Ohio EPA has a new site and new look

http://www.epa.ohio.gov/

House Hearing On Carbon Sequestration & Drinking Water Protection

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July 2008

Jul 24: The House Energy & Commerce Committee, Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials, Chaired by Representative Gene Green (D-TX), held a hearing entitled, Carbon Sequestration: Risks, Opportunities, and Protection of Drinking Water. Witnesses testifying at the hearing included Benjamin Grumbles, Assistant Administrator Office of Water for U.S. EPA, and representatives from: Energy Resources Team U.S. Geological Survey National Center; Strategic Center for Coal of U.S. Department of Energy (DOE); Oil and Gas Commission; American Water Works Association (AWWA); Bureau of Economic Geology, University of Texas at Austin; Environmental Defense Fund (EDF); and the Coal Utilization Research Council.

In opening remarks, full Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-MI) said, "Water is critical to growth and economic development in many areas of the country, and will become even more so in future years. In pursuing the goal of carbon capture and storage, a system must be in place that protects the quality of drinking water sources and assures the public that this is a safe way to proceed. Approximately one week ago EPA released proposed regulations under the Safe Drinking Water Act designed to achieve these goals [See WIMS 7/15/08]. I look forward to EPA’s testimony and the views of our other witnesses on the adequacy of the proposed regulations and any gaps that remain to be addressed.

EPA testified that geologic sequestration associated with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a promising technology that provides an innovative solution for reducing emissions of (CO2) to the atmosphere, while safeguarding our country’s underground sources of drinking water. EPA said the UIC program is focused on protecting public health by preventing injection wells from contaminating underground sources of drinking water. EPA’s proposed regulations build on more than 35 years of experience in the UIC program of safely injecting fluids, either liquid, gas or slurry, including CO2, into the subsurface. Annually, billions of gallons of fluids are injected underground through wells authorized under State and Federal UIC Programs. This includes approximately 35 million tons of carbon dioxide that are injected for the purposes of enhancing oil and gas recovery.

The buoyancy of CO2, its potential corrosivity when in water, the potential presence of impurities in captured CO2, its mobility within subsurface formations, and the large injection volumes anticipated at full scale deployment, have all been considered in requirements tailored to the new practice of injecting CO2 for long-term storage. EPA’s proposal would create a new well type -- a Class VI UIC well. EPA said, "We believe we have developed a framework that will ensure safe injection in the present and safe storage in the future."

USGS testified that Section 711 of the Energy Independence and Security Act (P.L. 110-140), enacted into law in December 2007, authorized the Secretary of the Interior, acting through the Director of the USGS, to develop an assessment methodology and conduct a national assessment of geological storage capacity in collaboration with the Secretary of Energy, the Administrator of EPA, and the State geological surveys. USGS will collaborate with DOE to incorporate the results of the assessment into future revisions of the DOE “Carbon Sequestration Atlas of the United States and Canada”. The cumulative advances from these earlier USGS studies and DOE-funded activities provide a basis for developing a methodology to assess the national capacity to store CO2 and understand the potential impacts of large-scale deployment of geologic sequestration.

DOE testified that the 2006 Carbon Sequestration Atlas contains information on major CO2 emission point sources, geologic formations with sequestration potential, and some terrestrial ecosystems that offer the potential for enhanced carbon uptake – all referenced to their geographic location to enable analysis of CO2 sources and storage sites. An interactive version of the Atlas is publicly available through the National Carbon Explorer (NATCARB) website [See below]. DOE is funding a network of seven Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships to help develop technology, infrastructure, and best practices/protocols for implementing CO2 sequestration in different geologies of the Nation. This approach includes engaging local organizations and citizens to contribute expertise, experience, and perspectives that represent their concerns and goals.

AWWA testified, "Our overarching concern regarding geologic carbon sequestration is the potential contamination of underground sources of drinking water (USDW) from such activities and the potential for other unintended, and possibly harmful, consequences. AWWA is particularly concerned about the potential for contamination of sole source aquifers and suggests that these aquifers be provided with special protective measures. An aquifer receives the designation of “sole source aquifer” if it is located in an area where there are few or no alternative sources to the ground water resource, and where if contamination occurred, using an alternative source would be extremely expensive. AWWA urges caution on the implementation of large-scale, commercial geologic carbon sequestration, as little data are available regarding the potential effects of this technology on drinking water resources. . . AWWA recommends that commercial-scale carbon sequestration not be deployed until the results of the large-scale Department of Energy pilot projects have been received and reviewed. . . "

AWWA also draws attention to the significant issue of long-term liability resolved. EPA’s proposed geologic carbon sequestration rule cannot address financial responsibility of the sequestration site after the formal period of post-injection site care has ended (default of 50 year length). AWWA says Congress must develop legislation that will address the issue of who has to assume financial responsibility of the sequestration site after the site closure requirements have been fulfilled and anticipates a means by which drinking water utilities could recover any costs incurred as a result contamination.

Call to Action Meeting a HUGE SUCCESS!

The Citizens Against CO2 Sequestration hosted their first Darke County Community Call to Action meeting at Lighthouse Christian Center on Monday, June 29, 2009.

They asked for participation and the community responded - approximately 1,000 residents attended this meeting to oppose the "demonstration" project to bury forever 1 M tons of CO2 in this agriculturally-rich community. The residents are FIGHTING BACK and the fight has just begun - their voices will be heard.

Due to the traffic congestion and lack of overflow parking, many residents were not able to attend, many who did attend parked over a quarter mile away.

When you have that many people in a room, sitting quietly, not talking amongst themselves, not shifting in their seats..... you know you have something unique and magical...... they were clearly getting the information they need to fight the fight to protect their community.

Like the Sierra Club, this community believes that when companies or governments want to do something that impacts their environment, the people who live in the community should have a vote.

Thank you, Darke County, for standing up to protect your community!

EPA researcher on why his controversial global warming report was shelved

Watch these videos -

http://www.foxnews.com/search-results/m/23765754/hot-air.htm#q=EPA+report+on+global+warming

http://www.foxnews.com/search-results/m/23872380/dissent-silenced.htm

I understand Mr Carlin is an economist and may not be qualified to speak as a researcher in this area.

CARBONGATE

Carbongate

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, June 26, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Climate Change: A suppressed EPA study says old U.N. data ignore the decline in global temperatures and other inconvenient truths. Was the report kept under wraps to influence the vote on the cap-and-trade bill?

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Read More: Global Warming

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This was supposed to be the most transparent administration ever. Yet as the House of Representatives prepared to vote on the Waxman-Markey bill, the largest tax increase in U.S. history on 100% of Americans, an attempt was made to suppress a study shredding supporters' arguments.

On Friday, the day of the vote, the Competitive Enterprise Institute said it was releasing "an internal study on climate science which was suppressed by the Environmental Protection Agency."

In the release, the institute's Richard Morrison said "internal EPA e-mail messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the administration's agenda of regulating carbon dioxide."

Reading the report, available on the CEI Web site, we find this "endangerment analysis" contains such interesting items as: "Given the downward trend in temperatures since 1998 (which some think will continue until at least 2030), there is no particular reason to rush into decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data."

What the report says is that the EPA, by adopting the United Nations' 2007 "Fourth Assessment" report, is relying on outdated research by its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The research, it says, is "at best three years out of date in a rapidly changing field" and ignores the latest scientific findings.

Besides noting the decline in temperatures as CO2 levels have increased, the draft report says the "consensus" on storm frequency and intensity is now "much more neutral."

Then there's one of Al Gore's grim fairy tales — the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and glaciers the size of Tennessee roaming the North Atlantic. "The idea that warming temperatures will cause Greenland to rapidly shed its ice has been greatly diminished by new results indicating little evidence for operations of such processes," the report says.

Little evidence? Outdated U.N. research? No reason to rush? This is not what the Obama administration and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were telling us when they were rushing to force a Friday vote on Waxman-Markey. We were given the impression that unless we passed this cap-and-tax fiasco, polar bears would be extinct by the Fourth of July.

We have noted frequently the significance of solar activity on earth's climate and history. This EPA draft report not only confirms our reporting but the brazen incompetence of those "experts" that have been prophesying planetary apocalypse.

"A new 2009 paper by Scafetta and West," the report says, "suggests that the IPCC used faulty solar data in dismissing the direct effect of solar variability on global temperatures. Their report suggests that solar variability could account for up to 68% of the increase in Earth's global temperatures."

The report was the product of Alan Carlin, senior operations research analyst at the EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE). He's been with the EPA for 38 years but now has been taken off all climate-related work. He is convinced that actual climate observations do not match climate change theories and that only the politics, not the science, has been settled.

Thomas Fuller, environmental policy blogger with the San Francisco Examiner, wrote Thursday in a story developed in conjunction with Anthony Watts' Web site wattsupwiththat.com: "A source inside the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed many of the claims made by analyst Alan Carlin, the economist/physicist who yesterday went public with accusations that science was being ignored in evaluating the danger of CO2."

All this is particularly interesting because of the charges by Al Gore, NASA's James Hansen and others that the Bush administration and energy companies actively suppressed the truth about climate change.

One of the e-mails unearthed by CEI was dated March 12, from Al McGartland, office director at NCEE, forbidding Carlin from speaking to anyone outside NCEE on endangerment issues such as those in his suppressed report.

Read the rest of the story here...........

Ohio EPA approves TAME Project Seismic Plans

From the Daily Advocate blog in Greenville, Ohio. ( A huge thank you to our local paper for going the extra mile to inform residents, many communities have not had this support from their local newspaper.)

Heather Lauer, Media Relations Coordinator for the Ohio EPA said that Batelle’s TAME Project Seismic Plans were approved on June 1, 2009.

A letter was drafted to David Ball, Project Manager, Battelle Memorial Institute that read:

Re: TAME Project Seismic Plans

Dear Mr. Ball:

The underground Injection Control (UIC) Unit of the Ohio EPA’s Division of Drinking and Ground Waters (DDAGW) has reviewed the proposed seismic reflection survey plan for The Andersons Marathon Ethanol, LLC (TAME) carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration project. The original seismic plan was submitted by Batelle Memorial Institute (Battelle) on April 27, 2009. A revised plan was submitted May 4, 2009, and reviewed in accordance with Ohio Administrative Code (OAC) 3745-34-40. The seismic plan, with revisions, is approved as submitted.

The TAME project is a Phase III Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (MRCSP) development and demonstration project of geologic sequestration. The MRCSP is a consortium of Midwestern states, geological surveys, non governmental and private companies led by Battelle and funded by the Department of Energy (DOE). The seismic survey is designed to help ascertain geologic conditions at the TAME site.

You are hereby notified that this action of the Director is final and may be appealed to the Environmental Review Appeals Commission pursuant to Section 3745.04 of the Ohio Revised Code. The appeal must be in writing and shall set forth the action complained of and grounds upon which the appeal is based. the appeal must be filed with the Commission within thirty (30) days after notice of the Director’s action. The appeal must be accompanied by a filing fee of $70.00 which the Commission, in its discretion, may reduce if by affidavit you demonstrate that payment of the full amount of the fee would cause extreme hardship. Notice of the filing of the appeal shall be filed with the Director within three (3) days of filing with the commission. Ohio EPA requests that a copy of the appeal be served upon the Ohio Attorney General’s Office of Environmental Enforcement Section. An appeal may be filed with the Environmental Review Appeals Commission at the following address:

Environmental Review Appeals Commission

309 South Fourth Street, Room 222

Columbus, Ohio 43215

If you have any questions regarding this correspondence please contact either Lindsay Taliaferro or Chuck Lowe of my staff at (614) 644-2752.

Sincerely,

Chris Korleski

Director

Fracking - CO2

Legislation pending to allow EPA control over CO2 “fracking” (protection of drinking water)

Fracking (fracturing) is a procedure identical to CO2 sequestration used by the oil industry to drive gas/oil to the surface.

Wall Street Journal Friday June 5, 2009

Energy Industry Lobbies to Avert Drilling Rules

On Thursday, June 4th Democratic Reps. Diana DeGette of Colorado and Maurice Hinchey of New York said they plan to introduce legislation to allow the EPA to regulate fracking under the Safe Drinking Water Act, which would repeal a 2005 law that exempted it from EPA oversight.

Submitted article -

The “Fracking” CO2 Sequestration must to be stopped!

Please excuse the “crude” (as in oil) language but:

“Fracking” (fracturing) is the term used in the oil and gas industry that involves the injection of millions of gallons of water and chemicals into oil and gas wells at high pressure. Fracking is used to fracture or crack open dense rock formations thousands of feet underground allowing trapped gas to flow to the surface. That description should give you a clear vision of the dangerous potential of a million of tons of liquid CO2 has as it emerges through a “frack” (fracture). Unlike water, liquid CO2 will expand by over 100-fold with explosive force as it emerges toward the surface. For this reason CO2 is preferred over water for fracking. According to the calculations of Darke County Engineer Jim Surber, the proposed CO2 sequestration could amount to a fraction of a cubic mile of the gas. This fact grossly underestimates the potential for such an event to kill. For most people breathing 5-10% CO2 (certainly the elderly and children) will prove fatal. Therefore this volume must be multiplied by a factor of 10-20. Furthermore since CO2 is of a greater density than air it will spread horizontally as it emerges, thus potentially putting several square miles at risk. Indeed fracking, which is used by the oil and gas industry to drive gases to the surface, is the same process used to permanently sequester the gas CO2 underground. Can this be? The fracking process and CO2 sequestration are identical procedures– except for the fact that fracking is vented by wells reducing the risk of explosive pressures developing. CCS is not vented but capped like a carbonated drink. Due to hydraulic pressure this cap can be “fracked” at any point of time followed by the explosive release by the expanding CO2. Indeed such a thing has happened on numerous occasions in the oil industry.

EPA Issues Proposed Rule Governing CO2 Sequestration

Taken from the article found here

July 30, 2008

On July 25, EPA published in the Federal Register its proposed rule to regulate the underground injection of carbon dioxide (CO2) for long-term storage, a process known as geologic sequestration. ...........EPA issued the rule under the Underground Injection Control (UIC) program. This program is implemented by EPA and the states under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) to regulate the injection of fluids into the subsurface so that these activities do not endanger current or future underground sources of drinking water. The public comment period ends on November 24, 2008.

While CO2 has been injected into the subsurface for purposes of enhanced oil and gas recovery for some time under “Class II” UIC permits, carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology has not been demonstrated at the commercial scale within the US. EPA issued guidance last year to provide that EPA regions, states, territories and tribes should, in the near-term, issue permits for pilot, non-commercial scale sequestration projects under its existing UIC permit classification for experimental technologies (Class V). (See “Class V Experimental Technology Well Guidance for Pilot Geologic Sequestration Projects,” EPA, March, 2007). EPA indicated that a Class V permit would be inappropriate for commercial-scale projects.

In contrast, the proposed rule is intended for commercial-scale sequestration projects. Although CCS technology has not been demonstrated at the commercial scale within the U.S., EPA decided to propose a separate UIC well classification for commercial-scale projects (Class VI), in part to reduce regulatory uncertainty that might hinder development of and investment in such projects."

(Who are they protecting? Us or BIG BUSINESS?)

"Importantly, in proposing the rule, EPA made clear that it does not have authority under the SDWA to do either of the following:

• Establish or provide mechanisms for addressing the liability of a UIC well operator for damages to public health (e.g., people), natural resources (e.g., air and ecosystems), or private property.
• Provide for the transfer of liability from one entity to another."

EPA made clear that sequestration projects could also trigger additional requirements under federal statutory regimes governing hazardous waste and releases of hazardous substances, finding that:

• If hazardous constituents are present in the injected CO2 stream due to the combustion source’s fuel source, additives, and other factors, the CO2 stream may constitute a federal RCRA “hazardous waste.” This would cause the injection to be subject to more stringent “Class I” UIC requirements.
• If hazardous substances are present in or created by the injected CO2 stream, its sequestration could also trigger potential liability under the federal Superfund law. While injection of hazardous substances in compliance with a UIC permit is deemed a “federally permitted release” exempt from liability under Superfund, EPA made clear that “Class VI requirements and permits will need to be carefully structured to ensure that they do not ‘authorize’ inappropriate hazardous releases.” 73 Fed. Reg. at 43504. Thus any release of subsurface migration which is not authorized by the permit could trigger liability under Superfund for response costs and/or natural resource damages (e.g., damages to an underground aquifer). Further, EPA raised the prospect of Superfund liability for the reaction of injected CO2 with the environmental media into which it is injected.

EPA has proposed a 50-year default period for post-injection site care during which monitoring and related activities would be required. The EPA Administrator or the director of the approved state program could either lengthen or shorten this period, depending on whether monitoring indicates that the CO2 plume movement and pressure front have ceased, and the Administrator or Director can determine that the injected CO2 does not pose a risk to underground sources of drinking water (with EPA noting that the period “could be extended for 100 years (or longer)”).

Click here for EPA’s proposed rule.