Which company had to pay an EPA fine?

Houston, Texas, is home to Cabot Oil & Gas and to Strategic Minerals, Inc. Both of these companies have a connection to Massachusetts. One of them extracts the fossil fuel that generates about half our state's electricity and, according to this search tool run by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), was responsible for emitting about 611,000 metric tons of CO2e in 2011. The other operates a glass recycling facility in the town of Franklin, about 40 miles southeast of Boston. Read on if you want to find out which of these two companies had to pay a big fine to the EPA.

The company paying the fine was Strategic Minerals, which runs the Franklin recycling site. A couple of months ago, it agreed to pay a fine of $159,000 for failing to have an adequate stormwater pollution prevention plan and for other stormwater discharge violations. Why was Strategic Minerals obliged to take care of its stormwater discharges? Because it has a duty to comply with the federal Clean Water Act, including Section 402(p) which requires permits for "discharges associated with industrial activities."

Flooding in Pennsylvania, 2011 (AP photo)

Not so Cabot Oil & Gas. Whereas oil-and-gas exploration fall under the Clean Water Act, natural gas production does not. Although subject to regulation by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) the frack pads that dot the state do not have to comply with the provisions of the Clean Drinking Water Act.

So any stormwater that might flow over any of Cabot's Marcellus Shale fracking sites -- picking up pollutants along the way -- would enter the waterways of Pennsylvania free from EPA meddling. Pennsylvania has experienced devastating floods in recent years, and climate change may increase the intensity of extreme weather events in the state according to this report from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The source of the statutory exemption is the infamous Energy Act of 2005, which exempted hydraulic fracturing from several important environmental laws. As a result, some industrial activities (glass recycling, for example) require permits under the Clean Water Act's National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). But not fracking.

If you would like to take action to help Massachusetts make the switch away from fracked natural gas toward clean energy, visit beatbackfracking.org.

Beat Back Fracking

According to the Office of the State Geologist, fracking is "probably not" coming to Massachusetts. You can read all the FAQs about the Hartford Basin here, but in the meantime, here's the answer to the question "Is hydraulic fracturing for shale gas coming to Massachusetts?":

Probably not.  Based on a survey of all available scientific data, the geologic conditions in the Connecticut Valley in western Massachusetts are not optimum for shale gas development.  Black shale units in the Hartford Basin are generally too thin, laterally discontinuous, and are cut by too many pre-existing natural fractures and extinct faults. This makes extraction of hydrocarbons economically not feasible with today’s technology at current market prices (see below). However, more data need to be collected to completely rule out that possibility. 

In addition, oil and gas wells used for conventional or enhanced hydrocarbon recovery are defined as Class 2 wells under the Massachusetts Underground Injection Control Regulations (310 CMR 27.00).  Class 2 wells are currently prohibited in the Commonwealth.

This is good news, and I was relieved to read it. But while Massachusetts itself is likely to remain frack-free, we are still complicit in the practice. After all, most of the electricity we generate in Massachusetts comes from natural gas. So every time we switch on the light (or type a blog post, for that matter) we can be sure that it's because somebody somewhere is having their land fracked. Massachusetts could use its market power to require that any company selling natural-gas based electricity in Massachusetts has to certify that the extraction process did not pollute anyone's drinking water.

That was the idea behind a bill the Sierra Club promoted in the last legislative session, and that deserves more support in the next session. The bill won the support of the Massachusetts Democratic Party's state convention in 2011. If you'd like to help the bill become law, please let me know.

What's wrong with fracking?

Why am I against fracking? That was the question Benjamin Coleman, a student at Boston University, posed when he interviewed me for his film project. My short answer: climate change. For my slightly longer answer (about two minutes) please check out this video.