Luzerne County, 8:21 p.m., 3/11 /11
Approximately 1,000 pounds of ammonia were released from malfunctioning equipment at Michaels European Specialties in city of Hazleton. There was a precautionary evacuation of a two-block area near the plant. One injury was reported.
As of 3:44 a.m., 3/14/11, personnel remain on scene monitoring the site.
Bradford County – 4:45 p.m., 3/6/11 – A tanker truck carrying frac water overturned on State Route 706 in Stevens Township. The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) responded and coordinated cleanup with a private contractor.
posted 2011.03.04 at 02:09 PM EST WPXI
The Armstrong County district attorney said an early Friday morning raid at a home in Park Township uncovered a methamphetamine laboratory.
Authorities from several jurisdictions raided the home, located on Garver’s Ferry Road, around 6 a.m.
Police said they arrested Jessica Conrad, the owner of the home, Herbert Covey IV, Gary Miller and Stephanie Swindler. Investigators said they also took two juveniles who were at the home during the raid into protective custody.
“Today’s efforts are the culmination of months of intense investigations and are a joint effort of the DA’s Drug Task Force and the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office. This effort highlights the cooperative effort it takes to identify and interdict these types of activities,” said District Attorney Steve Andreassi.
The investigation continues and charges are pending for the adults.
By Andrew Scott
Pocono Record Writer
March 03, 2011
Like many Pennsylvania counties, Monroe has too few hazardous materials incidents to justify paying the high cost of having its own hazmat team, said Deputy Director Bruce Henry of the Monroe County Office of Emergency Services.
It’s cheaper to contract for hazmat services, which is what Monroe does with a New York-based company called Environmental Protection Services, Henry said.
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‘Detergent suicide’ foiled at Tobyhanna State Park”Our county sees only four to five incidents a year involving chemical spills or leaks,” he said. “Paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to have equipment and personnel deal only with chemical incidents that don’t happen very often is cost-prohibitive. So, we contract with EPS, but we don’t pay them. Federal law requires whoever causes the incidents to pay. No tax dollars are involved.”
The hazmat team, which Henry said has an office in Lackawanna County, was called Tuesday to clean and decontaminate a car in Tobyhanna State Park in Coolbaugh Township.
This was shortly after a 23-year-old man had been in the car, attempting suicide by inhaling a poisonous mixture of household chemicals, Pocono Mountain Regional Police said.
Firefighters removed the man from the car, after which he was decontaminated and taken to Pocono Medical Center for a mental health evaluation.
Police as of Wednesday had not released the man’s identity or condition.
“Suicides and attempted suicides involving dangerous chemicals are even rarer in our area than other types of hazmat emergencies,” Henry said.
There are three levels of hazmat response training, Henry said. The first level, which federal law requires all firefighters to undergo, is awareness, or what to do at a hazmat scene.
The second level is operations, or containing the leak or spill to its area of origin. Most volunteer and paid firefighters in the state take it upon themselves to be trained at this level, though they’re not required by law to do so, Henry said.
The third is the technician level, which is for only haz-mat personnel and involves stopping the leak or spill.
“The OES, firefighters, paramedics, police and hazmat personnel have always successfully worked together in addressing these types of incidents,” Henry said.
http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110303/NEWS/103030334/-1/NEWS01
PITTSBURGH — Two Allegheny County water companies said they will begin testing water supplies for radiation to check for problems from treated gas drilling water that’s discharged into streams and rivers.
The move was prompted by a resolution from Pittsburgh City Councilman Doug Shields who cited a recent New York Times article concerning the potential dangers to drinking water from natural gas drilling.
The Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority and Pennsylvania American Water Co. said they expect tests to be conducted in the coming weeks.
Drilling companies do hydraulic fracturing, also called fracking, to reach the gas located in the Marcellus Shale more than a mile underground.
Millions of gallons of frack water has been taken to local sewage treatment plants where it is then treated before being dumped into the rivers. Then local water companies use that for drinking water.
Pittsburgh Water To Be Tested For Radiation – Health News Story – WTAE Pittsburgh..
Posted: 10:51 am EST March 1, 2011. SPRING TWP., Pa. — Emergency crews remain on the scene of an accident involving a box truck loaded with explosives.
The crash happened shortly before 11:00 Tuesday morning in the northbound lanes of Route 222, between the Broadcasting Road and Spring Ridge interchanges, in Spring Township, Berks County.
Police said the northbound truck was approaching traffic that was backed up as a result of the construction at the Route 183 interchange and couldn’t stop in time.
They said the truck veered into the right lane, struck a pickup truck, and then spun around and ended up facing south in a grassy area off the highway.
There were no reports of injuries in the crash, but firefighters and ambulance personnel were dispatched to the scene because of the truck’s contents, which officials said included dynamite and blasting caps. The West Side Emergency Management Agency was also called.
Officials said they don’t believe the explosives were badly damaged in the accident, just shuffled around a bit inside the truck, but they were not taking any chances in their cleanup of the scene.
http://www.wfmz.com/berksnews/27037477/detail.html
Keith R. Stevenson/Pocono Record March 01, 2011
A 23-year-old man attempted suicide by mixing household chemicals in his car at Tobyhanna State Park on Tuesday afternoon. The man was taken by ambulance to Pocono Medical Center. He was reported to be conscious and talking to rescue workers. Crews on scene did not identify the man and could not say what chemicals were involved. The man’s vehicle was first discovered at 7:30 a.m. parked near Department of Conservation and Natural Resources rangers. The vehicle did not appear suspicious and rangers left the scene. Later in the morning, rangers received a report to look for a vehicle matching the description of the one seen earlier. At about 12:45 p.m. rangers arrived back at the scene where the vehicle was parked and saw a man inside attempting suicide with the chemicals. Police and about 75 firefighters from Coolbaugh Township and Pocono Summit fire companies and the Tobyhanna Army Depot, along with Barrett and Pocono Mountain Regional ambulances, responded. Part of Route 423 was shut for several hours. Firefighters, wearing masks, approached the car and saw the still-conscious man with the chemical containers inside. Firefighters removed him from the car, after which he was decontaminated. He tried to flee on foot and was quickly apprehended by firefighters, police said. He was then taken by ambulance with a police escort to Pocono Medical Center.
Onorato Names Acting Chief of Emergency Services Contact: Kevin Evanto, County 412-350-3171 office 412-352-4075 cell PITTSBURGH — Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato today announced the appointment of Alvin Henderson Jr. as Acting Chief of Emergency Services and Fire Marshal effective March 7. Henderson will assume the duties of Bob Full, who has accepted the position of Chief Deputy Director with the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency in Harrisburg. Henderson was hired as an Emergency Management Specialist with the Allegheny County Department of Emergency Services in 2003. He was promoted to Emergency Operations Manager in 2007. Henderson served as Director of Public Safety at Point Park University from April 2008 through August 2009, before returning to Allegheny County Emergency Services as Assistant Chief of Operations and Training, the position he currently holds. Henderson served as Fire Chief and Emergency Management Coordinator for the Borough of Jefferson Hills, as well as an instructor at the Allegheny County Fire Training Academy. Henderson holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration, as well as fire protection specialist and arson investigation certificates, from Columbia Southern University. He also has numerous certifications in emergency management, firefighting, hazardous materials response, and law enforcement. Onorato will announce his plans to search for a permanent Chief of Emergency Services and Fire Marshal in the future.
KANAWHA COUNTY Tuesday March 1, 2011 DuPont reports ammonia leak at Belle plant CHARLESTON, W.Va. — DuPont said about 20 pounds of ammonia apparently leaked from the top of the ammoniatank at its Belleplant early this morning. The plant sounded the fume alert at 2:36 a.m. “after a remote sensor detected a smallleak from a vent on top of the ammonia tank,” DuPont said in a prepared statement. “The plant emergency response team responded and closedthevalve from the tank leading to the vent. “No one was injured during the incident,” the company said. “The BelleFireDepartment responded to the plant gate as a precaution per our normal joint protocol. The all clear was sounded at 3:12 a.m. “We have not detected any ammonia odors at groundlevel on site norarewe aware of any reported odors offsite,” the company said. “Our initial calculations indicate that the quantity releasedwas approximately 20 pounds, which is below the reportable threshold quantity. “We are continuing our investigation to finalize our calculations on the quantity released and determine the cause of the leak,” DuPont said. “All appropriate government agencies havebeen notified.” According to DuPont’s material safety data sheet for ammonia,thechemical causes skin and eye burns and nose, throat and lung irritation. Gross overexposure may be fatal.
By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press – 52 mins ago NEW YORK – Pennsylvania’s natural gas drillers are still flushing vast quantities of contaminated wastewater into rivers that supply drinking water, despite major progress by the industry over the past year in curtailing the practice. Under pressure from environmentalists and state officials, energy companies that have been drilling thousands of gas wells in the state’s countryside spent part of 2010 overhauling the way they handle the chemically tainted and sometimes radioactive water that gushes from the ground after a drilling technique known as high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” Until the second half of last year, Pennsylvania had been the only state to allow most of this wastewater to be discharged into rivers after only partial treatment. Other states required most or all of the brine to be disposed of by injecting it deep underground. In recent months, though, the industry has boasted big gains in the amount of well wastewater that is reused, rather than trucked to treatment plants that empty into rivers and streams. New figures released by Pennsylvania regulators this week confirm many of those claims, showing that for the first time, a majority of well wastewater is now being recycled. But drilling in the vast, gas-rich rock formation known as the Marcellus Shale is growing so explosively that some of those gains are being erased by operators that still send their waste to plants that discharge into rivers. Of the 10.6 million barrels of wastewater that gushed from the wells in the final six months of 2010, at least 65 percent was recycled, a dramatic increase from previous years, when little or no recycling took place. But the records also show that at least 2.8 million barrels of well wastewater were sent to treatment plants that discharge into rivers and streams. By comparison, some 3.6 million barrels were sent to those same plants during the 12-month period that ended on June 30. That means that even with the recycling effort ramping up tremendously, more tainted wastewater is being dumped into rivers now than was the case a year ago. A total of 1,386 new gas well drilled in the state last year, up from 768 a year earlier. Thousands more well permits have been approved. Kathryn Klaber, president and executive director of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, a group that represents gas drillers, said in a statement that huge improvements in the recycling rate should be viewed as a success story. “Pennsylvania is at forefront of developing and implementing industry-leading water recycling and reuse technologies aimed at further reducing our environmental footprint. These commonsense advancements are a win-win the environment, local communities and as well as our industry,” she said. Over the past year, most of the biggest drillers in Pennsylvania have moved toward systems in which water is recycled in new well projects. A variety of recycling methods exist, but most involve doing some light treatment of the wastewater, mixing it with fresh water, and then reusing it in the fracturing process. Companies benefit because it cuts down on the amount of fresh water they need. Even as it has made changes, the industry has argued that its original practice of sending wastewater through partial treatment, and then into rivers, posed no danger to the environment or drinking water. The drilling boom in the Marcellus Shale and other parts of the U.S. has been made possible by innovations in fracking, in which millions of gallons of water laced with sand and chemicals are injected into wells at such high pressure that the rocks split open, unlocking the gas. Some of the water comes gushing back up, polluted with metals like barium and strontium, and sometimes tainted with high levels of radium or benzene. Pennsylvania has a few plants that specialize in treating wastewater from the oil, coal and gas business, and operators of these facilities say that they are adept at removing many of the worrisome contaminants. They are unable, however, to remove the salty dissolved solids and chlorides that the wastewater picks up as it travels through the shale beds. There have been concerns about the salt levels rising in some Pennsylvania rivers that supply drinking water. A small amount of wastewater, about 14 percent in the latest state data, is also being sent to municipal sewage plants that lack the ability to remove contaminants as efficiently as some of the treatment facilities that specialize in oil and gas industry waste.
Hazardous Materials Emergency Response 