Rendell Celebrates OK to Water Standards
Washington PA Observer Reporter
18 June 2010
Staff & Wire Reports
The Rendell administration on Thursday was celebrating a key approval
of its strategy for protecting Pennsylvania's rivers and household
water from a rapid expansion of natural gas drilling.
A state regulatory board voted 4-1 in favor of proposed new standards
to deal with polluted drilling wastewater.
The rule is designed to take effect Jan. 1, but that could be delayed
by the Legislature.
State environmental officials say too much of the pollutants can kill
fish and leave a salty taste in drinking water drawn from rivers.
Sewage treatment plants that discharge into rivers aren't equipped to
remove the sulfates and chlorides in the brine enough to comply with
the proposed rule.
"Drilling wastewater is incredibly nasty wastewater," state
Environmental Protection Secretary John Hanger said after the vote at
the panel's public meeting. "If we allow this into our rivers and
streams, all the businesses in Pennsylvania will suffer ... all those
who drink water in Pennsylvania are going to be angry and they would
have every reason to be, and all of those who fish and love the
outdoors are going to say, 'What did you do to our fish and our
outdoors?'"
The vote comes at the beginning of what is expected to be a gas
drilling boom in Pennsylvania. Exploration companies, armed with new
technology, are spending billions to get into position to exploit the
rich Marcellus Shale gas reserve, which lies underneath much of the
state.
The rule would put pressure on drillers to find alternative methods to
treat and dispose of the wastewater.
Myron Arnowitt, who is Pennsylvania state director for Clean Water
Action, an environmental group that has been critical of the state's
regulation of wastewater from gas drillers, said Thursday he was
pleased that the new rules will be put into effect.
"We've been pushing for the state to adopt these rules for quite some
time," Arnowitt said. "We're really happy to see that they're making it
so (drillers) won't be able to put untreated water into our rivers."
The drilling industry, as well as a range of business groups and
owners, opposes the rule, calling it costly, confusing, arbitrary and
rushed during more than three hours of testimony before the regulatory
review commission.
Consol Energy spokesman Joe Cerenzia said his company didn't believe
the new rules would be helpful in achieving clean water. Consol's CNX
Gas subsidiary is a major driller of coalbed methane gas as well as
drilling horizontal wells to extract gas from the Marcellus Shale
strata.
"We're not opposed to clean water, but we believe that what the
commonwealth is proposing today is not going to achieve that," he said.
According to the Marcellus Shale Coalition, based in Southpointe, the
drilling industry is taking issue with a regulation that it said would
mandate an "end of pipe," 500 milligrams-per-liter cap on the
concentration of total dissolved solids in the disposal of produced
water from natural gas production.
"There is not a single water treatment facility in Pennsylvania that
could meet this unreasonable benchmark, which will not provide any
additional environmental benefit," said Kathryn Klaber, president and
executive director of the coalition, in a statement.
"There is a need for commonsense regulations that encourage the
production of job-creating natural gas throughout the commonwealth and
aim to keep our water clean," she said, noting that improving water
management pactices remains a top priority for the drilling industry.
"Unfortunately, these rules will make responsible shale gas development
more difficult, and the jobs and economic benefits created throughout
this process less likely, without positively impacting Pennsylvania's
water quality."
Arnowitt noted that some drilling companies have already applied for
permits to build wastewater treatment plants, which he said would be
regulated by the state Department of Environmental Protection.
According to Arnowitt, companies could either discharge the treated
water back into the rivers, or use it for other hydraulic fracturing of
horizontal gas wells.
Range Resources has said that it is now recycling nearly all of the
water it uses in the hydraulic fracturing of wells. A Range spokesman
was not available for comment late Thursday afternoon.
Cerenzia acknowledged that one option that has been discussed is for
drillers to build their own treatment plants. Consol Energy Chief
Executive J. Brett Harvey told shareholders last month that his company
is considering investing between $200 million and $300 million to
construct water treatment plants capable of processing mine and gas
water for its Marcellus Shale operations.
Once the rule takes effect, a treatment plant would have to get state
approval to process additional amounts of drilling wastewater beyond
what it already is allowed, or ensure that it was pretreated by a
specialized method that removes sulfates and chlorides.
Hanger said no other industry will be affected and he has worked to
incorporate the concerns of business groups that have had more than a
year to scrutinize the administration's plans. The companies, he said,
are making more than enough money to pay for alternative treatment
methods.
"There's plenty of money to do this the right way," Hanger said. "But,
of course, if you let an industry do it the wrong way, the low-cost
way, they will run with it, they will take it. They're not going to be
volunteers."