Report details violations by Marcellus drillers in Pa.

Companies drilling the Marcellus Shale (map) for gas in Pennsylvania were cited for more than 1,435 violations in the last two years, an average of around 1.5 per day, and 952 were considered "most likely to harm the environment," according to a report from the Pennsylvania Land Trust, Donald Gilliland of The Patriot-News of Harrisburg reports. The report was compiled through open-records requests with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. "Nearly half of the violations were related to improper erosion and sedimentation plans and improper construction of wastewater impoundments that contain fracking water," Gilliland writes.

"There were 155 citations for discharging industrial waste onto the ground or into [state] waters," Gilliland reports. The report revealed 100 violations of the state Clean Streams Law. "There’s likely to be lots more violations out there that haven’t been identified," Jeff Schmidt, director of the Pennsylvania chapter of the Sierra Club, told Gilliland. "Many people feel this is the tip of the iceberg." James A. Schmid, a consulting ecologist who produced a study about DEP's monitoring of longwall coal mines in souther Pennsylvania, said a review of more than 75,000 pages of DEP files revealed "DEP is not very credible in its monitoring and permitting," and since the drilling study didn't look at the actual files there were likely many more violations not reported. (Read more)