Official: Seek upgraded water protection

STEVE MOCAR
timesleader.com
Thurs., May 20, 2010

The head of a state environmental regulatory bureau said the public can help protect Pennsylvania waterways from pollution related to natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale by contacting legislators and a review board in support of tough new proposed regulations.

Scott R. Perry, director of the state Department of Environmental Protection’s Bureau of Oil and Gas Management, said last week that the oil and gas industry is “dead-set against these regulations on total dissolved solids in flowback fracking water. We’re going to have a huge fight with the Independent Regulatory Review Commission,” he said.

The hydraulic fracturing process (fracking) used to release natural gas from the shale, requires injecting about 5 million gallons of water into the ground per well. About 12 percent of that water, which contains trace chemicals and high concentrations of dissolved solids such as salt, flows back and must be disposed.

DEP Secretary John Hanger said in a press release that the new rules will ensure that the total dissolved solids, or TDS, in drilling wastewater do not pollute drinking water supplies, damage industrial equipment or endanger delicate aquatic life.

“Drilling wastewater contains TDS levels that are thousands of times more harmful to aquatic life than discharges from other industries. Without imposing limits on this pollution, treatment costs for this wastewater are passed along to downstream industries and municipal ratepayers,” Hanger said. “All other industries in Pennsylvania are responsible for the waste they generate, and the drilling industry should be no exception.”

Putting TDS in perspective:

In a phone interview, Hanger said the TDS concentration in discharges from landfills is about 2,000 miligrams-per-liter (mg/l). In coal mine discharges, it’s about 20,000 to 30,000 mg/l. In Marcellus Shale drilling discharges, it’s about 300,000 mg/l.

Under the new regulations, wastewater discharges from new and expanded facilities must meet a concentration threshold of 2,000 mg/l and discharges from drilling operations cannot exceed 500 mg/l.

The state Environmental Quality Board on Monday approved the regulations. Next, the rules will go to the Environmental Resources and Energy committees in the state House and Senate, as well as to the Independent Regulatory Review Commission for a 30-day review period.

The new rule was “thoroughly vetted and scrutinized” and amended in response to industry concerns, Hanger said.

Still, when speaking last week with members of the public at Lake-Lehman High School after a presentation on DEP’s role in regulating natural gas drilling, Perry said he could foresee “legislative action to intervene in trying to disapprove these regulations. Part of the regulatory process allows the House and Senate to pass resolutions disapproving the law.”

The industry likely would oppose the regulations because outfitting treatment facilities with equipment capable of lowering the concentrations of TDS would be expensive, as would be alternative disposal methods.

Perry said the public needs to step up in support of the regulations to protect the environment.

“Legislators and the Independent Regulatory Review Commission need to hear from more people than just industry representatives,” he said.

LINK

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!

PA Must Take Action to Protect Water Resources from Drilling Wastewater, Other Sources of TDS Pollution

Proposed Rules will Help Keep Drinking Water, Streams and Rivers Clean

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA
Dept. of Environmental Protection
Commonwealth News Bureau
Room 308, Main Capitol Building
Harrisburg PA., 17120

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

04/6/2010

CONTACT:

Neil Weaver

(717) 571-3866

HARRISBURG -- High levels of total dissolved solids pollution from natural gas drilling and other sources pose a real threat to Pennsylvania’s streams and rivers, including aquatic life, warned Department of Environmental Protection Secretary John Hanger today.

“The treating and disposing of gas drilling brine and fracturing wastewater is a significant challenge for the natural gas industry because of its exceptionally high TDS concentrations,” said Hanger. “Marcellus drilling is growing rapidly and our rules must be strengthened now to prevent our waterways from being seriously harmed in the future.”

Hanger pointed to recent examples where TDS impaired streams and affected major sources of drinking water.

In 2008 and 2009, TDS levels exceeded drinking water standards along the Monongahela River, which is a major source of drinking water. Drinking water treatment plants do not have the equipment available to remove TDS, so any water polluted with TDS goes into Pennsylvania’s homes and businesses.

Similarly, in early September 2009, excessive TDS levels led to an environmental disaster that wiped out 26 miles of Dunkard Creek in Greene County, as well as many miles of the creek in West Virginia. These high TDS concentrations, coupled with other factors such as temperature and nutrient concentrations, enabled golden algae to bloom and created an inhospitable environment for aquatic life. The algae released toxins to the water column that literally wiped out aquatic life, including at least 16 species of freshwater mussels and 18 species of fish.

Dunkard Creek is an example of what can happen if TDS is not controlled, said Hanger, and the loss of this important public resource was an environmental and economic tragedy.

TDS is a measure of all elements dissolved in water that can include carbonates, chlorides, sulfates, nitrates, sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium. In addition to natural gas drilling, other sources of TDS include, abandoned mine drainage, agricultural runoff, and discharges from industrial or sewage treatment plants.

For more information, visit www.depweb@state.pa.us.

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!

Gas industry responds to flowback concerns

The Wellsboro Gazette
Wednesday, February 10, 2010

The Marcellus Shale Coalition issued the following statement Feb. 4 regarding water use and flowback water management in the development of natural gas from the Marcellus formation:

“Pennsylvanians deserve to get the facts about water management for Marcellus shale development. We need to put an end to the suppositions that could threaten our state’s ability to create jobs and investment here at home.

“Regulations governing the use and management of water needed to drill a Marcellus shale well in Pennsylvania are among the most stringent in the nation, (But that doesn't mean they are stringent enough!) and ensure the protection of the commonwealth’s water resources. (Though to date they haven't always done that.) Water withdrawals from streams and rivers must be approved, including the withdrawal location and amount of water required for each well, as well as detailed storage and treatment plans. (This does not guarantee protection either.)
“The industry currently treats or recycles all of its flowback water. Recycling accounts for approximately 60 percent of the water used to complete Marcellus shale wells, with greater percentages predicted for the future. There are more than a dozen approved water treatment facilities available to treat flowback water, with plans for additional capacity in the future. (Recycling recoverable water does not preclude or prevent pollution from the toxic fracking fluid that remains in the well bore. Flowback accounts for only a fractional percent of the water used in drilling in the Marcellus shale. CLICK HERE for a .pdf file of PA wastewater facilities.)

“Companies are working with international water quality experts and are funding research and development projects to develop mobile and permanent treatment technologies such as evaporation and crystallization. These efforts will enhance the commonwealth’s overall water treatment capabilities, while bringing more commerce into Pennsylvania. We’re also researching and developing deep underground injection well technology, which is a proven, safe disposal method in other regions of the country. (But not a proven, safe disposal method for our geology. Here wastewater returns to our watershed. ...And, as fracking chemicals remain an industry secret, how can we know we've safely "treated" produced water for reintroduction into our enviroment?)
“Claims about elevated levels of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) in the Monongahela River from natural gas development have been refuted by studies that attribute a minimal amount of the total TDS levels to Marcellus shale drilling activity. In fact, historical monitoring shows the variability of TDS levels in the Monongahela and other rivers to be a cyclical phenomenon over the past 30 years. (Smoke and Mirrors!) Convincing arguments may not be provable beyond doubt, but the possibility of contamination could be avoided if proper wastewater treatment facilities were in place BEFORE more drilling is permitted!

On Feb. 2, 2010, Dave Badger of Treasure Lake, Dubois wrote, in the Tri-County Courier Express: Millions of gallons of gas drilling wastewater are being produced every day and our state doesn't have a single treatment facility capable of properly treating it. Currently, much of the wastewater is being trucked to some municipal sewage and industrial treatment plants across the state where it's haphazardly treated before being discharged into our rivers and streams. These treatment plants are not equipped to remove TDS (total dissolved solids) and other chemical contaminants commonly found in drilling wastewater. High levels of TDS in mining wastewater contaminated Dunkard Creek last September in southern Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia. The salts in TDS caused a golden algae bloom, an algae not known to the region that thrives in brackish water, that wiped out virtually every fish and other aquatic organism along a 30-mile stretch of stream. An estimate of the loss of life was $30 million. Wouldn't it make more sense to have proper wastewater treatment facilities in place before issuing any more drilling permits? Fresh, clean water is our most precious natural resource, not natural gas. Our elected officials are allowing greed to trump common sense.

“The industry is committed to the use of Best Management Practices in all aspects of its operations, including significant investment in advanced flowback water treatment capabilities and recycling technologies.”The Marcellus Shale Coalition is comprised of dozens of drilling and service companies who work in Pennsylvania’s oil and gas industry. Its Web site is www.pamarcellus.com.
LINK
Editorial comments by Splashdown in red.

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!

Gas drilling in Appalachia yields a foul byproduct

By MARC LEVY and VICKI SMITH, Associated Press Writers
Tue Feb 2, 2:40 pm ET

HARRISBURG, Pa. – A drilling technique that is beginning to unlock staggering quantities of natural gas underneath Appalachia also yields a troubling byproduct: powerfully briny wastewater that can kill fish and give tap water a foul taste and odor.

With fortunes, water quality and cheap energy hanging in the balance, exploration companies, scientists and entrepreneurs are scrambling for an economical way to recycle the wastewater.

"Everybody and his brother is trying to come up with the 11 herbs and spices," said Nicholas DeMarco, executive director of the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association.

Drilling crews across the country have been flocking since late 2008 to the Marcellus Shale, a rock bed the size of Greece that lies about 6,000 feet beneath New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. Geologists say it could become the most productive natural gas field in the U.S., capable of supplying the entire country's needs for up to two decades by some estimates.

Before that can happen, the industry is realizing that it must solve the challenge of what to do with its wastewater. As a result, the Marcellus Shale in on its way to being the nation's first gas field where drilling water is widely reused.

The polluted water comes from a drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," in which millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals are blasted into each well to fracture tightly compacted shale and release trapped natural gas.

...

Fracking a horizontal well costs more money and uses more water, but it produces more natural gas from shale than a traditional vertical well.

Once the rock is fractured, some of the water — estimates range from 15 to 40 percent — comes back up the well. When it does, it can be five times saltier than seawater and laden with dissolved solids such as sulfates and chlorides, which conventional sewage and drinking water treatment plants aren't equipped to remove.

At first, many drilling companies hauled away the wastewater in tanker trucks to sewage treatment plants that processed the water and discharged it into rivers — the same rivers from which water utilities then drew drinking water.

But in October 2008, something happened that stunned environmental regulators: The levels of dissolved solids spiked above government standards in southwestern Pennsylvania's Monongahela River, a source of drinking water for more than 700,000 people.

Regulators said the brine posed no serious threat to human health. But the area's tap water carried an unpleasant gritty or earthy taste and smell and left a white film on dishes. And industrial users noticed corrosive deposits on valuable machinery.

One 11-year-old suburban Pittsburgh boy with an allergy to sulfates, Jay Miller, developed hives that itched for two weeks until his mother learned about the Monongahela's pollution and switched him to bottled or filtered water.

No harm to aquatic life was reported, though high levels of salts and other minerals can kill fish and other creatures, regulators say.

Pennsylvania officials immediately ordered five sewage treatment plants on the Monongahela or its tributaries to sharply limit the amount of frack water they accepted to 1 percent of their daily flow.

"It is a very great risk that what happened on the Monongahela could happen in many watersheds," said Ronald Furlan, a wastewater treatment official for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. "And so that's why we're trying to pre-empt and get ahead of it to ensure it doesn't happen again."

Regulators in Pennsylvania are trying to push through a new standard for the level of dissolved solids in water released from a treatment plant.

West Virginia authorities, meanwhile, have asked sewage treatment plants not to accept frack water while the state develops an approach to regulating dissolved solids.

And in New York, fracking is largely on hold while companies await a new set of state permitting guidelines.

For now, the Marcellus Shale exploration is in its infancy. Terry Engelder, a geoscientist at Penn State University, estimates the reserve could yield as much as 489 trillion cubic feet of gas. To date, the industry's production from Pennsylvania, where drilling is most active, is approaching 100 billion cubic feet.

Wastewater from drilling has not threatened plans to develop the nation's other gas reserves. Brine is injected into deep underground wells in places such as Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma, or left in evaporation ponds in arid states such as Colorado and Wyoming.

However, many doubt the hard Appalachian geology is porous enough to absorb all the wastewater, and the climate is too humid for evaporating ponds. That leaves recycling as the most obvious option.

Entrepreneurs are marketing portable systems that distill frack water at the well site.

Also, in southwestern Pennsylvania, Range Resources Corp., one of the gas field's most active operators, pipes wastewater into a central holding pond, dilutes it with fresh water and reuses it for fracking. Range says the practice saves about $200,000 per well, or about 5 percent.

In addition, a $15 million treatment plant that distills frack water is opening in Fairmont, W.Va. The 200,000 gallons it can treat each day can then be trucked back for use at a new drilling site.

For years, regulators let sewage treatment plants take mining and drilling wastewater under the assumption that rivers would safely dilute. But fracking a horizontal well requires huge amounts of water — up to 5 million gallons per well, compared with 50,000 gallons in some conventional wells.

"In this case," said John Keeling of MSES Consultants, which designed the Fairmont plant, "dilution is not the solution to pollution."

LINK

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!

Natural Gas Drilling: What We Don’t Know

by Abrahm Lustgarten with Joaquin Sapien and Sabrina Shankman
ProPublica
December 31, 2009

It takes brute force to wrest natural gas from the earth. Millions of gallons of chemical-laden water mixed with sand -- under enough pressure to peel paint from a car -- are pumped into the ground, pulverizing a layer of rock that holds billions of small bubbles of gas.

The chemicals transform the fluid into a frictionless mass that works its way deep into the earth, prying open tiny cracks that can extend thousands of feet. The particles of sand or silicon wedge inside those cracks, holding the earth open just enough to allow the gas to slip by.

Gas drilling is often portrayed as the ultimate win-win in an era of hard choices: a new, 100-year supply of cleaner-burning fuel, a risk-free solution to the nation’s dependence on foreign energy. In the next 10 years, the United States will use the fracturing technology to drill hundreds of thousands of new wells astride cities, rivers and watersheds. Cash-strapped state governments are pining for the revenue and the much-needed jobs that drilling is expected to bring to poor, rural areas.

Drilling companies assert that the destructive forces unleashed by the fracturing process, including the sometimes toxic chemicals that keep the liquid flowing, remain safely sealed as much as a mile or more beneath the earth, far below drinking water sources and the rest of the natural environment.

More than a year of investigation by ProPublica, however, shows that the issues are far less settled than the industry contends, and that hidden environmental costs could cut deeply into the anticipated benefits.

...

For example, it remains unclear how far the tiny fissures that radiate through the bedrock from hydraulic fracturing might reach, or whether they can connect underground passageways or open cracks into groundwater aquifers that could allow the chemical solution to escape into drinking water. It is not certain that the chemicals – some, such as benzene, that are known to cause cancer – are adequately contained by either the well structure beneath the earth or by the people, pipelines and trucks that handle it on the surface. And it is unclear how the voluminous waste the process creates can be disposed of safely.

...

ProPublica has uncovered more than a thousand reports of water contamination from drilling across the country, some from surface spills and some from seepage underground. In many instances the water is contaminated with compounds found in the fluids used in hydraulic fracturing. ProPublica also found dozens of homes in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Colorado in which gas from drilling had migrated through underground cracks into basements or wells.

...

ProPublica has also found that drilling procedures that can prevent water pollution and sharply reduce toxic air emissions – another frequent side effect -- are seldom required by state regulators and are mostly practiced when and where the industry wishes.

Another uncertainty arises from the enormous amounts of water needed for “fracking.” The government estimates that companies will drill at least 32,000 new gas wells annually by 2012. That could mean more than 100 billion gallons of hazardous fluids will be used and disposed of each year if existing techniques, which often involve 4 million gallons of water per well, are used.

...

How will the wastewater be safely disposed of?

Are regulations in place to make sure the gas is extracted as safely as possible?

...

A recent regional government study in Colorado concluded that the same methane gas tapped by drilling had migrated into dozens of water wells, possibly through natural faults and fissures exacerbated by hydraulic fracturing.

...

“There is no such thing as impossible in terms of migration.” ...

In another case, benzene, a chemical sometimes found in drilling additives, was discovered throughout a 28-mile long aquifer in Wyoming.

...

Where Should the Waste Go?

On the East coast, one of the most important unanswered questions about drilling is how to dispose of the chemically tainted wastewater that hydraulic fracturing produces.

Most drilling wastewater in other parts of the country is stored in underground injection wells that are regulated by EPA under the Safe Drinking Water Act. However the geology in the East makes injection less viable, and less common. In New York and Pennsylvania, millions of gallons of drilling wastewater could eventually be produced each day.

That wastewater will likely be trucked to treatment plants that don’t routinely test for most of the chemicals the wastewater contains and that may not be equipped to remove them. Currently, the plants also can’t remove the high levels of Total Dissolved Solids found in drilling wastewater – a mixture of salts, metals and minerals – that can increase the salinity of fresh water streams and interfere with the biological treatment process at sewage treatment plants, allowing untreated waste to flow into waterways. High TDS levels also can harm industrial and household equipment and affect the color and taste of water.

After the wastewater passes through the treatment plants, it is dumped back into public waterways that supply drinking water to at least 27 million Americans, including residents of Philadelphia and New York City. But without identification and routine testing for the problematic chemicals, it will be impossible to know how much of them are making their way to drinking water sources, or how they are accumulating over time. Evolving medical science says low-dose exposure to some of those chemicals could have much greater health effects than the EPA or doctors have previously thought.

“Managing produced water has always seemed like one of the large challenges, because this area geologically doesn’t have the extensive network of underground injection wells,” said Lee Fuller, vice president of government relations for the Independent Petroleum Association of America. “One challenge that industry has got is looking at developing [treatment] technology, which could be very costly.”

All Equal Under the Law

The gas industry, and hydraulic fracturing, is subject to widely different laws in different states. Some of those laws are tough, perhaps burdening the drilling industry unnecessarily. Others are lenient, perhaps leaving much of the country subject to environmental danger.

One thing is certain: There is no national standard for an industrial process that is used prolifically in 32 states and will be used even more in the future.

...

... It remains to be seen whether politicians and environmental regulators will make sure precautions are taken at the beginning of this new energy boom, or if they will leave the nation to clean up the mess after the boom goes bust, as it has had to do so many times in the past.

To continue reading the important information contained in this thorough exposé, PLEASE CLICK HERE.

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!

DEP mulls changing discharge standards

State wastewater regulations for natural gas drilling may change to reduce pollution threat.

By Rory Sweeney rsweeney@timesleader.com
Staff Writer
TimesLeader.com
November 27, 2009

Anyone concerned with pollution threats from increased natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania has likely encountered the phrase, “total dissolved solids” and recognizes its potential to be a problem.

However, fewer no doubt know how it can become a problem or that – because of issues emerging from the increased drilling – the state Department of Environmental Protection is considering changes to wastewater discharge standards for TDS that would become effective Jan. 1, 2011.

DEP is seeking public comment on the proposals, and citizens have until Feb. 5 to make them. Earlier this month, Penn State University released a document to help people understand the issues and participate in the process.

Rather than a specific chemical, TDS is a measurement of all dissolved matter – such as minerals, salts and metals – in a given water sample and can be naturally occurring. The federal safe drinking-water standard has a recommended level of 500 milligrams per liter for TDS, but no specific regulation. However, concentrations above that can damage treatment equipment and be toxic to aquatic life and people who drink it.

DEP is proposing the changes, which would limit the TDS levels in wastewater discharges, because it determined that some state waterways, including the West Branch of the Susquehanna River, don’t have the ability to absorb increased levels of TDS.

According to the Penn State report, most of the water used to prepare gas wells – often called “frack water” – is between 800 milligrams per liter and 300,000 milligrams per liter.

The industry estimates the amount of such high-TDS wastewater needing disposal in Pennsylvania will increase from about 9 million gallons per day in 2009 to nearly 20 million gallons per day by 2011, the report said.

DEP’s proposal would change two parts of state code.

First, it would require high-TDS discharges to be diluted to at least 500 milligrams per liter, plus lower thresholds for sulfates and chlorides and, for the oil and gas industry, limits of 10 milligrams per liter for strontium and barium.

Second, it would change water-quality standards for the actual waterway, which would, in turn, affect what could be discharged into it. That regulation change hasn’t yet been officially proposed.

To comment on the proposed rules, the Penn State report recommends several approaches: be specific in citing documents or the target of the comment, stick to comments on the proposed rule rather than water-quality in general, include personal experiences and note where the proposed rules are written unclearly.

LINK to TimesLeader article.

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!

Delaware River Impacts From Natural Gas Drilling

Delaware River Basin Commission "Doesn’t Ask" what will happen to hundreds of millions of gallons of toxic wastewater when deciding on million gallon a day water withdrawal permit

By Iris Marie Bloom
Community Contributor
(Phila.) Weekly Press
21 Oct. 09

Upstate, some folks have started putting spikes in the roads to block trucks related to the natural gas industry. Downstate, meetings have stayed polite but tense, so far.

In New York, the Executive Committee of the Sierra Club decided on October 17, looking at the damage across the river in Pennsylvania so far, to ask New York State to ban hydraulic extraction, the water-intensive new natural gas technology, outright. But in Pennsylvania last week, the state legislature decimated its own environmental regulatory agency, the Department of Environmental Protection, with 27% cuts, while protecting the natural gas industry from a severance tax that would have given state coffers 90 million dollars this year, according to its sponsor. As soon as that was accomplished, Rendell’s point man on the issue went to work for the industry.

Nationally, clean water advocates are working to pass the FRAC Act, a bill to restore the Clean Drinking Water Act. The FRAC Act would close a loophole exempting hydraulic extraction – which has contaminated drinking water with toxic substances in at least three states so far, including Pennsylvania – from federal regulation.

What’s that all got to do with Philadelphia? Here, it’s all about drinking water.

The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) indicated at a meeting sponsored by the American Water Resources Association in Center City on October 15th that it will likely approve a massive withdrawal request for a million gallons of water per day from the Upper Delaware River. Off the record, some officials indicated that public outcry and "TV cameras" might make a difference. All of the water will be mixed with toxic chemicals at a ratio of about 7,500 chemicals per million and a half gallons of water, according to the natural gas industry. Both the industry and the DRBC concur that no plan currently exists to treat the resulting heavily polluted wastewater. Hundreds of millions of gallons of wastewater will be brought back to the surface from natural gas drilling operations and stored in pits (some open, some closed), with a certain amount of inevitable spills, until industry officials and regulators figure out what to do with it.

That could take years. There are currently no treatment plants in Pennsylvania capable of adequately treating the heavily polluted wastewater. Building new plants capable of doing so is extremely expensive, and officials estimate it would take about 50 such plants to handle the anticipated discharge. There is no information available about what might happen to the 40% to 70% of the contaminated water left behind, deep in the ground.

Meanwhile, Carol Collier, Executive Director of the DRBC, commented on October 15 that perhaps the wastewater would be "trucked downstream to where TDS (total dissolved solids, the most measurable and obvious component of frac wastewater) is not such an issue." Translated into simple language, that apparently means discharging the water in the Delaware River far south of where it is being trucked (200 trucks a day, leaving every 7 to 8 minutes) to natural gas pads in northern Pennsylvania. South of Trenton, the Delaware River has a greater volume of water to dilute the pollution. North of Trenton, the Delaware is better protected from severe pollution under the environmental designation, "Special Protection Waters."

Fifty percent of Philadelphia’s drinking water comes from the Delaware River; fifty percent comes from the Schuylkill River, which may also be impacted.

What’s in those chemicals? The exact formulas are not disclosed, at least as long as the process remains exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act. But EPA officials and other scientists have identified 54 to 300 components of "frac fluid" and wastewater resulting from hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in deep shale layers, such as the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania.

The components include known carcinogens and powerful fish pesticides, and the wastewater includes radioactive material from underground as well as heavy metals and extreme amounts of salt from ancient oceans.

The DRBC is still accepting public comment about the proposal from Chesapeake Appalachia, LLC to withdraw a million gallons a day in Wayne, PA, and may make their decision about the proposal and other proposals pending in November. The agency is under tremendous pressure to approve the proposal. Appalachia has taken out ads in northern Pennsylvania blaming the DRBC for keeping landowners from getting the royalties they expect after leasing their lands to gas companies. Hostility towards the DRBC from landowners is mounting accordingly.

In related recent news, one to three spills of frac fluid, from 5,000 to 8,000 gallons, occurred last week in Dimock, PA. Last month, 161 species completely died off in Dunkard Creek in Southwestern PA, creating a mystery that investigators have still not solved. Last week the DEP issued drinking water notices again for the Monongahela River due to unacceptable levels of total dissolved solids (TDS), a result of hydraulic fracturing wastewater being discharged into the river. The Monongahela River provides drinking water to 350,000 people in Pennsylvania.

In August, the EPA confirmed the presence of 2-BE (butoxyethanol), which is associated with kidney damage, harm to the adrenal gland, and reproductive problems, in drinking water both in Colorado and in Pavillion, Wyoming, in association with hydraulic extraction for natural gas there. Butoxyethanol is a known constituent of fracing fluid.

Citizens in both states complaining of adrenal cancer, seizures, birth defects and miscarriages have called for a halt to hydraulic fracturing in their regions after 2-BE contamination in their drinking water was confirmed by the EPA.

At the October 15 public meeting, DRBC director Collier was asked whether existing treatment plants in Pennsylvania have the capacity to treat chemicals such as 2-BE. She answered, "I don’t know."

Collier was also asked for clarification: "Are you saying that you plan to approve the withdrawal of a million gallons a day from the Delaware River without any plan to treat the resulting wastewater?"

The answer was yes: "We don’t ask that question [what will happen to the wastewater] when we are approving water withdrawal proposals."

To continue reading this article, CLICK HERE.

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!

**** What can be done with wastewater? ****

Rapid expansion of gas drilling has led to problems with disposal, contamination

Sunday, October 04, 2009
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette|post-gazette.com

By Joaquin Sapien, ProPublica

Workers at a steel mill and a power plant were the first to notice something strange about the Monongahela River last summer. The water that U.S. Steel in Clairton and Allegheny Energy in Greene County used to power their plants contained so much salty sediment that it was corroding their machinery.

Nearby residents saw something odd, too. Dishwashers were malfunctioning, and plates were coming out with spots that couldn't be rinsed off easily.

Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection soon identified the likely cause and came up with a quick fix. The Monongahela River, a drinking water source for 350,000 people, apparently had been contaminated by chemically tainted wastewater from the state's growing natural gas industry. So the DEP reduced the amount of drilling wastewater that was being discharged into the river and unlocked dams upstream to dilute the contamination.

But questions raised by the incident on the Monongahela haven't gone away.

In August, contamination levels in the river spiked again, and the DEP still doesn't know exactly why. And in September, the DEP began investigating whether drilling wastewater caused the death of 10,000 fish on a 33-mile stretch of Dunkard Creek, which winds through West Virginia and feeds into the Monongahela.

A spate of other water contamination problems also have been linked to gas drilling in Pennsylvania, including methane leaks that have affected drinking water in at least seven counties.

Pennsylvania is at the forefront of the nation's gas drilling boom, with at least 4,000 new oil and gas wells drilled here last year alone, more than in any other state except Texas. This rapid expansion has forced state regulators to confront a problem that has been overlooked as gas drilling accelerates nationwide: How will the industry dispose of the enormous amount of wastewater it produces?

Oil and gas wells disgorge about 9 million gallons of wastewater a day in Pennsylvania, according to industry estimates used by the DEP. By 2011 that figure is expected to rise to at least 19 million gallons, enough to fill almost 29 Olympic-sized swimming pools every day. That's more than all the state's waterways, combined, can safely absorb, DEP officials say.

"I don't know that even our [water] program people had any idea about the volumes of water that would be used," said Dana Aunkst, who heads the DEP's water program.

Much of the wastewater is the byproduct of a drilling process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which pumps at least a million gallons of water per well deep into the earth to break layers of rock and release gas. When the water is sucked back out, it can contain natural toxins dredged up during drilling, including cadmium and benzene, which both carry cancer risks. It also can contain small amounts of chemicals added to enhance drilling.

But DEP officials say one of the most worrisome contaminants in the wastewater is a gritty substance called Total Dissolved Solids, or TDS, a mixture of salt and other minerals found deep underground. Drilling wastewater contains so much TDS that it can be five times as salty as sea water.

Large quantities of TDS can clog machinery and change the color, taste and odor of drinking water -- precisely the problems reported along the Monongahela River. While it's not considered particularly harmful to people, it can damage freshwater streams, which is what happened when TDS levels skyrocketed in Dunkard Creek last month.

Drilling companies currently dispose of their wastewater in Pennsylvania's municipal sewage plants, which then discharge it into rivers and streams.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency warns against this because the sewage plants aren't equipped to remove TDS or any of the chemicals the water may contain. Of even more concern, TDS can disrupt the plants' treatment of ordinary sewage by killing organisms that are needed to treat human waste. But the EPA is giving some Pennsylvania plants a permit amendment to accept oil- and gas-drilling wastewater, if they can prove their treatment processes won't be damaged and that the streams they discharge into won't be harmed.

When U.S. Steel and Allegheny Energy complained about the Monongahela River's water in 2008, the DEP found almost twice as much TDS as the agency considers safe. DEP officials blamed some of the problem on the river's low flow last summer and on abandoned mines that have leaked TDS into the river for decades.

What apparently tipped the balance, however, was the drilling wastewater that nine sewage plants were discharging into the river. Only one of those plants had a permit amendment to accept drilling wastewater.

Steve Rhodes, president of the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Association, an industry trade group, argues that most of the TDS came from abandoned mines, not from drilling wastewater. A study prepared for a different trade group came to the same conclusion.

Mr. Rhodes also said Pennsylvania's waterways "are not anywhere near" their capacity to handle TDS and that the DEP's estimate of how much wastewater the industry produces is "completely exaggerated."

Caught off guard?

In April, drilling companies began temporarily trucking their wastewater to other states or to sewage treatment plants in other parts of Pennsylvania: The idea is to dilute it by spreading it among more rivers. DEP chief John Hanger said a more permanent solution will begin on Jan. 1, 2011, when new regulations will be in place requiring that the wastewater be treated by plants capable of removing TDS.

Currently, no plant in Pennsylvania has the technology to remove TDS, and it's unlikely that new plants capable of doing so can be built by 2011. Seventeen permit applications for new treatment plants have been filed so far, but the company whose bid is furthest along says its plant won't be ready until at least 2013. And at its peak that plant would be able to treat only 400,000 gallons of wastewater a day. The DEP would need 50 plants that size to process all the wastewater expected by 2011.

In the meantime, the DEP is allowing municipal sewage plants to temporarily continue taking drilling wastewater, even though none of them can remove TDS.

"That's not what these municipal plants are designed to handle -- the DEP is inviting legal problems as well as environmental problems," said Bruce Baizel, a senior attorney for the Oil and Gas Accountability Project, a Colorado-based nonprofit that focuses on the environmental impact of natural gas drilling throughout the United States.

As the DEP's responsibilities grow, its operating budget could be slashed: The state Legislature's latest draft of Pennsylvania's 2010 budget calls for a 25 percent cut in DEP funding.

Mr. Hanger says Pennsylvania's extensive experience with oil drilling has prepared it to deal with gas drilling problems quickly.

But ProPublica found that the DEP was caught off guard by the amount of wastewater the industry would produce when drilling began in the Marcellus Shale, a deeply buried layer of rock that some analysts say holds enough gas to meet all the nation's natural gas needs for more than 20 years.

When energy prices spiked in 2008, drillers flocked to Pennsylvania, bringing sorely needed revenue and jobs. A recent Pennsylvania State University study touted the benefits drilling brought last year: 29,000 jobs and $240 million in state and local taxes.

Even the industry's wastewater promised profits.

"Cha-ching!" is how Francis Geletko, financial director for the municipal sewage treatment plant in Clairton, described his first thought when he learned that drillers would pay 5 cents a gallon to get their wastewater processed at his plant.

The 1960s-era facility is in such desperate need of modernization that workers still use shovels to remove solid waste from its traps and filters. Many of the state's plants are similarly outdated: A recent report commissioned by Gov. Ed Rendell concluded that Pennsylvania needs to spend $100 billion over the next 20 years to maintain its aging sewage plants and pipelines.

Ed Golanka, who manages the municipal sewage treatment plant in Charleroi, said that when he checked with the DEP nobody told him that state and federal laws required his plant to get an amendment to its permit before accepting industrial wastewater. The amendment would require expensive modifications to allow it to treat industrial wastewater, which Charleroi couldn't afford to do, he said.

"At the time it was a new subject for all of us," Mr. Golanka said. "There was a limited amount of conversation [with the DEP] until the issue with TDS last summer."

Mr. Aunkst, the DEP's director of water standards, said he didn't know the plants along the Monongahela River were accepting the water until the spring of 2008, when people living near the plants complained to the DEP about long lines of trucks idling at sewage treatment plants. But the agency was so short-staffed that it didn't respond to the complaints immediately. Mr. Aunkst said many DEP regulators had left for more lucrative jobs with drilling companies.

"As the industry was ramping up, we were ramping down," he said. "In order for us to really catch these people we have to almost have an inspector coincidentally there on the day that these trucks pull up, because we have so many facilities and so few staff."

...

Wastewater levels cut

After Mr. Aunkst heard about the trucks, he wrote a letter to all of the state's sewage plants, reminding them that they couldn't take the wastewater without a special permit.

But before he sent it, TDS levels in the Monongahela River skyrocketed, causing U.S. Steel and Allegheny Energy to complain. The chain of events made Mr. Aunkst remember two other peculiar incidents: Cross Creek and Sugar Run Creek in Washington County were sucked dry, and DEP inspectors suspected that drilling companies had withdrawn the water to fracture nearby wells.

"We were trying to scramble, to put it bluntly, to get our act together to figure out how we were going to address these withdrawals as well as the disposal issues," Mr. Aunkst said.

The DEP did two things to lower the Monongahela's TDS level quickly. It unlocked dams upriver to flush out some of the TDS. And it ordered nearby sewage treatment plants to reduce the amount of drilling wastewater they accepted to just 1 percent of the total amount of water that flowed through their plants each day.

...

Some sewage plant operators were so alarmed that they stopped taking any wastewater at all.

But by January, the uproar had subsided. TDS levels in the Monongahela River were back to normal and plant operators began accepting the wastewater again, although in smaller quantities, as the DEP instructed.

"We didn't want to be the ones to stop the economy from growing in this area, and we felt that we were helping the country become energy independent," said Joe Rost, chief engineer at the municipal sewage treatment plant in McKeesport.

Mr. Hanger has promised to implement more aggressive regulations by 2011 that would require all drilling wastewater to be treated in special plants that are capable of removing TDS, rather than in sewage treatment plants.

...

But spokesmen for eight of the 17 plants that have been proposed told ProPublica it will be impossible to get the plants built by 2011. A spokesman for Larson Design Group, whose application to build a plant in Williamsport, Lycoming County, is furthest along in the process, expects that after it gets its permit, construction will take at least 40 months.

...
To read this article in its entirety, CLICK HERE.

Joaquin Sapien is a reporter for ProPublica, a nonprofit journalism organization in New York City. For more on natural-gas drilling, go to http://www.propublica.org.

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!

Pa. going over W.Va.’s head on Mon River pollution

Thanks to a friend for sending in this article from the Charleston (WVA) Gazette:

KEN WARD JR. • Tues., Aug. 25, 2009

Our neighbors to the north are apparently growing tired of West Virginia’s inaction — or action through only baby steps — to deal with the potential water pollution problems from disposal of “pit fluids” from large-scale oil and gas drilling.

According to a story over the weekend by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Don Hopey, Pennsylvania authorities have asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to step in and set tougher pollution limits for Monongahela River.

Pennsylvania DEP Secretary John Hanger told Hopey that his state has issued orders limiting the discharges of total dissolved solids, or TDS, in the Mon — and, perhaps more importantly, has started the lengthy process of drafting new regulatory controls. But, Hanger said, West Virginia hasn’t done likewise. Hanger told Hopey:

We’re not satisfied with the response we’ve received from West Virginia and are engaging the EPA. Because at the end of the day, without federal involvement, we may not get the kind of cooperation needed to solve this problem. I personally have concerns that the posture of West Virginia on this matter is not aggressive enough.

In his article, Hopey explained some background of this Pa-W.Va. dispute:

Sources of dissolved solids include sewage treatment plants, power plant scrubber and coolant water, storm water runoff, abandoned mine drainage, a host of industrial activities and wastewater from oil and gas drilling, especially the millions of gallons produced by deep wells tapping into the Marcellus shale gas bed.

For the past year, Pennsylvania has restricted the amount of wastewater from those deep gas drilling operations that sewage treatment plants can accept to no more than 1 percent of their total water discharges into the river.

West Virginia has only recently urged treatment facilities to limit intake of well waste water. And officials there said the sewage treatment plant in Clarksburg, the only such facility in the state that was permitted to accept well drilling waste water, stopped last month.

Scott Mandirola, director of the WVDEP’s Division of Water and Waste Management, told Hopey that his agency would “cooperate fully” with Pennsylvania and the EPA to develop a pollution reduction plan for the Mon.

But as I reported in May, setting the needed pollution limits is not a major priority for WVDEP. In a presentation during a public water quality standards meeting, DEP assistant water director Pat Campbell noted that surrounding states have such standards, but West Virginia is only just beginning to study whether it should adopt one:

This is the beginning of the state considering whether to have a TDS critiera and what that number should be.

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!

Pennsylvanians, ACT NOW!

JUNE 1st DEADLINE...
Copy, Print, Sign, Stamp and Send!

Reprinted here is an appeal from Williamsport resident, Jon Bogle, and a letter of petition to our DEP. Please do your part...

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!

Dear All,

Below is a letter to DEP opposing the granting of a permit to operate a waste water discharge plant at Water Tower Square. In total, there are ten plants in the works which will dump four million gallons of the gas drilling industry’s waste water, containing millions of pounds of dissolved salts, into the West Branch Basin every day.

The thirty day period DEP has set to comment on this permit ends on June 1st. A strong response is needed.

This is the first issue where the gas industry will try to transfer our quality of life to their bottom line. We need to send a clear message that we won’t stand for it. The Gas industry will do what is necessary to get to the gas. If we demand the state of the art treatment of our landscape and environment we will get it. If we don’t--they will treat rural Pennsylvania as a third world country. Our quality of life is not their concern.

You can simply print out this letter, add your name and address and send it in. Or, you can modify it in any way you want, add to it, or write your own. It is your letter and each person, not just each address, is entitled to send one.

Many of us believe that DEP is under political pressure to grease the way for the gas industry. A strong public response will help to counteract that pressure and loosen the bonds of DEP’s better angels.

If you have persons on your e-mail list who may be willing to help, please send this on to them.

Jon

Jon Bogle
201 E 3rd St.
Williamsport PA
17701
570-772-0151
boglejon@comcast.net

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TO: Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
Water Management Program, Permit Section
208 West Third Street, Suite 101
Williamsport, PA 17701-6448

RE: Opposing the granting of a NPDES permit to operate, PA0233650,
Industrial Waste, TerrAqua Resource
Management, LLC, 1000 Commerce Park Drive, P. O. Box 487,
Williamsport, PA 17703-0487.
Also opposing NPDES permits for the nine other similar facilities in
the West Branch Basin which DEP
has knowledge of that are preparing to submit NPDES permit
applications or have already done so.

FROM: YOUR NAME/ADDRESS HERE

The TerrAqua proposed facility at Water Tower Square is clearly a transfer of the Susquehanna Riverʼs water quality to the financial bottom lines of the gas industry and to the facilityʼs owners. It will put hundreds of thousands of pounds of dissolved salts into the river at Williamsport-- every day.
It will not remove most of the dangerous chemicals in the water from gas well fracturing operations.
As is the case with the other nine plants being proposed for the West Branch basin, it will be little more than a dilute and dump operation. Pennsylvaniaʼs rivers and environment deserve the same state of the art treatment for this waste water that the gas industry has available and uses in other places. Our rivers havenʼt yet recovered from the damage inflicted by the coal industry over a hundred years ago. We need DEP to protect them from being used as a chemical dump.
Pennsylvaniaʼs DEPʼs new policy statement, Permitting Strategy for High Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Wastewater Discharges April 11, 2009 clearly describes the damage of continuing to dump dissolved solids (salts) into our rivers. The new strategy, which goes into effect on January 1, 2011, will not permit new large volume dischargers of dissolved salts. It also clearly states that any facilities seeking a licence until then must show they will possess the technology to remove salts from the discharge. A capability TerrAquaʼs application doesnʼt have. The April 11th Strategy policy is cited below:
(a) DEP will not issue permits for new sources of High-TDS industrial waste unless the applicant proposes to install adequate treatment for TDS on or before January of 2011.
TerrAqua, which is still at the conceptual, approval seeking stage, will begin discharging large quantities of dissolved solids into the Susquehanna river almost exactly when DEPʼs new policy goes into effect. It is difficult to understand why TerrAqua would go forward with this application unless they are expecting to be granted an exception to the new regulations when they go into force.
It is also clear that TerrAquaʼs facility isnʼt a critical component of the new gas exploration industry because at a 400,000 gallon maximum capacity it doesnʼt begin to address the volumes of anticipated waste water from this industry. Indeed, even if all ten of the new high-salt dischargers on the Susquehanna were approved, they would only account for 20% of the needed capacity.
Estimates from the industry indicate that demand for brine water treatment in Pennsylvania will reach approximately nine Million Gallons per Day (MGD) in 2009, 16 MGD in 2010, and 19 MGD in 2011.
Estimates from the Susquehanna River Basin Commission are 20 MGD for that same timeframe.
The April 11th report makes clear that the Susquehanna, like other rivers in Pennsylvania, is already challenged from discharges and acid mine drainage.
Many of the areas where the drilling for natural gas is proposed have a history of mining activity and are affected by Abandoned Mine Drainage (AMD). Brine and fracturing wastewater have high concentrations of dissolved solids, and considering the already elevated levels of dissolved solids in the AMD-affected surface waters, the need to stringently control these dissolved solids likely will prevent other pollutants from exceeding water quality standards on a cumulative basis.
...watershed analyses conducted by DEP of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River watershed has documented that it is also severely limited in the capacity to assimilate new loads of TDS and sulfates.
Local biologists have estimated that several million fresh water clams live in each mile of the Susquehanna River. These serve to filter the nutrients out of the water which are
so harmful to the Chesapeake Bay.
Without this natural filtering our local cost of reaching acceptable nutrient levels for the Chesapeake Bay will be higher. Again below, from the April 11th policy:
The major concern associated with high TDS concentrations relates to direct effects of increased salinity on the health of aquatic organisms.
It is clear that TerrAquaʼs NPDES permit application, and the other nine possible facilities, are in direct opposition to the strategic intentions of DEP for maintaining water quality in Pennsylvaniaʼs rivers and streams.
There is no ethical or logical reason why this permit should be granted.