Building upon an already great day for natural gas yesterday, the Vestal Coalition, together with the Joint Landowners Coalition of NY (JLCNY),  held another great educational event in Vestal, N.Y. EID Marcellus was in attendance and we couldn’t have been happier to be there, especially on the day the EPA Administration confirmed (once again) the record of safety and performance of hydraulic fracturing.  Click here for the full article on that.

The keynote speaker for the event was Mike Lovegreen, District Manager for the Bradford County Conservation District in neighboring Pennsylvania.  He presented, “Ground Zero: Bradford County,” a balanced overview of the industry throughout Bradford County. Topics included well pad construction, road usages/maintenance, water usage, and economic impact.

What I enjoyed most about this presentation was the candor of the speaker. For example, when discussing the issue of roads in Bradford County, Lovegreen demonstrated how dirt roads will break down under heavy truck traffic. He forthrightly addressed the inevitable need to constantly move back and forth between job sites and the impacts on local roads.  Most important, he articulated what gas companies are doing as a matter of course to rebuild these same roads and make them better than they were at the start.

Lovegreen also acknowledged forward progress by the industry in reducing road traffic and surface impacts. Companies are now creating water reservoirs to service well pads during the process of fracturing. This cuts down the number of trucks needed to deliver water to each job site. These reservoirs are connected by temporary water pipelines which feed multiple sites from one location.

On a closing note, it’s great to see so many people coming to these events and showing their support for what we’re trying to do. Kudos to the Vestal Coalition and JLCNY. What makes these types of events even better for me is having people recognize our team and ask questions about our Northeast Marcellus Initiative. If there is any way EID can help, please feel free to contact me at bill@energyindepth.org.

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