Muchas Gasias: Beaver Run Reservoir Hires Auditor for Royalties
Waaaaay back in March 2009, when MDN was still in it’s blog infancy, we told you that Westmoreland County, PA supervisors had voted to lease land at the Beaver Run Reservoir to Dominion to drill five Marcellus Shale wells (see Westmoreland County, PA Supervisors Vote to Approve Drilling on County Land). The reservoir provides drinking water to some 60,000+ customers in five southwestern PA counties. What! Marcellus wells next to–even under–a fresh water reservoir? Say it ain’t so!! But it is, and it’s worked out so well (with NO water contamination issues), that over the years those initial five wells have sprouted to become 37 wells with more on the way. The wells at Beaver Run Reservoir are raising so much money for the county they’ve hired a “drilling auditor” to keep track of royalty revenues, which this year will exceed $6 million…
Read More “Muchas Gasias: Beaver Run Reservoir Hires Auditor for Royalties”
Range Resources built an open-air frack wastewater and brine impoundment in Amwell Township (Washington County), PA in 2009–the Jon Day Impoundment. At the time, they installed a monitoring system under the impoundment to alert them (and the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection) in case the impoundment–essentially a big pond with a rubber liner–sprung a leak. The monitoring system included 4-inch perforated pipes under the impoundment located inside trenches of gravel. The theory was/is if anything leaks, it will hit one of those pipes and come out the end. According to the DEP the monitoring system was “over and above” DEP requirements at the time. Unfortunately, the monitoring system somewhere along the way failed and the impoundment sprung a leak and now we have some 15,000 tons of “contaminated” soil which has nearly all been removed from the site…