If we want to continue to have clean water for drinking and ag use, we need to step up.
These hundreds of oil wells would require a large amount of natural gas to power the steam generator engines.
To put that in perspective, it is more natural gas than all residential use of natural gas in the entire county.
ERG’s natural gas pipeline would overlay the San Antonio Creek Groundwater Basin in Los Alamos, our primary source of water.
The natural gas pipeline would go under Highway 135 and San Antonio Creek.
The San Antonio Groundwater depth is pretty shallow there, at approximately 130 feet below ground surface near SR 135.
On an on-going basis, the gas pipeline presents a significant danger of explosion and leaks.
The pipeline would run adjacent to U.S. 101 for about 1,900 feet.
Recent accidents in California involving natural gas pipelines are a reminder that gas pipelines near roadways can pose a serious hazard to the public.
For the sake of our water quality, and our safety, we need to be there when this matter comes before our Planning Commission and our Board of Supervisors.

The two likely sources of pollution — contamination that includes methane gas and other petrochemicals — have affected the Wind River Formation drinking aquifer to the point it’s unlikely to ever be cleaned up, one scientist said.
The tainted water affects homes and ranches in the 12-square-mile Pavilion gas field, where about 169 gas wells were drilled.
The three sought to answer whether hydraulic fracturing, the disposal of petrochemicals in unlined reserve pits, and the inadequate construction of gas wells polluted the 3,000-foot-thick Wind River Formation aquifer and/or individual domestic water wells.
“I think that helps explain a lot why we see so much methane in people’s water–supply wells.” Gas drilling has been going on in the Pavillion area since the 1950s Spencer said.
Gas from those zones, and even from the deeper, targeted production zone, can move up the bore hole “then moves laterally out into that upper 1,000 feet of the Wind River [Formation],” he said.
That’s about 80 wells, 90 wells.
“The state has to make sure these wells are constructed in a manner that safeguards the water and I don’t believe that has happened,” Wireman said.
Unlined disposal pits definitely polluted groundwater and data suggests they also affected domestic water wells, he said.
DiGiulio believes fracking impacted groundwater below 1,000 feet, DiGiulio said.
The probe is to use shallow monitoring wells to calculate what might have spread from some of the unlined pits to nearby domestic water wells.

Mr. Schneiderman is asking that more testing be completed, and that the testing, which centered on the landfill, be expanded to include areas to the north and west of the site, between Francis S. Gabreski Airport in Westhampton and the landfill.
During a work session on Thursday, November 1, Town Board members were presented with a study conducted by Eric Weinstock, a hydrologist with the Wood Group, that looked into possible sources of contamination at the Damascus Road landfill.
When the contaminants were found at the former landfill site in East Quogue, the DEC detected levels as high as 11,000 parts per trillion, or ppt; for context, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set the health advisory level for water containing the chemicals at 70 ppt.
Mr. Schneiderman said the town gave bottled water to those with private wells in the area, and the Suffolk County Health Department started testing groundwater with monitoring wells around the old landfill to see if any had PFOS or PFOA levels above the safe level.
“At the same time, the DEC started pointing a finger at this Damascus Road landfill as the possible source of contamination,” Mr. Schneiderman said, explaining the DEC declared the former landfill a possible Superfund site—a contaminated site that poses a risk to human health and the environment.
Mr. Weinstock said during the study, groundwater samples were pulled from three wells around the property.
One monitoring well was upstream from the landfill site, to see what was entering the area.
“That well had 11,200 ppt of PFOS and 424 ppt of PFOA,” Mr. Weinstock said.
Despite the PFOs numbers being higher as the water exits the landfill, Mr. Schneiderman had his doubts that the site was contributing to the contamination of groundwater.
“I’m not convinced it’s a Superfund site.” Mr. Schneiderman offered alternate explanations: He said a plane could have crashed toward the end of the airport, upstream from the landfill, and the fire from the crash could have been put out with foam containing the toxic compounds.

Water providers are hosting a meeting in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., to update community on a toxic underground plume In South Lake Tahoe, Calif., water providers are planning to host a meeting on Nov. 7 to update the community on a toxic underground plume.
According to the Tahoe Daily Tribune, the groundwater contaminant tetrachloroethylene (PCE), was first found in drinking water wells in 1989 near South Lake Tahoe.
It is currently impacting five public drinking water wells, according to Tahoe Daily Tribune.
According to the Tahoe Daily Tribune, the laundry mat operated from the 1970s until 2011.
According to the Tahoe Daily Tribune, the officials will provide an update of the progress of a study aiming to identify the most cost-effective approach to removing PCE from the groundwater.
The study will integrate information collection during the pre-design investigation with evaluation results from groundwater model simulations.
The utility district installed a test well to collect soil and groundwater samples earlier this year.
All water provided by the STPUD, Lukins and Tahoe Keys meet drinking water standards and have been given the okay to drink, according to the district.
The meeting will take place Nov. 7 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Lake Tahoe Airport in City Council Chambers.
The airport is located at 1901 Airport Road, South Lake Tahoe, Calif., 96150.

PAVILLION — Three scientists say groundwater pollution in Pavillion is likely caused by gas seeping from inadequately lined gas wells, a porous geology and the dumping over years of up to 880,000 gallons of chemical effluent into 40 unlined pits.
The tainted water affects homes and ranches in the 12-square-mile Pavillion gas field where about 169 gas wells were drilled.
Activity that started in the 1950s increased in density and rate starting in 2000.
The scientists, two former federal Environmental Protection Agency experts and a hydrologist specializing in wells and pollution, spoke for almost three hours in an update of the decade-long, contentious investigation into Pavillion groundwater contamination and the tainting of domestic water wells.
They included some of the latest information provided by the DEQ to residents and conclusions expected to be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
The three sought to answer whether hydraulic fracturing, the disposal of petrochemicals in unlined reserve pits and the inadequate construction of gas wells polluted the 3,000-foot-thick Wind River Formation aquifer and/or individual domestic water wells.
The effects of the pollution continue to dog the community.
Their artesian well flows clean, supporting 240 head of cattle, 45 horses and seven people.
That’s done using steel casing or cement.
So instead of extending 1,000 feet deep, casing might extend only 100 or a few hundred feet, he said.

Southampton Town officials said last week that they are unconvinced a former town landfill in East Quogue — a site where perfluorinated compounds were detected in the groundwater last spring at record levels for Long Island — is the source of drinking water contamination in the area.
The compounds, which were used in fire suppression foam and other products, have been detected by the Suffolk County Department of Health Services in 45 private wells near the long-closed landfill, on Damascus Road near Lewis Road.
“I’m not convinced this is even a contributing site,” Schneiderman said during a conference call at the work session with a Bayside, Queens-based geologist whom the town hired to resample state data and outline possible contamination sources.
The geologist’s report, which was discussed at the work session, found PFOS levels at 4,050 parts per trillion at a well downgradient of the landfill, meaning the sampled water flowed off the property.
Schneiderman pointed to the detection of PFOS and PFOA in a monitoring well on the east side of the airport property in October as a possible link to the East Quogue contamination.
The system would have to be extended to offer service to 106 additional properties at a cost of $1.3 million, said Water Authority CEO Jeff Szabo.
Residents would then have to pay to connect to the mains, though Schneiderman said he would consider a proposal where the town lays out that money, which can be thousands of dollars per household, and recoups the cost through those homeowners’ tax bills.
Meanwhile, Lewis Road area residents remain anxious and question how soon public water could reach the area.
“I think everyone should be connected to public water.” Lucille Morreale, 73, and her husband Robert, 76, who live on Lewis Road, said they are drinking and cooking with bottled water despite a detection of less than 4 parts per trillion of PFOA and no PFOS in their well.
They still shower with well water for lack of another option, the couple said.

The two likely sources of pollution — contamination that includes methane gas and other petrochemicals — have affected the Wind River Formation drinking aquifer to the point it’s unlikely to ever be cleaned up, one scientist said.
The tainted water affects homes and ranches in the 12-square-mile Pavilion gas field where about 169 gas wells were drilled.
The three sought to answer whether hydraulic fracturing, the disposal of petrochemicals in unlined reserve pits, and the inadequate construction of gas wells polluted the 3,000-foot-thick Wind River Formation aquifer and/or individual domestic water wells.
“I think that helps explain a lot why we see so much methane in people’s water–supply wells.” A boom started in 2000 Gas drilling has been going on in the Pavillion area since the 1950s Spencer said.
Gas from those zones, and even from the deeper, targeted production zone, can move up the bore hole “then moves laterally out into that upper 1,000 feet of the Wind River [Formation],” he said.
That’s about 80 wells, 90 wells.
“The state has to make sure these wells are constructed in a manner that safeguards the water and I don’t believe that has happened,” Wireman said.
He could not say definitely that fracking impacted domestic water wells, however.
Investigations and cleanup continues at some of the unlined pits.
The probe is to use shallow monitoring wells to calculate what might have spread from some of the unlined pits to nearby domestic water wells.

The Southampton Town supervisor called for a deeper investigation to be done November 1, looking into water flow tables and test results at locations near the Damascus Road landfill to determine if it, or other areas, are the source of high levels of perfluorooctanesulfonic and perfluorooctanoic acid.
The DEC listed the parcel as a problem or Class “P” site, or possible Superfund site, and the town was ordered to begin an investigation.
Make Travel Moments Big Ad Earn up to 3X Points on every stay, now through 1/03/19 Hilton Hotels and Resorts Book Now Superfund allows the EPA to clean up contaminated sites.
During the DEC’s original testing, 11,200 parts per trillion of PFAS and 424 parts per trillion of PFOA were detected.
But Schneiderman said he’d like to see a water-mapping table developed to see if the flow of water could be carrying the contamination from other sources to the former landfill.
“But we don’t really have a lot of answers on that at this point.” He said the northern end of the main runway at Francis S. Gabreski Airport in Westhampton Beach, a nearby explosive storage facility, and what he called a “mysterious” one-acre site on which nothing seems to grow could be clues affecting the results at Damascus Road.
The county is currently testing wells at the airport, and findings are expected to be presented in the next week or two.
A visual project management tool for teams monday.com Signup Now “The airport had the foam.
Did they test it?
“There’s a foredrawn conclusion in the draft report that it’s one or the other, and I’m just not sure it is at this point,” the councilman said of declaring the former landfill site a Superfund or brownfield.

In June, the Air Force announced a 10-square-kilometre plume of PFAS contamination had been found in the ground water below and around the Richmond Air Base, 50 kilometres north-west of Sydney’s CBD.
Twenty-five surface water test sites were also found to have had PFAS contamination above safe drinking levels, including Rickabys Creek and Bakers Lagoon.
However, the Human Health Risk Assessment released today says people living in the area should limit their intake of locally grown eggs and red meat, and locally caught fish to reduce their exposure to the chemical.
The report said people living in the investigation area around the air base should not eat more than 24 eggs per month, 50 serves of red meat per month or 12 servings of fin fish per month that have been grown or caught locally.
That amount is smaller for children.
"Each chook egg had a different level of PFAS in it.
"I was really distressed, particularly because I’d been feeding them to my grandchildren — one of whom is under six.
An ecological risk assessment also released today found unacceptable risks of contamination for animals and the environment on and around the base.
There is also some exposure risk for animals and birds in the Hawkesbury River, the assessment found.
According to NSW Health, PFAS does not break down in the environment and can accumulate and persist for a long time in humans and the environment.

By John Byrne and Michael Hawthorne City testing of Chicago homes with water meters found nearly 1 in 5 sampled had brain-damaging lead in their tap water, but Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s water commissioner acknowledged Thursday that the city continued installing new meters after learning about the alarming results in June.
Randy Conner, the city’s water commissioner, and Julie Morita, the health commissioner, said all 165,000 Chicago homes with water meters are eligible for city-provided water filters.
"It was just determined that this was the appropriate way of action between myself, Morita and the scientists," Conner said when asked why the city took so long to address the well-documented health risks.
The Chicago Tribune first reported in 2013 that the city water department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had found high levels of lead in Chicago tap water after lead service lines had been disturbed by street work or plumbing repairs, including the installation of water meters.
In April, a Tribune analysis revealed that lead was found in water samples drawn from nearly 70 percent of the 2,797 homes that returned free testing kits provided by the city during the past two years.
On Wednesday, Emanuel himself declared Chicago’s drinking water is safe while opposing plans introduced in the City Council to finance the replacement of lead service lines.
A day later, Conner and Morita announced the city would begin distributing water filters shortly before the water commissioner was scheduled to appear at a City Council budget hearing, a setting during which aldermen could slam the Emanuel administration for not doing more about the lead problem.
"What we’re committed to doing is taking a look at this thing holistically, and understanding what this is going to take to tackle this issue, from the feasibility, the framework and a funding perspective," Conner said about a $750,000 contract with the global engineering firm CDM Smith, which is required to submit a new review of the municipal water system before Emanuel leaves office in the spring.
Water utilities are considered to be in compliance with federal water quality regulations as long as 90 percent of the homes tested have lead levels below 15 ppb, a 1991 standard the EPA acknowledges is based not on the dangers of lead but because the agency thought the limit could be met with corrosion-inhibiting chemicals.
Morita, the city health commissioner, noted that the number of Chicago children with elevated levels of lead in their blood has steadily declined citywide for years.