Sierra Club PA Chapter Testifies at EPA Methane Hearing in Pittsburgh

The following is testimony provided to the EPA by Sierra Club PA Chapter Director, Joanne Kilgour, on September 29, 2015 in Pittsburgh, PA: 

Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to speak here to day on this important topic - controlling methane emissions from oil and gas sources. My name is Joanne Kilgour and I serve as the Director of the Sierra Club PA Chapter, representing 25,000 members and 80,000 supporters across the Commonwealth of PA. Our members have - for decades - been leading climate advocates and clean air champions in their communities, and I know that each of them would be here testifying today if they could. 

By holding this hearing in Pittsburgh, you are recognizing the significant impact air pollution from methane emissions has on this region - and regions across Pennsylvania - largely as a result of the dirty oil and gas industry. While we support and appreciate EPA taking this necessary first step to control methane emissions from oil and gas sources, we also recognize the need for action that will address pollution from existing sources.

I live in Lancaster, PA - one of the areas with the worst air quality in the nation. In fact, more than half of the counties in Pennsylvania are at risk because of air quality concerns, which are exacerbated by harmful methane emissions from the oil and gas sector. Just like me, more than four million residents of Pennsylvania live in areas that exceed national ozone standards, meaning that our health and our communities cannot afford to bear pollution from the thousands of existing sources in our state - let alone from new and modified sources. Our children, our elderly, and individuals as greater risk from respiratory complications cannot take another ozone action day.

Since this is the first-ever proposal to control methane pollution from the oil and gas industry we thank you, we support this initial step, and we call for these proposals to be adopted quickly so we can get to work on tackling the threat from methane emissions from oil and gas sources now in existence - sources that by 2018 are projected to account for nearly 90% of all methane emissions in this sector. 

In addition to threatening our climate, the public health threat posed by these emissions is staggering. For this reason, we call on EPA to revise its cost-benefit analysis and include in this revision metrics that monetize the public health benefit the methane standard will generate by reducing VOCs - and this smog and soot - as well as hazardous air pollutants. Without this adjustment, the benefits of implementing the rule will remain understated and the cost-benefit analysis will remain an inadequate assessment. Public health benefits are not simply qualitative or experiential, but have quantifiable financial benefits that must be documented.

I applaud the EPA and the Obama Administration for beginning to address this problem of new and modified sources of methane, and I now look to our state Department of Environmental Protection and the Wolf Administration to follow this lead and address fugitive emissions from existing sources, moving as fast and far as necessary to put the health and prosperity of Pennsylvania families first.

Beaver County Under Siege

By Roni Kampmeyer

A distressing stage is being set in Southern Beaver County as it becomes a major target for oil and gas development.  This area is already enduring the health and environmental impacts from several corporate polluters.  The American Lung Association ranks Beaver County as 19th in the nation for air pollution.  The region’s mortality rate is 27 percent higher than the nation’s average.

The first of the polluters is the world’s first nuclear power plant originally built in 1959 and rebuilt in 1972.  This aging nuclear power plant has had multiple recent incidents which make one wonder if its age is showing or if there is some sort of operator negligence or neglect.  Industry regulators who once said that the life span of a nuclear power plant was forty (40) years are now claiming the life can be up to 100 years.  Beaver Valley Unit 1 Nuclear Power Plant’s license has been extended to 2036.

Right next door to the nuclear plant is the fifth largest coal combustion plant in the country, Bruce Mansfield, which also ranks as the nation’s eighth highest producer of greenhouse gases.   Every producer of energy has to have a disposal site and Bruce Mansfield has the nation’s largest high hazard earthen dam and coal ash impoundment just seven (7) miles west of the plant.  It is currently operating under a Federal Consent Decree to correct the leaking impoundment and the contamination caused by it.  Both Unit 1 and Bruce Mansfield are owned by First Energy, LLC.

AES Power Plant, Wheaton Power Plant, Armstrong World Industries and Horsehead Zinc Plant round off the major contributors to Beaver County’s pollution and mortality rankings.  It is, however, the shear sight of thumper truck caravans and helicopters transporting seismic testing equipment by land and over head on a daily basis that brings visions of an invasion to an area with a dozen or more gas wells with many more on the way.  With the pipeline already in place and property acquisition and demolition in process another captain of industry, Shell, has its sights set on building a Cracker Plant on the existing Horsehead site.

A study, released by the Center for Healthy Environments and Communities at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, found that residents living in southwestern Pennsylvania, have a “significantly higher than acceptable risk” of getting cancer from air toxins.  Specific cancer risk rates for Beaver County were not immediately available.  The report did say Shell’s proposed $2.5 billion petrochemical plant could raise cancer risk in the area because it will emit large quantities of formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, both considered “probable human carcinogens” by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

In spite of the report’s findings, State Representative Christiana and State Senator Vogel are deeply entrenched in these dealings.  Senator Vogel’s farm is home to a gas well.  The Beaver County Commissioners are swelled with hopes of economic stimulus from all this activity.  While it cannot be argued that economic stimulus is welcome and necessary in Beaver County which has been in an economic state of depression since the eighties when the steel mills ceased operations; one cannot help but feel that no one is "watching the hen house" and making sure this development is safe for the health of the community and the environment.