Private Water Partners With Fracking Lobby

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Shocking Conflict of Interest: Private Water Companies Partner With Fracking Lobby
Sarah Pavlus | April 19, 2012 | American Independent News Network

Selling water to drillers, two of the nation's biggest private water utilities may soon profit from treating the wastewater.

'Two of the country's (USA) largest private water utility companies are participants in a massive lobbying effort to expand controversial shale gas drilling -- a heavy industrial activity that promises to enrich the water companies but may also put drinking water resources at risk. The situation -- which some watchdogs describe as a troubling conflict of interest -- underscores the complex issues raised by the nationwide push to privatize infrastructure and services like water, prisons, and roads. The water companies -- American Water and Aqua America -- are leading drinking water suppliers in Pennsylvania, where drilling is booming. They also sell water to gas companies -- which use a drilling technique that requires massive amounts of water -- and have expressed interest in treating drilling wastewater, a potentially lucrative opportunity.'

http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/e77fdd4f5afd88a3852576b3005a604f/ba591ee790c58d30852576ea004ee3ad

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'World's Biggest Fracker' Pockets $1 Billion in Shady Deal
Jeff Goodell | April 18, 8:55 PM ET | Rolling Stone

'Chesapeake Energy, whose CEO, Aubrey McClendon proudly boasted to me, "We’re the biggest frackers in the world." The story raised questions about the financial underpinnings of the company and suggested that today’s natural gas boom is likely to be a short-lived euphoria driven by new drilling technology and corporate greed.

Well, this morning Reuters hit with an important story revealing that the financial shenanigans at Chesapeake are even more complicated than anyone knew. And, as always, McClendon is right in the middle of it.

Reuters reports:

McClendon has borrowed as much as $1.1 billion in the last three years by pledging his stake in the company’s oil and natural gas wells as collateral, documents reviewed by Reuters show.

The loans were made through three companies controlled by McClendon that list Chesapeake’s headquarters as their address. The money is being used to help finance what could be a lucrative perk of his job – the opportunity to buy into the very same well stakes that he is using as collateral for the borrowings.'

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Toxic Wastewater Dumped in Streets and Rivers at Night: Gas Profiteers Getting Away With Shocking Environmental Crimes
Aaron Skirboll | August 15, 2012 | AlterNet

Allan Shipman was found guilty of illegally dumping millions of gallons of natural gas drilling wastewater. But he's part of a much bigger problem.

'On March 17, 2011 Greene County resident Robert Allan Shipman and his company, Allan’s Waste Water Service Inc., were charged with illegally dumping millions of gallons of natural gas drilling wastewater, along with restaurant grease and sewer sludge across six counties in Pennsylvania from 2003-2009. Pennsylvania is one of several states that sit atop the gas-rich underground rock formation the Marcellus Shale. Hydraulic fracturing, the process used for retrieving the gas, is a water-intensive drilling method that not only requires massive volumes of water to unlock the gas, but also generates millions of gallons of wastewater when the drilling is done.

The two-year investigation by the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office resulted in a total of 98 criminal counts charged against the 50-year-old Shipman and an additional 77 charges levied at his company. Said Nils Frederiksen , spokesman for the attorney general’s office, “He was pouring the stuff in any hole he could find.”

Most egregiously, the grand jury presentment detailed how when the demand for Allan’s Waste Water services grew in the summer of 2007, as a result of an uptick in production water (wastewater produced by gas well drilling operations that may contain toxic chemicals) from CNX Gas Co. LLP, a subsidiary of Consol Energy, a company Shipman was hauling for, “Shipman showed the drivers how to leave open the gas well valves and ordered them to discharge production water onto the ground and/or into the nearby waterways.” Drivers’ testimony added, “This activity would typically occur after dark or during heavy rain so that no one would observe the illegal discharge.”'