Coming to a neighborhood near you:
Officials said thousands of gallons of fluid leaked over farm land and into a creek from a natural gas well in Bradford County.
Now there is a massive operation underway to contain the spill of drilling fluids.
The rupture near Canton happened late Tuesday night, contaminating nearby land and creeks.
The blowout happened on the Morse family farm in LeRoy Township outside Canton, a farming community.
Chesapeake Energy officials said a piece of equipment on the well failed.
Now a major response is underway to stop the leak of frack fluid and get control of the well.
Water is gushing from the earth at the Chesapeake well pad. It has been all hands on deck to put a stop to the leak of fracking fluid that, according to company officials, spilled thousands and thousands of gallons into nearby land and waterways.
“We’ve been able to limit the flow. We’re still doing additional work to regain full control,” said Brian Grove of Chesapeake Energy. He added there is no telling yet how much of that extremely salty water mixed with chemicals and sand has impacted the nearby Towanda Creek, but no gas has escaped into the air.
“The biggest thing is the footprint on the environment. Well obviously this is a big footprint,” said neighbor Ted Tomlinson. “It’s one of those things that happens. Gotta live with it, I guess. Here to stay.”
Neighbors like him were asked to leave their homes as a precaution. Some did, and some did not. “Our family’s been on this corner a long time and expect to stay and expect a good-faith effort from Chesapeake so that we can live here,” Tomlinson added.
His concern is for his drinking water well just several football fields away from the blownout gas well.
Gee. You think drinking water might be an issue? Although I wonder if that well was doomed anyway with them blasting chemicals into the watershed even without a spill like this.
The good news is that the PA administration has basically banned all environmental monitoring, so while all that shit is now all over the place, the upside is we won’t have to hear about it or worry our pretty little heads with the ugly details. Plus, thanks to Bush and Cheney and the money party in Congress, we don’t know what they are using anyway in the fracking procedure, so how would we know if any contamination is their fault?
And I hope we have learned a lesson from all of this. If we had taxed this highly profitable industry, they would not have been able to invest in R&D to keep spills like this from happening. Wait, what? But, you say, if we tax them and regulate them, they won’t come here and give us jobs. Yes, they will.
Because that’s where the fucking gas is. They aren’t there for the scenery and pleasant attitudes of the people of LeRoy Township, you clowns.
cathyx
It’s a total win for the bottled water companies.
Maude
Makes me want to run out in the street and yell they are going to kill us all.
This is also a year away from the Gulf Oil Spill. Government isn’t good at connecting the dots.
Zifnab
If we had taxed the industry, they might have looked at the cost benefit of drilling holes and sucking up gas and blowing apart the community water supply and said, “Nope – cheaper to mine coal / oil / etc”
And if you want to get really clever and start taxing and regulating coal and oil and the rest of the fossil fuels, the business-folk will go totally nuts and start building wind farms and solar panel factors instead.
But that shit is elitist and expensive, and I hear Al Gore has a big house so NOPE we’re drilling for gas instead.
jo6pac
Hopes they’ll make it good, amazing! Hope the check was worth the lost farm.
Ruckus
And I hope we have learned a lesson from all of this. If we had taxed this highly profitable industry, they would not have been able to invest in R&D to keep spills like this from happening. Wait, what? But, you say, if we tax them and regulate them, they won’t come here and give us jobs. Yes, they will.
Exactly. You go where you can make money. If it’s extracting natural gas, you go where the gas is. If it’s exploiting cheap labor, you go where the cheap labor is.
ETA What Zifnab said also
freelancer
Frack us, we’re doomed.
Marmot
Silly John, fossil fuel fairies won’t inhabit a taxed geological stratum or geological area!
EDIT: Whoa! Mixed the two originally.
BGinCHI
Plus, the motherfucker who owns Chesapeake bought up a bunch of land around pristine beach and natural habitat in Saugatuck, MI, so that he could build a luxury hotel and homes. Locals are fighting it but they don’t stand a chance.
Oklahoma energy polluting assholes.
I’m not religious but I fucking hope there’s a fiery, fiery hell for these bastards.
El Cid
This problem is caused by the slow speed of approval of further fracking licenses. If it weren’t for environmentalists and government bureaucrats, natural gas producers wouldn’t have had to resort to such techniques to explore more difficult sources. Surely in the name of Freedom we should be able to make all these people living around these valuable resources leave so as not to threaten production with their irrational fears about ‘drinking water’.
singfoom
I hope that the families affected can reclaim their homes without ill effects to their health. And if they can’t live there, I hope the company pays out the nose for the property they ruined so they families can restart their lives somewhere else.
But knowing what I hope and what usually happens in the world, they’ll get a pittance and end up moving somewhere else close by that’s also contaminated.
Perhaps someday, in the future, logic will drive policy on energy and on preserving the environment (or hell, on anything.)
But, if we did so, the true corporate citizens of this country would get a smaller share, and well, that’s just the same as having Stalin run everything.
@Maude: They are going to kill us all.
Corner Stone
Not a problem. I’m sure taxpayer funds can be utilized to contain and clean this unforeseen mess up.
Now that I think on it, this seems like a clear signal we’re taxing Chesapeake too much. Otherwise they’d already have a fund set aside to clean this up.
Ruckus
@BGinCHI:
Of course there’s a hell. The devil has arrived in the guise of rich bastards and is making us live in it.
eemom
OT, but the NYT has a lengthy article about the President’s mother, subtitled “Wealth and White Privilege.”
nytimes.com/2011/04/24/magazine/mag-24Obama-t.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
Corner Stone
@singfoom: Chesapeake will hound these families for two decades, until such time as the case can be referred to the Roberts Court.
BGinCHI
@Ruckus: At least Dante got to hang with Virgil while he was there. Who do we get, Joe Scarborough?
singfoom
@Corner Stone: I’m sure Thomas will ask no questions, and Scalia and Roberts will chide the family for having the temerity to live near natural resources and prevent the company involved from having to compensate those affected.
If we cannot get the toxic influence of money out of our politics, I weep for the Republic.
eemom
here’s an example of White Privilege in Indonesia:
The Thin Black Duke
Edward Abbey once remarked, “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” Isn’t it amazing how applicable Abbey’s acidic observation is to corporations? Hey, greed is good.
Ruckus
@BGinCHI:
Another reason to believe it’s hell.
scav
Remind me, this is the same nation that immediately put a gazillion mile wide evacuation zone around a nuclear plant on the other size of the globe. I’m confuseled, is distance decay now working backwards?
S. cerevisiae
The invisible hand of the free market will provide water. Probably from a division of the same company that fracked the gas. So now you get to pay to the people that polluted your water – freedom!
Martin
@singfoom: Alito: “I don’t see ‘right to not die from your own well’ written in the Constitution anywhere, do you Scalia?”
Scalia: “Fuck no.”
MikeJ
@Martin: Even if there were such a right, it would restrict the federal government, not private actors.
PeakVT
“We’ve been able to limit the flow. We’re still doing additional work to regain full control,” said Brian Grove of Chesapeake Energy.
I can think of better ways of commemorating the first anniversary of the Macondo well blowout.
Martin
@scav: The Obama government did that. The PA teaparty government would have made geiger counters illegal.
arguingwithsignposts
We are all Nigerians now.
Cerberus
@Maude:
Sadly yes, they will gladly if allowed kill us all for a slight uptick on this quarter’s profits.
Which is why regulation is a good thing and should be a “no duh, what kind of monster would want to live in a world without it”. Because as long as we allow any behavior in the name of greed and trust that the moral rightness of everyone will keep everything working, we will always be at the mercy of those with the least conscience.
Corner Stone
@arguingwithsignposts:
Speaking of, I need your help. I have an issue with my bank account…
S. cerevisiae
@The Thin Black Duke:
Are humans smarter than yeast?
I guess we’ll find out.
Dave C
Doug, when you’re on, you’re really fucking on.
mr. whipple
Clearly, the landowners leased this good, responsible, honest company defective bedrock which in turn caused this tragic and unavoidable accident. Therefore, the landowners must be punished. / Roberts Court
cathyx
I bet that Indian from that pollution commercial from long ago is sobbing right about now.
arguingwithsignposts
@Corner Stone: Sure man, just give me the digits and I’ll see what I can do. Also, I’ll need a copy of your long-form birth certificate and a SSN.
stuckinred
@arguingwithsignposts: And his circ remnants.
Primigenius
Preach it, Brother Cole!
arguingwithsignposts
I should add: We are all Centralia, Pa. now.
Maude
@Cerberus:
Chesapeake Energy is trying to CYA. What federal agency has a say in this?
And why did the piece of well equipment fail? Lack of inspections, I bet.
It getting to be like the Robber Barons are back and doing just fine.
gypsy howell
I can’t hear the word fracking without thinking about Starbuck and Lee Adama.
On another note, Thurston’s cousin lives in that area, has a gas well on his property, and is totally unconcerned about the environmental effects. But hey, he’s got free heat!
Bob Loblaw
On the topic of fossil fuel producers doing the dirt:
independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/secret-memos-expose-link-between-oil-firms-and-invasion-of-iraq-2…
For all the awful destructiveness of Tory economic policies leading to a second recession, I really can’t say I’m that surprised Britons went with them. I can’t believe Labour isn’t exiled from power for a generation.
I guess not for the same reason the Republicans aren’t…
WaterGirl
With all the remakes of old films that are being produced, you’d think someone would think to make a new version of Robin Hood. The way things are going, I’ll bet it would be a huge box office hit.
stuckinred
@WaterGirl: Ridley Scott just did.
maus
@cathyx: He wasn’t actually Native American.
arguingwithsignposts
@cathyx: Well, the American Indians/Native Americans have had plenty of reasons to cry for quite a while.
MikeB
Shouldn’t “money party” be capitalized?
It’s way bigger than either of the other two…
Gustopher
Customers will be outraged, purchase their natural gas only from corporations that do not destroy their neighbors’ health and property, and then this corporation will go out of business, and we’ll all have ponies.
Just another instance of the invisible hand working.
Rihilism
Sheesh! Feel as though I’m being hammered by all the fucked-up news on today’s BJ frontpage (John Cole, why must you persecute me?!). One cute penguin post and the rest is, “Cum ear, looket dis corpse. Ssscary ssstuff, huh?”.
Moar kittens, pulease….
WaterGirl
@stuckinred: You made me go to The Google, so now I say: but, but… that was a year ago. Sadly, there were all sorts of references to the tea party in the google links for this movie. I was talking about the real real americans who are getting screwed, like the people from wisconsin and michigan.
Oh well, I guess I need to get out more.
Calouste
Another thing here is that drilling fluid isn’t exactly cheap, and having downtime on a rig is even less cheap. So even if you have bribed all the politicians and have bribed all the judges so that you never have to pay any damages to third parties, you’d still want to make sure that accidents such as these are kept to a minimum because they are fracking expensive in itself. But I guess that requires management that can look further than the next lunchbreak or the next golf round and doesn’t walk around in a cloud where bad things only happen to other people.
stuckinred
@WaterGirl: I tried to post a link but this rinky-dink whattaya call it would let me!
singfoom
I do appreciate the strange logic of google ads, showing a “Invest in U.S. Oil & Gas” banner at the bottom of these comments.
Maude
BP has filed suit against Transocean, the owner of the DWH offshore oil rig.
This is turning out to be quite a day for blown wells.
WaterGirl
@stuckinred: FYWP
@singfoom: You made me laugh. My only other laugh on this shitty, shitty day was the Dancing Merengue Dog that someone was kind enough to post earlier on the penguin thread. I would have laughed at the penguin being tickled, but I wasn’t altogether certain that those were happy sounds.
Edit: In spite of my reservations about the penguin, I am wildly in favor of “tickling the penguin” as a rotating tag line.
John - A Motley Moose
@singfoom: I got a more appropriate “Aquasana water filtration” ad.
Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water
How about one for an “energy/environmental engineering” firm
Josh
Oh, that “good-faith effort.” My neighbor from Wyoming County (just SE of Bradford) tells me that the denizens really do love and trust the gas companies and are extremely grateful that those companies give them bottled water after having made their tap water undrinkable. It’s that weird feudal mentality that Taibbi writes about.
Omnes Omnibus
@Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water: I have a wealth management software ad.
Gus
This is what breaks my heart. This is the new normal, and people are just rolling over for it. If I was this guy I’d be breathing fire.
kdaug
@gypsy howell: That’s “frak”, without the c
Bill Murray
@maus: but his sons are
NaveenM
Well, Bradford County went for McCain so what do you expect?
Population trends in PA indicate that these areas are slowly clearing out — full of old people, and the young tend to leave. I guess things like this will just speed up the depopulation.
As long as the crap in the water doesn’t trickle down state, these people can lay in the bed they’ve made.
Chad N Freude
@Zifnab: Don’t tax them, just don’t limit their liability. Their cost/benefit risk analysis experts will all have heart attacks. I think we should have a Constitutional amendment that states that all persons (i.e., corporations as defined by the SCOTUS) shall have unlimited liability for any harmful environmental effects resulting from their actions.
jayackroyd
I spent the better part of a couple of years, two weeks a month, in Bradford County. We were helping the County set up their property valuation system, so they could do annual reassessments.
I’ve worked with a lot of government officials in such settings, and I have to say the County Commissioners (two Republican, one Democrat–there was a rule that the Commission had to reflect both parties) were the most committed to good governance than I’d experienced before or since.
So it makes me very sad to read this. Bradford County is a source of many fond memories (although we took a serious bath on the project. But the system was done right.)
JerseyJeffersonian
Now would be a good time for some environmentally-minded types to collect samples of the effluents from the well failure. Then maybe they could have them analyzed for their chemical constituents so that we could all know what REALLY is in that Mystery Fracking Fluid, and then share this information with the press.
The Philadelphia Inquirer has been running a lot of articles about fracking and Gov. Corbett’s obstinate refusal to either regulate the industry in any meaningful way, or to consider taxing the bastards to permit the government to – at minimum – develop an emergency response capability that is not under the control of these gasholes. So this’ll be interesting to see how the Ol’ Governor tries to blow smoke up everybody’s asses now. Should be interesting to see the response of the Delaware River Basin Commission (the members of which are jointly appointed by PA, NY, NJ, & DE, the states who between them share this river basin) which has been another force with which to reckon.
Frackin’ in PA, puppy mills in MO. What’ll the soulless bastards select to apply themselves to next? Satan only knows.
kdaug
@Chad N Freude: I love this.
matryoshka
I went to a meeting about my region’s water supply last night and learned that our surface water and the higher water tables are completely contaminated with VOCs and road salt, so more people will be slurping out of Lake Michigan–too many more, as it turns out. More than the federal government will allow for this region. So maybe Chicago’s next war will be with Michigan or Indiana. It baffles me that this same federal government allows fracking, which poses a direct and immediate danger to the water supply.
Oh, wait, no it doesn’t.
Jason
State field inspectors and regional directors must obtain “final clearance” from Harrisburg before issuing permits or pursuing enforcement actions.
Regulatory processes, across all state agencies, are stealthily being shifted, also, to DCED – a move that lands most of these decisions on the desk of Alan Walker, formerly of Bradford Energy. In case you’re wondering, that’s a business, not a conservation society.
The PG also just published a pretty damning report on DEP’s oil and gas permitting at the local level. They’re understaffed, and the clock runs out quick, so they essentially rubber-stamp everything. Naturally, state Republicans bemoan the “bureaucracy” that “those that produce jobs” have to deal with.