Lenape Resources, Inc.

Lenape Resources, Inc. is the operating arm of Lenape Energy, Inc. Along with its sister companies Lenape Drilling, Inc. and Lenape Gathering Corp, Lenape Resources is involved in the exploration, development, gathering and marketing of oil and natural gas resources in the Appalachian basin with a primary focus in the states of New York and Pennsylvania.

Lenape has been disposing of drilling wastewater in Caledonia NY, 27 miles southwest of Rochester, NY on a permit which expired in 2007 but was administratively continued.

(Editor’s Note: 20 Oct 2023. Neil Zusman)

This article starts out in 2010 to be about Lenape Resources, a New York State gas operator of active wells, operating a wastewater disposal site for frack water in a town near Rochester NY for 3 years after their permit expired.

The old link: See also: Public Notice No. 2010- 25 Permit No. NYU119702 Date: August 3, 2010

When I searched for the archived EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) link, the one I originally cited to the public notice from 2010 was no longer available. This has happened only rarely in my review of the Fracking Resource Guide external links undertaken this year in 2023.

When I examined the archive.org timeline for the last available link – it stopped at 2007 and then continued with a 2017 “update” that erased this information on corporate misbehavior and its potential penalties.

The 2007 EPA link: https://web.archive.org/web/20070526161202/http://www.epa.gov/region02/public_notices/

Readers can get a sense of what the old EPA Public Notices page did: it recorded violations and potential violations of EPA regulations made in the interest of public safety.

The current EPA website tracking violations by state may be found here, through what is now known as their ECHO rsource. ECHO (Environmental and Compliance History Online)

The 2007 Archived EPA link: https://web.archive.org/web/20070526161202/http://www.epa.gov/region02/public_notices/

Note the timeline above the link. When were these pages taken down? If they were taken down in 2008, was it the Bush-Cheney EPA that did it? Why weren’t they restored?

In 2017, in the early days of the Trump administration, EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt restored something but it had already been put into operation by the Obama Administration. Did the EPA still track violations under Trump?

As reported in the Washington Post in 2017:

Chris Mooney and Juliet Eilperin. EPA website removes climate science site from public view after two decades. 28 Apr 2017. Washington Post.

The Environmental Protection Agency headquarters. (Photo by Matt McClain/ The Washington Post)

For New York, you can see the current version of the enforcement record here using ECHO:

https://echo.epa.gov/facilities/facility-search/results?state=NY&activeOp=Y

Echo began in 2002 but was updated under the Obama Administration. This page was last updated: February 29, 2016

https://echo.epa.gov/resources/general-info/modernization-information

Here is the page titled: EPA Enforcement and Compliance History Online, updated 19 Jun 2021.

https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/epa-enforcement-and-compliance-history-online

There seems to be a gap that may be worth exploring but it will come as little surprise that during the Trump Administration regulations struggled to make it to the public record.

United States District Judge Sean J. McLaughlin imposed the sentences on John Morgan, age 54, of Sheffield, Pennsylvania, and Michael Evans, age 66, of La Quinta, California. Mr. Morgan received a sentence of three years probation, a $4,000 fine, eight months home detention and eighty hours community service. Mr. Evans received a sentence of three years probation, a $5,000 fine, ten months home detention and one hundred hours community service.

The EPA oversees the Underground Injection Control Program. Under the Eleventh amendment to the U.S. Constitution, if the state violates a Federal law, then the courts have jurisdiction, but if it’s a purely state matter, they don’t. How did Lenape manage to go three years without a permit to dispose of it’s fracking waste water?

According to the website, Endangered Environmental Laws, “…over time, courts have transformed [the Eleventh Amendment] into a sweeping doctrine of state “sovereign immunity,” unmoored from the Constitution’s text, and in recent years, a conservative bloc of the Supreme Court has further expanded states’ immunity from private lawsuits. In the environmental context, this has led to near-total immunity of state agencies from citizen suits under the federal coal-mining statute; to similar challenges (so far unsuccessful) to citizen litigation under the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act; and to dismissal of state employees’ whistleblower complaints under the Solid Waste Disposal Act and other laws.”

“The states are permitted to act unjustly only because the highest court in the land has, by its own will, moved the middle ground and narrowed the nation’s power.

With rare exception, many people, including Indian tribes, federal employees, patent holders, the elderly, and the disabled, find themselves unable to vindicate rights granted by federal laws in any court when the defendant is a state or a state agency.”

Violations are prosecuted only after a dramatic event such as an explosion leading to workers’ deaths. Even when the dumping of toxic waste is prosecuted, the sentences’ regulatory effect is minimal. Environmental felons absorb these costs of doing business.
Babcock, H. “Effect of the United States Supreme Court’s Eleventh Amendment Jurisprudence on Clean Water Act Citizen Suits: Muddied Waters, The.” Oregon Law Review 83 (2004): 47.

However, the Justice Department sees it differently. According to John C. Cruden, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, “The Safe Water Drinking Act and the regulations overseeing oil and gas related injection wells are designed to ensure safe sources of drinking water. Violations of these laws will be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” Mr. Cruden was Chief Legislative Counsel, U.S. Army (1988-1991).

See also: Nicholas St. Fleur. The Alarming Research Behind New York’s Fracking Ban. 19 Nov 2014. The Atlantic.

See also: Karen Edelstein. NEW YORK STATE OIL & GAS WELLS – 2020 UPDATE. 11 Mar 2020. Fractracker Alliance.

We’ve recently updated the New York State Oil and Gas Well Viewer with data up to 2020. The map and data below show that conventional gas drilling in New York State has decreased significantly since the first decade of 2000, but drilling for oil in western New York has increased in the past few years. In part thanks to the fracking ban in New York State, less than 1% of the wells in New York State have been drilled unconventionally.

These data are compiled by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation on their Downloadable Well Data site, and mapped by FracTracker. Well data can either be accessed as a zipped file, or viewed on a well-by-well scale through a searchable database.

NY DEC Downloadable Well Data site: http://www.dec.ny.gov/energy/1603.html

Searchable database: https://www.dec.ny.gov/cfmx/extapps/GasOil/search/wells/index.cfm

See also: Joaquin Sapien and Sabrina Shankman. Drilling Wastewater Disposal Options in N.Y. Report Have Problems of Their Own. 29 Dec 2009. Circle of Blue.

This report comes to Circle of Blue from ProPublica, an independent, non-profit newsroom based in Manhattan that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.

Circle of Blue provides relevant, reliable, and actionable on-the-ground information about the world’s resource crises.

See also: Cecot, Caroline, No Fracking Way: An Empirical Investigation of Local Shale Development Bans in New York (September 1, 2017). Environmental Law, Forthcoming, George Mason Law & Economics Research Paper No. 17-41, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3045436

See: Texas Transportation Company and Officials Sentenced for Hazmat Violations

See: Gas Drillers Plead Guilty to Felony Dumping Violations

See: Drilling Wastewater Disposal Options in N.Y. Report Have Problems of Their Own – ProPublica

See: The Effect of the United States Supreme Court’s Eleventh Amendment Jurisprudence on Clean Water Act Citizen Suits: Muddied Waters | Mixplex

See: U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi: The Gavel: Draining The Swamp

See: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Case Heads to Supreme Court

See: Priscilla Summers v. Earth Island Institute Supreme Court Decision : ACOEL

See: WATER: Rulings Restrict Clean Water Act, Foiling E.P.A.