By Justin Elliott, ProPublica

Recently, we wrote about former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell's connections to the natural gas industry after he published a pro-fracking op-ed in The New York Daily News.

Following our story, Rendell's column — which called on New York officials to lift a ban on the drilling technique — was updated to disclose that he is a paid consultant to a private equity firm with natural gas investments.

Rendell assured us in an interview before the first story that despite his role with the private equity firm, he had no "pecuniary interest in the natural gas industry doing well."

But the story doesn't end there. One entity that indisputably has an interest in the industry is Rendell's longtime home outside of politics: the law firm Ballard Spahr of Philadelphia.

Rendell is currently special counsel at the firm, and is a member of its energy and project finance and environment and natural resources practice areas, his spokeswoman said.

The firm touts its work "on the forefront" of the development of the Marcellus Shale, the formation under Pennsylvania and other states from which a vast quantity of natural gas is now being extracted.

Continue reading »

Artists Against Fracking have released a mini-documentary by filmmaker Josh Fox (Gastown) of the group’s recent tour of fracking sites in Pennsylvania. The group will air a winning TV ad from its #DontFrackNY video contest next week.

Below, Yoko Ono’s new television spot in response to NY Governor Cuomo’s silence and his upcoming Feb. 27th deadline for a decision on fracking. The ad features Ono addressing the Governor, with a response to her unmet requests for meetings.

“Governor Cuomo, since you haven’t met with me about the dangers of fracking, I will show you. PS: Nice to meet you, Governor,” Ono says in the ad.

"After visiting with families in Pennsylvania whose water, homes and lives have been hurt by the gas industry, I wanted to show Governor Cuomo and the public what I saw," she says. "He must know what could happen to New Yorkers -- our air, our water, our climate -- if he allows fracking."

Concerned citizens of Western Pennsylvania and friends of Lawrence County farmer Maggie Henry recently locked themselves to a giant paper-mache pig at the entrance to a Shell Oil Co. natural gas well site to protest the company’s threat to local agriculture and food safety. The newly-constructed gas well is located less than 4,000 feet from Henry’s organic pig farm.

Via:

The farm has been in the Henry family for generations and has been maintained as a small business despite pressure from industry consolidation. The Henry’s made a switch from dairy to organic pork and poultry production several years ago as part of their commitment to keeping the operation safe and sustainable for generations to come. Joining Maggie Henry at the well site are residents from other Pennsylvania counties affected by natural gas drilling and Pittsburgh-area residents of all ages who support Henry’s fight. Many are customers who buy her food at farmers’ markets and grocery stores who do not want to see the integrity of their food source compromised.

The Henry farm is especially vulnerable to the risk associated with fracking because it is located in an area riddled with hundreds of abandoned oil wells from the turn of the 20th century. According to hydro-geologist Daniel Fisher who has studied the area, “Each of these abandoned wells is a potentially direct pathway or conduit to the surface should any gas or fluids migrate upward from the wells during or after fracking.” Methane leaks from gas wells have been responsible for numerous explosions in or near residences in Pennsylvania in recent years. Migrating gas and fluids also threaten groundwater supplies, on which Henry and her animals depend for their drinking water. Last summer a major gas leak in Tioga County, PA caused by Shell’s own drilling operations, produced a 30 ft geyser of methane and water, which spewed from an unplugged well and forced several families to evacuate.

Protesters, wearing signs that read "Fracking Threatens Food," and "Protect Farms for Our Future," chained themselves to the nine foot tall pig situated in the driveway of the gas well site, and blocking traffic to and from the site. A few dozen supporters attended the event as well.

Henry resorted to civil disobedience after all avenues within the legal system had been exhausted, and Shell continued on with their operations at the well.

Last week, seven members of Decarcerate PA set up school desks, banners, and a little red schoolhouse to block the entrance to the prison construction site in Montgomery County, PA. They then sat at the desks, linking arms and refusing to move or allow construction vehicles onto the sight. Construction was delayed for over an hour before all seven protesters were arrested and taken away. The new prisons are being built on the grounds of SCI Graterford in Montgomery County. If completed, they will cost $400 million and house 4,100 people.

Decarcerate PA statement:

Decarcerate PA is determined to stop Governor Corbett from spending $400 million to build two new prisons outside of Philadelphia. These new prisons represent an expansion of mass incarceration in Pennsylvania and a continuation of policies that lock people up instead of giving our communities the resources they need to thrive. The money used to build these prisons is money that is being stolen from our schools, our healthcare, reentry programs, social services, and the environment.

To stop the prison construction in Montgomery County, Decarcerate PA has taken to the streets. We’ve written letters to the governor. We’ve called our elected officials. We’ve interrupted the governor’s town hall meetings to demand a prison moratorium. We’ve publicly called out the Department of Corrections on their lies and misinformation. We’ve raised awareness about the construction through opinion pieces and a social media campaign that was viewed by thousands. And yet the construction continues.

That’s why, this morning, seven members of Decarcerate PA put their bodies on the line to stop the prison construction in Montgomery County. They engaged in this action at the construction site to increase pressure on Governor Corbett and to shine a spotlight on his irresponsible and destructive expansion of Pennsylvania’s prison system.

Learn more about Decarcerate PA, a grassroots campaign working to end mass incarceration in Pennsylvania and demanding that PA stop building prisons, reduce the prison population, and reinvest money in our communities.

[Via OccupyWallSt.]

DemocracyNow! video discussion of the new evidence in the Terry Williams case. Williams was scheduled to be executed on October 3, 2012.

A state judge granted a stay of execution on Friday for Terry Williams, a death row inmate facing lethal injection in just five days, after ruling that prosecutors hid crucial mitigating evidence from defense attorneys before his trial nearly 30 years ago.

Williams faced death for killing Amos Norwood, a 51-year-old chemist, in Philadelphia in 1984. What the jury in that case did not know is that Norwood had sexually abused Williams and had allegedly violently raped him the night before. Furthermore, Williams had suffered years of physical and sexual abuse by older males. Most recently, evidence has emerged that prosecutors tried to make robbery seem like the motive for the murder, even though Williams’ co-defendant knew about the sexual abuse.

At trial, the lead prosecutor called Norwood an "innocent man" and told jurors that Williams committed the murder "for no other reason than that a kind man gave him a ride home." Williams was three months past his 18th birthday at the time of the killing.

Via:

Both accomplice Marc Draper, a policeman's son, and the trial prosecutor, Andrea Foulkes, gave new testimony before Sarmina in recent days. Draper said that he was promised a chance at parole if he told jurors the Norwood slaying was a robbery, not a sex-related crime.

He testified accordingly, but is serving a life term for felony murder. He said he did not understand that lifers in Pennsylvania are never eligible for parole.

Several Norwood jurors said they also misunderstood that when they sentenced Williams to death. Five jurors now support his bid for clemency, as does Norwood's widow.

Foulkes denied promising Draper a shorter sentence, or withholding evidence from jurors or the defense.

Under Saramina's ruling, Williams will get a new hearing before a jury to determine whether he should be executed or not. The judge did not overturn Williams' guilty verdict in the Norwood murder. If Williams prevails in court, he will serve life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Lawyers with the Federal Community Defenders Office in Philadelphia said the sex-abuse evidence might have steered the jury toward a life sentence, if not a different verdict on guilt.

Then Philadelphia District Attorney Ronald Castille -- who signed off on Williams' death penalty case -- now serves as chief justice of the state Supreme Court, which may now ultimately decide Williams' fate.

Former longtime Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter was battling for his life Monday after recently being diagnosed with a "serious form of cancer," a source close to his office told CNN.

Specter, who has overcome numerous serious illnesses over the past two decades - including a brain tumor and non-Hodgkins lymphoma - was diagnosed six weeks ago with the new form of cancer, the specifics of which are being closely held by his family.

Specter had "a big flare up" of the disease Monday night, the source said.

New Study: Fluids From Marcellus Shale Likely Seeping Into PA Drinking Water

by Abrahm Lustgarten ProPublica, July 9, 2012, 3 p.m.

New research has concluded that salty, mineral-rich fluids deep beneath Pennsylvania's natural gas fields are likely seeping upward thousands of feet into drinking water supplies.

Though the fluids were natural and not the byproduct of drilling or hydraulic fracturing, the finding further stokes the red-hot controversy over fracking in the Marcellus Shale, suggesting that drilling waste and chemicals could migrate in ways previously thought to be impossible.

The study, conducted by scientists at Duke University and California State Polytechnic University at Pomona and released today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, tested drinking water wells and aquifers across Northeastern Pennsylvania. Researchers found that, in some cases, the water had mixed with brine that closely matched brine thought to be from the Marcellus Shale or areas close to it.

No drilling chemicals were detected in the water, and there was no correlation between where the natural brine was detected and where drilling takes place.

Still, the brine's presence 2013 and the finding that it moved over thousands of vertical feet -- contradicts the oft-repeated notion that deeply buried rock layers will always seal in material injected underground through drilling, mining, or underground disposal.

"The biggest implication is the apparent presence of connections from deep underground to the surface," said Robert Jackson, a biology professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University and one of the study's authors. "It's a suggestion based on good evidence that there are places that may be more at risk."

The study is the second in recent months to find that the geology surrounding the Marcellus Shale could allow contaminants to move more freely than expected. A paper published by the journal Ground Water in April used modeling to predict that contaminants could reach the surface within 100 years 2013 or fewer if the ground is fracked.

Last year, some of the same Duke researchers found that methane gas was far more likely to leak into water supplies in places adjacent to drilling.

Today's research swiftly drew criticism from both the oil and gas industry and a scientist on the National Academy of Science's peer review panel. They called the science flawed, in part because the researchers do not know how long it may have taken for the brine to leak. The National Academy of Sciences should not have published the article without an accompanying rebuttal, they said.

"What you have here is another case of a paper whose actual findings are pretty benign, but one that, in the current environment, may be vulnerable to distortion among those who oppose this industry," said Chris Tucker, a spokesman for the gas industry trade group Energy In Depth. "What's controversial is attempting to argue that these migrations occur as a result of industry activities, and on a time scale that actually matters to humanity."

Another critic, Penn State University geologist Terry Engelder, took the unusual step of disclosing details of his review of the paper for the National Academy of Sciences, normally a private process.

In a letter written to the researchers and provided to ProPublica, Engelder said the study had the appearance of "science-based advocacy" and said it was "unwittingly written to enflame the anti-drilling crowd."

In emails, Engelder told ProPublica that he did not dispute the basic premise of the article 2013 that fluids seemed to have migrated thousands of feet upward. But he said that they had likely come from even deeper than the Marcellus 2013 a layer 15,000 feet below the surface 2013 and that there was no research to determine what pathways the fluids travelled or how long they took to migrate. He also said the Marcellus was an unlikely source of the brine because it does not contain much water.

"There is a question of time scale and what length of time matters," Engelder wrote in his review. In a subsequent letter to the Academy's editors protesting the study, he wrote that "the implication is that the Marcellus is leaking now, naturally without any human assistance, and that if water-based fluid is injected into these cross-formational pathways, that leakage, which is already 2018contaminating' the aquifers with salt, could be made much worse."

Indeed, while the study did not explicitly focus on fracking, the article acknowledged the implications. "The coincidence of elevated salinity in shallow groundwater... suggests that these areas could be at greater risk of contamination from shale gas development because of a preexisting network of cross-formational pathways that has enhanced hydraulic connectivity to deeper geological formations," the paper states.

For their research, the scientists collected 426 recent and historical water samples -- combining their own testing with government records from the 1980s -- from shallow water wells and analyzed them for brine, comparing their chemical makeup to that of 83 brine samples unearthed as waste water from drilling sites in the Marcellus Shale.

Nearly one out of six recent water samples contained brine near-identical to Marcellus-layer brine water.

Nevertheless, Jackson, one of the study's authors, said he still considers it unlikely that frack fluids and injected man-made waste are migrating into drinking water supplies. If that were happening, those contaminants would be more likely to appear in his groundwater samples, he said. His group is continuing its research into how the natural brine might have travelled, and how long it took to rise to the surface.

"There is a real time uncertainty," he said. "We don't know if this happens over a couple of years, or over millennia."