,000 to 1 million people – including Marines and family living on base housing – drank, bathed and cooked using that fouled water.

Congress has dubbed ill Marines “poisoned patriots,” and in 2008 lawmakers ordered the Marines to notify those who might have been exposed.

So far, almost 10,000 affected Floridians have registered with the Marines to take part in a health study, the highest total for any state except North Carolina. About 1,500 claims have been filed against the government seeking $33.8-billion in damages.

Among the chemicals detected in high concentrations at Camp Lejeune are a metal degreaser, trichloroethylene (TCE) and a degreaser and dry-cleaning agent called tetrachloroethylene (PCE).

PCE appears to have been dumped by a private dry cleaner near one of the water wells, while the TCE was dumped by the Marines, according to documents and investigators. Federal limits on the chemicals are 5-parts-per-billion. The highest level of Camp Lejeune water for TCE was about 1,400-parts-per-billion. PCE was found at levels over 200-parts-per-billion.

The Marines discovered the water contamination in 1980, yet waited four years to close contaminated wells and then minimized the danger to Camp Lejeune residents, critics say. Two wells were later reopened for almost two years during a water shortage. In 1985, Lejeune’s commander told residents “minute” levels of contaminants had been found, failing to disclose that a lab had informed the Marines that water was “highly contaminated.”

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Source:  TampaBay.com

Contaminated Water in Black Falls Affects Navajo Residents

By Kathy Helms, Gallup Independent

WINDOW ROCK – For some elderly Black Falls, Ariz., residents, last week’s Navajo Environmental Protection Agency conference was their first opportunity to have a voice in Window Rock – a chance some didn’t want to miss.

The community located in the former Bennett Freeze area has struggled for years to find a source of safe drinking water, with residents often traveling 50 miles to Flagstaff on unpaved roads to haul water.

In February, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Indian Health Service extended a waterline and constructed a safe water-hauling point in the priority area to serve residents near four unregulated wells contaminated with uranium.

Indian Health Service distributed 14 new water-hauling tanks to members of the community and is developing plans to install cisterns for up to nine homes within the immediate vicinity of the contaminated wells. In the interim, EPA has been providing bottled water to two families living in a very remote area who previously relied on uranium-contaminated wells.

During the May 13 EPA conference presentation of “Assisting the Water Haulers: Using Grassroots Driven Development to Secure Environmental Justice,” Don Yellowman, president of The Forgotten People, talked about how this group of Bennett Freeze area residents came together to help themselves.

“In Diné way, these people have extended families here and cannot just pick up and move to some other location so they remain and when necessary subject themselves to drinking contaminated water,” Yellowman said.

“I can only imagine how Rolanda (Tohannie) must feel speaking publicly about how she knows she is drinking contaminated water but does so because she has no other choice, and how Elsie Tohannie and other Black Falls residents feel as mothers, grandmothers and relatives of these families.

“It is imperative the new Black Falls Church watering point open, be maintained, and in the interim, all chapter houses must serve everyone in need without discrimination to ensure access to safe drinking water,” he said.

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Source:  Gallup Independent

City Officials Hid News of Water Contamination from Residents

Taken from an original article by Michael Hawthorne, Chicago Tribune

When public water supplies are fouled by toxic pollutants, Illinois law requires that municipal officials, not residents, be notified. But village officials in Downers Grove and Crestwood already knew their municipal well was contaminated — state officials had told them so in 1986 — and continued to use it anyway.

In response to the Tribune’s investigation, Governor Quinn and others vowed last week to ensure that state and local officials follow through on the intent of the law. They also are moving to make it a felony to mislead the public about the source of its water.

“You would expect them to tell their constituents what’s in the water they’re drinking,” said Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago), who sponsored the right-to-know measure. “If we need to amend the law to make it clear people should be notified, that’s what we’ll do.”

After the law took effect, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency posted on its Web site examples of state officials issuing notifications or requiring polluters to do so. Under the heading “right-to-know legislation better informs Illinois citizens,” the site notes that early notification can help people “make important decisions that may impact their families’ health.”

One case the EPA highlighted involved radioactive tritium that had seeped into groundwater near the Braidwood nuclear power plant in Will County. The Tribune first reported in January 2006 that Exelon Nuclear had bought out a homeowner and offered to compensate others for any loss in home value because of the contamination.

On at least a half-dozen occasions after that, Exelon and state officials sent notices to people living near the plant updating them on plans to clean up the area. “We moved fairly quickly on that one,” said Kurt Neibergall, manager of the EPA’s Office of Community Relations. “In many of these cases, we maybe don’t have all of the answers, but we can get as much information as possible out there.”

Answers were difficult to find for Ann Muniz and her neighbors in unincorporated Downers Grove. After they were told in 2001 that their wells were contaminated with trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene, two industrial solvents linked to cancer, they were advised by state health officials to avoid drinking tap water and to limit bathing in it.

If they needed to take a shower, Muniz said, they were told to open the windows because the chemicals can easily become airborne when aerated.

The neighborhood later was hooked up to treated Lake Michigan water and the wells were capped. But as the saga dragged on, it became clear that state and local officials had known about the contamination in the late 1980s and didn’t inform people living nearby.

“They always seemed to be looking for loopholes or excuses for not telling us what’s going on,” Muniz said.

When the right-to-know legislation was signed into law in 2005, state officials vowed that what happened to Muniz and her neighbors wouldn’t happen again.

In Crestwood, village officials told state regulators in 1986 that they would use only treated Lake Michigan water from neighboring Alsip and the contaminated well would be turned on only in an emergency. But records show that Crestwood relied on well water for up to 20 percent of the village’s water supply for some months.

The well finally was shut off after the EPA tested the water again in 2007 and found it still was contaminated with chemicals related to perchloroethylene. But before the Tribune report, the only public hint of contaminated water in the area was an Aug. 13 news release from the Illinois Department of Public Health warning that private wells in the area might be polluted.

State officials now say they are taking steps to avoid a repeat of what happened in Crestwood.

“We think what these guys did is outrageous,” said Doug Scott, director of the state EPA. “It can’t be allowed to ever happen again.”

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Source:  The Chicago Tribune