Environment & Energy

Fracking arrives in Luzerne County community
BY ANDREW STAUB (STAFF WRITER) Nov 10, 2010 Updated Apr 15, 2020

LAKE TWP. - A low hum rolled through the chilly country air Wednesday afternoon, traveling about 1,000 feet from a natural gas well to Robert Anderson's home on muddy Zosh Road.

"That sounds like they're fracking," Mr. Anderson said. "I didn't hear that before."

For all the hand-wringing that has accompanied the Marcellus Shale natural gas boom in Luzerne County, the controversial fracking process arrived in Lake Twp. with little noise - save for the low hum and the occasional clanging metal emanating from Encana Oil & Gas USA Inc.'s exploratory gas well.

About three football fields from Mr. Anderson's small trailer, crews injected water, sand and other chemicals into the ground, a process intended to break up underground shale and draw natural gas from the earth.

…

Project Updates

The Caithness Moxie Freedom Generating Station in Salem Township, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, is online and selling power into the markets of PJM Interconnection, a regional transmission organization that coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity in thirteen Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states.

This $1 billion, highly efficient facility uses Pennsylvania-produced, clean-burning natural gas to generate more than 1,000 megawatts of electric power, enough to supply approximately 900,000 homes throughout the region.

Using state-of-the-art technology, the plant is the highest efficiency user of natural gas in the region. The dry-cooling technology used by the plant means that water usage is 95 percent lower than a plant of the same size using traditional cooling technology. A 1,050-megawatt, highly efficient combined cycle plant such as Freedom reduces CO2 emissions by 3.2 million tons per year compared to the older steam plants.

During construction, employment peaked at more than 650 workers per day at the site. Overall, it took more than 2 million man-hours to safely complete construction while remaining vigilant to the highest safety and environmental standards.

The Freedom Generating Station transitioned to commercial operation in September 2018.

…