May 2011
No 1.5
Community Media on Keystone Issues
Supplement
www.pafrombelow.info
•Jumping Through Loopholes •Roasting Pennsylvania •New Website •Get Involved •PA from Below Joins NEPA Organizing Center •Our Values •Report on Distribution •Call for Donations
Jumping Through Loopholes
Call for Stories
Is there something going on locally that you think we should cover? Is by Kara Newhouse and Mitch Troutman there something you’d like us to run? Please let us know. SUNBURY, PA — A Watsontown-based company that recently expanded into the natural gas industry is operating a waste-transfer site without state permits. In Sunbury’s New Website Caketown neighborhood, Moran Industries has been moving drill cuttings from trucks We will soon release a brand-new to train cars and shipping them to an undisclosed location in Ohio. Trucks started arriving at the Caketown site in January, during what Moran called a website at www.pafrombelow.info . test run. At that time, residents documented 22 trucks in one day. Moran announced the Please stop by soon to check it out. test run only after it had started, and neighbors to the facility reported that the waste You’ll find helpful resources, curated transfer has continued steadily since that time. The company completed purchase of content from the web and, of course, the property in early April for $525,000 after demolition of the former Knight-Celotex our own articles and announcements. If your organization needs a website, fiberboard manufacturing plant. The trucks contain a mixed substance that gives off a strong chemical odor and please get in touch. appears to have soil, rock, mud and woodchips in it. When Sunbury resident Cora Campbell noticed the initial activity at the property, which is a block from her home, she immediately went to the city’s code office to find out details. Employees in the code office were unaware of what was happening at the time. According to Cora, “Ever since that, I’ve been trying to fight it to find out whether there’s anything hazardous in it, and whether it’s gonna affect our health in any way, and what all is involved in them bringing it in to our neighborhoods.”
Gas Drilling Waste Moves Through Sunbury to Ohio
Residents’ concerns Cora is part of a group of Sunbury residents calling themselves “the Caketown group.” They want to know whether the waste in the trucks is toxic and if Moran holds proper permits to operate at the site. The group has raised questions at city council meetings, contacted the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Drill cuttings in an open rail car waiting to be shipped to Ohio. Protection, and visited PA State Representative Lynda Schlegel-Culver to present their concerns and demands. They have a right to be concerned. The old Celotex plant made products containing asbestos, and though a connection has never been officially documented, the group said that most families in the area have lost someone to cancer. Dave Whipple, another member of the group, said, “when Celotex was here, we put up with that horrible smell for 40 years. Everybody in this neighborhood that has died, has died of cancer”. About the new transfer site, Dave added, “We live here. We have to breathe it. Looking at it doesn’t bother me, but breathing in it, because » Continued on Page 2 we don’t know what it is.”
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According to Jeff Stroehmann, vice-president of Moran Industries, the site is used to transfer drill cuttings, which are the rock material brought up from deep in the earth when drilling gas wells. Drill cuttings are produced before hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) takes place, but there is still a level of caution because radioactive material can be found in the rock where they drill1.. According to law, drill cuttings should be dry pieces of rock.
Shipments to Ohio Transfer of this sort of material is part of an expanding web of gas drilling support services that have sprung up across the state, as companies seek second-hand profits from the boom industry. On a WKOK radio show in March2, Stroehmann described Moran’s role in the process. “What’s happening is that drill cuttings, as the industry calls them, are coming from the well pad,” he said, “They’re transferred on the Celotex site from a roll-off container [in a truck bed] onto a rail car, and that rail car is going to a landfill in Ohio for disposal.” But why Ohio? Stroehmann explained that in Ohio, regulations on residual waste allow for it to be dumped as cover on top of landfills. In Pennsylvania, this type of waste must be disposed of inside a landfill, or buried on the drill site. Stroehmann said, “The gas companies wanna clean the sites up when they leave,” so they hire companies like Moran to transport the waste away. He noted that the industry is lobbying to have[a] the Pennsylvania’s regulations changed to be more like those in Ohio.
Regulation loopholes
Unanswered questions A vacuum of information exists for Sunbury residents, not just about what’s going on, but who concerned residents can go to about it. Who has the oversight? Who can make changes? The local government is excited about the use of the old industrial site and the potential jobs that could come with its development. The river town of almost 10,000 people3 has always been reliant on the factories in town. It is in Northumberland County, where the unemployment rate is 9.7% as of February 20114. Bringing good jobs into the town would be a great benefit to the local economy. Yet despite their support for the project, city officials seem to have few specific details. No clear promises have been made about what types of jobs Moran will create or even how many. Neither the mayor nor city council have been able to tell residents which company supplies the waste or where it is being shipped to in Ohio. The mayor also did not respond to phone calls from Pennsylvania from Below. At city council meetings, Moran Vice-President Jeff Stroehmann promised a transparent relationship between Moran and Sunbury residents, but he has not answered their questions about who produces the waste or where in Ohio it is going. He attributed complaints about Moran’s work to the influence of environmentalists. Stroehmann said Moran has a good relationship with the DEP and has worked with them all the way, yet the DEP has already spent months trying to figure out whether Moran owns or operates the site on behalf of the railroad. A DEP representative initially responded to questions from one member of the Caketown group, but communication has stopped since the beginning of the legal team’s examination of permit requirements. The community relations officer of the DEP also did not answer questions from Pennsylvania from Below. With this unresponsiveness from official sources, residents are left to do their own research about the waste in their neighborhood. Cora Campbell said, “What we’re finding out is what we’re doing on our own.“ The residents are persistent and clear with their demands. Carole Mazzeo, another member of the Caketown group, described what they told Rep. Schegel-Culver in their March meeting: “[We said] we wanted an independent certified state lab to come in to test the stuff. We wanted the DEP permits in place. We wanted it done legally and properly.” According to Dave Whipple, “They think we’re gonna go away and we’re not. If it’s not right, it’s not right.”
While PA’s residual waste regulations govern how gas companies must dispose of waste they create, the key question in the DEP’s investigation of the Sunbury site is if Moran needs permits to run a waste transfer facility. The federal Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act, passed in 2005, opened a loophole that let railroads operate waste transfer facilities without state or local permits. The federal Clean Railroads Act of 2008 narrowed that loophole, but left it open for waste from oil, gas and mining. Mark Szybist, a lawyer with the environmental advocacy organization PennFuture, said, “This is another loophole that the oil and gas industry has managed to carve out for itself. The result in this case is a drill cuttings transfer facility that has no state-approved radiation action protection plan, no nuisance control plan, and no plan for alternative waste handling if equipment breaks down. Public health and safety This article was supported by community fundraising through Spot.Us » Continued on Next Page depend on plans like these and DEP oversight, generally. It makes no sense for oil and gas waste transfer stations to be allowed to operate without them.” These laws mean that for Moran to keep operating the site as-is, they must be operating “as, or on behalf of, a railroad carrier.” While the DEP’s legal team determines if that is the case, Moran continues to unload trucks full of waste onto Ohio-bound rail cars. Szybist explained, “One approach the DEP could take is to shut the facility down pending a final determination on whether it is owned or operated by or on behalf of a rail carrier. The Department has chosen not to do this. They appear to be presuming that no permit is needed.” If Moran were required to have a state permit, a few things at the site would be different. According to state code, Moran would not be able operate within 300 feet of a home without written consent from the owner. The company would have to install radiation monitors, as well as building a fence around the site and putting up a sign that says who is operating and the hours. It would also not be allowed to At Moran’s waste transfer facility, drill cuttings from the natural gas industry are loaded onto rail cars on the Norfolk Southern line heading to landfills in Ohio. operate in a floodplain.
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« notes from previous page “Radioactivity in the Marcellus Shale results from the high content of naturally occuring radioactive uranium and thorium, their decay products include Radium-226, and radioactive potassium elements. The evidence of high radionuclide content is present in geochemical studies and in gamma-ray logs from wells drilled into the Marcellus formation.” http://www.rwma.com/Marcellus%20Shale%20Report%20 5-18-2010.pdf 2 http://www.wkok.com/roundtable/L&L03-10A.mp3 3 9,810 residents, as of 2009: http://www.city-data.com/city/Sunbury-Pennsylvania.html 4 According to Google Data 1
Waste that missed the rail cars sits along the tracks in Sunbury.
Roasting Pennsylvania
by Mitch Troutman
Sloppy Secondz’ YouTube Success
THREE GUYS from Northumberland county don’t usually get too famous. Producing catchy YouTube videos did it for Sloppy Secondz. After making the hit, “Pennsylvania Guys”—a parody of Katy Perry’s “California Gurls”—Jason McGuigan of Shamokin said, “People get excited. I never expected that.” Justin Derr, his friend and fellow group member from Sunbury noted, “I even had to sign an autograph, and I didn’t write it in cursive. I printed it. That showed how much I knew.” Jason, Justin and John Duttinger, a PA native living in Texas make up the group. After creating a few other musical parodies, they released “Pennsylvania Guys” in July 2010. It gave them and their comedy a spotlight all over the state. “We got it out at like one in the morning,” said Justin, “I remember calling Jason and he’s like, ‘It’s a flop, it’s a freakin’ flop!’ And then literally that evening and the next few days it was crazy.” It’s now been watched by almost a million people. “A lot of the lyrics I wrote for PA guys was to roast, and to give people a sense of pride,” said Justin. He added, “A lot of people who moved away are showing it to their friends, saying 'Hey, this is exactly how I grew up.’” “Pennsylvania Guys” was Sloppy Secondz’ first video about the whole state, but they’ve done more about the local areas they know well. “People like the closest to home ones best—Sunbury, Shamokin, Snyder County,” said Justin. The number of views for “We’re from Snyder County” is nearly double the total population of the county. Not every one reacts the same, though. Justin explained, “People in older generations look at it like, they have their own image of their town and they're into it.” But a lot of Pennsylvania isn’t what it
was decades ago. Sloppy Secondz’ roasts are popular because their images of Pennsylvania resonate with people. According to Jason, “It doesn't have anything to do with dissing the coal town. [Critics] look at me like, maybe I'm wearing clothes that they don't think people in Shamokin should be wearing—they have a problem with that.” It’s no secret that young people are leaving PA and have been for a long time. There aren’t many young people who spark regional pride like Sloppy Secondz. When asked about leaving, Jason said, “Success might be outside of Pennsylvania, but even if you do move, your heart's always in your hometown. No matter where you go.” Justin added that their connection to PA is what has made Sloppy Secondz popular: “Our success is thanks to our own state. Everybody that leaves thinks it's the greatest thing. I don't know—I like staying close to home. I'm torn between how bad the state really is, but I've never been anywhere else. My brother lives in Orlando and told me the economy's terrible down there now. He can't find a job. He's a DJ at a strip club.” When a friend who edited Sloppy Secondz’ first videos moved to Manhattan, Justin decided to keep the PA comedy alive by learning the process himself. He got a popular video editing program and watched YouTube tutorials to learn it. Comparing the videos to their older projects, Justin said, “We knew this is what we've gotta do from here on out. If we go backwards and do another slideshow, we're gunna get laughed at.” The group likes to keep up the laughs for different reasons. As Justin put it, “We’re more comedians than we are musicians. We like the music—that’s how we express the comedy. But in a way that’s what we really are.”
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NY Times Drilling Series Draws DEP Backlash
by Pennsylvania form Below
IN A recent series on the risks of natural gas drilling and efforts to regulate the industry, the New York Times revealed that wastewater from fracking is being disposed of at treatment plants across Pennsylvania that were not built for that kind of waste. The Times also reported on a lack of testing that would have shown the extent of contamination from radioactive materials and carcinogens as water traveled from the wastewater pit through treatment plants and into rivers and municipal water supplies for many people living across the state. Although the contamination in the wastewater is heavily diluted as it makes its way to the tap, the Times published documents written by EPA officials – and even some by the officials from the gas industry itself – that cast doubts on the reliability of dilution to make the wastewater safe. John Hanger, the former director of the PA Department of Environmental Protection, apparently did not appreciate the coverage of these issues. On his blog, “Facts of the Day,” Hanger criticized the Times for concluding that the state is not doing enough to monitor these contaminants and especially the levels of radioactivity that the Times reported sometimes appear in the wastewater. In a long list of complaints about the series, Hanger alleged that the coverage was “deliberately false.” Hanger posted seven blog entries within 48 hours of the first story. In one of those he wrote that the Times “completely and apparently willfully ignored or placed outside of the main story due to the famous space limitations” other environmental enforcement efforts undertaken during his time in office. In several posts over the following weeks, Hanger attacked the timing of the series, which coincided with an Academy Awards nomination for Gasland, and claimed that the articles
2 79 87 2
and accompanying annotated documents “went for drama and scandal” in telling what he called a “fictional narrative of lax regulation.” One of Hanger’s main criticisms was that the Times did not interview him before the running the series. But Hanger, who left the DEP in January, left out that the paper requested twice to interview him before the first story ran, according to the reporter who wrote the series. Hanger’s staff did not respond to the requests for interview, so the paper submitted questions by email to the department. The Times submitted so many questions to the DEP that officials within the agency complained to the reporters’ editors that the newspaper was taking too much staff time. The paper also verified by email with Hanger’s department that quoted comments from him were accurately reported. After the first story ran on February 27, the Times interviewed Hanger about matters covered in the series. Rather than responding to the content of the Times series, natural gas industry PR representatives have focused on Hanger’s criticisms [1, 2]. When Pennsylvania from Below asked Ian Urbina, author of the Times series, about Hanger’s response to the articles, Urbina replied, “Honestly, I’m trying to just focus on the story and the facts.” Hanger did state that the DEP needed to begin testing for radium or radioactive pollutants to “resolve the issue raised by the NYT.” Corroboration for the Times’ other revelations can be found from other sources. The E.P.A., for instance, immediately instructed Pennsylvania to step up monitoring. The folks at FracTracker found the Times to be on the mark. When the Philadelphia Inquirer re-crunched the recycling numbers that the Times used, they too found that the state and the industry have significantly overstated how much drilling wastewater is getting recycled.
The number of times that the Times requested (and did not receive) an interview with John Hanger, PA DEP director, before publication of the series The number of emails the Times sent to PA DEP seeking input during the seven months before the story ran. The total number of questions the Times submitted to the PA DEP in those emails The number of phone calls received by the Times complaining that their reporter was asking too many questions and taking too much PA DEP staff time
8:30
The time of night it was when one of those angry “please stop asking us questions” calls came in to the reporter’s home from an official with PA DEP.
3
The number of examples given when the Times emailed the PA DEP on Oct. 25, 2010 asking its spokesman to list the Department’s greatest regulatory accomplishments
3 <50 90 - 100 70 5 17 0 3
Of the accomplishments reported by the DEP, the number that were included in the story The percentage of wastewater that the state’s data showed was actually recycled by Marcellus Shale companies over 18 months The percentage of wastewater that the Marcellus Shale Coalition said was recycled The percentage of wastewater that Hanger said was being recycled The number of seconds that Hanger paused after being presented with this data discrepancy by the Times reporter during a phone interview before the series’ second story The percentage the Philadelphia Inquirer found was recycled over the most recent six months when they followed up on the Times’ coverage and corrected reporting errors in the state’s data The number of times that the Times said that radioactivity was showing up in people’s drinking water The number of times that the Times said there was a lack of monitoring to ensure that no radioactivity shows up in our drinking water
1/28/11 The date when the Times asked (and later received) the PA DEP for verification of the quotes from Hanger that were used in the Times’ series
2
While the E.P.A. has argued for ongoing monitoring of radioactivity in rivers and at drinking water intakes, this is the number of rounds of tests that have been done, which Hanger has said suffice to show that our drinking water is safe
ANNOUNCEMENTS
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Report on Distribution
IT’S BEEN a year since we printed the first run of our paper. Initially, we had 5,00 copies, but we quickly ran out of those. That batch had cost us $400, so as we continued to get requests for them, we began answering: “If you can throw some money in the pot, and we get together another $400, we’ll be able to get copies to you.” In about a week’s time, we raised more than that, and were able to print another 10,000 copies. The papers were distributed by a wide network of people and organizations. They were distributed at libraries, hospitals, schools and gas stations. Many local grassroots groups opposed to gas drilling used them to educate their neighbors. Many of those neighbors then PA from Below was distributed in the counties in grey.
distributed them as well. Outside of Pennsylvania, they also went to New York, New Jersey and Ohio. We asked some people why they wanted to distribute the paper. We heard many of the same answers from all of them. The rural focus was very important, and is crucial to the Red/Blue, Urban/Rural divide. • It tied into the economic climate well. • There was no editorializing; the facts spoke for themselves. It didn’t rant and didn’t need to. • It was easy to read and did a good job of arranging information, with plenty of detail mixed into personal stories. • It was a good educational tool that covered many bases. • It’s a good hand out; it was something that people could share with each other. • Local papers aren’t doing enough to cover controversial or difficult issues. We ran out of copies some time ago. Thank you for multiplying our efforts to distribute 15,000 copies. We offer our apologies to anyone who requested them but wasn’t able to get any. We have no plans to reprint the first issue, though if a different organization would like to do so, we’d be glad to help them. You can find all of the articles on our website, www.pafrombelow.info. Apologies, also, to anyone we didn’t respond to. We’ve been working with very limited resources and will do better in the future.
Thank You We owe a ton of thank you’s. None of our stories would have been written without your help, and none of our papers would have been distributed without you. PA from Below’s core is only partly responsible for our accomplishments. It’s hard to list everyone, so if you receive our supplement, please consider that a ‘thank you’ as well! Mari Grace Butella, Mark Szybist, The Caketown Group, Ralph Kisberg, Sloppy Secondz, Trevorton PA, Media Mobilizing Project, NEPA Organizing Center, MMP-TV, Labor Justice Radio, Bret Grote, Doug Sheilds, David Merian, Jessica McPhearson, Julie & Craig Sautner, coffee, spot.us & everyone who donated, Rachael Spotts, Sara Lee & her Aunt, Abdul Al-Malik, Rachel Fetrow, Scott Pinkleman, Mary Anne Troutman, Dave Onion, The Shoe Shop, Jen Rock, Emili Allen Feigelson, Tim Groves, Gustavo Martinez, Tara Craig, Adam Bevan, Laura Glace, Jessamy James, Frank Sindaco, Tim Siftar, Barb Jarmoska, Marla Williard, Megan Williamson, Jade Walker, Neil Turner
Our Values Fighting for just treatment of Pennsylvania’s People, Land & Environment WE ARE Pennsylvania from Below. We came together to find out what’s happening in our state from the people who live here. We are committed to reporting what we discover to ignite a continuous process of learning and sharing. We believe that the interests of the wealthy who use people and land to make money contradict the interests of poor and working people, as well as a healthy relationship to the environment. People organizing in their communities and around common problems is the first step toward a better Pennsylvania—one with dignity, justice and equality for everyone. We use organizing, education, development, storytelling and culture to stand up for ourselves. Although we are critical, we are not pessimists, and we take active roles in creating solutions. We are building a network of people across the state, both inside and outside of our organization. We will work with any person or organization that shares our values. We are building leadership to fight for an economic commonwealth, self-determination of communities and the right of people to organize and act. Our membership and target audience are poor and working class Pennsylvanians of all races, religions and statuses, whether urban, rural, or in between. We strive to work with those we have not reached yet. We don’t just observe; we move. We don’t trust the integrity of mainstream media to accurately and fairly portray poor and working people’s realities, so we use grassroots media to communicate Pennsylvania issues from below. We do this by listening to people’s stories and broadcasting what’s happening in their lives through our newspaper and website.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
PA from Below Joins NEPA Organizing Center FOUNDED IN 2008, the Northeastern Pennsylvania (NEPA) Organizing Center is a resident-led organization dedicated to providing their community the means to build long-term solutions to human rights issues. Through issue-based campaigns, they combine organizing support, outreach/intake, and media programs in order to bring community voices to the forefront of policy discussion. After Mitch Troutman was asked to become their Media Coordinator and develop a Media Program, it was decided that Pennsylvania from Below would become a part of the Organizing Center. Both he and Pennsylvania from Below are now be based out of Wilkes-Barre. Up to this point, PA from Below has not operated out of any one location. Becoming part of the Organizing Center means that we will have an office and an address. We will be better able to share strategies for developing our organization. Perhaps most importantly, we will work with their organizing model, which could be replicated in other areas of the state. On their end, the Organizing Center gets some of our attention, increased focus on NEPA issues and the ability to produce a regional newspaper. They will also use their organizing perspective to give input into our statewide activities and help facilitate statewide relationships. PA from Below will continue to work as a state-wide group, with members in different towns and regions. We will continue to produce news that follows the stories of poor and working people in our state, and will create new editions of our paper. The NEPA Organizing Center is located at 67 Public Square, Room 503, Wilkes-Barre, PA. You can read more about the Organizing Center on their website at nepaorganizingcenter.org The NEPA Organizing Center is located at 67 Public Square, Room 503, Wilkes-Barre, PA. You can read more about the Organizing Center on their website at nepaorganizingcenter.org
Get Involved Join Pennsylvania from Below today and help us grow! We work with people across the state and rely heavily on the Internet for communication and managing our organization. We work with individuals and would like to form regional chapters. We also affiliate with any organization that shares our values and vision. There are many ways to be involved. Core members create media, guide projects and guide PAB’s development. We challenge ourselves to learn and grow as a group. Volunteers assist our publications through research, writing, editing, layout and distribution. Volunteers can also contribute to organizational tasks such as managing our website and social media, making phone calls and fundraising. If you have a skill, we can use it! And of course you can always support us by donating, distributing our material, and spreading the word! We have an orientation coming soon. It will be on a weekend around the end of June or Beginning of July, near Harrisburg. Please get in touch about joining us.
www.pafrombelow.info Voicemail: 267-560-7247 pafrombelow@gmail.com
Donations Pennsylvania from Below’s work has done it’s work with a very small budget. We heard from countless people across the state who said that our efforts helped their work. Please help us continue by making a donation. Any amount will help us as we continue to expand, grow, and produce. Mailings, printing, travel cost, research, and communications all add up, in addition to equipment that we need. You can make donations in person, by clicking the ‘Donate’ link on our website, or by check ( write checks out to either Kara Newhouse or Mitch Troutman and mail them to the address below )
Pennsylvania from Below c/o NEPA Organizing Center 67 Public Square, Room 503 Wilkes-Barre, PA 18701