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Letters-to-the editor tips
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 In 2008, one billion gallons of toxic coal ash spilled from the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant. WASHINGTON, DC — “Today the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released information revealing the existence of hundreds of previously unknown coal ash dumps nationwide. The information comes pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA) by Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice.
The data released today by the EPA reveal that there are at least 451 more coal ash ponds than previously acknowledged—significantly increasing the known threat from coal ash. The EPA had admitted to 710 ponds, and today’s numbers increase that total to at least 1,161. In addition, the agency previously did not know how many ponds were unlined. Today’s data indicate that at least 535 ponds (46 percent) operate without a liner to prevent hazardous chemicals from reaching drinking water sources.
 David Bernet, Hanoverton, Columbiana County LISBON — “The Hanoverton man charged with abduction for taking a drilling employee he found on his property to the sheriff’s department is now the defendant in a civil case filed this week by TGS-Nopec Geophysical Co. and Chesapeake Exploration LLC.
TGS-Nopec, a seismic survey company, and Chesapeake Exploration, the company with the biggest percentage of gas and oil leases, filed a motion for an injunction requesting the right to begin testing on the property belonging to David and June Bernet, U.S. Route 30, Hanoverton.
The gas leases involving the Bernet’s properties are allegedly subject to oil and gas leases from 1985, 2010 and 2009.
Besides the injunction, the lawsuit also requests an excess of $25,000 in damages.”
— Deanne John, Lorain Morning Journal
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— Michelle Nicks, WFMJ
 Workers stand near a rig that drills into the shale at a well site in Washington, Pa. HARRISBURG, PA — “When Pennsylvania passed a state law that stripped local authority over where potentially hazardous natural gas wells could be drilled, cities and townships decided to take matters into their own hands.
…Thanks to the law, doctors can find out what chemicals are used in fracking, the controversial drilling technique that environmentalists say turns their water taps into flamethrowers and poisons the air. But they are bound by a confidentiality clause that prevents them from telling their patients what those chemicals are. Local counties get the impact fee, but it comes with strict regulations on how it can be spent. They can use it to provide low-income housing for gas workers, for example, but not to conduct air quality testing.
Most importantly, municipal zoning jurisdiction has been overruled. Now gas companies can drill wherever they like, even if local councils vote to keep the wells out of their jurisdictions.”
— Alice Su, iWatch News
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WASHINGTON, DC — “Language requiring approval of the Keystone XL pipeline and barring Environmental Protection Agency regulation of coal-ash waste were dropped from a highway spending bill being negotiated by U.S. lawmakers, Republican Senator James Inhofe said.
The deal removes two obstacles preventing agreement on a compromise package paying for bridge and road construction and transit programs. Legislation drafted by a Senate-House committee may be filed tonight, Inhofe, chief Republican negotiator for the Senate on the package, said today.”
— Jim Snyder and Kathleen Hunter, Bloomberg News
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 NORTH CANTON – “Aubrey McClendon, the embattled CEO of Chesapeake Energy Corp., made an unannounced stop to the Stark campus of Kent State University Wednesday to address about 300 of the company’s Utica shale employees.
‘He came into North Canton to meet with all of the employees in the Ohio Utica shale region,’ said Chesapeake spokesman Pete Kenworthy shortly after the meeting concluded just after 1 p.m. The meeting was closed to the media and public, and security deterred reporters from conducting interviews before and after the private luncheon.
The meeting was simply an opportunity for the CEO to meet with some of his workers in eastern Ohio, Kenworthy said, and that includes those employed in Chesapeake’s midstream subsidiaries.”
— Dan O’Brien, Crain’s Cleveland Business
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 AEP says it needs to raise the charge paid by competitors for its electricity to help stabilize its finances during a multiyear transition to a new pricing system. COLUMBUS — “Evidence is starting to emerge about how electricity suppliers will react if state regulators grant American Electric Power’s request to modify a fee paid by competitors.
DPL Energy already is passing the costs on to customers, according to a filing by grocery chain Aldi Inc. with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.
Border Energy executives have decided that half of the cost will be passed on to customers.The PUCO last month approved temporary changes in the ‘capacity charge’ that electricity suppliers must pay each month.”
Dan Gearino, Columbus Dispatch
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 Prof. David Dana CHICAGO, IL — “Fracking, whether you like it or not, is here to stay.
But not forever. One day, all the shale gas and oil will be depleted. The operators will leave. Depletion is just a reality of a nonrenewable energy source. And if the history of the revolution in industrial production following World War II or the history of mining is any guide, fracking will not leave a pristine environment behind. Soils will have been contaminated, surface waters will have been contaminated, groundwater will have been contaminated. Trying to remove fracking-related contamination from underground aquifers that provide drinking water and water for irrigation could take years and million upon millions of dollars. Some of the contamination will be due to inadequate regulation, some to inadequate regulatory enforcement, some just to accidents. Given the vast scope of fracking we will see, and the fact that fracking involves the release of toxic chemicals and generates potentially hazardous wastes, we must assume that there will be sites and natural resources in need of remediation. And so the question inevitably will arise — who will pay to clean up the mess?”
— David A. Dana, Chicago Tribune
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 The Bhopal disaster in 1984 was one of the worst industrial accidents in history. But almost three decades later, toxic waste is still being stored on the site under poor conditions. Now, a German government agency will transport hundreds of tons of hazardous material to Germany for disposal. BHOPAL, INDIA — ” Rusted metal barrels filled with a dark, dusty material stand in a warehouse on the site of the former Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India. Dirt and sand trickle from worn plastic bags piled up in a corner. The barrels contain toxic materials, but they have no lids and are not inside any containers. Any slum child can pick the lock on the entrance gate. It’s hazardous waste storage, Indian style.
Now, German experts want to clean it up.
On the night of December 2, 1984, one of the biggest chemical accidents in history occurred in the Indian city of Bhopal. A factory owned by the US chemical company Union Carbide, now part of Dow Chemical, produced an insecticide called Sevin at the Bhopal plant. The facility was intended to bring work and prosperity to the capital of Madhya Pradesh, a largely rural state in the heart of India, a little bigger than Italy. Instead, the plant brought death to the residents of Bhopal. Several dozen tons of methyl isocyanate, a highly toxic chemical, leaked from a tank that night, releasing a deadly cloud of gas over the city. The leak is believed to have caused up to 30,000 deaths, although the exact number, especially in the slums adjacent to the plant, was never determined.
Today the people in Bhopal still live with the consequences of the gas cloud and are still fighting for compensation. It took a decree by India’s highest court for the toxic waste to finally be removed. The partner the Indians found to perform the task is the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ), a German government agency that provides services for sustainable development. ”
— Simone Kaiser, Der Spiegel
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 Approximately 2 grams of phenol in glass vial. HAVERHILL — ” The stench of phenol was overpowering, wafting from mud taken from a layer of rock thousands of feet beneath southern Ohio.
It was 1989 and workers for the Aristech Chemical Corp. had begun drilling a disposal well for dangerous, chemical-laden waste from the company’s acetone manufacturing plant in Haverhill.
The well site was next to two older Aristech disposal wells, in a spot where federal and state regulators believed hazardous materials would remain safely tucked away forever almost 6,000 feet under the earth’s surface.
But the phenol – a deadly chemical used in Aristech’s processes that is known to cause internal burns, muscle spasms and organ failure – indicated that something might have gone wrong. ”
— Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica
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CLEVELAND — ” In a hotel ballroom filled with entrepreneurs, angel investors and government bureaucrats hungry for opportunities in the evolving field of turning household trash into energy, Ivan Henderson delivers some sobering advice: Waste to energy is not an easy ride.’It’s been a bumpy road,’ the soft-spoken commissioner for Cleveland Public Power told an audience at the Waste Conversion Congress in Philadelphia earlier this month.
Cleveland’s efforts to bring a promising, if unproven, technology to provide a local source of power and manage its waste stream has faced a few hiccups: local opposition, federal criticism and the firing of a top consultant.
… Citizen groups believe Cleveland Public Power’s gasification talk is a smokescreen for another incinerator project.
‘They don’t want to call it an incinerator because they know the public opposition to incineration,’ said Sandy Buchanan, executive director of Ohio Citizen Action. ”
— Tiffany Stecker, Midwest Energy News
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MANSFIELD — ” Preferred Fluids Management has withdrawn its proposed site plan for two 5,000-foot-deep injection wells from consideration by the city planning commission.
‘It would now appear, at least with respect to Mr. (Steve) Mobley and his company, that they are no longer proceeding with their project,’ Mansfield Mayor Tim Theaker and Law Director John Spon said in a news release issued this afternoon.
‘While this withdrawal appears to be a city victory over a company that sought to injection toxic poison into our soil, the city must remain vigilant against other companies,’ the news release said. ”
— Linda Martz, CentralOhio.com
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 The bill now heads for the desk of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. TRENTON, NJ — “A measure that prohibits hydraulic fracturing byproducts created in other states from entering New Jersey is now headed to Gov. Chris Christie’s desk, but it’s not clear if he’ll sign the bill into law.
…Some lawmakers and environmentalists say public health and natural resources would be endangered if fracking waste from neighboring states, like Pennsylvania, enters the Garden State. But petroleum council director Jim Benton says fracking is covered under existing state regulations, and also claims fracking has brought down the cost of energy and provided economic benefits.
The New Jersey measure specifically bans the treatment, discharge, disposal or storage of any wastewater, wastewater solids, sludge, drill cuttings or other byproducts of the fracking practice.”
— Associated Press
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— Spencer Hunt, Columbus Dispatch
— Athens News
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State should carefully analyze water withdrawals for fracking
 COLUMBUS — “That officials have discussed allowing large-scale withdrawals from waterways designated as Scenic Rivers is troubling; only 14 Ohio streams bear that distinction, because of their extraordinary water quality and biological diversity. Such delicate and valuable ecosystems deserve the highest degree of protection.
The Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District also has water it could sell, but it announced earlier this month that it won’t allow any withdrawals until a survey it has requested from the U.S. Geological Survey is completed, which might take until the end of the year.
That may be a course to emulate: seeking an assessment from a disinterested outside agency.
Damaging a stream or lake and killing its wildlife by drawing too much of its water wouldn’t be remedied easily or quickly, if ever. Better to be safe.”
— editorial, Columbus Dispatch
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 Richard Sahli, Columbus attorney, former Chief Counsel, Ohio EPA COLUMBUS – “And don’t forget the ultimate Catch-22 undermining the whole process: How can you determine what can injure you if you are not given the “chemical identity” in the first place, because that is the very thing that its being declared a trade secret is designed to conceal?”
— Richard Sahli memo to Sandy Buchanan, Executive Director, Ohio Citizen Action, June 25, 2012
link to full text
 Darren Bush, a professor the University of Houston Bates School of Law is a former attorney in the Justice Department's Antitrust Division. GAYLORD, MI — “Under the direction of CEO Aubrey McClendon, Chesapeake Energy Corp. plotted with its top competitor to suppress land prices in one of America’s most promising oil and gas plays, a Reuters investigation has found.
In emails between Chesapeake and Encana Corp, Canada’s largest natural gas company, the rivals repeatedly discussed how to avoid bidding against each other in a public land auction in Michigan two years ago and in at least nine prospective deals with private land owners here.
In one email, dated June 16, 2010, McClendon told a Chesapeake deputy that it was time ‘to smoke a peace pipe’ with Encana ‘if we are bidding each other up.’ The Chesapeake vice president responded that he had contacted Encana ‘to discuss how they want to handle the entities we are both working to avoid us bidding each other up in the interim.’ McClendon replied: ‘Thanks.’”
— Brian Grow, Joshua Schneyer and Janet Roberts, Reuters
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— Christopher Helman, Forbes
— Zachary R. Mider and Jeffrey McCracken, Bloomberg News
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Letters supporting the Fracking Emergency Medical Right to Know Act 7,672 neighbors have sent handwritten letters and made personal phone calls urging state legislators to support the Fracking Emergency Medical Right to Know Act as of May 14, 2013.
Ohio coal-fired power plants
Resources on proposed Cleveland incinerator
AEP’s Muskingum River Power Plant
Letters to American Electric Power 989 neighbors have sent handwritten letters urging AEP to retire its Muskingum River coal plant as of July 15, 2011.
Letters to Duke Energy 2,307 neighbors have sent handwritten letters and telewires urging Duke Energy to retire Miami Fort Unit 6 and Beckjord coal plants as of July 15, 2011.
Letters to Kokosing Asphalt 8,709 neighbors have sent handwritten letters and petitions urging Kokosing Asphalt to be a good neighbor as of February 25, 2011.
Letters to Rumpke 9,205 neighbors have sent handwritten letters and petitions urging Rumpke to be a good neighbor as of April 15, 2011.
Letters to FirstEnergy 3,914 neighbors have sent handwritten letters and petitions urging FirstEnergy to retire their four Lake Erie coal plants as of July 15, 2011.
Mountaintop removal coal mining
Letters to Senator Sherrod Brown and Senator Rob Portman 6,615 members have sent handwritten letters and petitions to Senator Brown urging him to support US EPA rules that will protect our health from polluting coal plants as of January 24, 2012.
3,751 members have petitioned Senator Portman urging him to support US EPA rules that will protect our health from polluting coal plants as of January 24, 2012.
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