Citizens Petition of Urgent Concern to the Chemung County Legislature April 5th, 2010

We the undersigned are submitting our individual signatures and group endorsements to demonstrate our deep concern over the direction the County of Chemung is currently taking in regards to the Chemung/Lowman Construction and Demolition (C&D) and Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) landfills. The proposed contract with Casella Inc. includes the acceptance of wellbore drilling cuttings and affiliated waste, yet to be adequately identified and shared with the taxpayers of Chemung County and with the citizens of New York.  Chemung County%u2019s acceptance of this waste contract will adversely affect a broad region of NY and when containment technologies fail, parts of the Chesapeake Watershed will suffer damage as well. The reasoning for these conclusions is as follows:

1. Current DEC regulations allow the transport and dumping of gas well cuttings. They also allow disposal of oil and gas well drilling fluids as %u201CNon-Hazardous Industrial/Commercial waste%u201D under the %u201CWaste Transporter (Part364/381) Permit Application (Pg3 of the permit App.) The current regulations were written to cover vertically drilled gas wells.

The current DEC regulations were not originally written to cover the acceptance of cuttings and affiliated waste from Horizontally Drilled Wellbores into the Marcellus Shale strata. Proposed DEC regulations currently being evaluated, following a lengthy draft supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (dsGEIS) process, are concerned with, among other things, the proper disposal of Marcellus Shale gas drilling waste (cuttings and fluids).  DEC has demonstrated its concern about radiation in gas wells by its inclusion of tables showing high radiation readings for 12 of 13 gas wells tested in the Southern tier (Appendix 13 of the dsGEIS).

We therefore strongly urge the Chemung County Legislature and the NY DEC to not violate the statutory reasons why a dsGEIS was required, by continuing to allow the dumping of Marcellus Shale drilling waste in the Chemung/Lowman Landfills!

2. There have been repeated requests from Chemung County residents and others to see and evaluate the Benchmark Analytics Lab report on the material(s) being dumped in either the C&D or the MSW landfills.  These requests have fallen on unresponsive %u201Cpublic servants%u201D. Yet repeatedly, declarations have been rendered by these %u201Cpublic servants%u201D that the dumped materials are free of any radioactivity or, implicitly, anything of concern.  We do not feel this is accurate or truthful.

3.  We also conclude that the acceptance of the cuttings from Pennsylvania wellbores that are derived from vertical and horizontal penetrations of the Marcellus Strata present a clear and present danger of radioactivity. We make this conclusion based upon expert evaluation of wellbore radiation logs that clearly show radiation at levels of regulatory concern in the Marcellus strata. It is estimated by a well known engineering expert that each horizontal wellbore into the Marcellus strata will generate between 100 - 200 tons of drill cuttings. Current and projected Marcellus Shale well drilling numbers in Pa. were 763 last year and the industry estimates 1750 this year.

http://www.philly.com/philly/business/87606177.html

Drill cuttings with radioactivity above 20 pico curies/gram cannot be disposed of in a MSW. We have expert analysis that levels above 20 pCi/g are often encountered in Marcellus Shale cuttings.

It appears that the Gas industry sees the loopholes in the current regulations as a cost avoidance way of doing business in benefitting their shareholders. But we contend that this constitutes a violation of the trust of the citizens of Chemung County and the state of NY. We strongly appeal to you as elected officials to remove the acceptance of Horizontal Marcellus Shale cuttings and affiliated wastes as a step toward restoring  the Chemung County environment and toward adequately preserving it for this and subsequent generations.

We therefore urge the Chemung County Legislature%u2019s attention to this matter by voting to delay Casella%u2019s contract approval until these reasonable concerns are thoroughly addressed.

Respectfully submitted WE ARE:

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