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Protesters Get Violent, Shut Down OH Frack Water Plant

I'm Adult Aren't I GreenHunter Energy operates a bulk storage and shipping facility near New Matamoras (Washington County), Ohio for salt water (“brine”) that comes from shale wells long after they are drilled and fracked. Brine is naturally occurring water from deep below the ground—water without chemicals from fracking—it just contains a lot of minerals. That fact doesn’t seem to matter to some obtuse protesters.

Yesterday, a group of 100 or so protesters, organized by an extremist group called Appalachia Resist!, stormed the New Matamoras brine facility and shut it down. They engaged in criminal acts by plugging the toilets, stealing keys and in general terrorizing the employees at the facility. Ten of the protesters were arrested (their names, ages and home cities are listed below). More will be charged once police are done reviewing video tapes of the incident.

You may be interested to know that almost all of the people arrested were from other states—not even Ohio residents. GreenHunter is pressing charges, which includes felony counts and possibly charges under the Anti-Terrorism Act.

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Youngstown Shale Wastewater Dumper Faces Jail and Big Fines

MDN has been tracking the story of Ben Lupo, owner of Hardrock Excavating and D&L Energy in Youngstown, OH. Lupo instructed an employee to repeatedly dump shale drilling wastewater into a storm drain that ended up in the Mahoning River. The Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources quickly shut down both Hardrock and D&L (see OH Company Dumping Frack Wastewater in Drain May Appeal Shut-Down). It was thought there was originally up to six dumping incidents and about 200,000 gallons of wastewater, but the Hardrock employee involved has confessed it was more like 20 dumping incidents. It represents a mind-boggling millions of gallons of wastewater literally down the drain.

In addition to having his companies shut down, Lupo now faces the prospect of jail time and huge fines. He’s facing federal criminal charges from the U.S. Attorney’s office for violating the Clean Water Act:

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Youngstown Business Dumped >200K Gal of Untreated Wastewater

The case of a company dumping shale drilling wastewater down a sewer drain in Youngstown, OH—wastewater that has made it’s way to the Mahoning River—keeps getting worse. The owner of Hardrock Excavating (part of D&L Energy) says he thought he was “doing the right thing” by having his employees dump the wastewater at nighttime—to prevent an uproar. Little did he know the uproar he would create.

The owner, Ben Lupo, now admits his company dumped wastewater on at least six occasions, meaning the amount of untreated wastewater entering the water system in the Youngstown area exceeded 200,000 gallons—not the previously reported 40,000 gallons.

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OH Company Dumping Frack Wastewater in Drain May Appeal Shut-Down

Yesterday MDN told you about the (likely) criminal act by Hardrock Excavating, a Youngstown, OH company owned by D&L Energy, when it dumped up to 50,000 gallons of fracking wastewater down a storm drain (see OH Company Dumps 50K Gal of Fracking Wastewater in Storm Drain). The fallout from that act continues. Yesterday the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) revoked all operating permits—permanently—for both Hardrock Excavating and D&L Energy. Ouch.

D&L says it may appeal the ODNR decision to permanently shut them down…

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Did Man Convicted of Dumping Shale Wastewater Get Off Easy?

The Pennsylvania State Attorney General’s office has appealed the sentencing of a man who owned a shale gas wastewater hauling company who was convicted off dumping millions of gallons of wastewater into streams and abandoned mine shafts. The AG thinks a sentence of seven years’ probation with no prison time is not good enough:

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2 Protesters Arrested in NYC at Spectra Pipeline Site

Yet another case of unhinged anti-drilling protesters, this one in New York City. For some time, protesters have rallied against a new 20-mile, $1.2 billion natural gas pipeline being built from New Jersey to New York City by Spectra Energy (see this MDN story). It’s the first new natural gas pipeline built to NYC in decades. According to NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, without new sources of natural gas, New York City residents won’t just pay higher rates for heating and electricity, they’ll run out of it (see this MDN story).

Anti-drilling protesters don’t let reality and common sense get in the way of a good protest, however, so they’ve taken to so-called acts of “civil” disobedience—attempting to block workers in NYC as they try to construct the new pipeline. Yesterday, their antics got two of them arrested.

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Anti-Drilling Protesters Arrested Near Watkins Glen, NY

Anti-drilling protesters in New York are increasingly becoming unhinged. Midstream company Inergy is working on a gas storage project near Watkins Glen in the Finger Lakes region in New York. The $40 million project will create a storage and transfer station for natural gas and liquid petroleum in underground salt caverns near Seneca Lake. Are anti-drillers concerned that the facility will leak gas into the lake? Nope. They just hate fossil fuels period—and they think this facility will encourage more drilling and fracking in New York and Pennsylvania—so they oppose it.

Yesterday a couple of old hippies protesters handcuffed themselves to a fence at the facility. Here’s what happened:

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Penn State Study Finds No Crime Rate Increase in Drilling Counties

Those who oppose drilling try to make the case that crime rates soar when drilling comes to a community. They say those “out of towners” have a lot of time on their hands in the off hours, and they use it to drink hard and play hard, and that leads to all sorts of criminal mischief. But a new Penn State study finds no evidence that when shale gas drilling comes to town crime rates increase. The preliminary findings of the study, performed by the Justice Center for Research at Penn State, were released in January but only announced just last week (a copy of the preliminary report is embedded below).

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Marcellus Areas See Increase in Drunk Driving, Lesser Crimes

A statistical certainty is that as the population of an area grows, there’s bound to be more drunk driving arrests and more crime in general—one of the “hazards” of an increasing population. And so it is in Bradford County, PA and other regions in the Marcellus Shale where the Marcellus drilling boom is happening. The increase in crime is not caused by drilling, according to law enforcement officials, but is a simple fact that where there’s more people there are bound to be more criminal incidents. It’s one of the negatives of drilling, like industrialization of rural areas (more trucking, more noise, more traffic) that must be recognized and if possible, mitigated or at least anticipated.

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