Radioactive Water? Now More Than Ever, Let's Scrutinize Gas
Drilling
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
7 March 2011
Now is not the time to relax state oversight on drilling for gas in the
Marcellus Shale. Yet that is precisely what the Corbett administration
seems to be doing.
It recently rescinded a policy requiring an environmental review before
drilling in state parks and it suspended a guideline requiring the
state to consider and regulate the collective emissions of gas wells in
a region.
An extensive story in The New York Times on Feb. 27 revealed that
wastewater from the process of hydraulic fracturing, which breaks up
the underground rock and releases the natural gas, contains
radioactivity at levels higher than previously known and much higher
than is safe for waste treatment plants to handle.
The report, based on an examination of more than 30,000 pages of
federal, state and industry records on more than 200 gas wells in
Pennsylvania, 40 in West Virginia and 20 wastewater treatment plants,
indicates that not all the potential hazards from drilling have been
under scrutiny. The degree of radioactivity in fracking wastewater must
not be overlooked by regulators, drillers and treatment plants that
will discharge the fluids into waterways used for drinking water.
The Times reported that wastewater from 179 Marcellus Shale wells in
Pennsylvania had high levels of radiation, including 116 wells with
radioactivity 100 times as high as the levels set by federal drinking
water standards. Fifteen wells had wastewater with more than 1,000
times the acceptable amount of radioactive elements.
Left unmonitored and untreated, this is an unacceptable risk to public
health. Fortunately, officials for some systems, like Pennsylvania
American Water and the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, have said
they will test voluntarily for radiation. But that's not good enough;
state and federal regulators must mandate testing for radiation in
water that could be affected by Marcellus Shale drilling.
That may pose additional costs to water and sewer systems, but it's the
kind of added scrutiny that could be covered by revenue from a state
drilling tax -- if only Gov. Tom Corbett would drop his opposition to
the idea.
In the meantime, Pennsylvanians must arm themselves with more
information on the promise and problems of Marcellus drilling. Toward
that end, the Post-Gazette has launched a special website called
Pipeline (http://shale.sites.post-gazette.com),
a rich resource of news articles, maps, glossaries, corporate listings,
community meetings, citizen postings and more. Pipeline also contains
the entire eight-page special section, The Marcellus Boom, published
two Sundays ago as a primer on the scope and impact of this energy and
economic phenomenon.
Radiation in drinking water may be new on the list of Marcellus Shale
drilling concerns, but citizens who become informed are taking the
first big step toward getting the oversight by the state, the
accountability by the industry and the careful approach to public
health that they deserve.