Three years after drilling, feds say natural gas in Medina County well water is potentially explosive
Story by Bob Downy, Akron Beacon Journal
Posted by admin on January 20, 2012
GRANGER TWP.: A
federal health agency says potentially explosive levels of natural gas
at two houses in eastern Medina County are a public health threat.
The problems in
the two drinking water wells appear linked to the nearby drilling of two
natural gas wells in 2008, says the Agency for Toxic Substances and
Disease Registry, part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.
That news
contradicts repeated statements from the Ohio Department of Natural
Resources on the connection between the drilling and problems at the two
houses at State and Remsen roads.
“We are the victims of fracking… and natural gas drilling gone wrong,” said Mark Mangan, one of the affected homeowners.
On Sept. 29,
2008, Mangan and wife, Sandy, found that their drinking water well had
gone dry at the same time that a company was drilling for natural gas at
Allardale Park about a half mile away.
When the water
returned to the Mangans’ well in five days, it had an unpleasant taste
and a rotten-egg scent. It was salty. It bubbled. It contained methane
gas and a gray slurry of cement.
The Mangans could
ignite the gas bubbles in the water from their kitchen sink, similar to
what happened in the anti-fracking documentary Gasland.
“Yes, we got water back, but it wasn’t our water,” said the 49-year-old Mangan. “Our water was gone.”
Neighbors William
and Stephanie Boggs had similar well problems that began one day after
the Mangans’. They told federal officials they continue to use the well
water.
The Granger
Township case is one of a small but growing number of cases in the
United States where contamination problems have been linked by a federal
agency to natural gas drilling.
In a Dec. 22
letter to the U.S. EPA, the CDC agency said both families are still at
risk from potentially dangerous natural gas levels. The agency concluded
that “the current conditions are likely to pose a public health
threat.”
The agency looked at natural gas levels detected last November by the Granger Township Fire Department.
The levels of
explosivity were 34.7 and 47.4 percent at wells at the two houses, the
agency said. Hazardous conditions exist when levels surpass 10 percent,
the health agency said.
The gas levels in
and around the Mangans’ house have been so high that firefighters were
called several times. Columbia Gas shut off service for a time because
of the likelihood of an explosion.
“We are constantly in danger,” Mangan said. “Our house was a bomb waiting to go off.”
He said the explosivity levels inside the house have been as high as 20 percent, far above the federal guideline of 1 percent.
Corrective action
The healthy
agency intends to work with the Department of Natural Resources, the
Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health to address
the problem.
Those steps include:
• Getting Natural
Resources to immediately seal an older, abandoned natural gas well that
also appears to be contributing to the problem.
• Working with
the Ohio Department of Health and local health agencies to vent
wellheads and enclosed space in the homes where water is used.
•Encouraging
Natural Resources or the drillers to conduct gas tests in the two houses
when water is in use, such as shower and laundry times.
• Conducting
additional water testing at the two houses and a house near the older
leaking well, and surveying other nearby homes.
The health agency
said it intends to meet with Ohio agency officials soon to discuss the
findings that were released to the Mangans and Boggses last week.
Said U.S. EPA
spokesman Jeffrey McDonald in an email: “We think their [Natural
Resource’s] continued attention to this issue is still needed.”
The federal involvement surfaced at a Jan. 9 health conference on drilling safety in Alexandria, Va.
Vikas Kapil,
chief medical officer at the National Center for Environmental Health,
part of the federal CDC, said in a presentation that his agency has been
investigating gas levels from drilling problems in Medina County.
He told reporters he was not authorized to provide additional information.
Cement problems noted
The two Allardale
Park gas wells were drilled by Wildcat Drilling LLC for Landmark 4 LLC,
another firm. The county park is east of the Mangans’ house and near
the Bath Township border.
The wells, about
1,500 feet apart, were being drilled to a depth of 3,700 feet and
cemented on the outside for environmental protection at the time that
the Mangans’ problems surfaced. The vertical wells were then fracked.
The federal
health agency noted: “Problems in cementing the well casings were
recorded in the drilling logs provided to ODNR, indicating the loss of a
significant amount of cement somewhere in the drilled formation.”
Wildcat Drilling
is affiliated with Ohio Valley Energy, a firm that drew headlines in
2007, after a house exploded east of Cleveland in Geauga County.
A casing failure
on a well resulted in explosive methane gas migrating through the
aquifer and into drinking water wells. One house exploded and 19 others
were evacuated. The company said the problem was caused by a
construction error.
Initially, the Mangans and Boggses were reportedly told by a state investigator that they were too far away from the drilling.
An investigator
explained that the drilling could be responsible if their wells produced
water again within five days. If that didn’t happen, drilling was not
involved, they said they were told.
Their water returned, but with the smell, discoloration and gases.
The Mangans
switched to bottled water for drinking. They initially used the well
water only for showers and flushing. They hauled water via tank trucks. A
filter was added. Later they took out a second mortgage to buy a
$15,000 cistern to provide clean drinking water.
Their well is
also producing less water than it used to. Production dropped from 30
gallons a minute to two or three gallons a minute.
Mangan said he
wished he had evidence of the water quality from his 245-foot-deep well
before the 2008 drilling, but he had never seen the need for such
testing.
The Mangans
remain angry at what they perceive to be the lack of help from the state
agency. “The Ohio Department of Natural Resources did nothing for us.
They said the gas company did nothing,” Mark Mangan said.
ODNR says differently
Natural Resources disagrees that the local drilling was responsible for the couple’s problems.
In 2009 letters,
the agency said it had investigated the Mangans’ complaint and found “no
evidence” that nearby drilling for natural gas had caused their well
problems.
In January 2009,
the state agency’s Division of Mineral Resources Management sent the
Mangans a four-page letter that largely dismissed their complaint.
Geologist Ahmed Hawari said a mild drought was responsible for the water
loss from the’ well.
In March 2009, a
top agency official upheld the Hawari’s conclusions. Scott Kell,
then-deputy chief, indicated that the salt contamination probably came
from road salt, not drilling wastes.
In October 2009, the state agency reported that a new source of contamination had been discovered: an abandoned well nearby.
The state had put
a video camera down the Mangans’ water well and discovered evidence of a
natural gas well on a neighbor’s property leaking into the Mangans’
aquifer, state spokesman Tom Tomastik said in a letter.
No action has
been taken to reseal that well, sealed once in 1966, because the
landowner refused to grant permission, officials said.
Meanwhile,
authorities said there may be another source of gas infiltrating the
Mangans’ water supply at a depth of 196 feet, but it has not been
identified.
Family is stressed
The ordeal has taken a toll on both Mark, a millwright and volunteer firefighter, and Sandy, a real-estate agent.
“We’re very
stressed,” said 48-year-old Sandy Mangan. “That’s the biggest thing.
We’re not sure how this has affected our health. We have to live here.
We can’t afford to walk away.”
Her husband
added: “We’ve eaten, lived and slept with this for three years. It
affects everything you do. It just eats away at you.”
The
long-simmering dispute is likely to end up in court again. The Mangans
and Boggses sued in 2010 in Medina County Common Pleas Court, but the
suit was later withdrawn. It may be filed again before a March deadline.
The Mangans said
they have also contacted federal and state agencies to investigate
Natural Resources’ actions. The agencies include the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Ohio
Inspector General’s office.
The EPA got the
federal health agency involved. Spokesmen for the two other agencies
said they cannot comment about possible investigations.
Mark Mangan said he does not feel vindicated by the federal health agency’s findings.
“I’m something of
a pit bull and I’m not giving up or letting go,” he said. “I just want
justice now. Because of everything we’ve been through, I do not believe
that ODNR is capable or even interested in protecting Ohioans. Its only
interest is helping and protecting the drillers. And that’s wrong.”
Bob Downing can
be reached at 330-996-3745 or bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com. Updates on
the drilling industry can be found on the Utica Shale blog at
http://drilling.ohio.com/.
