Pennsylvania Official: End Nears For Fracking Wastewater Releases
April 25, 2011
Pennsylvania Official: End Nears For Fracking Wastewater Releases.
Pa. wants to cut off gas-drilling wastewater AP
April 19, 2011
Pa. wants to cut off gas-drilling wastewater – Yahoo! News.
Pa. wants to cut off gas-drilling wastewater
HARRISBURG, Pa. – Citing potentially unsafe drinking water, Pennsylvania called on companies drilling in the Marcellus Shale natural gas formation to stop taking wastewater to 15 treatment plants by May 19.
Tuesday’s announcement was a major change in the state’s regulation of gas drilling and came the same day that an industry group said it now believes drilling wastewater is partly at fault for rising levels of bromide being found in Pittsburgh-area rivers.
Gas drilling that uses millions of gallons of chemical-laden water has rapidly grown in the past three years in Pennsylvania.
In other major gas-drilling states, drilling wastewater is kept out of rivers largely by injecting it deep underground into disposal wells. But in Pennsylvania, some drilling wastewater is treated by sewer authorities, largely in western Pennsylvania, and discharged into rivers.
Those wastewater plants, however, are ill-equipped to remove all the pollutants, and Pennsylvania still allows hundreds of millions of gallons of the partially treated wastewater to be discharged into rivers from which communities draw drinking water.
The state Department of Environmental Protection cited elevated levels of bromide in rivers in western Pennsylvania in its announcement.
“Now is the time to take action to end this practice,” acting Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Krancer said in a statement Tuesday.
Bromide is a salt that later reacts with the chlorine disinfectants used by drinking water systems and creates trihalomethanes. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says that trihalomethanes can be harmful to people who drink water with elevated levels of the chemical for many years.
Officials at Pittsburgh-area drinking water authorities in Beaver Falls and Fredericktown say their facilities have flunked tests for trihalomethanes in the past couple years.
Complicating the matter is that, in addition to gas drilling, Pennsylvania’s multitude of acid-leaching, abandoned coal mines and other industrial sources are also a major factor in the high salt levels that lead to trihalomethanes in drinking water.
Pennsylvania imposed tougher wastewater treatment standards for drilling wastewater in August, although it still allowed facilities that had been permitted to accept drilling wastewater before August to continue accepting limited amounts under the same treatment standards. Fifteen of those 27 facilities that were grandfathered under the August rules were still accepting the wastewater, the DEP said.
“While there are several possible sources for bromide other than shale drilling wastewater, we believe that if operators would stop giving wastewater to facilities that continue to accept it under the special provision, bromide concentrations would quickly and significantly decrease,” Krancer said in the statement.
Kathryn Klaber, president of the industry’s Marcellus Shale Coalition, said she would provide specifics in the coming days about actions that coalition members will take in an effort to reduce the amount of bromide that ends up in Pennsylvania rivers. Her organization came to that conclusion after seeing new research from Carnegie Mellon University and the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, Klaber said.
Local group warns Auburn on gas well water Apr. 18, 2011
April 18, 2011
Local group warns Auburn on gas well water
Christopher Caskey / The Citizen | Posted: Monday, April 18, 2011 3:05 am
A group of local citizens concerned about natural gas drilling is calling on the city of Auburn to tighten regulations related to gas well water at its sewage treatment plant.
A letter signed by 75 people questioned how the city can trust that the companies currently dumping well water at the plant to follow the rules. They specifically pointed to a recent public notice that announced citations against six natural gas drilling companies for failing to file proper monitoring reports in 2010.
The group, which calls itself the Cayuga Anti-Fracking Alliance, wants the city to do one of two things. Either charge an “exorbitant price” to take the water and require all drilling firms to accept any future liability related to environmental or health impacts from the water, or refuse to take natural gas well water altogether.
City and state regulations currently ban any water from the controversial Marcellus shale formation and from wells that use a process known as high-volume, horizontal hydraulic fracturing (or fracking, for short) from going into the city’s wastewater plant.
The firms cited in March for the reporting violations were also forced to produce certification that no water from the Marcellus Shale was discharged into the local plant.
“How do we know that this is the case apart from taking natural gas companies at their word?” the group asks in their letter to the Auburn City Council.
“Bluntly put, the natural gas industry has no incentive to tell the truth,” the letter later states.
Members of the city council say they are intrigued by the group’s concerns. Auburn Mayor Michael Quill said on Thursday that the council will hold a work session in the coming weeks to try and answer some questions and discuss issues related to processing well water at the city plant.
Quill said he is interested in studying legislation in other municipalities about processing well water and see if the city should change its own regulations. A work session on the issue would be a way to “get everyone in a room together talking to each other” about the issue, he said.
“None of us want anything (processed at the plant) that’s detrimental to the environment,” Quill said.
Councilor Gilda Brower said she’s also watching the issue closely. She said on Thursday that the city may have to do more testing of the water that comes through. Though Brower said she’s in favor of going even further, at this point.
“I would support a ban, for sure,” Brower said.
The city’s wastewater plant has accepted natural gas well water for more than a decade. But that water, and natural gas drilling, has become the focus of controversy in recent years.
The horizontal hydrofracking process is used to pull large amounts of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale, a large underground formation that runs through parts of New York’s Southern Tier and Pennsylvania.
The natural gas well water processed at the Auburn plant mostly comes from wells in the Trenton Black River, Queenston, Oriskany and Oneida formations in New York state and is hauled by a handful of companies. The water is considered industrial waste, and the city must include all sources in an industrial pretreatment program filed with the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
Each hauler must report the wells and formations from which the water comes.
The wastewater from the Marcellus wells contains higher levels of contaminants, radioactive materials, chlorides and dissolved solids than water from a typical gas well that uses a conventional, vertical drilling process. The water coming into the Auburn site contains lower concentrations of contaminants, according to city officials.
The state is currently in the process of finishing an environmental review for horizontal drilling in the Marcellus formation. And as that process continues, the members of the Cayuga Anti-Fracking Alliance are one of dozens of environmental groups looking to ban horizontal drilling in New York state.
Auburn resident Beth Cuddy, who helped bring the local group together, said she started focusing on the issue recently when she saw in a national media report that said Auburn accepts well water.
She described the organization as an “informal group,” though she said they plan to organize local rallies and events to raise awareness about the hydrofracking issue. This weekend they held private screenings of a documentary on the issue, and Cuddy said they are looking for other times and places to hold similar screenings.
They also plan to continue lobbying local officials and raise awareness about environmental issues surrounding hydrofracking.
“I don’t see any way it (hydrofracking) can be done where it doesn’t affect the water,” Cuddy said. “I don’t understand why anyone would want to destroy the one resource we need to survive as a human race.”
Staff writer Christopher Caskey can be reached at 282-2282 orchristopher.caskey@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter at CitizenCaskey.
Some water treatment plants refuse to take fracking fluid
April 13, 2011
Some water treatment plants refuse to take fracking fluid.
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Some water treatment plants refuse to take fracking fluid
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
WASHINGTON — Several wastewater treatment plants in Western Pennsylvania have stopped taking in waste from natural gas hydraulic fracturing amid controversy about potential waterway contamination.
Testifying before a Senate committee examining natural gas extraction, Environmental Protection Agency deputy administrator Robert Perciasepe was asked about a recent flap over stream contamination related to wastewater treatment plants. A New York Times report about radiation found in Pennsylvania streams near plants that treat fracking “flowback” water prompted additional testing and information gathering from EPA and state officials.
Mr. Perciasepe also revealed that, “In many cases, those plants have stopped taking some of those fracking fluids.”
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Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman Katy Gresh said seven treatment plants, including six in southwestern Pennsylvania, have ceased processing fracking waste. She couldn’t say for sure their reasons for doing so.
Mr. Perciasepe testified that some wastewater plants are ill-suited to treat the fluid, which is mostly water but also includes a cocktail of chemicals that would be dangerous in drinking water. The state has demanded additional and frequent testing for harmful contaminates at facilities that treat fracking fluids and public water suppliers downstream from them, though its tests last fall showed no abnormal radioactivity.
Mr. Perciasepe testified that possible solutions for treatment plants would be to put new constraints on plants that treat fracking waste, or to pre-treat the wastewater before it arrives.
Jeff Cloud, the vice chairman of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, testified that in his state, fracking waste is barred from being processed at treatment plants. This prompted Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., who chaired the hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, to wonder why this isn’t the case in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
The answer is partially due to geology.
In Oklahoma and other states, leftover fluid can be re-injected into abandoned wells. This is not possible in Pennsylvania because the geology doesn’t permit deep well injections.
Conrad “Dan” Volz, of the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Public Health, testified that the waste could go to sites in Ohio, but it’s more convenient for Pennsylvania companies to dispose flowback water in nearby treatment plants. And, he said, it was an “oversight” by DEP to allow it.
A critic of DEP and of environmental impacts of the Marcellus Shale drilling boom, Dr. Volz recently announced he is leaving Pitt because the administration was trying to muzzle his views.
“I was told not to talk about a lot of Marcellus Shale issues that are very politically sensitive, and I wasn’t willing to do that,” he said in an interview after the hearing, adding that he might return to consulting.
Dr. Volz testified about his study finding that a creek in Indiana County, located near a treatment facility that took on flowback water, had a slew of contaminates. An industry group discounted the study as isolated and limited to an area with no impact on drinking water or other human activities.
Much of the hearing focused on the debate over whether federal or state authorities should be the primary regulators of fracking. The process is exempt from federal oversight except when diesel fuel is used in fracking or when the EPA sees an imminent danger.
Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., testified before the committee on the merits of his bill that would give EPA oversight over the practice. Instead of regulations of varying strength across different states, Mr. Casey said, “I’m in favor of a national standard.”
Support for and criticism of his FRAC Act broke on predictable partisan lines, with Democrats backing Mr. Casey and Republicans opposed.
Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., a leading EPA critic, lauded the economic benefits of increased natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania and other states.
“A virtual boom in natural gas development is transforming America’s energy security — due in no small measure to the absence of federal regulation,” he said.
Daniel Malloy: dmalloy@post-gazette.com or 1-202-445-9980. Follow him on Twitter at PG_in_DC.
First published on April 13, 2011 at 12:00 am
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11103/1138930-455.stm#ixzz1JRE1taka
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