Recycling wastewater from hydraulic fracturing presents its own set of challenges

Natural-gas drilling companies began recycling wastewater from hydraulic fracturing operations after facing mounting criticism as the process became more prevalent over the last decade, but recycling hasn't alleviated many of the industry's problems. The "win-win" that drilling companies say results from waste water recycling "comes with significant asterisks," Ian Urbina of The New York Times reports as part of a series about fracking. "In Pennsylvania, for example, natural-gas companies recycled less than half of the wastewater they produced during the 18 months that ended in December, according to state records."

Even recycled water may not eliminate all the environmental risks associated with fracking, Urbina writes. "Some methods can leave behind salts or sludge highly concentrated with radioactive material and other contaminants that can be dangerous to people and aquatic life if they get into waterways," he reports. Some well operators sell their wastewater to communities who spread it on roads for melting ice during the winter and controlling dust during the summer. In Pennsylvania "such waste remains exempt from federal and state oversight, even when turned into salts and spread on roads," Urbina writes.

"No one wants to admit it, but at some point, even with reuse of this water, you have to confront the disposal question," Brent Halldorson, chief operating officer of Aqua-Pure/Fountain Quail Water Management, told Urbina. Halldorson added that he believes in the benefits wastewater recycling brings, including reducing waste produced by fracking, reducing water used and facilitating the shift to cleaner natural gas as a electricity source, but "there still needs to be a candid discussion, and there needs to be accountability about where even the recycled wastewater is going." (Read more)

Webinar to focus on help for failing rural schools

Successful strategies for turning around failing rural schools will be the subject of a March 16 webinar hosted by the Rural School and Community Trust. Presenters at the event will include select i3 grantees that claimed a rural competitive preference and received matching grant support from RSCT. The webinar will be held March 16 at 2 p.m. EDT and be hosted by RSCT Executive Director Doris Terry Williams.

"Panelists will focus on the opportunities, obstacles, and challenges they face in transforming rural education," RSCT advises, encouraging current and aspiring rural educators, community-based activists, policy analysts, faith-based organizations and education advocates for underserved and rural children to register for the free webinar. You can register for the event here.

Wendell Berry getting National Humanities Medal

Author, poet, farmer, environmentalist and rural icon Wendell Berry is among the 19 Americans being honored for their work in the arts and humanities at a White House ceremony today. Berry, who lives in Henry County, Kentucky, and has written more than 40 books, will receive the National Humanities Medal. Berry was among Kentucky environmentalists who staged a sit-in at the Kentucky governor's office last month to protest mountaintop-removal coal mining. (James Crisp photo for The Courier-Journal of Berry looking out a door of the Capitol during the sit-in) Berry has "spent his career exploring our relationship with the land and community," the White House said in a news release.

Other National Humanities Award honorees include National Book Award winner Joyce Carol Oates and Pulitzer Prize winners Philip Roth and Gordon Wood. Harper Lee, author of "To Kill a Mockingbird," and Meryl Streep, an academy award winning actress, are among the recipients of the National Medal of Arts. Berry is expected to attend the White House ceremony, which will be streamed online here, at 1:45 p.m. (Read more)

GAO report highlights overlaps, could lead to budget cuts; food and nutrition among them

A new report from the Government Accountability Office highlights a plethora of overlapping government programs that cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars yearly, including 15 programs that oversee food-safety laws. The GAO report "compiles a list of redundant and potentially ineffective federal programs, and it could serve as a template for lawmakers in both parties as they move to cut federal spending and consolidate programs to reduce the deficit," Damain Paletta of The Wall Street Journal reports.

The report examines spending by numerous agencies, including the Department of Agriculture. It says lawmakers should create a single food-safety agency, noting USDA "is responsible for the safety of eggs processed into egg products," while the Food and Drug Administration makes chicken eggs are "safe, wholesome and properly labeled." USDA and FDA spokespeople pointed to the Obama administration's creation of the Food Safety Working Group as one strategy for better coordinating government regulators.

Also on the food front, the report notes 18 federal programs, which combined to spend $62.5 billion in 2008, are tasked with administering food and nutrition assistance, but "little is known about the effectiveness of 11 of these programs because they haven't been well studied," Paletta writes.

In other areas, "The agency found 82 federal programs to improve teacher quality; 80 to help disadvantaged people with transportation; 47 for job training and employment; and 56 to help people understand finances," Paletta writes. (Read more)

Feds won't list wild plains bison as threatened

Wild bison do not deserve Endangered Species Act protection, says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The announcement came following the conclusion of the agency's 90-day review of a petition by private citizens James and Natalie Bailey to list the wild plains bison as threatened, Environmental News Service reports. "Based on our review," said FWS, "We find that the petition does not present substantial information indicating that listing may be warranted." (Photo by Jim Patton)

Wild plains bison are estimated to number 20,500 in 62 conservation herds, and the herds' recent population trends appear to be stable or slightly increasing, FWS says. "In 2010, the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity sued the service for failing to respond to the petition to list the bison and other petitions to list dozens of species as threatened or endangered under the Act," ENS reports. Noah Greenwald, endangered species director for the center, called the decision not to list bison as threatened a "complete farce."

Greenwald said the agency had chosen to look only at the species' current range and ignore the fact that wild plains bison are almost completely absent from their historic range. "The Fish and Wildlife Service has turned a blind eye to the tremendous loss of our iconic bison from the North American landscape," he said. "This see-no-evil, hear-no-evil approach is entirely inconsistent with the broad purposes of the Endangered Species Act, and we will certainly challenge this absurd finding." About 500 bison are being held captive at Yellowstone National Park to prevent them from entering Montana, where brucellosis, a disease that causes elk, cattle and bison to prematurely abort their young, is prevalent. (Read more)

Proposed power line across Appalachia is in limbo

American Electric Power announced Monday it will withdraw applications for approval for the massive Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline, which we have reported on previously here. Construction of the line could raise rates not only for customers in the three states it would cross, but also in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and North Carolina.

The announcement came after PJM Interconnection, a private agency that runs the region's electric grid, recommended that AEP and its partner, FirstEnergy, "suspend efforts" on the project because of the slow economic recovery, Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette reports. (Black line on map shows proposed route; sorry for low resolution)

PJM's president said its action "does not, at this time, constitute a directive by PJM to the sponsoring transmission owners to cancel or abandon the PATH project," and said the grid operator would do a "more rigorous analysis." In early January the West Virginia Public Service Commission delayed hearings about the West Virginia portion of the project until October. Michael G. Morris, CEO of AEP, said "We remain convinced that the project will be needed and plan to move forward with it when PJM completes its review." (Read more)

Walla Walla newspaper tackles spike in suicides

In January, Walla Walla County, Washington, recorded five suicides, as many as in all of 2010. Coroner Richard Greenwood and Deputy Allison Barnett were new to the office "and had no idea what could be done to stop the number from climbing higher," Sheila Hagar of the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin reports as part of the newspaper's package on the local suicide outbreak. Greenwood began organizing roundtable discussions with area professionals, county officials and clergy. (MapQuest image)

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention ranks Washington about average the in number of suicides per capita, but Walla Walla County Public Health Department Administrator Harvey Crowder notes the county's rate is 50 percent higher than the rest of the state. Barnett said she was wary about several things when taking the deputy coroner job, but she was "had no idea suicide would be one of them." She explained, "I was blindsided — totally unprepared for it. And we’ve been slammed with it."

Public perception may be that suicides are most prevalent among teenagers, but the recent ones in Walla Walla have been "all over the board. Different ages, different socioeconomics, different methods, different education," said Patty Courson, director of the county’s emergency medical services. In a phenomenon that likely affects many rural areas, local therapist Richard Garcia says part of the problem in rural Washington may be a lack of access to mental health services. (Read more)

You can read the entire Union-Bulletin suicide package here. As part of the package the newspaper explained the ethical concerns in reporting about suicides, noting it usually only reports suicides when they occur in public or the person was a public figure. "Our objective has been -- and always will be -- to keep the public informed," Union-Bulletin editor Rick Doyle writes. "But we also try to do it in a way that does as little additional harm to the survivors as possible." (Read more)

Strongest earthquake to-date in Arkansas swarm recorded; drillers stop doing injection wells

Last month we reported residents of Guy, Ark., suspect that a recent swarm of earthquakes was related to natural-gas drilling in the area. On Sunday the strongest earthquake in Arkansas recorded since 1976 hit the region, centered on nearby Greenbrier, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette reports. No serious damage was recorded after the quake, but some people did report broken windows and cracks in plaster walls. More than 4,100 people reported on the U.S. Geological Survey's website that they felt the quake. (Read more)

The Arkansas quake swarm "has garnered national attention because of its possible connection to natural-gas drilling operations in the area," Campbell Robertson of The New York Times reports. "Researchers with the Arkansas Geological Survey have pointed out spatial and temporal relationships between the earthquakes and the use of injection wells, which are used to dispose of the wastewater left over from gas drilling." No scientific link has been established between the quakes and hydraulic fracturing used in drilling to open up gas and oil deposits.

The Arkansas Oil and Gas Association has halted drilling of new injection wells until the connection is better understood, but injection wells that were drilled prior to the moratorium are still being used. While similar swarms have occurred in the region in the past, "there is also a growing body of research suggesting that injections wells can induce earthquakes, and there is some circumstantial evidence that this might be happening in Arkansas," Robertson writes. (Read more)

Security boss for mine where 29 died is indicted

The security chief for the Massey Energy coal mine where 29 workers died last April has been indicted on charges of lying to federal agents and ordering an employee to destroy records of the mine nine months after it exploded. The indictment of Hughie Elbert Stover, 60, was issued last week and unsealed today, reports Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette.

"The indictment is the first in the mine disaster investigation," notes National Public Radio's Howard Berkes, who has done much reporting on it. "The indictment says the documents were recovered." Stover supervised security at several Massey mines.

Massey said it "takes this matter very seriously and is committed to cooperating with the U.S. attorney’s office. Indeed, the company notified the U.S. attorney’s office within hours of learning that documents had been disposed of and took immediate steps to recover documents and turn them over to the U.S. attorney’s office."

Sherrod: Killing racism can revive rural U.S.

Shirley Sherrod, who lost her job in the U.S. Department of Agriculture after she was falsely accused of racial discrimination, "believes the key to reviving rural America lies in moving past the racism that has plagued the South and was the cause of her own USDA ouster," Mike Mueller of The Commercial Appeal in Memphis reports after hearing Sherrod speak at Metropolitan Baptist Church in the city.

"We have gotten to the point that poverty is the issue. We have got to work with other racial groups, other ethnic groups to make our communities better," said Sherrod, who grew up in rural Baker County, Georgia. "We need to deal a deathblow to racism. We can do a better job working together than we can trying to fight each other." (Read more)

DEA cuts funding for meth-lab cleanup

Local law enforcement agencies' attempts to curb methamphetamine production have taken a hit with the Drug Enforcement Administration's announcement that it was cutting funding for cleanup of meth labs. "According to records, $10 million was transferred to the DEA for meth-related spending nationally in fiscal year 2010," DeWayne Patterson of The Daily Sentinel in Scottsboro, Ala., reports. "The funding was not included in President Barack Obama's recommended 2011 budget."

"Right now, all we can do is the best we can," said Jackson County Sheriff Chuck Phillips. Scottsboro Police Lt. Scott Matthews told Patterson the average meth lab costs $2,500 to clean up. Previously when a meth-related arrest was made, local law enforcement called the DEA to clean up the lab, Matthew said. "I'm not sure what the plan is now," he told Patterson. "I don't know."

The loss in funding will affect every law-enforcement agency in the country, said Jackson County District Attorney Charlie Rhodes. "Right now, we don't have the answers to what we will do," he told Patterson. DEA reports every pound of meth produced can yield up to five pounds of toxic waste, Patterson writes. "We can't just leave it," Rhodes said. "It's very dangerous." (Read more)

Fracking documents show radioactive pollution that sewage and water plants can't handle

A review of documents obtained from the Environmental Protection Agency, Pennsylvania regulators and natural-gas drilling companies show the dangers of hydraulic fracturing are greater than previously understood, The New York Times reports. "The wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle," Ian Urbina writes. Other documents show some EPA scientists worry that fracking wastewater is a threat to drinking water.

Those concerns are partially based on a 2009 study by an EPA consultant that was never released to the public but found "some sewage treatment plants were incapable of removing certain drilling waste contaminants and were probably violating the law," Urbina writes. The newspaper also discovered never-reported studies from EPA and another from an industry group that all concluded "radioactivity in drilling waste cannot be fully diluted in rivers and other waterways," Urbina writes. Still federal and state regulators are allowing most sewage treatment plants to accept drilling waste without testing for radioactivity, which is found naturally in many shales. For a diagram showing how fracking works, from Pro Publica, click here.

"Most drinking-water intake plants downstream from those sewage treatment plants in Pennsylvania, with the blessing of regulators, have not tested for radioactivity since before 2006, even though the drilling boom began in 2008," Urbina writes. Fracking, which uses millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals to release natural gas from dense shale formations, is the bright spot in domestic energy production. However, some experts fear that adequate safety precautions are being sacrificed to reduce dependence on foreign sources. "We’re burning the furniture to heat the house," John H. Quigley, who left last month as secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, told Urbina. "In shifting away from coal and toward natural gas, we’re trying for cleaner air, but we’re producing massive amounts of toxic wastewater with salts and naturally occurring radioactive materials, and it’s not clear we have a plan for properly handling this waste." (Read more) (NYT graphic showing well sites, water plants and amount of radioactivity over the federal limit found in wastewater from 149 Pennsylvania wells; click on map for larger version, here for online interacvtive map)

Local school officials in Wisc. question savings from scaling back teachers' collective bargaining

The national debate over collective-bargaining rights started by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker may have begun on a flawed argument. "As massive demonstrations played out in Madison—an estimated 70,000 protesters came to the state Capitol one day this week—local school officials were questioning one of the core arguments behind the governor’s proposal: that it will help cash-strapped districts financially in the years ahead," Sean Cavanagh of Education Week reports. Some Wisconsin school district officials also worry that limiting collective bargaining to pay issues, ruling out working conditions, would ruin relationships between teachers and districts that have so far been relatively harmonious.

"We’ve never supported stripping all bargaining rights," said Miles Turner, the executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators. "This goes way too far." Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker "predicted that without making changes to public workers’ pensions, health insurance, and negotiating rights, state and local governments would have to lay off thousands of workers, including teachers," Cavanagh writes. Several officials representing school boards agreed pension and health care costs would go down under the governor's proposal, but overall savings, particularly ones resulting from changes to collective bargaining, are difficult predict.

Those officials say the cumulative amount of savings from the proposal "would almost certainly be insufficient to make up for anticipated cuts in state funding," Cavanagh writes. Dan Rossmiller, the director of government relations for the Wisconsin Association of School Boards said, "We don’t know how deep the state-aid cuts will be, but we think they’ll be deeper than we can make up" through the proposal. Turner added that overcoming potential losses in state funding "is going to be nearly impossible . . . without layoffs." (Read more)

In lawsuit against Cheaspeake Bay cleanup plan, Farm Bureau has other regions in mind

The Chesapeake Bay region has rarely attracted much interest from the nation's largest farm group, but now the American Farm Bureau Federation is suing to block the Environmental Protection Agency's plan to limit pollution runoff into the bay. The lawsuit argues the "bay's cleanup is the responsibility of the six states in the region and that the EPA does not have the authority to establish a "pollution diet" that will cost taxpayers and farmers billions of dollars by the time it is fully implemented in 2025," Darryl Fears of The Washington Post reports. In January we reported Farm Bureau President Bob Stallman claimed the regulations would "ruin agriculture in the region" and "become a model for similar environmental restrictions nationally."

"The farm lobby has made it clear it sees the cleanup effort as a harbinger of more far-reaching EPA requirements across the country, including in the Mississippi River basin, where chemical runoff from industrial farms is swept to the Gulf of Mexico," Fears writes. Farm Bureau also alleges EPA's science behind the decision is flawed and the agency did not allow adequate time for public comment about the proposal. An EPA spokesman declined to comment on the lawsuit but told Fears "restoring the bay to health will help local economies and encourage recreational activities."

"Environmentalists are concerned that the Farm Bureau is focusing on the cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay watershed because of its broader interests in the Midwest," Fears writes. Don Carr, a spokesman for the Environmental Working Group, sees the lawsuit as a warning to stay away from the Mississippi River Basin and giant farms around it. "I agree that this is motivated by the national Farm Bureau's issues elsewhere," Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, D-Md., told Fears. "The Chesapeake Bay just happens to be the place where [regulations] are being implemented now." (Read more)

USDA sets hearings on conservation policies

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is seeking public input on natural-resource conservation policy issues six regional meetings around the country, starting this Thursday. The goal of the meetings, which are administered by USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service, is "is to improve delivery of conservation services to landowners and communities, and expand participation in conservation programs," reports the Farm Foundation, which is collaborating with NRCS and the American Farmland Trust to complete the project. Here is the schedule:

• March 3 -- Augustana College -- Rock Island, Ill.
• March 10 -- Colorado State University -- Fort Collins, Colo.
• March 10 -- State University of New York -- Cobleskill, N. Y.
• March 15 -- Arizona State University -- Mesa, Ariz.
• March 18 -- Portland State University -- Portland, Ore.
• March 22 -- 4-H Center -- Columbiana, Ala.

There is no cost to attend the meetings, but registration is required. You can register by clicking on the meeting you wish to attend here.

Groups say tax Netflix etc. for Universal Service Fund; rural telcos stress wireless data roaming

We've been following the Federal Communications Commission's push to use the Universal Service Fund to support rural broadband. Now a consumer group says high-bandwidth websites should have to pay into the fund. Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America, says it "would be 'legitimate' to force Netflix and other high-bandwidth companies to contribute to the fund," Sara Jerome of The Hill reports. Copper explained, "The Internet is not an infant industry anymore. It can certainly bear the burden of making sure that wires and the communications mediums are there."

Rural telecommunications companies have long said big Internet users should have to contribute to the fund. "Netflix takes up about 10 percent of every telco's bandwidth," Shirley Bloomfield, chief executive of the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, told Jerome. Taxing high-bandwidth websites may seem foreign to the current structure of the Internet, but it is a move that has precedent, Cooper says. "The exact same logic that was in used in the old days for whacking a toll could actually be used to impose legitimate costs on high-bandwidth users and say 'that's discretionary consumption,'" he told Jerome. "But we have difficulty bringing ourselves to do that." (Read more)

The Universal Service Fund wasn't the only area of rural broadband making news this week. Mandating wireless data roaming could be key to increasing mobile broadband, says the Rural Cellular Association. "Voice roaming is already mandatory, but data roaming (which includes wireless broadband) is not," Jerome reports. The FCC is considering a data roaming requirement. Rural telecommunications companies say without a data roaming mandate they have a difficult time entering into roaming agreements with bigger providers.

"The entire wireless industry with the exception of Verizon Wireless and AT&T agrees with the National Broadband Plan that an automatic data roaming obligation is in the public interest," said Steven Berry, president of RCA. Mandating data roaming could help save or create almost 117,000 jobs by increasing broadband availability in rural areas, says a report released by RCA Thursday. (Read more)

Drug dealers hope to avoid police by moving trade to rural areas in Massachusetts

Small towns in Massachusetts have become targets of drug traffickers. In Ashby, population around 3,000, "Dealers have been using quiet side roads and nearby state parks to pass cocaine and heroin to other dealers or to sell drugs to addicts, many of whom drive there from New Hampshire towns just over the border," Maria Cramer of The Boston Globe reports. (Click on Mapquest image for larger version)

The problem isn't isolated to Ashby; the drug trade is ratcheting up in other small towns around the state "where the police departments are too small to keep up with the numerous deals," Cramer writes. Ashby Detective John Dillon said of the dealers, "They’re organized and they do their homework. If I was going to sell drugs, I wouldn’t do it in front of 100 people. It’s a very isolated area. You could go to certain streets and not see a house for a quarter mile." Ashburnham Detective Robert Siano, who serves on the North Worcester County Drug Task Force, a regional unit of 11 cities and towns in the area, notes the drug dealers "meet in various locations, dead-end roads, state parks, state park parking lots. What they do is, the customer contacts the dealer and the dealer sends a runner or goes himself to meet at certain locations and exchange drugs for money."

In larger cities drug dealers are subject to wider scrutiny, and once popular drug-deal locations like shopping-mall parking lots are now likely to be covered by cameras and security personnel. GPS devices have also made it easier to plan meetings in out-of-the-way locations, Gardner Lt. John Bernard told Cramer. The remote drug deals are also likely to be exchanges between people who know each other well. "If you call me up for . . . cocaine, I’m not going to deal with you out in the woods if I don’t know you," Bernard told Cramer. "There is a relationship there." (Read more)

Women lacking on farm-group boards despite PR campaigns, environmental group notes

Some recent agriculture public-relations campaigns have been centered on female farmers, but analysis from the Environmental Working Group suggests those campaigns offer a distorted view of women's role in agriculture, at least in its leadership. Women account for just 1.3 percent of the executive boards of the five largest industry groups representing corn, soybean, wheat, cotton and rice growers, EWG reports. Two of the groups, the National Cotton Council and the U.S. Rice Producers Association, have no women on their boards. The National Corn Growers Association, the American Soybean Association and the National Association of Wheat Growers each have one woman.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports women now operate 14 percent of U.S. farms, but the type of farming those women practice is of particular interest, EWG writes. A study from the Organic Farming Research Foundation reveals 22 percent of organic farmers are women, and female farmers are "far more likely to allocate land to vegetables and herbs" than male farmers. On average female farmers devote 28 percent of acreage to field crops, compared to 44 percent of acreage for males. The average female-operated farm is 40 acres, while the average male-operated farm is 149 acres. (Read more)

CSX to clean flaking paint from Ky. bridge

CSX Transportation will voluntarily remove flaking lead paint from a Bowling Green, Ky., railroad bridge that has been the subject of local fears about water and soil contamination. In a letter to the Superfund branch of the Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection, CSX's manager of environmental remediation, Paul J. Kurzanski noted that the state had agreed that the paint posed negligible impact on water life and that steps to remove contaminated soil were sufficient, but the company had decided to remove the paint anyway. Kurzanski said the company planned to begin work on removing the remaining paint on the bridge before the end of the year.

We previously reported on the bridge controversy, here and here, noting other aging railroad bridges across the country could face similar paint flaking issues. The push for CSX to clean up the soil below the bridge in Bowling Green was led by local philanthropist David Garvin. In December we reported the Superfund branch said it would tell CSX to address the flaking paint but would place no restrictions on how the company met that goal.

McClatchy reporter honored for covering North Carolina issues in Washington

Barbara Barrett, the Washington correspondent for the McClatchy Co. newspapers in North Caolina, The Charlotte Observer and the News and Observer of Raleigh, has been named Washington's top regional reporter by the Washington Press Club Foundation.

Barrett, who began working for the News and Observer in 1998, was honored for a series of stories about North Carolina issues, including one about Sen. Richard Burr bringing Senate committee work to a standstill last year during the health-care debate and another about how a Warren County textile mill had benefited from tariff exemptions, the News and Observer reports.