Judge tours Amwell impoundment
An Environmental Hearing Board proceeding included a tour Friday of the Yeager Farm, the Yeager well site and the now-closed centralized impoundment in Amwell Township. This photo was taken from McAdams Road, which passes through the Yeager property.
The Yeager centralized impoundment in Amwell Township was used in the Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling industry.
AMITY – An Environmental Hearing Board judge toured a closed water impoundment and Marcellus Shale natural gas wells Friday before visiting an adjoining Amwell Township farm – crossing steep hills and stepping over cow droppings – as a proceeding continued to determine if a driller polluted a private water well.
Chief EHB Judge and Chairman Thomas W. Renwand joined attorneys and members of the media on the tour of the Yeager gas facility and farm in a case in which a neighbor, Loren Kiskadden, is challenging a state Department of Environmental Protection ruling that the Range Resources operation didn’t damage his drinking water supply.
After nearly two dozen people arrived on his farm, property owner Ron Yeager said his cattle “drank that water as long as I’ve been alive.”
Testimony began in the case Tuesday, and it is expected to be presented over 10 days, said Cecil Township attorney John Smith, who represents Kiskadden.
It was the first time members of the local media were given a glimpse of one of the 18 centralized impoundments – pits used to store fresh and frack water for use in drilling operations – in Washington and Greene counties. Reporters were allowed onto the property only after a local newspaper reporter asked to attend the tour. Renwand granted the request under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Renwand took part in an initial tour of the area after the lawsuit was filed in 2012.
The tour Friday was separate from a 25-count lawsuit Amwell neighbors Stacey, Harley and Paige Haney; Beth, John and Ashley Voyles; and Loren and Grace Kiskadden filed in Washington County Court charging Range with negligence, partly over allegations it allowed a hole to develop in the liner of the impoundment, contaminating the soil and groundwater.
Range, as well as state and federal regulators, have “exhaustively studied, tested and investigated these claims and have repeatedly determined that there have been no impacts” to the water from any of Range’s activities, including no impacts to health and safety, company spokesman Matt Pitzarella said following the tour.
The DEP, meanwhile, included problems at the Yeager site when it issued Range a record-setting $4.15 million fine last week for various leaks and other problems at six of the company’s water impoundments in Washington County.
The Yeager Farm springs were contaminated by the operation’s drill cutting and fluid recycling pit on the well pad, Smith said.
“It leaked all over the place,” he said. “It had to be reclaimed.”
The drilling pit, which was less than 100 yards from the Yeagers’ springs, resulted in increased chlorides in the water, Pitzarella said.
“The Yeagers’ springs were never unfit to drink, but the presence of chlorides can impact taste,” he said, adding Range drilled the Yeagers new, deeper water wells.
DEP inspectors became concerned with the impoundment in November 2011, when two test samples showed elevated chloride levels at the site.
Both impoundment liners have been stripped and removed, and only the dirt basin remains nearly seven months after Range notified the DEP it was closing the facility, the Friday tour revealed. Some of the soil had been excavated as the drilling company worked to reclaim the impoundment.
Surrounding the impoundment on all sides are rolling hills, lush greenery and streams. During the tour, several wild turkeys ran across a field a few hundred feet from the impoundment.
The Kiskadden property is about three-quarters of a mile away from the southwestern edge of the impoundment.
The 7H well on the Yeager pad, which has been discussed in court hearings, was drilled in 2009 and started producing in 2011. Two other wells in the center of the pad just started producing this year.
Water flows downhill from the Yeagers’ spring, overflows from a culvert along McAdams Road and enters a watering trough for their cattle to drink from near a second spring. The hill continues down through a pasture to Bane Creek and unnamed tributaries in the rural area.
The tour passed the Kiskadden mobile home and other nearby residences situated beside a former salvage yard. Littered among the weeds hugging Bane Creek were two junked school buses, a motorboat, an overturned pickup truck bed and a burned-out mobile home.
Smith contends the impoundment contents spilled over the hill from a high-density plastic holding tank covered with a manhole, part of its leak-detection system.
He alleged the spill surfaced for a while and “was flowing over the hill, and then they began to pump it back in.”
Pitzarella said regulators informed Kiskadden his water was unaffected by the Marcellus operation.
“They have also repeatedly stated that his water does not meet drinking water standards due to natural contaminants and bacteria from livestock and septic systems found in his and other nearby water supplies,” Pitzarella said.