To Wind or Not To Wind - a very negative wind energy decision

I find that we, the United States, are at cross roads and cross currents.  On Sunday, the New York Times reported, that Duke Energy has agreed to pay $1 million in fines as part of the Justice Department’s first criminal case against a wind power company for the deaths of protected birds.  That’s right a criminal case for the death of birds, golden eagles in this case, which is a tragedy.  But how is Duke Energy Renewables or any other utility to comply with the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) mandate of increasing the percentage of electricity produced from wind, solar, geothermal or other, when they can be found criminally guilty of avian deaths. 

Birds are killed by everything from cars, trains, planes, stationary meteorological towers, cell phone towers, trees, windows of homes (we have had two in 14 years), other birds, chemicals, hunters, and on and on.  The $1 million fined was paid to several conservation groups, including the North American Wetlands Conservation Fund, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.  These are the very groups that have pushed for the RPS.

The company must now put into place a plan to prevent the deaths of the birds.  Duke Energy said that it had been working with federal officials to limit the bird deaths.  “The company is installing new radar technology to detect birds and using field biologists to look for eagles and determine when turbines need to be shut down.”  This clearly is a negative for wind power and will be more expensive and interruptible. 

How is a country supposed to grow?  If the aim is to reduce energy consumed, then say so and provide the incentives that make sense (not the passing of a compact fluorescence lights law with no appropriate way of disposing them because the contain mercury and no competitive substitute).  This is why rate hikes are being proposed by the energy companies and the rate payers are being forced to foot the bills. 

This country needs an energy plan and what we have, is a terribly impractical one.  We deserve better.

Did you know that landfills and septic leach fields lie on top of your water supply?

Which would you prefer?  Landfills and septic leach fields lying hundreds of feet above your water tables and aquifers or hydraulic fractures thousands of feet below your water tables and aquifers?  Clue: gravity moves to the core of the planet.

I am a pragmatist.  I think that we can have good paying jobs, good taxable revenues and be environmental.  I believe that hydraulic fracturing provides those jobs, revenues and can be environmental.  The companies are working diligently and quickly to develop fracturing fluids that are environmentally safe.  But before we can have that discussion, we must first know about our water supply.

So, let us start with water tables and depth limits to potable water supplies, i.e. aquifers.  Across the US, the average depth of a fresh water aquifer, from which communities drill into and pump water from, is 400 feet below the surface.  The potable deep water limit approaches 600 feet, as the water begins to have increasing concentrations of metals and minerals.  I logged onto the City of Plymouth: Sewer and Water Services website to see what minerals were in my water.  The front page of the website (fact sheet, if you will) informs me that our aquifers are the Prairie Du Chien-Jordan and Prairie Du Chien Group and that the water wells are 302 to 473 feet deep.  The water is hard due to the presence of both iron and manganese.  There are 24 grains per gallon, requiring treatment by the city to improve quality.  The minerals are removed through filtering.  A corrosion inhibitor is also added to the water to protect home pipes.  The water is disinfected using chlorine and fluoride is added for dental protection.  Hold on – a corrosion inhibitor, what’s that? and that can’t be good.

So, I dug a little deeper and downloaded the 2012 Plymouth Water Report.  In my water there are the following (bold are the “contaminants” and in parentheses are typical sources of “contaminants”): alpha emitters (erosion of natural deposits), arsenic (erosion of natural deposits; runoff from orchards; runoff from glass and production wastes), barium (discharge of drilling wastes; discharge from metal refineries; erosion of natural deposits), combined radium (erosion of natural deposits) fluoride (added by the state to promote strong teeth; erosion of natural deposits; discharge from fertilizer and aluminum factories), haloacetic acids (by-product of drinking water disinfection), TTHM – total trihalomethanes (by-product of drinking water disinfection), chlorine (water additive used to control microbes), copper (corrosion of household plumbing systems; erosion of natural deposits), lead (corrosion of household plumbing systems; erosion of natural deposits), iron and manganese already mentioned in the above paragraph.  WOW.  That is a lot of bad stuff. 

Please notice that almost every “contaminant” is sourced from the erosion of natural deposits, except for Haloacetic acids, trihalomethanes, fluoride and chlorine, which are introduced by the city/county/state.

You might ask what are trihalomethanes?  They are chemical compounds in which three of the four hydrogen atoms of methane (CH4) are replaced by halogen atoms.  Many trihalomethanes find uses in industry as solvents or refrigerants.  They are also environmental pollutants, and many are considered carcinogenic.  WOW.  This is what is in my water and it is introduced by our local sewer and water utility.

There you have it.  That’s what in the water and most of the contaminants occurs through natural erosion of deposits and some is introduced by the sewer and water utility. 

Now let’s address what is above your water tables and aquifers.  I will begin with the cartoon cross-section of a septic system.  This is a rendition of a septic leach field/drainfield.  When you flush the toilet, the fluids pass through the septic tank, where most of the solids are captured.  The lighter solids and liquids are transported to the drainfield.  The soil absorbs the lighter solids and some of the liquids, with the balance of the effluent being purified by the deeper soil layers.  The water then enters as theoretically purified groundwater.  All of this relies on GRAVITY and SOIL ABSORPTION to purify the effluent.  Remember that.

Source: Google Images

Next move to landfills, which is one of my biggest pet peeves.  Below is the second cartoon of a cross-section of a landfill.  Environmentalists are so preoccupied with the hydraulic fracturing issues, that they have completely ignored many other more pressing issues.  Landfill waste should be at the top of that list.

Source: Google Images

The following is from the EPA website.  Municipal solid waste landfills (MSWLFs) receive household waste. MSWLFs can also receive non-hazardous sludge, industrial solid waste, and construction and demolition debris. All MSWLFs must comply with the federal regulations in 40 CFR Part 258 (Subtitle D of RCRA), or equivalent state regulations. Federal MSWLF standards include:

•   Location restrictions—ensure that landfills are built in suitable geological areas away from faults, wetlands, flood plains, or other restricted areas.

•   Composite liners requirements—include a flexible membrane (geomembrane) overlaying two feet of compacted clay soil lining the bottom and sides of the landfill, protect groundwater and the underlying soil from leachate releases.

•   Leachate collection and removal systems—sit on top of the composite liner and removes leachate from the landfill for treatment and disposal.

•   Operating practices—include compacting and covering waste frequently with several inches of soil help reduce odor; control litter, insects, and rodents; and protect public health.

•   Groundwater monitoring requirements—requires testing groundwater wells to determine whether waste materials have escaped from the landfill.

•   Closure and postclosure care requirements—include covering landfills and providing long-term care of closed landfills.

•   Corrective action provisions—control and clean up landfill releases and achieves groundwater protection standards.

•   Financial assurance—provides funding for environmental protection during and after landfill closure (i.e., closure and postclosure care).

What’s not listed by the EPA in this description of what a landfill is supposed to have, are the contaminants.  For decades all kinds of things went into the waste stream: batteries (lead, zinc, lithium, acid, etc.), electronics (with cadmium and other deleterious metals), light bulbs (CFL with mercury), rotting food (noxious microbes, and other biological hazards), medical wastes from home (to numerous and deleterious to include), oil-based paints, turpentines, all kinds of cosmetics, and the list is end-list.   We are told that the liners and detection systems must be in place and that they work.  Do they?  As your surface waters, lakes, ponds and oceans, get polluted, the reliance and dependence on water tables and aquifers increases.  Do you want this junk sitting above your drinking water supply?

Remember that I said above, “All of this relies on GRAVITY and SOIL ABSORPTION to purify the effluent.”  How is it that it does not apply to hydraulic fracturing?  If gravity and soil absorption work for septic leach fields effluent, why would it not work in reverse?  Sediments would purify drilling fluid effluent, which I know is much less toxic (hydraulic fracturing fluids are 99% water with the 1% being non-water; I wish that the landfills and septic systems were 99% water and 1% non-water) than what is sitting on top of my water tables and aquifers and gravity is impacting them every second, of every minute, of every hour, of every day, of ever year; pulling those cadium, lead, terpentines, medical wastes closer to your water source.  Now, let’s put some more perspective on this.  While the landfills and septic leach fields are within several hundred feet of your water source, with gravity constantly acting on them, hydraulically fractured holes are thousands of feet below your water source, with the same gravity constantly acting on them.  

As the below cartoon shows, the oil and gas companies are required, through state regulations, to run casing, well below the water table and aquifers.  The casing is cemented (using natural resources) in place.  The cemented steel casing can be from 1,000 feet to over 3,000 feet long in order to protect water tables and aquifers from the production of oil and gas from below.  Next, most hydraulic fracturing occurs several thousands of feet to 15,000 feet below the water tables and aquifers.  Frac fluids rise only during hydraulic fracturing, once the fracturing is complete, the pressure drops and the fluids flow back into the pipe and are pumped back to the surface, where it is recovered.  The companies know volumetrically how much is sent down the hole and how much is recovered. 

Gas does rise, but many forget or simply don’t know that shales are typically impervious and impermeable.  They act as road blocks to migrating gas.  Shales are ductile at heat and temperature.  What does that mean?  It means that as the geothermal gradient (different in each depositional basin) increases, temperature increases.  As depth increases, so does pressure.  Temperature and pressure impact shales by making them ductile, or slightly plastic, thereby healing fractures.  The hydraulic pressure needed to fracture the overlying lithostatic pressure to the surface, is not possible with current technology.  But does anyone tell you this.  No, it is not in their interest.  

Sources: Google Images

Exponential Growth

While this blog is not energy specific, it is science related.  I thought that it was worth discussing as the general population continues to apply stress in many areas – related or unrelated.  In the Sunday, August 4, 2013 Star Tribune, in the Health Section of page A11, they had an article entitled, “Is Meat Making You Sick?”  I would like to digress for a minute.  My father was a pediatrician in the 1960s.  He loved medicine and read the latest medical articles.

I can remember asking him about antibiotics and how they worked.  He said that antibiotics worked on bacterium, but not on a virus.   The use of antibiotics for bacteria and common ailments, were routinely used and increasingly prescribed by physicians for many bacterial infections.  He said that someday the bacteria would beat out antibiotics.  I naively asked why and he said the rapid reproducibility of bacteria would evolve faster than the scientist’s ability to manufacture succeeding antibiotics.  The graph below depicts the exponential growth of bacteria in numbers, not in generations.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=Ip_GUy8jq_5hEM&tbnid=SXMuGSrkhx3LkM:&ved=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fe-ducation.net%2Fstructuredwriting.html&ei=Ywn_UZf1IsGQyAGQ6oCICw&psig=AFQjCNFaKF-a0eAMKYTdLcYwyj2d-crxQA&ust=1375754979598379

The graph below shows the how bacteria reproduce by binary fission.  Each binary fission is another generation.  Each generation is evolution and with it comes adaptive changes to its molecular structure.

http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&client=safari&sa=N&rls=en&hl=en&biw=1309&bih=732&tbm=isch&tbnid=HaKYc6hixSPpkM:&imgrefurl=http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/science/21c/keeping_healthy/disease_resistancerev2.shtml&docid=OJKjmul_jGf_EM&imgurl=http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/science/images/21c_bio_microorganisms.jpg&w=450&h=382&ei=IRv_UbuJBuH4yAHI6IG4DQ&zoom=1&ved=1t:3588,r:2,s:0,i:89&iact=rc&page=1&tbnh=200&tbnw=236&start=0&ndsp=18&tx=93&ty=33

As you can see, one bacterium multiplies to eight bacteria in 60 minutes.  That is 4 generations in only 60 minutes.

In the below chart, one can see the explosive development of antibiotics from the 1940s, peaking in the 1960s and significantly tailing off into the new millennium.  This is a function of fewer antibiotic discoveries and a more onerous FDA approval process.  This is a very negative and disturbing trend.

http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&client=safari&rls=en&hl=en&biw=1309&bih=732&tbm=isch&tbnid=5k_gu8omevi3KM:&imgrefurl=http://smellslikescience.com/a-need-for-new-antibiotics/&docid=dV5TgGHD-ji8JM&imgurl=http://smellslikescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/antibiotic-discovery.jpg&w=609&h=441&ei=eBv_Uf_BGpDiyAG8_YGADQ&zoom=1&ved=1t:3588,r:0,s:0,i:79&iact=rc&page=1&tbnh=169&tbnw=219&start=0&ndsp=15&tx=130&ty=64

While I am not an epidemiologist, a geneticist, a statistician, mathematician, etc., I can recognize diverging charts.  The bacteria growth remains on an exponential growth and binary fission (generational) path, while antibiotic discovery and implementation appears to be on a declining asymptotic path. 

I try to identify trends and analyze markets and companies.  I typically employ mosaic theory to identify trends.  As the name implies, a mosaic is made up of many colored tiles.  While viewed individually, they are meaningless.  As more and more tiles are added, a picture emerges.  The same can be done with pieces of data.  For instance, the honey bee population is being decimated by a bee virus and other environmental factors, not well understood.   Honeybees are required for pollinating just about everything fruit and vegetable.  If they become extinct, then how are we to grow fruits and vegetables?  While this is just one tile, that may suggest is a one-off event.  However, when it is added to the next three tiles, a picture begins to emerge.  1) The meat article, mentioned above, describes the overuse of antibiotics in animals, where 70% of all antibiotics in the US is consumed.  2) Genetically modified organisms (GMO) have been developed to produce an increase in the yield of row crops to better feed an increase in the protein consumption of emerging markets.  3) The increase of staph infection, in particular, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA), which is resistant to methicillin, oxacillin, penicillin, and amoxicillin.

This mosaic has in common a bacteria or viral component (and it is only 4 tiles), in which, we are engineering genetic traits into seeds, or developing antibiotics to fight increasingly antibiotic resistant bacteria.  How do you outrun a bacteria or virus that replicate and evolve at an exponential rate?  My father was correct.  

New DOE study on Hydraulic Fracturing doesn't Contaminate Aquifers

The National Energy Technology Laboratory in Pittsburgh just released a study on hydraulic fracturing and its impact or should I say, lack of impact, on drinking water aquifers.  The study indicates that after a year of monitoring eight Marcellus Shale wells, that drilling fluids did not migrate into aquifers.

The year long study included the seismic monitoring of eight wells with one injected with four different tracers at different stages of the hydraulic fracturing process.  The tracers were included in the drilling fluids that were over 8,000 feet below the surface at the gas well bore.    No tracers were detected at a monitoring zone at a depth of 5,000 feet.  They monitored a separate series of older gas wells that are about 3,000 feet above the Marcellus to see if the fracturing fluid migrated up to them, and none did.

This will go along way to support the industry, but additional analyses will continue, particularly for those much shallower wells.  I have read many of the studies and reports of hydraulic fracturing. Many of the facts are ignored by numerous groups, who are anti-petroleum industry.  Here is a list of subjects that should be discussed:

• Most potable aquifers are within less than 1,000 feet of the surface (typically less than 500 feet); most shale gas producers are below 5,000 feet.
• The deeper the aquifers, the more dissolved metals and minerals in the aquifer, making the cost of stripping these metals and minerals out of the water, too costly (at the moment).
• Shale has natural gas incorporated within its molecular lattice, but can only be released through hydraulic fracturing.
• Shale has natural gas incorporated within its molecular lattice if the total organic content (TOC) is high enough.  Not all shale produces natural gas.  Exxon tried hydraulic fracturing in a large acreage package in Poland and found nothing economic.  It has left the Polish shale play.
• Shale is formed from platy clay particles (produced by a process of weathering of granites, metamorphic rocks and the re-weathering of shales) that drop out of solution in quiet waters.  These platy particles align and begin to form shales as increased pressure and temperature from burial due to the creation of overlying sediments, squeeze the water out of the molecular lattice.  The point of all this is to think of shale as a series of asphalt shingle roofs stacked on top of each other.  The thicker the shale, the more layers of asphalt shingles.  This is what makes shale impervious and impermeable; making any kind of fluids penetrating the formation incredibly difficult. 
• Shale tends to become plastic-like with increased temperature and depth, up to the point that the both begin to metamorphose the molecular structure into slate (which is brittle).   
• There is never any discussion by the writers about the pressure used in hydraulic fracturing versus the overburden pressure that must be overcome. 

At the end of the day, there are thousands of feet of overlying sediments exerting a lithostatic pressure that exceeds the pressure employed in hydraulic fracturing.  Thereby limiting the propagation of fractures in the upward direction.