GUILFORD – Guilford Center resident Robert Sandell keeps a blow torch near his sink and regularly ignites the methane-induced water coming out of his kitchen faucet for fun.
Sandell described his hobby and displayed photos and videos as proof to a group of reporters in The Evening Sun’s offices last week.
“If it was going to kill me, it would have by now,” the 74-year old said, explaining that he drinks about 10 cups of coffee a day using water from his tap.
Sandell’s story may sound familiar, particularly to those following the controversial hydraulic fracturing process that is being employed around the country to release natural gas from shale formations. Fracking, as its called, is the subject of Gasland, a documentary film nominated for an Oscar at the Academy Awards presentation on Sunday. One of the film’s premises is that the technology, which requires millions of gallons of water mixed with soap, sand and a number of potentially toxic chemicals, is polluting the water table.
The closest natural gas drilling that has taken place near Guilford Center is more than 25 miles away in Coventry, according to the Chenango County Planning Department. Sandell, himself, pointed out that no drilling could have caused the methane in his water.
“I don’t think you can pollute any worse than what we’ve got going on,” he said.
When he decided to buy land and move his doublewide to Guilford Center 10 years ago, the former construction worker said his neighbors cautioned him about the “oasis of gas” underground. They even told him not to smoke in the shower.
“I said, ‘What are you talking about?’” he joked.
Methane abounds 300 feet under the ground in the region located less than 11 miles south of the county’s seat in Norwich. Sandell originally drilled his well 250 feet deep, but eventually moved it up 150 because the water was clearer. He said the drilling company was surprised to still find methane at the shallower depth.
Colgate University Geology Professor Bruce Selleck said the phenomenon is quite common, and not surprising at all for the Guilford Center area. He said the source of the gas is likely the Geneseo Shale underlying the 100-200 feet thick Oneonta Formation. The gas travels up from the Geneseo along natural fractures, and enters the well along with groundwater.
“Very often well drillers will extend water wells to depths where they find sudden increases in water flow to the well, and those increases are often related to encountering intensely fractured shale zones, which also allow natural gas to leak into the well. In some cases, the water well will actually bubble and boil as methane (natural gas is mostly methane) and the bubbles will rise through the water column. Since methane is slightly soluble in cold, pressurized water in a household water system, it will degas from the water at the tap, where it can be burned,” he said.
Earlier this month, Gasland Director Josh Fox and Best Supporting Actor nominee Mark Ruffalo, whose home in the Catskill Mountains, traveled to Washington D.C. to make the case on Capitol Hill about the alleged public health and the environmental risks associated with the dangers of natural gas drilling. Congressmen Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), Jared Polis (D-CO), and Rush Holt (D-NJ) warmly welcomed the actor and director and talked about efforts to close oil and gas industry loopholes in the Safe Drinking Water Act and other laws designed to protect public health.
Energy in Depth (EID), a group representing oil and natural gas producers, has sent a letter to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences arguing that Gasland should be ineligible for best documentary feature because it contains inaccuracies. EID Executive Director Lee O. Fuller called Gasland “an expression of stylized fiction.”
Central New York Landowners Coalition Vice President Bryant LaTourette is among many in the pro-drilling local community who say the film is based on falsehoods.
“We all want it done right. We do not need exaggerated stories or putting a spin on lighting our faucets on fire. This is common in our area and dates back far before drilling. But you would have to live here to know that!” he said.
In the film, Fox presents that fracking fluids “injected down a wellbore that breaks apart rock formations where gas is trapped and has opened up other formations to drilling throughout New York and Pennsylvania that weren’t able to be drilled before. And somehow these chemicals, which are very dangerous, neurotoxins and carcinogens and the gas itself migrate into the aquifers.”
 But according to former Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Secretary John Hanger in a statement made to Reuters last summer, “Pennsylvania has not had one case in which the fluids used to break off the gas from 5,000 to 8,000 feet underground have returned to contaminate ground water.
Hanger dismissed Gasland as ‘fundamentally dishonest’ and ‘a deliberately false presentation for dramatic effect.’
Sandell said his wife thinks he’s nuts for playing with fire. But he keeps the blow torch nearby and shared his story because he believes natural gas should be drilled and produced to feed schools and factories.
“There must be a lot of it down there. We should we be doing that now and saving all of this monkey business about it being dangerous and get rid of those Arabs,” he said.