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The
Gas Well Study grew out of a desire to see what gas wells
look like so we'd have a better understanding of what to expect
when a well was drilled on our property.
The
first year's study (Gas Well Study,
2008) focused on wells operated by one company (we only
came across two well operated by other companies in our search).
The second year's study (Gas
Well Study, 2009) has focused on expanding our search
area so as to include more wells operated by different companies,
and also to perform environmental assessments at selected
sites. Three environmental assessments were made in 2009.
This
section of the website has photographs and information for
each well site we've visited, arranged according to whether
they were viewed in 2008 or
2009.
Overwhelmingly,
problems we've seen fall in several categories. Most well
access roads are in need of repair. (We have a web page showing
problems at a single well access road.)
A large number of wells have condensate storage tanks without
secondary containment dikes as required by state regulations
(and in some instances federal regulations). Other problems
observed include lack of maintenance (generally a need of
a coat of paint), presence of trash or industrial debris,
and about a third of the wells have either no API number,
required by state regulations, or the wrong API number.
One
troubling aspect is the poor vegetation (or utter lack of
vegetation in one case) at a number of sites. This issue,
along with problems of drainage/sedimentation control that
we've seen, means that operators are not following the state
code mandated West
Virginia Erosion and Sediment Control Field Manual
during reclamation and for site and road maintenance during
the life of the well.
At
the three sites we performed environmental assessments, we
found surface contamination due to pollution created during
production of natural gas or due to problems with drilling
waste management.
Two
environmental assessment reports are available for download,
as is an interim environmental assessment for the third site.
The environmental assessment
page has links for all the reports and there are also
links to individual reports on the pages for those well sites.
To
get an idea of the types of problems we've seen there's a
page of examples with links to more information about
that well.
Go
to the Gas Well Study, 2008.
Go
to the Gas Well Study, 2009.
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