Gas Drilling In Pennsylvania   

This is the full text of an Editorial published in the Wilkes Barre, Times Leader on Sunday , June 6th, 2010. It is about the juggernaut of Marcellus Shale Gas drilling that is  steamrolling across the farms and wildlands of Pennsylvania.   

   Like many in our region, I am struggling with the issue of drilling for gas in the Marcellus Shale formation. It’s hard to ignore the potential benefits. Gas drilling in Pennsylvania has the potential to tap a new source of clean-burning fuel applicable to many uses, from home heating, to motive transport, to the production of electricity.  In North Texas, where companies have been drilling gas wells in the Barnett Shale formation since the 1990s, gas production has added a significant number of new, good paying jobs to a struggling region. For land owners, gas leases offer the prospect of significant income in these challenging financial times. Unlike the wind energy boondoggle of several years ago, the gas industry comes with the prospect of very real and tangible benefits.   

  Given my previous modest involvement in environmental advocacy, I have been asked by a number of people to weigh in on the issue. Up to now I have been reluctant, as I was not knowledgeable enough to have an answer. I’m still not sure that I am. What I have learned however is sufficient to cause me great concern.   

    In my travels, I have spent a lot of time in the western part of the state, where small gas and oil wells have been a regular feature of the landscape for many years. They generally sit on a small footprint, and appear to have little impact on their pastoral surroundings. I once encountered a venerable, but functioning gas/ oil well in the middle of a lush forest that had grown up around the installation. Many of these are so-called “stripper wells” were drilled by landowners themselves, down to depths of 1500-2000 ft. They produce modest amounts of natural gas, and have had some problems such as “gas migration”, particularly the so-called “orphaned” wells, abandoned by their owners before being properly “plugged”.   

   So, at first blush, gas drilling wasn’t particularly frightening to me.   

   But… this isn’t your grandfather’s gas drilling.   

  “Fracing” is the process by which gas is extracted from the shale that lies roughly 5000-9000 ft below ground in this region. Suffice it to say that it involves injection under great pressure of very large volumes of water, sand, and what was, until recently, a secret mix of chemicals, now known to contain some really nasty toxins and carcinogens. This is done do fracture the rock and allow gas to be extracted. It said to be safe, because the process occurs a mile or more below the surface, far below the natural aquifers. As I understand it, a good proportion of the fluid is then recovered, and has to be dealt with at the surface. A pad site can house 6 to 8 wells, each of which will need to be fraced.     

Given the usual strict federal regulations that apply to industry, I wondered how such a risky process could be legal. It turns out that since 2005, gas drillers have been exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act, and thus the nation’s most potent and pertinent regulatory laws. Arguably, this is the only way that they could get away with injecting these toxic chemicals into the earth.   

   Each episode of fracing requires significant heavy truck traffic to transport the literally millions of gallons of water, plus the sand, and chemicals required. And what is the source of the water? Apparently in western Pennsylvania where drilling is well underway, it has been streams and rivers.  A Pittsburg television news team recently reported that in August of 2008, well drillers actually “pumped dry” Sugarcamp Run, a stream in Washington County.   

  Another huge problem is what to do with the toxic brine extracted from the well after fracing is completed. Our current DEP Secretary, John Hanger was recently quoted on the topic: “I am concerned about the capacity to treat the water…There is a problem looming.”   

  There are very few treatment plants in the state that are equipped to properly detoxify the mixture pumped out of the well head.  Some drillers have attempted to present the waste water to municipal treatment plants. Many have prudently refused the gift. In some parts of the state the water, which may not be completely detoxified by the municipal equipment, is still being discharged into the Monongahela River which serves as drinking water source.   

By the way,  brine samples from 11/13 Marcellus wells in New York tested by their DEC recently, were found to be radioactive, some at levels as much as 250 time the level allowed by law   

    If this large volume of contaminated, possibly even radioactive liquid is not treated, then it must be stored on the site. Where there are liquids, there will be spills…and there’s going to be a lot of liquids in holding ponds, in tanks, and in trucks driving on our roads.   

Also, has anyone considered how  the municipalities involved are going to pay for the rather drastically increased wear and tear on what have been up to now often lightly travelled rural roads and bridges?   

    I think of the Foster Wheeler incident near my home in Mountaintop. There, a relatively small amount of trichloroethylene, a chemical degreaser, escaped into the soil and fouled a great many water wells downstream. The solution was to run public water into the affected homes. What would happen to the value of your home if there were no public water nearby, and fracing water contaminates the local aquifer? Or worse, if drilling contaminates the public water supply, a scary thought with drilling set to occur near to the Ceasetown and Huntsville reservoirs.   

    I have a number of friends who own acreage suitable for drilling; others have been offered money for a well to be run beneath them from a drilling “pad” on adjacent land. I have heard them describe the money that they have been offered for leases on these properties, often where they reside. I own no such land, and I think I’m glad I don’t.  The temptation to sign on must be overwhelming.   

   I am concerned that these friends do not understand the intrusion on their lives, as well as those of their neighbors, that drilling on their property would involve. I also fear that the effects of such a violent and toxic geologic manipulation might cause problems far beyond the borders of their parcels. I hope that they’re testing their water supplies and perhaps the soils near to where drilling may occur, to establish a baseline. Someday that information may be essential.   

  I honestly believe we should slow down the rush towards widespread drilling.  Let’s drill some wells in carefully selected sites.  See what happens. If everything comes out OK, drill a few more. After all, it’s not like the gas is going away any time soon. What’s the big rush?  The potential downside is huge.     

  Perhaps we should wait for the results of recently announced EPA study, commissioned to investigate the surge in reports of drinking water contamination in sites near to where fracing has been used.   

   I fervently hope that we can find a safe, cost-effective way to exploit this wonderful resource with out permanently ruining our aquifers, wild places, and watersheds.   

I’m just not convinced that we have, as of yet.   

                                                                                   Henry F. Smith Jr. MD   

    

 

 

My daughter, Brigid Louise, was graduated  Cum Laude from Wyoming Seminary in Kingston, Pennsylvania this weekend. 

This was the 166th commencement ceremony and was beautifully organized. It was chock full of traditions, some of which were lost on this parochial school graduate. They were not lost on the graduates and their parents, many of whom were multi-generational alumni.

Congratulations Brigid. 

And thanks to the teachers and Staff at “Sem”,  for her wonderful  education. 

 

The Mountain Laurels are starting to bloom in Pennsylvania.

    This is our state flower, and its emergence marks the point where our climate finally evolves from the fickle whims of April and May, to the soft summer weather of June. It is a moment of unconscious celebration for people who begin to open their pools, grill in the evening after work, and sit on the porches at night, listening to the distant call of whippoorwill.

   Here in the northeastern part of the state, we are beginning to see the delicate clusters of white blooms open up on the lower altitude woodland slopes in our region. By mid to late June they will bloom in abundance throughout the northern third of the commonwealth.

   I have for the last fifteen years, taken a week of vacation at this time, to wander the mountains, either by backpacking, or more recently, because of the burgeoning weight of my photo equipment, and a bad knee, car camping and day hiking. The laurels, and their cousins, wild rhododendrons, provide the forests their last splash of widespread color before they settle in to the monotonous green of summer. Arguably, it is the last time until fall, for a photographer to use wider lenses in the forest. After the laurels are extinguished,  longer focal  lengths become more useful to capture the later blooming wildflowers which are scattered throughout the woodland greenery.

I have several striking memories of this time of year involving Mountain Laurels:

   I first hiked the West Rim Trail of north central Pennsylvania in mid June, perhaps eighteen years ago. I was mainly a mountain biker at the time and hadn’t backpacked in years. I didn’t realize at the time, the different conditioning needed to carry a pack over distance. The rugged trail, plus the weight on my back played hell with my feet.  The weather had been wet, and I remember being extremely eager for the trip to end. I was getting close on the third day. The last portion of the trail diverts west into the Tioga State Forest, apparently to avoid Coulton Point State Park which hugs the rim of the” Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania”  in that location. Within the last four miles of its northern terminus, the trail leaves the woods to once again skirt the edge of the gorge.

   The Pine River gorge at this point is roughly 800 feet above the river, and the edges are swathed in laurel, which was in full bloom as I emerged from the forest on the path as it swerved to edge of the ridge. My jaw dropped at the beauty. White blossoms were everywhere, densely surrounding the trail. To my right was the spectacular vista off the ridge. I photographed it at the time but the small pocket camera and I were inadequate to the task, and the results were unpublishable. The memory of this, however, was worth every blister.

   A year later, I was on the Loyalsock Trail in the Wyoming State forest. This is a very vertical trail, laid out I am told by an Explorer troop, which must have had very sadistic leadership.

   I was in better shape that year and enjoying as I recall some wonderful June weather with blue skies, seventy degree days, and fifty degree nights. Hiking with several friends, we lugged our heavy backpacks up another of the seemingly limitless up hill climbs that mark the trail’s early miles.

    I remember cresting a hill, and looking down on a relatively old growth stand of trees on the vast wooded slope below. The canopy was quite high, perhaps 150 feet. There was a feeling of being in a vast verdant space. The forest floor was lush with white laurels, all in full bloom, a carpet that extended for as far as your eyes could discern. All of this was dappled with shafts of sunlight, occurring at random spots where the leaf cover was spare. No one could help but to stop, and stare. Though it was only 11 AM, we found a log on which to sit, and ate our lunch early.

June is a wonderful time of year in the eastern mountains.

 Perhaps God makes the Mountain Laurels bloom, just to remind us.

     

  In the eastern United States, where there are mountains, there will be streams.   

    It’s inevitable. Elevated terrain enhances precipitation, which is absorbed by the soils, gathers together, and then works to find the easiest route off the mountain. In the moist, temperate climate of Pennsylvania Appalachians, this means that thousands of cold, swift brooks cleave the earth in their gathering rush to the valleys below. Many start as tiny flows, emerging from the rocks at a point somewhat below the crest of the ridge. Depending on the vertical rise of the land and the watershed they capture, they gather speed and volume as they cascade off the mountainside.   

    Mountain streams serve as the punctuation for the many long wilderness trails scattered throughout the commonwealth’s wild areas.  In planning a trek through the wilderness, attention must be given to the availability of water at points along the planned route. Knowing the location of streams is essential to avoid carrying large amounts of the heavy liquid.   

    Many of the small mountainside brooks are seasonal, with no surface water present during drier years. Coming upon a parched stream bed when you were counting on replenishing your water stores is a distinctly unpleasant experience.   

     Where the mountains are steeper, the topography becomes more interesting. In the deepest draws of the northern mountains, the sun rarely penetrates to the forest floor. Legions of ancient hemlocks line the steep side walls of these eastern canyons, cut by eons of the action of water against rock. Glens form, where the land forms force the water to fall abruptly in altitude, increasing its hydraulic power. Ricketts Glen is just one example of this; there are many other spectacular falls and glens which are often quite remote and visited only by intrepid souls.   

    Hiking in the Tidaughten State Forest, deep in a within a mountain glen, I once found a mature American chestnut tree, blooming on a  spring morning. So remote was its location,  it was untouched by the blight, which kills its more accessible relatives while they are mere spindly adolescents.   

   Because of the severity of the terrain in ravines and draws, loggers in the past may not have had sufficient access for harvesting. These draw and ravines, deep in our state forests are wonderful places to experience true “Old Growth” forest. Here you can find four-to-five-hundred year old relics from our pre-colonial past, in this case White Pines and Hemlocks that tower two hundred feet and more over the forest floor.   

   The climate in these sheltered places is much more constant and gradual than on the nearby ridge tops. Shielded from the sun, snow lingers much deeper into spring.  It is cool here, even on hot summer days, especially where the streams run strongly into the warmer months.   

   On one of the more established hiking trails, such as the Loyalsock or the West Rim Trail, more often than not, a  stream crossing will have acquired a fire ring and informal tenting sites. These are generally fine places to overnight. On a clear winter nights, they can be warmer, the dense cover of conifers preventing radiational cooling.   

    Summer rain is shed initially by the hemlock canopy, making such places are a clever hiker’s refuge in wet weather. The rain comes down eventually however as the accumulated water drips slowly, over days, from the fine interlaced needles.   

  On a hot summer day, glens and ravines are cooled by the shade and the cold creek water. After the sun sets, cool air descends through the ravines from the mountaintops, clearing the air of biting insects, and providing a lovely sleeping experience.   

   Sadly, there is a real threat to these wonderful ecotones. An insect called the hemlock woolly adelgid is spreading throughout the state, threatening to wipe out the hemlocks that shelter these lovely places. There are efforts to control the parasites, but they have only partially successful. If they do not succeed, there will be a fundamental alteration of woodland and stream ecology in the eastern forest.   

 Visit these lovely places while you still can.

 When I am out on the road to do photography, I generally travel alone, my camera gear on the passenger seat beside me. I will often drive somewhat aimlessly, looking for roads and lanes I have never before traveled.

  Because of this, I tend to keep a GPS available in case I get lost. The coordinates for home base, wherever I am, are programmed in so that I can plot a reasonable course at the end of the drive.

    I love to come upon a scene that compels me to at least stop, and consider whether it should be added to the files on my memory card. Obviously, in the digital world, there is little to be lost by shooting a few frames. But one hopes to have developed enough judgment to decide just what will work, and what won’t, and avoid photographing the latter.

   I spend a lot of time on backroads. On a Sunday morning in early April in Pennsylvania, I took a drive in the hope of capturing some early spring images.

   I encountered this little house, on a winding lane east of Berwick, on a country lane that first climbed out of the river valley through a lovely, remote, hemlock ravine, and then opened up on a plateau over the Susquehanna River. I pulled over, and turned off the ignition, to avoid letting the engine’s vibrations blur the shot.

   I rolled down the driver’s side window, braced the camera on the door top, and shot several frames.

    I have no wish to intrude on people’s privacy, but I was drawn to this house, and especially its outgoing motif. I wish I had encountered the owner, but from their display, I feel I understand the personality of the occupants.

   Obviously they are religious. From their devotion to the Blessed Mother, they are likely Roman Catholic. Probably they’re a little serious and devout. Maybe they were at Mass when I shot this image.

   On the other hand, it had been cold, with snow on the ground until several weeks before this was shot. The fresh tablecloth, the flowers in the vase, and the grill at the ready suggest a desire to embrace the joy of early spring sun.

    We have a tendency to admire stylish, stately, homes, professionally decorated to a fair-thee-well, and thus devoid of character.

   I like this little cottage, and I think I would like the owner.

The quality of images on this blog has been one of the few frustrations of working on WordPress .com.   

   

   I intended that imaging would comprise a lot of the site’s content. Unfortunately, the aggressive file compression used by WordPress  has resulted in blurred details on photos uploaded to the site.    

   However, their wonderful “Help” resources have given me a partial solution, namely linking to the photos URL on my repository gallery. Posted this way, images look better, though still not as good as on my Photo site. Glensummitimages.com.    

  Still, it’s a start.   

   

I have begun to update some of the posted images, but going forward the new method will be used exclusively.

   

    I think of myself as a Nikon/Fuji “shooter” yet I have always kept other equipment in my camera closet for use in situations where an expensive DSLR-lens combination would be at risk of loss due to dunking or dropping, or would be too heavy and or bulky to be practical.  

     For years I shot Olympus bodies in this role. These bodies were part of what was then a new system based on the Olympus/Panasonic “four thirds” standard: a sensor and lens mount designed to allow digital bodies to be smaller, yet to make better images. My Olympus bodies had nice image quality, were image stabilized, and there was stunning high quality optics available for the system. Even their “kit” lenses were sharp and very usable, but cheaply replaceable if damaged. The the body and lens were still fairly bulky, more so than was often convenient.  

     In January ’08 I acquired my first Panasonic G-1 a digital body of the new “micro four thirds” standard, an offshoot of the earlier specification. The same lens mount as was on the full “four thirds” cameras was utilized, but the lenses were much smaller and designed to focus on a sensor that was much closer to their posterior element. The sensor had a robust “live view” capability and the mirror and optical viewfinder was replaced with a very high quality LCD “finder” detailed enough to allow even manual focusing.  

  

     Because of this the overall package, with the kit lens was 20-30% less bulky than even the Olympus SLRs. The sensor at 12 million pixels produced highly detailed images. Though the sensor’s dynamic range was limited (see my Fuji article below) the electronic viewfinder allows exposure data to display as you compose the image (as opposed to after) that helps to optimize the exposure, and mitigate somewhat this limitation. The other attraction of this system is that it is very adaptable to lenses from other manufacturer. My Olympus lenses work beautifully with an adapter; so does some wonderful old Leica glass.  

    These cameras are seductive. I can carry the body with two stabilized lenses covering 35mm equivalent focal lengths of 28-400mm in a modest sized fanny pack. Without the camera motion that is induced by SLR “mirror slap”, tripods can be lighter. The system has limitations, but it can be a hiker’s dream.  

    Now I have acquired an upgraded version of the G1. The GH1 has a better sensor with more dynamic range and better high ISO capability. It sensor allows you to shoot in multiple formats without having to crop out pixels.  

It has one other new feature.  

The GH1 like several other new SLRs or SLR-like bodies comes with video, in this case, fairly seriously high-definition, 1080p video. There is an on camera microphone, capable of recording rather accurate digital stereo sound (sorry about the heavy breathing).  

     This extends the imaging capabilities of this device into dimensions I hadn’t previously explored. Sound and motion add a dimension to imaging that  as a still photographer I am just starting to grapple with.  

I think it’s going to be fun.

As always, the images can be better viewed on Glensummitimage.com

We had a forest fire here in Mountaintop, Pennsylvania earlier in the spring. It burned off several hundred acres, threatened several homes, and scared the crap out of other people who imagined that it would consume their properties. This is pretty much normal for April in our corner of the commonwealth.

I watched from the home of a friend, who has a deck with a spectacular view of the conflagration.  The action was perhaps a mile away, on the next ridge over.  Even from that distance, we could see the flames leaping far into the night sky, as though they would consume completely, everything in their path. As is usually the case, this does not happen. Millions of years of evolution have equipped trees and shrubs with the tools to survive wildfires; they tend to regrow rather stubbornly.

I drove through the affected area today.

Already, several weeks later, there are signs of healing with the green grasses and bracken ferns punctuating the charcoal forest floor. Some of the smaller trees as well as the less fire resistant species will die, but most seem to have survived. Much of the fire occurred on scrub barrens land, for which burning is the agent of perpetuation.

 Today, the chestnut oaks on the burn site are in bloom as though nothing significant had happened.

In a year, only the blackened tree trunks will suggest that there had been any forest disturbance here.

Nature, in this case fire, creates renewal. The results can be jarring when a favorite landscape is involved, but most often, the changes wrought by fire are natural and even helpful to the ecosystems involved.

 What is most disturbing is that a fire strips away the shroud that hides our human misdeeds. With the ferns and underbrush gone, it is the nonflammable human refuse that remains, revealing the obscene way, that at least here in Northeastern Pennsylvania, we tend to abuse our surroundings.

I have never understood what possesses a person to toss their garbage into the countryside.

If you don’t want to pay for garbage pick-up, find a dumpster somewhere, take it to work, to your parents, whatever.

 Please don’t do this.

 

 

I reside, as I have mentioned before, in a fairly rural part of eastern Pennsylvania.

As a landscape photographer, I am naturally drawn to certain scenes more than others.  I think like many people, when I drive around on country roads, in my case looking for fresh subjects for my work, my eyes are naturally drawn to farm infrastructure, and most especially, to barns.

  People seem to like barns. Images that contain them tend to be well received in gallery exhibitions, and importantly, they tend to sell.

They seem to evoke pleasant thoughts in viewers. Perhaps it involves a harkening to some imagined ancestral past, a back-to-the-earth sort yearning for the mythical farming life, free of the stresses of the modern workplace. This is absolutely mythical, because farming of any kind is far from stress-free.

   Perhaps it is something about their permanence. Most barns you see tend to be rather old. It‘s easy to imagine them being used by multiple generations of the same family. This is pleasant concept in our increasingly transient lifestyle.

  Often they show off their age. Commonly a barn will, over the years, drift far out of plumb. I will often encounter structures that lean precipitously, yet are still in use.

When they do begin to fail structurally, as often as not, they are allowed to die without intervention. I watched for years, a barn near my home with a pronounced saddle on the main roof line. Over time, and seemingly unnoticed by the farmers, it proceeded to fall in on itself. It was finally finished off by a wet November snowstorm, the wood structure collapsing completely into the stone foundation where it remains to this day.

   It seems to me that barns are all about function rather than esthetics. Gambrel roofs aren’t there to be pretty; they allow a farmer to store more hay in the loft than in a barn with a simple pitch. Cupolas aren’t for decoration, they’re for ventilation.

 Need a new wing to the structure? Build what you can, paint it with whatever pigment you have stored in the loft somewhere. What’s most important is that the new building will serve as a shelter for whatever new equipment or livestock you need to be housed.

I think it is this pragmatic approach to construction that makes barns visually interesting to non-farming folk.

Now all of this having been said, I sometimes feel that photographing barns is somehow cheating. It’s fairly easy to create a pleasant image with a barn as an anchor. Not uncommonly, as I round a bend on a country road and find yet another bucolic barn-containing rural scene, I pause and think. Do I really need this image? Will it add anything to the vast archive of similar bucolic barn-containing rural scenes already residing on my external hard drives? Shouldn’t I be looking for more novel and challenging subjects?

  Oh, but what the hell, it’s just another file for the hard drive.

 

 

Daffodil and Motorcycle

  As I have mentioned before in this space, the camera bodies that I utilize include the Nikon F-Mount system cameras. I have always preferred the ergonomics of the Nikon based cameras to their Canon counterparts. For me, these digital bodies, in particular, the professional level models have the best user interfaces on the market.

    This is all personal preference: Canon, Pentax, Sony, and Olympus all make systems with compelling features and good quality imaging chips, and I have used many of them in the past.

  Among the cameras made with the Nikon F-Mount, were cameras made by Fujifilm. I have always thought that there is something special about imagers designed by film manufacturers (Kodak makes imagers also, now used in high-end digital backs). The Fuji that I use is an S5,  a modified Nikon D200, with Fuji firmware and a unique sensor that gives it a wide dynamic range.

   Originally designed for the wedding industry to capture the bright whites, and dark tones in the attire of a typical bride and groom, it work very well for landscape situations where the light range is broad, or the color is particularly intense. The sensor has two sizes of photodiodes for a total of 12 million pixels arranged as a honeycomb.

   There are 6 million larger pixels that are responsible for most of the imaging duties. The addition 6 million small pixels are utilized to allow the camera to record very bright whites. They are set at a lower gain than the large pixels and thus don’t burn out with very bright scenes. The sensor layout increases the apparent resolution of the camera from the expected 6 Mp to more like 8-10 MP still lower than the resolution of many current DSLRs. Even so, I have printed images from my S5 as large as 20”x 30” which were happily accepted by professional art buyers without complaint.

  The camera has a small but dedicated following, who believe as do, I that the images produced by the Fuji have a unique tonality, and film-like quality, unlike other competitive products, in large part because of the unique sensor design.

   Fujifilm has not announced a successor to this camera. The dream of Fuji aficionados would be a true 12 MP (12 million small pixels, 12 million large pixels) full frame body built on the D-700 chassis. In the mean time, I’ll keep using the S5.