The Hardness of Steel

Steel is a mystery. Essential to our psyche and civilization, it is perhaps our most useful invention, as well as the third largest industrial cause of climate change. Its myriad properties which enable that usefulness are due to its endless formulations, which have evolved with us.
Molybdenum is one of the minerals which give steel its hardness, but the quantities used are so small that the demand is limited, causing an oscillating demand, which has prompted the mining industry to mine it only periodically.
One such mine in my list of interests, is on Copper Mountain, southwest of Denver.
Also on my list to shoot are two power plants that are among the 100 largest CO2 and mercury emitters in the USA. This group of attractions, in combination with an exhibit in Denver and lecture invitation, suggested a photo flight.


Lighthawk is a group of pilots that fly for the environment, and are frequent partners in my work. Their pilot Stephanie Wells agreed to the mission, and I laid out a flight plan, which Stephanie modified with her local knowledge and experience of high altitude flying, an exacting experience set combing science, local knowledge, skill, aerodynamics, and the knowledge of her aircraft. The steel would have to wait.


We agreed to go west to the power plant at Craig, CO, the 51th largest CO2 emitter in the USA, which is also near several coal mines, one deep below ground, the other on the surface.

Trees affected by bark beetle in Colorado Rockies

Much of the success of  these projects comes from predicting and praying for the right weather, and we had luck on our appointed day. For a coast native that studies those regions, the mountains held a novel fascination- what Stephanie saw as normal was unique and beautiful to me as we crossed the “Front Range” as the mountains closest to Denver are called.



The first environmentally interesting site, a deep coal mine, had not been on my plan, but with an abiding curiosity to see these things and how they work, we circled, before moving on the the power plant at Craig. So as not to seem like a sinister character, cautious pilots limit the number of circles they will make around a power plant. We agreed to pan around it once, circle the nearby mine, and pass by again on the way back to the nearby airfield for fuel, (Stephanie had flown with a minimum for the mountain crossing) and then pass the plant again on our way to the open-pit mine. Power plants are often rather ugly affairs, and this one is no exception, being all stacks, boilers, and turbines enclosed in a utilitarian building.

Coal-fired power plant. 51th largest CO2 emitter in the USA

Open-pit mines use drill rigs to make holes which are “charged” with ammonium nitrate to blast away the dirt (overburden) covering the object of the mine (in this case coal). The overburden is scooped and dumped to the side by a giant walking “dragline”.
After one pass around the mine, Stephanie expressed nervousness about our fuel level, so we went back to tank up from a charismatic old Coloradan gentleman at the tiny air strip (sadly, I left the cameras in the plane). As we took off again, a giant cloud filled the distant sky, and we reasoned it was a blast at the mine, probably executed after everyone left for lunch, due to the danger of flying rock. Still, it was a sight I was disappointed to miss.

Compressor trucks, well-heads and chemical tanks at fracking site

Hydro-fracking has been a controversial gas extraction technique around the world, and Colorado is no exception. Between the close proximity to houses and schools, and the regional scarcity of water, a resource mightily depleted by this process, local people were organizing in opposition to the industry near their homes, and I was asked to get the bird’s eye view. So we came down from the mountains and out to the plains around Boulder to find the sites, and they proved to be a textbook series of illustrative examples of the process. Hydro-fracking is also a rather ugly business, visually as well as its side-effects. A giant drill makes a deep and meandering hole, then leaves to make room for a group of large, powerful compressors which pump that bore full of water and chemicals at excruciating pressure, endeavoring to fracture the gas-bearing layer of rock below.

Factory farm for cattle

I have many topics of abiding interest, and never know when opportunity might arise to further those stories, and I was quite pleased to see large factory farms of beef cattle just on the other side of the fracking sites. Beef is the most climate-change intensive of foods– and, one hamburger requires upwards of 8,000 gallons of water to produce, this in a water-challenged region.


The day really seems a smashing success, even if we did not make it to see the steel, and both pilot and artist were glad to get back on the ground and run to the head.

North Dakota Landscape

I'm sitting on a rise in North Dakota (it's pretty flat out here) and admiring the rolling farmland that has supplied our country with grain for so long. After the beauty of the landscape, so different from where I was raised, in the Deep South, what strikes me first is the constancy of the wind. In the three days I have been here, it is always there. From my perch, I would expect windmills as far as the eye could see. After all, who could argue with free electricity? Instead, I'm surrounded by drill rigs, each a tremendous industrial zone on its own "pad" cut out of the farmland. The traffic on this small dirt farming road is constant, most of it being tanker trucks hauling fresh water to the sites and contaminated water away, the process of "hydro-fracking" being such a thirsty one.

Discussions with local people orient mostly around the jobs the industry has brought to the community, and everyone wants prosperity for themselves and their neighbors. Then they might wistfully speak about how the town has changed from a place where no one ever locked their doors to a Wild West boom town with crime and infrastructure overload. There is a tremendous influx of people who have come here for work, from the oil field workers to the waitresses. At a point in history when our country has actively exported so many of its manufacturing jobs overseas, and gutted the middle class, leaving your family to come to ND for a well paying job seems like a good opportunity.

And we are told this is the way it must be. "Progress has its costs." But it's only this way because the people that are making the real money from these extraction industries are preventing any change. The senators who give impassioned speeches about climate change being a hoax, and decrying the conspiracy of the scientists who would impose world government on us are not stupid. They are venal.

Our economy will change. Will it happen at our behest, and evolve into an economy of sustainability, or will it happen in reaction to multiple catastrophic weather events that destroy coastal infrastructure and completely disrupt agriculture, and rising sea levels which force us away from the coasts?

Like all economic booms based on extractive industries, this one will end. The irony is that this could be a boom based on implementing a new paradigm, and that boom would not end. Windmills need constant maintenance, but they don't need water, and they don't cause climate change.

Buy A House

I'm a little blue. Circumstances have conspired so that I must leave a house that I love. We have all been there. And of course, the consolation is that this is a great time to buy a house, or so they say. I want to stay in New York State, and Westchester is too expensive, so I am looking north. There are some great places on the market: nice houses, large properties, old farms. I look at the listings and imagine myself there - a beautiful picture. Then I look them up on the map, and my heart sinks, as I cross-reference each location against a map of the existing gas drilling leases in New York State. The sad fact is that much of New York State has been leased for gas drilling, and as a prospective buyer of property, there is no way I would buy something that might have hydro-fracking near it.

Admittedly I have a good understanding of the process, and thus the risks inherent. But even for the layman, all one needs to know can be summarized in this editorial by an environmental engineering technician: “Hydraulic fracturing as it’s practiced today will contaminate our aquifers.” Why would I, as a home buyer looking to invest life savings in a property, buy something that will have poisoned water?

The question arises whether I should believe this technician or the glowing industry reports (from an industry that has wheedled exemptions from the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, and hopes to get in and profit and get out). I will err on the side of caution, thank you very much. And of course I feel badly for those who were duped into signing leases for their land, and even worse for those that live adjacent to leased land. Caveat emptor.

HYDROFRACKING

19 April 2010

Water, water, everywhere, who needs to worry about a drop to drink?

In an effort to keep tabs on the Catskills gas drilling issue and its impact on the regional water supply, up we went for another look at the activity of the pernicious gas drillers. Catskill Mountainkeeper, Wes Gillingham, Lighthawk pilot Bob Keller and yours truly, the undesignated hydro-fracking swat team out to save your drinking water.

For those who don’t know, hydro-fracking is a deep drilling technique that enables access to natural gas reserves locked in shale formations a mile or more below the surface by pumping vast quantities of water mixed with a chemical cocktail at extremely high pressure to fracture the rock formation and unlock the natural gas therein. Permits have been issued for the western Catskills, and drilling has already begun in the adjacent areas of Pennsylvania. The process uses millions of gallons of water per well, and could easily deplete groundwater and fluvial resources. And then of course are the pollution issues: these millions of gallons of chemical–laced water are being injected down through the aquifer, and back up again.

This was our third flight, so we knew the terrain and the issues pretty well, and agreed to meet at the Poughkeepsie airfield. It was a beautiful day, clear and cool (or as clear as it gets with the always-present pollution.) Always tolerant of my meanderings, Bob and Wes had agreed to a detour to look at a few coal-fired power plants and the Westchester Garbage Incinerator. So we shot the Danskammer Plant first (you can see their emissions report here if you want a little fright)

Coal Ash at Danskammer Power Plant

Our next stop on the tour was Lovett Plant in Tompkins Cove, just upriver from NYC.
When we got there, it was gone. How do you disappear a large power plant? Turns out, it was part of the Enron debacle (remember that) and was spun off to a company called Dynergy that refused to upgrade its pollution controls and was then ordered to close. Good riddance, New Yorkers can breathe a bit easier (turn off the lights before they build another one.) Here is the pollution scorecard on it.

The gas drilling sites we had photographed on our last expedition (nine months ago) were capped and closed, leaving only a giant industrial pad in the middle of the once pristine farm fields. It is amazing how fast they operate, drilling, fracking, and extracting in less than a year. I wonder if the farmers knew that they would be left with an abandoned industrial site in place of their farms. I wonder what the well water is like now?

We then moved westward to see some new sites, and were amply rewarded with some impressive drill rig towers, and then a site with a flare. Flares are generally how the really nasty stuff is burned away in petroleum refineries and drill sites, so you don’t want to live near there. (Wonder if the neighbors know about that?) Then we found a site with a continuous stream of tanker trucks filling a giant man-made pond, which gives some idea of the amount of water used in this process. As we circled, we saw several tractor trailers come and go without making a dent in the level. Assumedly, there is not enough groundwater at that location to support the millions of gallons per well, so they are likely trucking it in. But imagine if that amount of water was being removed from the aquifer as it is elsewhere. Water is so precious, and we take it for granted.

Then we happened upon a site in which fracking was in process, with numerous compressor trucks arrayed around a spider rig, looking like some industrial creature being attended by its feeder slaves. Quite fascinating, actually. The amount of pressure needed to fracture the shale formation is tremendous, and I can’t believe that pumping that water/chemical mixture down at such pressure through the aquifer is innocuous as the gas companies claim.