Marcellus Shale Issues in February Alone

Sayre Morn­ing Times file photo

Accord­ing to Steve Reil­ly at the Sayre Morn­ing Times, the hits are already here and will keep com­ing. I'll link the whole arti­cle, but let me just cut to the good stuff (emphases mine):

Sev­er­al inci­dents and fines relat­ed to nat­ur­al gas activ­i­ty, includ­ing notable a spate of arrests stem­ming from over­weight and over­size trucks, were report­ed in February:

• On Feb. 2, DEP fined Tal­is­man Ener­gy $3,500 for vio­la­tions at its “Cease” well pad in Troy Town­ship dis­cov­ered dur­ing inspec­tions in 2009. A Feb­ru­ary 2009 inspec­tion revealed that the com­pa­ny had not pub­licly post­ed the per­mit num­ber and oth­er required infor­ma­tion at the entrance of the well pad. Dur­ing a fol­low-up inspec­tion in June 2009, a DEP state­ment explains, “flow-back flu­ids — or the flu­ids that are used to break up under­ground rock and then return to the sur­face — were found dis­charg­ing into a drainage ditch, an adja­cent sed­i­ment basin, and even­tu­al­ly through a veg­e­tat­ed area into an unnamed trib­u­tary of the south branch of Sug­ar Creek.”

• On Feb. 3, Penn­syl­va­nia State Police arrest­ed and jailed four dri­vers employed by TK Stan­ley, a rig mov­ing com­pa­ny head­quar­tered in Way­nes­boro, Miss., for dri­ving a con­voy of over­sized trucks through North Towan­da Town­ship on U.S. Route 6.

• On Feb. 6, state police cit­ed three men employed by T.A.W. Inc. of Wysox for dri­ving trucks with weight, size and per­mit violations.

• On Feb. 7, Arthur H. Dawes of Bloss­burg, Pa., was arrest­ed and jailed after his over­weight and over­sized truck was involved in three sep­a­rate acci­dents as he trav­eled through Brad­ford Coun­ty. Dawes and his employ­er, Todd Bergu­son Truck­ing, received over $15,000 in cita­tions as a result of the incident.

• On Feb. 8, James Matusek of Shaver­town, Pa., and his employ­er, Latona Truck­ing, were fined over $31,300 after state police dis­cov­ered a truck dri­ven by Matusek to be 49.7 tons over­weight.

• On Feb. 23, Arron Wad­dy, an dri­ver for MARMC Trans­porta­tion of Cas­par, Wyo., was cit­ed with $24,089 in fines after state police stopped his vehi­cle on U.S. Route 220 in Albany Town­ship and dis­cov­ered it was 71,707 pounds over­weight.

To all the new gas-lease mil­lion­aires in Brad­ford and Tio­ga coun­ties: this is just begun. Nice job.  And before you say any­thing, I under­stand. If some­one dan­gled what seemed like free mon­ey in front of my nose, I'd like­ly take it, espe­cial­ly if I lived in these tra­di­tion­al­ly poor­er coun­ties still. But you're risk­ing turn­ing the way of life you so val­ue into a hor­ror-show. For those of you who haven't leased yet, please don't.