Natural gas workshop June 23

Penn State Cooperative Extension and state Rep. Karen Boback are hosting a workshop on June 23 about natural gas leasing.
The workshop is titled, "Understanding and Negotiating Natural Gas Leases."
It begins 7 p.m. at the Lake-Lehman High School Auditorium.

The workshop has a $15 fee.
To register, contact the Luzerne County Extension Office at 570-825-1701 or call 1-888-825-1701 toll-free.


For more details or directions, contact one of Boback's offices:
- the Mountain Top office is located at 7844 Blue Ridge Trail, 570-868-7780
- the Sweet Valley office at 5315 Main Road, 570-477-3752
- the Tunkhannock office at 6 Cross Country Complex, 570-836-4777

-- Josh Mrozinski

Protecting Your Drinking Water

The Penn State Cooperative Extension hosted two forums last week on testing a private drinking water supply.
During the June 9 forum in Wayne County, 230 people attended, and 98 returned water samples for testing the next day, said Dave Messersmith, extension education of the Penn State Cooperative Extension of Wayne County. Thirty attendees of the Montrose program June 10 returned samples, he said.
Bryan Swistock, water resources extension associate with Penn State University, recommends regular water testing for all homeowners. To obtain a water test kit from the Penn State’s Agricultural Analytical Services Laboratory, visit http://www.aasl.psu.edu/.
The United States Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library, has as on-line Water Quality Information Center. Visit http://www.nal.usda.gov/wqic/water_quality.shtml.

Road bonding

Recently, Herrick Township secretary Diana Dorman encouraged members of the Wyoming County Council of Governments to adopt bonding for their dirt and gravel roads. She told supervisors that bonding is needed to protect roads from heavy trucks that would be used to haul equipment to natural gas drilling sites. She said that $600,000 in damage was caused to her road -- Cold Creek Road -- by heavy trucks hauling equipment to a nearby drilling site.

Dorman also recommended that municipalities follow these procedures:
- Establish the weight restrictions
- Pass an ordinance
- Notify the user and enforcement agency
- Post the limits
- Establish bonds
- Excess maintenance agreement
- Issue permit
- Monitor the damage



-- Josh Mrozinski