Muskingum Watershed District Sells only 136M Gal of Water So Far
The Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD), organized in 1933 to reduce the effects of flooding and conserve water for beneficial public uses, oversees 16 dams and reservoirs across 22 counties in Ohio, covering 20% of the state. It is a massive area under the oversight and control of the MWCD. We’ve previously covered their deals with Antero Resources to lease District property for drilling. We’ve also covered District deals to sell water to Antero and other shale drillers (see Muskingum Watershed Votes to Sell 209M Gals of Water for Fracking). Although the district has voted to sell 209 million gallons of water, so far in 2014 they’ve only sold 136 million gallons–or the amount of water used in four days by the city of Akron, OH. According to officials with the MWCD, water sales have had a “negligible” impact on the reservoirs–lowering the several reservoirs used by less than 3/4 of an inch. MWCD lowers reservoirs more than that each year for winter anyway–so actually there’s been no impact, especially since much of the water sold flows through pipelines instead of tanker trucks…
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The mother’s milk of academe is grant money–and West Virginia University is happy to announce a new grant related to the Marcellus Shale. The U.S. Dept. of Energy is forking over $11 million to WVU and Ohio State University for a five-year project to study “baseline measurements, subsurface development and environmental monitoring” in the Marcellus and Utica Shale. The money will be used for research and to establish a first-of-its-kind Marcellus Shale Energy and Environment Laboratory–a field site and dedicated research laboratory to be located at the Morgantown (WV) Industrial Park…
Yesterday’s election was, by all accounts, historic. It was a complete and utter repudiation of Barack H. Obama and his aggressive socialist policies–there’s no denying that. Republicans picked up governorships in most states where they ran. The one cloud was, unfortunately, Pennsylvania where California environmentalist wacko Tom Steyer’s $10 million+ purchased the governorship for the hapless Democrat Tom Wolf. One bright spot in PA (we challenge you to find this news in your local newspaper today) is that Republicans picked up MORE seats in both the PA House and Senate. Which means unless Republicans cave, there will be no severance tax to shut down Marcellus drilling in the Keystone State–at least for the next few years. Whew. In New York, Republicans (beyond all belief) held on and improved their majority in the Senate. The NY Senate is the only firewall against legislative action to permanently stop fracking in the Empire State. Whew. And what’s this, New England moves Republican???…