Pa. Allows Dumping of Tainted Waters From Gas Boom
Companies insist there's little risk, but now recycle
Pittsburgh Post Gazette - 4 January 2011
By David B. Caruso, The Associated Press
The natural gas boom gripping parts of the United States has a nasty
byproduct: wastewater so salty, and so polluted with metals like barium
and strontium, that most states require drillers to get rid of the
stuff by injecting it down shafts thousands of feet deep.
But not in Pennsylvania, one of the states at the center of the gas
rush. In Pennsylvania, the liquid that gushes from gas wells is only
partially treated for substances that could be environmentally harmful,
then dumped into rivers and streams from which communities get their
drinking water.
In the two years since the frenzy of activity began in the vast
underground rock formation known as the Marcellus Shale, Pennsylvania
has been the only state letting its waterways serve as the primary
disposal place for huge amounts of wastewater produced by a drilling
technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. State regulators,
initially caught flat-footed, tightened the rules this year for any new
water treatment plants, but let existing operations continue
discharging water into rivers.
At least 3.6 million barrels of the waste were sent to treatment plants
that empty into rivers during the 12 months ending June 30, state
records show. That's enough to cover a square mile with more than 8 1/2
inches of brine.
Researchers are still trying to figure out whether Pennsylvania's river
discharges, at their current levels, are dangerous to humans or
wildlife. Several studies are under way, some under federal
Environmental Protection Agency auspices.
State officials, energy firms and treatment plant operators insist that
with the right safeguards in place, the practice poses little or no
risk to the environment or the hundreds of thousands of people,
especially in Western Pennsylvania, who rely on the rivers for drinking
water.
But an Associated Press review found that Pennsylvania's efforts to
minimize, control and track wastewater discharges have sometimes failed.
For example:
• Of roughly 6 million barrels of well liquids produced in a 12-month
period The Associated Press examined, the state couldn't account for
the disposal method for 1.28 million barrels, about one-fifth of the
total, due to a weakness in its reporting system and incomplete filings
by some energy firms.
• Some public water utilities downstream from big gas wastewater
treatment plants have struggled to stay under the federal maximum for
contaminants known as trihalomethanes, which can cause cancer if
swallowed over a long period.
• Regulations that should have kept drilling wastewater out of the
important Delaware River Basin, the water supply for 15 million people
in four states, were circumvented for many months.
The situation in Pennsylvania is being watched carefully by regulators
in other states, some of which have begun allowing some river
discharges. New York also sits over the Marcellus Shale, but former
Gov. David Paterson slapped a moratorium on high-volume fracking while
environmental regulations are drafted.
Industry representatives insist that the wastewater from fracking has
not caused serious harm anywhere in Pennsylvania, in part because it is
safely diluted in the state's big rivers. But most of the largest
drillers say they are taking action and abolishing river discharges
anyway.
All 10 of the state's biggest drillers say they have either eliminated
river discharges in the past few months, or reduced them to a small
fraction of what they were a year ago. Together, those firms accounted
for 80 percent of the wastewater produced in the state.
The biggest driller, Atlas Resources, which produced nearly 2.3 million
barrels of wastewater in the review period, said it now recycles all
water from its wells in their first 30 days of operation, when the
flowback is heaviest. The rest is still sent to treatment plants, but
"our ultimate goal is to have zero surface discharge of any of the
water," spokesman Jeff Kupfer said.
Still, with dozens more energy firms at work in Pennsylvania's surging
gas industry -- more than 2,400 wells drilled and work starting on
5,400 more -- operators of the largest of the 16 treatment plants they
most commonly use say they haven't lost much business.
Records verifying industry claims of a major dropoff in wastewater
discharges to rivers will not be available until midwinter, but John
Hanger, secretary of Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental
Protection, said he believed that the amount of drilling wastewater
being recycled is now about 70 percent -- an achievement he credits to
tighter state regulation pushing the industry to change its ways.
"The new rules, so far, appear to be working," he said. "If our rules
were not changed, ... we would have all of it being dumped in the
environment, because it is the lowest cost option," Mr. Hanger said.
But he cautioned that rivers need to be watched closely for any sign
that they have degraded beyond what the new state standards allow.
"This requires vigilance," he said. "Daily vigilance."
University of Pittsburgh scientist Conrad Volz, who has been studying
the environmental effect of the wastewater discharges, said he had
student researchers in the field this fall documenting a steady flow of
brine-filled tankers arriving at plants on the Monongahela River south
of Pittsburgh, and on the Blacklick Creek, 17 miles northwest of
Johnstown.
"We've been taking pictures of the trucks," he said. "We know it's
still happening."
He said researchers are still trying to figure out whether the
wastewater discharges, at their current levels, could cause serious
environmental harm.
The municipal authority that provides drinking water to Beaver Falls,
27 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, began flunking tests for
trihalomethanes regularly last year, about the time a facility 18 miles
upstream, Advanced Waste Services, became Pennsylvania's dominant gas
wastewater treatment plant.
Trihalomethanes aren't found in drilling wastewater, but there can be a
link. The waste stream often contains bromide, a salt, which reacts
with chlorine disinfectants used by drinking water systems to kill
microbes. That interaction creates trihalomethanes.
The EPA says people who drink water with elevated levels of
trihalomethanes for many years have an increased risk of getting cancer
and could also develop problems of the liver, kidney or central nervous
system.
Gas drilling waste isn't the only substance that can cause elevated
trihalomethane levels. 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 the problem.
Beaver Falls' treatment plant manager Jim Riggio said he doesn't know
what is causing the problem, but a chemical analysis raised the
possibility that it might be linked to the hundreds of thousands of
barrels of partially treated gas well brine that now flow past his
intakes every year.
"It all goes back to frack water," he said.
Natural gas drilling has taken off in several U.S. states in recent
years because of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling,
techniques that unlock more methane than ever before from ancient shale
sea beds buried deep underground. Fracturing involves injection of
millions of gallons of water mixed with chemicals and sand deep into
the rock, shattering the shale and releasing the gas trapped inside.
When the gas comes to the surface, some water returns, along with
underground brine that exists naturally. It can be several times
saltier than sea water and tainted with fracking chemicals, some
carcinogenic if swallowed at high enough levels over time.
The water is often laden with barium, found in underground ore deposits
and also used by drillers as a bit lubricant. It can cause high blood
pressure if someone ingests enough of it over a long period of time.
It also is often tainted with radium, a naturally occurring radioactive
substance, and strontium, a mineral abundant in rocks, earth, coal and
oil.
The amount of produced water varies from well to well, but in
Pennsylvania it has been running about 1 to 2 gallons for every 10
injected into the ground.
In some Pennsylvania locales, there have been fights over whether the
drilling process itself has the potential to contaminate nearby
drinking water wells.
When firms recycle wastewater, they lightly treat it for particles and
other substances, combine it with fresh water and reuse it in a new
fracturing job.
Operators of the treatment plants handling the bulk of the waste still
being discharged into Pennsylvania rivers say they can remove most
toxic pollutants without much trouble, including radium and barium.
"We have been able to do it carefully. We have been able to do it
safely," said Al Lander, president of Tunnelton Liquids, one of the
state's busiest treatment plants. The facility, near Saltsburg, east of
Pittsburgh, treats both drilling water and acid draining from abandoned
mines.
"In some respects, its better than what's already in the river," he
said of the water his plant discharges into the Conemaugh. "What we are
putting into the river now is far cleaner, and far more eco-friendly
than what was running in naturally from acid mine drainage."
What can't be removed easily, except at great expense, he said, are
dissolved solids and chlorides that make the fluids so salty. Those
usually don't pose a health risk to humans in low levels, said Paul
Ziemkiewicz, director of the West Virginia Water Research Institute at
West Virginia University in Morgantown, but high levels can foul
drinking water's taste, leave a film on dishes and cause diarrhea.
In 2008, workers at two plants that draw water from the Monongahela
River -- U.S. Steel Corp. in Clairton and Allegheny Energy -- noticed
that salt levels had spiked so high that equipment was corroding. State
regulators suspected it was related to gas drilling waste being
discharged through sewage treatment facilities. But it remains unclear
today how much of a role wastewater had in the salt spike. Some
research has suggested that abandoned coal mines, which release far
more polluted water into state rivers than gas drilling, were
predominantly to blame.
Monongahela salt levels have spiked again since 2008, though relatively
little drilling wastewater is being discharged into it.
In the Barnett Shale field in Texas and the Haynesville Shale in
Louisiana, fracking has also ignited a gas bonanza, but the main
disposal method for drilling wastewater there and in other big
gas-producing states such as West Virginia, New Mexico and Oklahoma is
injection wells. Regulated by EPA, these are shafts drilled as deep as
those that produce shale gas.
When Pennsylvania's gas rush began a few years ago, the state had only
a few injection wells in operation. Ohio had more, but trucking
wastewater there from Pennsylvania was expensive. River dumping turned
out to be the easy answer.
The Environmental Protection Agency requires all polluters to get a
permit before they can discharge wastewater into rivers and streams. In
theory, the permits limit how dirty the effluent can be when discharged
into a river and ensure that the water quality doesn't degrade.
But Pennsylvania, which administers the EPA permit program within its
borders, initially lacked a clear regulatory scheme to deal with the
big increases in volume created by the gas boom and wasn't initially
aware that some facilities had begun handling the waste.
Since then, the state has enacted tougher water quality standards. The
new rules, adopted last summer, allow existing treatment plants to
continue operating with few changes, but will require new facilities to
meet strict targets for dissolved solids and chlorides. Essentially,
the water they discharge must be no saltier than tap water.
Operators of several of the public water utilities closest to the
biggest plants say they are testing for any signs of degradation in the
quality of the raw water flowing into their intakes.
Much of the drilling wastewater legally discharged in Pennsylvania
eventually flows into the Allegheny or Monongahela rivers and
ultimately past Pittsburgh's drinking-water plants.
Along the way, it passes more than 20 public drinking-water intakes
from Emlenton and Clarion, halfway between Pittsburgh and the New York
line, to the Tri-County Joint Municipal Authority on the Monongahela in
Fredericktown, 20 miles from West Virginia.
Chemists for the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority have been
monitoring river water and testing for salt levels and a variety of
other contaminants.
At the Buffalo Township Municipal Authority in Freeport, 23 miles
northeast of Pittsburgh -- which is closer to more gas wastewater
treatment facilities than any other municipal water supplier in the
state -- plant manager Don Amadee said he was "not aware of any issues"
with his water quality. But he added that, as a small supplier, the
authority doesn't have much expertise in drilling waste and may not be
testing for every contaminant that could be in the effluent.
Area waterworks, he said, have been communicating more about the
problem and keeping in touch with chemists downstream at the bigger
water suppliers.
Shifting industry practices have, at times, made it hard for the public
officials and researchers monitoring the potential environmental impact
of the discharges. For a time, many focused attention on the
Monongahela River after drilling waste was suspected of contributing to
an unusually high load of chlorides and dissolved solids on the
waterway in 2008.
But state records show very little drilling waste was discharged to
plants on the Monongahela in 2009 or early 2010. They show 55,257
barrels sent to treatment plants in that river's watershed over the
12-month period The AP analyzed, compared with 1.2 million barrels sent
to facilities on the Conemaugh River and a tributary, the Blacklick
Creek.