Leaks
and spills everywhere:
"Officials
are responding to a spill of oily bilge water in Washington’s Puget
Sound. The spill occurred at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor and has spread
10 miles north to Hood Canal.
State
agencies estimate that up to 2,000 gallons spilled Monday when a ship
was pumping out oily discharge at the naval facility. The pier-side
transfer system failed and overflowed.
Initially
the Navy estimated that 150 gallons spilled, but by Tuesday other
agencies were disputing that amount.
The
Washington Department of Ecology has conducted fly-overs and said
that the sheen has spread as far as the Hood Canal Bridge, 10 miles
north of the base."
--Mike
Ruppert
Greene
County shale well continues burning
Smoke
rises on Tuesday above the flames at the site of the gas fire at the
Chevron well near Bobtown, Greene County.
11 February , 2014
A
spark or an error on the job results in a potentially deadly well
fire that burns out of control, causing even more danger to the
experts who have to be flown in to contain the blaze.
That's
the situation in Dunkard, Greene County, after something caused a
Marcellus Shale gas well owned by Chevron to catch fire just before 7
a.m. Tuesday, leaving one employee with a minor injury and another
worker missing and feared dead.
More
than 12 hours after an explosion that "sounded like a jet engine
going 5 feet above your house," as one neighbor put it, the
fire, fueled by the well's gas, continued to shoot flames and smoke
into the air, causing a hissing sound that could be heard a
quarter-mile away.
The
heat from the blaze -- which caused a tanker truck on site that was
full of propane gas to explode -- was so intense that first
responders from local fire departments had to pull back rather than
risk injury.
"They
essentially retreated to let the fire burn," said John Poister,
spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental
Protection, which had three people on site investigating.
State
police said they were told it could take days to contain the fire.
"We're
being told ... the site itself, that fire, will not be contained and
we will not have access to that property for at least a few days,"
Trooper Stefani Plume said at a news conference Tuesday.
Experts
on well fires like this were flown in Tuesday from Houston.
Patti
Green, a spokeswoman for Wild Well Control, the company Chevron
called in to try to contain the blaze, said it would not be unusual
for a response team to let a fire burn before making an attempt to
knock it down.
The
question that remained unanswered Tuesday was what caused the
explosion.
Though
the fire was initially thought to be a "blowout" in which
there was loss of control at the well head during drilling that
resulted in a release of natural gas, Mr. Poister said he has been
told that it was not a drilling-related accident.
Instead,
he said, the well had long since been drilled and crews were on site
early Tuesday morning putting in pipe that would connect the well to
Chevron's gas-gathering network -- the final stage before the well
goes into production.
DEP
records show that Chevron's Lanco 7H well was drilled in March 2012
-- as were two other wells on the same well pad -- and had not yet
begun to produce gas.
DEP's
online records also show the state had not issued any violations
against Chevron for any problems related to the drilling of the three
wells on the well pad.
In
December, Chevron was given one violation for an incident related to
the well site -- for failure to comply with the terms and conditions
of the state's site permit -- but no details of that violation were
immediately available.
Chevron
said the explosion occurred at about 6:45 a.m. Tuesday.
John
Kuis, 57, of nearby Dilliner said he heard his dog Riley start
growling early in the morning, seconds before he felt rumbling.
"Then
the house just sort of shook and there was a big loud bang," he
said.
Mr.
Kuis, who lives less than a half-mile from the well, said he saw
smoke and flames out of his window and at first thought his
neighbor's home had blown up.
A
contractor working for Chevron had 20 employees on site at the time
of the explosion. Beyond the worker who was injured and the one who
is missing, the other 18 workers were accounted for by 8:48 a.m.,
according to Rep. Pam Snyder, D-Greene.
Chevron
employees came to the scene after the explosion and immediately
decided to call in the experts at Wild Well Control, and police
created a half-mile perimeter around the site.
No
schools, homes or businesses are inside the state police perimeter,
and state officials don't believe the burning natural gas is toxic,
Mr. Poister said, and the fire appeared to be contained to the well
pad.
Wild
Well Control has an office in Southpointe, Washington County, and
"prepositioned" equipment to help with well control
incidents at an office in Clearfield.
But
local offices are not typically staffed with advanced well-control
specialists -- which Wild Well calls its "first response teams"
-- who would handle a well fire or other well control incident.
Up
To 2,000 Gallons Of Oily Water Spilled In Hood Canal
11
February, 2014
Officials
are responding to a spill of oily bilge water in Washington’s Puget
Sound. The spill occurred at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor and has spread
10 miles north to Hood Canal.
State
agencies estimate that up to 2,000 gallons spilled Monday when a ship
was pumping out oily discharge at the naval facility. The pier-side
transfer system failed and overflowed.
Initially
the Navy estimated that 150 gallons spilled, but by Tuesday other
agencies were disputing that amount.
The
Washington Department of Ecology has conducted fly-overs and said
that the sheen has spread as far as the Hood Canal Bridge, 10 miles
north of the base.
The
Navy did not immediately respond to requests for an interview.
There
were no documented impacts to wildlife as of Tuesday afternoon, but
the Department of Health advised against harvesting shellfish from
the affected area.
'Significant'
slurry spill blackens Kanawha creek
100,000
gallons escapes Patriot Coal facility
11
February, 2014
CHARLESTON,
W.Va. -- More than 100,000 gallons of coal slurry poured into an
eastern Kanawha County stream Tuesday in what officials were calling
a "significant spill" from a Patriot Coal processing
facility.
Emergency
officials and environmental inspectors said roughly six miles of
Fields Creek had been blackened and that a smaller amount of the
slurry made it into the Kanawha River near Chesapeake.
"This
has had significant, adverse environmental impact to Fields Creek and
an unknown amount of impact to the Kanawha River," said
Secretary Randy Huffman of the state Department of Environmental
Protection. "This is a big deal, this is a significant slurry
spill."
"When
this much coal slurry goes into the stream, it wipes the stream out."
Earlier
in the day, Jimmy Gianato, director of the Division of Homeland
Security and Emergency Management, said he didn't have a lot of
details on the incident but was under the impression it wasn't that
serious.
"I
don't think there's really anything to it," Gianato said. "It
turned out to be much of nothing."
The
spill occurred at Patriot Coal's Kanawha Eagle operation.
The
spill was caused by a malfunction of a valve inside the slurry line,
carrying material from the preparation plant to a separate disposal
site, not to an impoundment, according to DEP officials.
The
valve broke sometime between 2:30 and 5:30 early Tuesday morning,
Huffman said at a news conference Tuesday evening. Patriot Coal did
not call the DEP to alert them of the leak until 7:40 Tuesday
morning, Huffman said. Companies are required to immediately report
any spills to the DEP.
There
was an alarm system in place to alert facility operators of the
broken valve, but the alarm failed, so pumps continued to send the
toxic slurry through the system. There was a secondary containment
wall around the valve, but with the pumps continuing to send slurry
to the broken valve, it was soon overwhelmed and the slurry
overflowed the wall and made its way to the creek.
Huffman
said they did not know why the alarm system failed.
"Had
the alarms gone off and warned the operator that the pipe was
leaking, the shutdown could have been done in time for the secondary
containment to contain the material that leaked," Huffman said.
"This was a mechanical failure, we're not making any excuses for
anybody."
The
company turned off the pumps at 5:30, more than two hours before
anyone called the DEP, but Huffman said he's not sure if they turned
off the pumps because they knew about the spill or for another
reason.
Patriot
Coal released a statement on the spill Tuesday evening.
"Mine
personnel provided notification to the West Virginia Department of
Environmental Protection and all pumping related to the slurry line
was promptly discontinued and the discharge ceased. Containment
activity began immediately at the site and is continuing in Fields
Creek and is our top priority," Janine Orf, a Patriot
spokeswoman wrote.
For
most of the day, the DEP was operating under the assumption that
MCHM, the chemical that contaminated the drinking water of 300,000
West Virginians last month, was included in the spilled slurry.
Huffman said that they learned late in the day that the facility had
stopped using MCHM just a few weeks ago, so a different coal-cleaning
chemical was involved.
Huffman
said that the new chemical was polypropylene glycol, although he also
referred to it as polyethylene glycol. He said that that chemical is
such a small part of the slurry that they don't believe it,
specifically, will have an impact.
Huffman
said they had been testing for MCHM, but will now have to change
their testing protocols.
Residents
near the spill had complained of MCHM's telltale licorice odor, but
Huffman said that the odor was from a tank of MCHM that the company
was moving off site.
Oddly,
in Patriot's statement the company mentioned testing for MCHM in
Fields Creek.
"Recent
testing initiated by the Kanawha Eagle mining complex confirmed that
the level of MCHM is far below the 1 part per million screening level
set by the Centers for Disease Control and in most instances was
non-detectable," Orf wrote. "We will continue to work with
the Department of Environmental Protection regarding the containment
and cleanup activities."
Huffman
said that they are using booms, vacuum trucks and settling ponds to
try to contain the spill.
Coal
slurry contains a variety of substances that are likely more toxic
than Crude MCHM or polyethylene glycol. It contains heavy metals,
like iron, manganese, aluminum and selenium.
By
calculating the rate of the pump and the time it ran, DEP officials
estimate a maximum of 108,000 gallons of slurry spilled into Fields
Creek. They do not know how much made it into the Kanawha, but
Huffman said the slurry was visible in the river for about a
half-mile before it began to dissipate.
There
are no water intakes directly downstream from where the spill took
place.
Laura
Jordan, a spokeswoman for West Virginia American Water, issued a
statement to reassure the public the slurry spill would not impact
the company's regional drinking water plant in Charleston -- which is
located about a mile upstream from where the Elk River empties into
the Kanawha.
"We
have been in contact with the West Virginia Bureau for Public Health,
which concurs that they do not anticipate any impact to our plant on
the Elk River," Jordan said.
This
is at least the third slurry incident since 2010 at the Kanawha Eagle
cite. In late November, black water was discharged into South Hollow
Stream, and ended up in Fields Creek. The company was fined $663.
In
October of 2010, there was a slurry line break that discharged into
Spicelick and Joes Creek, impacting about 3 miles of stream. The
company was fined $22,400.
On
Tuesday, Huffman said fines alone were not enough of a deterrent to
prevent spills.
"A
some point companies will just pay. We have to do more than that, we
can't just send them a bill and say you have to pay this to continue
operating, there have to be fundamental changes made at a facility
that's had multiple incidents," Huffman said. "Maybe there
needs to be a top down review of all their processes. Maybe there's a
cultural change within that company that needs to take place that has
more of an emphasis on safety, environmental controls, things like
that."
He
mentioned increasing the size of secondary containment and requiring
alarms to be certified as possible steps to be taken.
Coalfield
citizens have for years complained about blackwater spills and
worried about the dangers of coal-slurry impoundments and the
potential consequences of injecting coal slurry underground.
A
little more than four years ago, the U.S. Office of Surface Mining
Reclamation and Enforcement issued a report cautioning the DEP was
not taking strong enough enforcement actions to cut down on
blackwater spills from mining operations.
"The
team found that existing policies and procedures are not effective in
reducing or preventing blackwater spills," said the OSM report,
issued in October 2009.
DEP
officials rejected the OSM's suggestion the DEP re-examine its rules
and policies on blackwater spills, arguing the incidents were on the
decline.
"The
violation rate for blackwater spills is going down," Tom Clarke,
then the DEP's mining director, said at the time. "The figures
show it's a declining problem."
After
a series of blackwater spills from 2001 to 2003, OSM had launched a
review of how well the DEP was policing such incidents.
Among
other things, the 2009 OSM report found it hard, using DEP inspection
reports and databases, to definitively quantify the number of
blackwater spills. When spills occur, state inspectors cite companies
for violating different regulations, and inspection narratives don't
always explain clearly what happened, OSM said.
The
lack of clear data may lead some operators to face less-serious
enforcement action than they should and may hurt the DEP's ability to
cite companies for a "pattern of violation," which can lead
to operations being shut down and operators being blocked from
receiving new permits.
OSM
investigators also found that other strategies -- including
settlement agreements with mine operators and federal criminal
prosecution -- don't always work in stopping future blackwater
spills.
"It
appears that the consequences for violating the law, even when the
violations are intentional, willful and blatant, are not significant
enough to be a deterrent," the OSM report said.
This
Is What It Looks Like When 100,000 Gallons Of Coal Waste Spill Into A
West Virginia Stream
12
February, 2014
A
pipe break at a Patriot Coal preparation site spewed more
than 100,000 gallons of coal slurry into a waterway near
Charleston, WV on Tuesday.
“
When this much coal
slurry goes into the stream, it wipes the stream out,” said
Randy Huffman, Secretary of the Department of Environmental
Protection.
Tuesday’s
spill did not occur near a drinking water intake, an area of
particular concern for nearby residents as the safety of their water
supply remains a concern more than one month after a massive
chemical spill contaminated the water for 300,000 West
Virginians. Coal slurry contains a range of toxic substances,
including chemicals used to wash the coal and heavy metals, like
iron, manganese, aluminum and selenium.
Here are some images
from the spill:
CREDIT: Foo
Conner/@iwasaround
CREDIT: Foo
Conner/@iwasaround
CREDIT: Foo
Conner/@iwasaround
CREDIT: Foo
Conner/@iwasaround
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