December 21, 2016
Testimony of Billofrights to the Allegany County Planning Staff on the proposed Zoning Regulations and the relationship between fracking for natural gas and previously stated values* in county planning documents, especially the Allegany County 2014 Comprehensive Plan and the Water Resources Element from October 2010.
Good evening. My name is BillofRights and I am a resident of Frostburg, Allegany County. In another life, I had a decade’s (and more) worth of experience as the Director of Conservation for NJ Audubon Society. I spent a good deal of my time working on the relationship between economic development and its impacts upon the conservation of natural resources and ecosystems, especially water resources in the NJ Highlands. I lived for ten years on a 67 acres farm in a rural Republican area very similar in terrain and habitats to Allegany County, but quite a bit lower and warmer. Hunterdon, Warren and Sussex counties there hated the NJ state plan, despite the fact that the plan was voluntary. These counties did not want to use the zoning power of government to protect natural resources: they relied up state purchases of sensitive areas and then complained the state didn’t compensate them enough. Sound familiar?
I will try to make my points in the broadest possible fashion, and include the Allegany County 2014 Comprehensive Plan and Water Resources Element in making them.
The heart of the matter before us tonight is the invitation to frack in all zoning districts, with only the surface well pads and related infrastructure banned from the residential zones R-1 and R-2. So, just like Gov. Hogan’s proposed state regulations, all the lands of Allegany County, including any small portions of the four specifically nominated watersheds are subject to fracking beneath their surface features…and to various forms of surface conveyances – by that I mean the numerous feeder and main trunk pipelines that go with the industrial operations that make up fracking.
The working assumption here seems to be that if it’s underground, its’ no threat to the county’s water supply systems, either for Frostburg or Cumberland, or the many private wells widely spread out in rural areas that citizens depend upon. From one study I’ve seen about newly uncovered and uncatalogued water complaints in PA – and Cumberland needs to pay attention to this as does Frostburg…47% of the well pads drilled in PA had water pollution complaints filed against them…mostly from private drinking wells. (www.ecowatch.com/... )
That’s bad enough…but the other great threat to both surface hydrologic watersheds, like the one that drains to Frostburg’s Piney Run Reservoir, and to the aquifers which supply that city’s wells and springs on Big Savage Mountain, is that the toxic chemicals which go with the water injections for fracking will remain in the ground…the bulk of them, from 70-90% will stay there “forever,” thus violating the “precautionary” principal, because these toxic fluids may find a new or previously unknown pathway to both surface water supplies and aquifers. After all, near the heart of the technological breakthrough claimed for fracking is the explosive construction of new fault lines in the relevant…and to an unknown extent, adjacent rock formations…vertical as well as horizontal. Since we have learned from talks at the Appalachian labs that not all the faults of Western Maryland have been mapped…it seems to me the county (and the state) are underestimating the risks: current and future.
And the cement and steel casing which pro-frackers pledge will protect us must also therefore, be good “forever,” something which I do not believe is possible. Looking around me in both Frostburg and Cumberland, I see concrete retaining walls a foot thick or more crumbling after just 25-50 years exposure to our harsh winter climate.
Forgive me, but I’ve just recently downloaded, with a long delay in doing it, the Allegany County Water Resources Element from 2010. Despite the fact that there was a very serious fracking frenzy going on – at least 20,000 acres leased in Allegany County by just one company – Samson Resources – according to their own project leader – well under way by this date - there is no mention of “fracking” or its possible impacts in this document – no matter how many ways I did a search: horizontal drilling, unconventional gas drilling, natural gas…and so on. Why is that? Is it because the county and its consultants believe there are no or insignificant risks to our water resources? Yes, is my answer, that’s the secular religion of our Annapolis delegation, and of the incoming President as well. Let her rip. The hell with the precautionary principle. I strongly disagree.
I was happy to learn that the impervious surface cover from houses, driveways roads and commercial structures in Allegany County was well under the 10 % of coverage that begins triggering impairment of surface waters. Yet I wonder if that figure is too high, that 10% figure for soils of our type – easily erodible and because the county allows building on slopes up to 25% - which is far too lenient; the state fracking regs cut off surface pad preparation at 15% slopes. Of course, since there is no discussion of fracking impacts, there is no inclusion of the impervious surface coverage increases contributed by the infrastructure of fracking, including pipelines. The Delaware River Keeper did such a study of those cumulative impacts for fracking possibilities in their watershed, projections from known data in PA, (here at www.cna.org/... )
So we know that it is possible, and just to be clear, the 6 acres or so for the well pads of which there might be hundreds if not thousands, should be considered “impervious surfaces” because of their degree of soil compaction.
Which brings me to another missing planning document element: there is no build out scenario for what the impervious surface cover % would be if all the construction allowed by the zoning were to happen. I note that residential housing can be built even in Agricultural Areas at densities of between 2.90-7 units- per- acre. So here’s a question: the state queried Allegany County on a projected nutrient loading modeI, which proceeds along the same logic I’m suggesting here. I’m curious about the same for impervious surface cover for build-out of commercial and residential structures…and accompanying driveways, parking lots and detention basins. It would be useful to know how many acres comprise each zone…how much is buildable according to the “density” formulas and where that would leave the percentages at “build-out,” with implications for water quality?
And finally, because residential construction is so widely allowed even in Agriculture zones, given these zoning densities, what protections are there, enforceable ones, to protect what I’ve heard is the most cherished value of Western Mountain citizens: their scenic landscapes? The protections, I’ve so far concluded, lie not in Allegany County zoning, or the non-existent regional siting commissions for wind turbines, but in the fact that we are distant, and therefore not part of a high growth real estate market, our vacancy rate being over 10%, twice the recommended rate. That and the difficult terrain.
Apparently even a commercial enterprise such as our “Town Planner” calendar relies more on rural scenic values than commercial ones, as I interpret the collection of monthly images in the 2017 calendar. I count seven rural or ecological scenes, including the cover of a fawn drinking in a lake, several Frostburg “Main Street” Scenes, but surprisingly, no images of fracking pads, although they would be easy to get from our two neighboring states. Not so “scenic” I would guess. Even the Allegany Chamber of Commerce, which opposed the 2015 moratorium bill on fracking, didn’t want to “go there.” I wonder why?
I saw that the county claimed to the state that we have a very high percentage of structures and residents included in public water and sewer systems, and I accept those numbers. However, for new construction, more than 80% is occurring outside poor old Governor Parris Glendening’s Priority Funding Areas, or PFA’s…so what was their point if that’s what’s happening?
At some other time, and some other place, I’d love to talk about the lack of money to deal with the county’s 5,000 derelict structures, the high drug addiction rate and high unemployment rate…and how the economic values in these planning documents run at odds, as does fracking, with the stated environmental aspirations. Yes, at some other time and place in forums that never happen, where alternative economic/alternative plans or concepts never come up, that don’t exist for the “regional mindset.” Instead we want to invite “market voices” in entirely on their own terms: how has that worked out with Samson Resources? (See my Samson “parable” in the PS for more details).
I’ve said in other public forums, that no class, nation, or economic philosophy has the right to destroy the natural world to achieve its material goals. That applies here as well, and also to energy “regimes,” whether in the past coal company towns or what has transpired in captive states since 2009, like West Virginia and Pennsylvania, under the new fracking “regimes.” It can happen here. We can do better in Maryland, build a new model. But we have a long way to travel yet. Thanks.
Billofrights
Frostburg
Postscript:
The contradictions between fracking and the values stated in the Allegany County 2014 Comprehensive Plan are numerous. Here are just a few. I acknowledge that some of these values are aspirational and not binding in a legal or regulatory effect. But they still can be revealing, glaring even…they surfaced in the long legal case called Terrapin Run (see the Nov. 2007 coverage in the Baltimore Sun here: articles.baltimoresun.com/... ) where Robert S. Paye, who testified in favor of fracking and the proposed Zoning Regulations (in part; opposed them on procedural grounds as well) in this hearing (Dec. 21, 2016) argued in 2007 that “the seven ‘visions’ for growth required under the 1992 state planning law were general and not prescriptive.”
Some of the contradictions I picked up between fracking and environmental and aesthetic values in the 2014 Comprehensive Plan:
At 1-3: Smart Growth: “Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty and critical environmental areas.” Fracking jeopardizes them all.
1-4: “Quality of Life and Sustainability: a high quality of life is achieved through universal stewardship of the land, water and air resulting in sustainable community and protection of the environment.” Now I cringe at the way this is phrased, but even so, does anyone besides our Annapolis delegation think this is what happened in West Virginia or Pennsylvania? Or that fracking enhances any of these three resources?
Same section, under goal 8, Economic Development. (Support) “Economic Development and natural resource based businesses that promote opportunity for all economic levels within the capacity of the state’s natural resources, public services and public facilities are encouraged.” Anyone who has followed the history of explosions, fires and spills in PA and WVA knows, and our region must admit, that we don’t have the public resources, first responders, to deal with the unique challenges posed by fracking: for my research on fracking incidents, go here: www.dailykos.com/... ( In some cases in PA, the special corporations from Texas that deal with wildcat gas and oil fires had to be summoned to PA to put the fires out.)
At 8-1: under Sensitive Areas: “Viewsheds and Ridge Tops”…from what I learned from a field trip in May of 2015 in West Virginia, the infrastructure fracking needs directly impairs Viewsheds and Ridge Tops – and our region currently does not have the siting tools or legal mechanisms to protect these areas from existing impairments, much less the ones coming with fracking. Also at 8-21. It is also amazing that fracking would be allowed to threaten Tier II Watersheds and Streams. Please see my comments on the proposed state regulation of the MDE for their inadequate stream and wetland buffers, and laughable standards for detention ponds on the pads, aimed at the 25 year, 24 hour flood when reality is delivering, right next store, 500-1,000 year 24 hour “events” - that have happened in WVA and parts of MD in 2016: Here at www.dailykos.com/...
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The Samson Resources “Parable” is a written version of what I delivered verbally to the Planning Board. What happened is reflective of the tensions between the economic values in the Allegany planning documents and the realities of our economic system. Facts on the ground. Samson was a major US energy exploration company, and even an international one, and I don’t think most Allegany citizens know that at some point between 2007-2012 the company had leased 50,000 acres for fracking in Garrett County, and 20,000 acres in Allegany. As noted above, Allegany has not seen fit to make public the location of those leases, despite the implications for water resources, and despite their own Plan calling for it. Frack Free Frostburg has produced maps showing how threatening the Garrett leases were for Frostburg’s water supply, available here at:
So what happened in economic reality? Calamity for Samson Resources: Chapter 11, unfolding in the fall of 2015 in proceedings in Delaware. And what happened to those leases in Western Maryland? I don’t know; someone does, but it’s not the public. We should know.
Samson was done in financially because their business model could not survive the two cycles of wild gas and oil roller-coaster price swings since 2007. The “free market” in gas and oil that was supposed to bring a boom to Western Maryland destroyed the company which sank the most money into our region – at least for leases. Has anyone in economic or political power been made more cautious by this experience, having second thoughts about fracking in our region? Certainly not our delegation. Nor Governor Hogan, it would seem. Donald Trump? Hardly.
A Word about Alternative Economic Models: I see our Governor and the President Elect ready to replay the classic Republican model: de-regulate and give every tax break under the sun to business, with a heavy dose of military Keynesianism. With perhaps the public rhetoric on trade excepted, it is classic Neoliberalism, the reigning philosophy of the past 30 years, that Bill and Hillary readily also subscribe too. Meanwhile, many parts of rural America are suffering through drug epidemics, in a vicious cycle of despair and lack of jobs. The public analysis I see blames weak people and prescription happy doctors and Big Pharma. Incredibly shallow diagnosis and blame shifting. Ironically, the problems of white rural American, including Western Maryland, are now merging with the black ghettos of Baltimore and the older rust belt cities in the Northeast and Midwest. Why would 30 more years of Reaganism/Neoliberalism help when it didn’t previously? Some clear eyed business leaders like Martin Wolfe at the Financial Times see this cycle of despair and right-wing populist reaction throughout the West. The answer is in a more robust form of social democracy, essentially FDR’s Second Bill of Rights, especially the first two rights: to a job and the second, to universal health care.
Allegany County’s own Master Plan states, at 7-1 that “Attention should be drawn to the fact that only 40-50% of coal mining sites are restored into forest land-use” This section also notes that we have 400 mine openings in the Georges Creek Valley (not all in Allegany to be sure) yet to be closed, and some 40 “Gob” piles (“Garbage of bituminous) to be cleared and the land underneath them restored. Not to raise sensitive issues, but I also hear that global warming needs to be combatted, and then there are the 5,000 derelict properties being “carried along” without remedies in Allegany County alone. Sounds to me like the scientists at FSU and the Appalachian labs could do a lot of good, more than Samson Resources has done, by drawing up a careful “work order” for a future CCC/WPA funded at the national level from the stockpiles of unused cash and capital of the 1% (and hidden in tax shelters, including Joe Biden’s Delaware – Joe!); nationally funded but local projects. By the way, none of the former drug addicted citizens nor the millions released eventually from our new Jim Crow Prison system are going to find work in the utopian employee criteria/desires of corporate America. Let’s get real: a modern, updated CCC/WPA is as needed in our region as it was in the 1930’s. What’s needed too is good design for the projects, supervision and training…lots of jobs to go around, working class and middle class jobs.
Please be reassured that I am fully aware of the gap, the Grand Canyon that separates what I just wrote from the political economy congealed in the minds of our Annapolis delegation. Any time, any place that they would like to debate these ideas, just give me a call. That’s the last thing they want. Probably true for the old Democratic Party of Bill and Hillary.
Thank you for your generous time and courtesies.