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Pennsylvania Fracking Law Opens Up Drilling On College Campuses
PolygamousRanchKid writes with this news from MotherJones: "Last year, when Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett suggested offsetting college tuition fees by leasing parts of state-owned college campuses to natural gas drillers, more than a few Pennsylvanians were left blinking and rubbing their eyes. But it was no idle threat: After quietly moving through the state Senate and House, this week the governor signed into law a bill that opens up 14 of the state's public universities to fracking, oil drilling, and coal mining on campus. Environmentalists and educators are concerned that fracking and other resource exploitation on campus could leave students directly exposed to harms like explosions, water contamination, and air pollution."
We're not opening up the college campuses to resource exploitation. We're expanding our engineering program and our geology program. New fields of study to include Mine Safety Engineer, Gas Well Engineer, Resource Geology, Mining and Mineral Engineering, and more! Internships right on campus! Sorry for the coal dust on the windows.
I can imagine how this conversation went.
"So, does anyone have any suggestions how we can fuck over the country's college students some more?"
"I don't know, we're already indebting them for most of their adult lives. How do you top that?"
"Hey, I have an idea, but it's kinda far-fetched..."
If I recall correctly isn't PA the state with the ever burning coal mine fire? I think it was called Centrailia or something. Let's open up college campuses to mining as well. I'm sure putting a mine on the same property as drunk frat boys is a brilliant plan.
Battlestar Galactica has a lot to answer for.
Referring to the "fracturing" of seams beneath the earth sounds much worse than it actually is when it is called "fracking".
The real question we should all be asking is: WHERE THE FRACK ARE YOU GOING TO GET ENERGY TO POWER YOUR NEW DIGITAL ECONOMY FROM?
Does it go on forever?
This isn't the worst thing to happen on Pennsyvalnia college grounds.
State University systems can own thousands of acres of land not actually being used as campus land. A large portion of the University of Texas's income comes from leases operated on UT-owned land. In fact, there is an entire entity solely dedicated to handing this for UT: University Lands. It's unlikely that Pennsylvania is looking to lease Campus Commons areas. More likely they are simply making it possible for unused land owned by the system to bring in funds for the State University System.
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Coal mining is completely different to seam gas extraction.
Coal mining removes the coal.
Seam gas extraction leaves the coal seam in-situ.
Seam gas extraction extracts water that is within the seam, this water contains gas, the gas is separated from the water.
The size of an exploration pad is nothing more than 30x30m, including all the equipment.
The size of a production drill pad for CSG extraction is nothing more than 2 basketball courts.
At least, this is how it works in my part of the world... and seriously, in Central Queensland (Australia) we have boat loads of the stuff.
Does it go on forever?
No, son. "Any land owned by the University system" is not considered part of the "campus".
I won't argue what "campus" means but, the bill never mentions "campus". here' the text of the bill:
Senate Bill 367 (P.N. 2349) – This bill establishes the Indigenous Mineral Resource Development Act, allowing the Department of General Services to make and execute contracts or leases for the mining or removal of coal, oil, natural gas, coal bed methane and limestone found in or beneath land owned by the state or state system of higher education.
In other words, the article from Mother Jones was entirely misleading making people think of gas rigs next to dormitories when, in reality, the bill opened up all state lands pending government approval. Typical Mother Jones scare tactics.
The best part is, once the extraction is done, you have two new basketball courts!
Fracking with modern techniques is what is of concern here, in addition to the fact that it's being done on the east coast, an area more densely populated than where fracking has traditionally been done.
The modern techniques are not a safer, more efficient version of older techniques. Modern techniques involve drilling down and then snaking sideways to get at the gas. This has only been going on in populated areas since 2006, which isn't a whole lot of time to study effects. And since it's being done around a lot more people, we've seen a large amount of complaints about air quality, water quality, and increased levels of sickness. Some of that is bound to be the equivalent of headaches from an unpowered cell tower, but some of that is also bound to be genuine.
There is significantly more than "a shred of hard evidence" that fracking poses dangers to people living near wells. Anyone who tells you otherwise is being deceptive:
[P]roponents of hydraulic fracturing have erroneously reported in the press and other media that the recent University of Texas Study ("Fact-Based Regulation for Environmental Protection in Shale Gas Development") found that hydraulic fracturing caused no environmental contamination,[17][18] when in fact the study found that all steps in the process except the actual injection of the fluid (which proponents artificially separated from the rest of the process and designated "hydraulic fracturing") have resulted in environmental contamination.
That text is from this Wikipedia article all about the environmental impact of fracking in the US. Much of the data from that article comes from the UT study, and is most damning since the industry (and its shills) looked at the one positive bit and said, "See?! That piece there is really what fracking is! That's harmless! Ignore all of the setup and finishing steps...that's not fracking, so fracking is harmless!" If the evidence in that paper for the fluid injection stage is deemed reliable by the industry, so too should be the evidence against the other stages; if it were not so, we'd have heard them specifically attacking that evidence instead of remaining silent about it and relying on misdirection to keep it out of the spotlight.
As for fracking being "our golden chance for energy independence": it is an entirely stupid notion. What better way to not have to rely on fuels from other countries than to...dig up and use all of our reserves?
Your brain is not a computer.
FYI, "fracking" has been verifiably linked to flammable tap water. It's no surprise that this had to be pushed quietly through system, because there's a lot of very good reasons fracking shouldn't be done at all, especially near populated areas.
And just for fun: here's a fun video showing what can happen when you live too close to it.
I think the closest thing I have seen close to this is the "Commitee to Nuke the Whales" - a troll operation set-up in one of late Robert Anton Wilson's novels.
-><- no
I agree - the same is true here in Colorado, where land owned by Colorado State (a land-grant university) has been open to drilling for several years already. The university owns lots of land, often many tens of miles away from the main campus, for such things as experimental farms, aircraft hangars and radar sites. Most of them have been drilled using the "horizontal" approach, so no equipment directly on site. I know this because I work on one of the remote sites, and was around when they drilled some 500 feet away from my building. The oil company folks came over and explained that we may hear odd sounds when they did the frakking (I didn't). The university has made quite a bit of money off the wells, which translated to no student fee increases for a couple of years (this year was an exception, though).
If you read the acutal law, SB 367, it does not authorize natural gas drilling on college campuses. In fact it specifically exempts them, as well as all state nature preserves:
It does, however, permit the state to make a right of way through a state college to reach natural gas wells located some place else, but I guess "Pennsylvania Fracking Law Opens Up Roads on College Campuses" doesn't sound nearly as sentational.
Or Beverly Hills 90210,
the BH high school has 19 wells on it, earning the school $300K a year since the 70s.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Environmentalists and educators are concerned that fracking and other resource exploitation on campus could leave students directly exposed to harms like explosions, water contamination, and air pollution.
Not to mention it permanently degrades public land and the mining companies will never undo the damage they did because it's not cost-effective (for them).
Fracking compositions known as slickwater have been around for a lot longer than 1998 - I know Halliburton had a key patent on that expire in 1968. Generally the term 'slickwater' refers to adding some type of polymer - either natural or synthetic that suppresses formation of vortexes in the fluid flow making it easier to pump. This makes the fluid 'slick'.
WP also got the 1947 date wrong. Fracking has been used a lot longer than that. Some forms involving pumping nitrogylcerine into wells were used as early as 1860. Liquid fracturing fluids were definitely used in the 1930s.
Finally the idea that shale gas uses especially high pressures never used before is equally specious. Hydraulic fracturing pressures are determined by one thing - what is needed to open the resource bearing formation.
Wikipedia is just not factually correct in several regards on this topic.
Sure they can! Why that's why we have higher student defaults than ever before in history, because of all those non existent jobs they can use to pay off the crushing debt they find themselves in!
Wake up chuck, the jobs aren't there to be had and the bill collectors will hound you to the grave, i should know as they carried out a nice kid downstairs who slit his wrists after being unable to get out of the mountain of debt and not being able to find anything but a McJob. I find it funny how the corps can just file bankruptcy and start again tomorrow under a new name but they will never allow anyone to escape the student loans, no matter how obvious that they'll never be able to pay them off with the ever dwindling number of jobs we have.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Ask Berry College(located in Rome, GA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berry_College ) how their college campus ended up when Florida Rock dug a huge hole on campus property. Though the site was out of site to people on campus, one of the lakes on campus(Victory Lake) almost completely dried up(sink hole) and buildings, some very old(Ford Buildings, paid for by Henry Ford and given continued assistance by the Ford Corporation), started having problems from sink holes, the watertable started to be displaced, and it hurt the college far more than the help Berry College got from Florida Rock.
The rock quarry is now a large lake, which is also extremely deep. Would you fall in(which you should survive the fall), and cannot get out, you will drown and never have your body retrieved. Sadly, this place is well known to be an excellent place(one of a few in the area) to dump a body, or other items you do not want found, or ever retrieved by anyone(including the person that dump the body or item). Yes, Martha Berry would be proud.
https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2011SE/finalprogram/abstract_183994.htm
There are other buildings that have had problems from the bad decision of Berry Colege's administration. These colleges may end up in a similar situation.