| The Environmental Protection Agency says a subsidiary of Chesapeake Energy has illegally buried some WV streams, apparently joining a trend of filling hundreds of miles of the state's streams by mountaintop removal.
The issue should be a concern of Central West Virginia communities, where Marcellus Shale development is expected to occur.
But Chesapeake is now promising to restore four northern West Virginia streams it filled illegally while building roads and laying pipeline for Marcellus shale gas drilling projects.
EPA spokeswoman Donna Heron confirmed that federal inspectors cited Chesapeake Appalachia LLC after four site visits in Wetzel and Marshall counties.
The report said inspectors found that Blake Fork stream and a picturesque waterfall near New Martinsville had been completely filled with gravel for a road.
Local photographer Ed Wade took before and after photographs of the 20-foot wide stream and the waterfall, visited because of its beauty.
Wade said, " They just took their dozers and ripped it out."
Blake Fork and three other streams affected by Chesapeake's drilling operations are tributaries of Fish Creek, which flows into the Ohio River.
Chesapeake spokesman Matt Sheppard called the incidents "isolated issues concerning earth-moving activity."
Chesapeake is among dozens of companies rushing to tap the Marcellus shale field, a vast, mile-deep natural gas reserve underlying most parts of West Virginia and other states.
Marcellus Shale hold trillions of cubic feet of gas, but breaking it free from the rock requires horizontal drilling and water-intensive hydraulic fracturing technologies, both procedures which are being questioned in other states.
Horizontal drilling is a growing concern of landowners, and environmentalists have expressed concerns about the millions of gallons of water used in the fracing process and its disposition.
Those groups have been looking to the WV Legislature for help
preventing problems with property rights, water pollution, erosion, road destruction, among other things.
Chesapeake has violations in Wetzel and Marshall counties dating back to 2007, when they received citations for illegally filling in Laurel Run near Cameron between January 2007 and December 2009.
Violations on Lynn Camp Run and Middle Fork Lynn Camp Run, both near New Martinsville, were done without a legally required permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The compliance orders are requiring Chesapeake to remove the fill and restore the streams and wetlands "to pre-disturbance conditions."
Wade, a 40-year-old boilermaker, told the Associated Press he is
skeptical Chesapeake will change its ways.
"If someone's watching them, they do right. It's like a little kid. If they can get away with it, they're going to. They don't care. It's all about their bottom line," Wade said.
CBS's 60 Minutes aired a report on natural gas production in America, including concerns about the environmental impacts.
Interviewed was Aubrey McClendon, the CEO of Chesapeake Energy, one of the country's largest producers of natural gas.
EPA documented illegal discharges of dredge and fill material at several Chesapeake drilling sites, the CBS report said.
Sources: Wetzel Chronicle, Associated Press, CBS News
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