EPA Asks Pa. to Boost Gas Monitoring
Washington
PA Observer
Reporter
10 March 2011
The Environmental Protection Agency has asked Pennsylvania regulators
to begin testing drinking water for radium in some places to make sure
it isn't being contaminated by wastewater from the state's booming
natural gas industry.
In addition to producing gas, the thousands of wells now being drilled
into the Marcellus Shale rock formation produce large amounts of
ultra-salty water tainted with metals like barium and strontium, trace
radioactivity, and small amounts of toxic chemicals injected by energy
companies.
Most big gas states require drillers to dump that waste into deep
shafts to prevent it from contaminating surface water, but Pennsylvania
allows the fluids to be discharged into rivers after partial treatment.
State regulators and the industry have insisted the practice is safe
and adequately regulated, but an EPA regional administrator, Shawn
Garvin, said in a letter to Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental
Protection on Monday that it was concerned about the potential for harm
to human health and the aquatic environment.
"Many of these substances are not completely removed by wastewater
treatment facilities, and their discharge may cause or contribute to
impaired drinking water quality for downstream users, or harm aquatic
life," Garvin wrote.
He said Pennsylvania's drinking water utilities should start sampling
immediately for radium, a naturally existing radioactive substance
sometimes found in drilling water prior to treatment. Similar testing
should be required at the treatment plants handling drilling
wastewater, he said.
Garvin also asked the agency to re-examine permits previously issued to
the treatment plants handling the waste, saying they lacked "critical
provisions." He suggested in his letter that Pennsylvania officials
already had independently expressed an interest in re-evaluating those
permits - a step he called "welcome."
Pennsylvania's acting environmental protection secretary, Michael
Krancer, didn't immediately indicate whether he intended to take any of
the actions requested by the EPA. He appeared to chafe, slightly, at
the suggestion that the state wasn't doing enough to regulate the
industry.
"We are reading and evaluating the letter, just like we do with all
input that comes to us. We at DEP know what our responsibilities are,"
he said in a statement released by a spokeswoman.
"We will focus on protecting public safety and the environment and we
will do that with facts and science. We will work with EPA to be sure
that it is aware of everything we are doing in Pennsylvania in that
regard."
The state's new governor, Tom Corbett, announced Tuesday that he was
forming a commission to advise him on gas-exploration issues, including
environmental concerns.
The Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission is heavy on representation from
the energy industry. Of the 24 appointees who aren't members of
Corbett's cabinet, 10 are either executives or lobbyists for gas
drilling concerns. An 11th is a lobbyist for U.S. Steel, which sells
tubing to the gas industry. Two more are chamber of commerce
representatives who have been supportive of the industry.
Four representatives are from environmental groups, including the
Pennsylvania Environmental Council, the Western
Pennsylvania Conservancy, the Nature Conservancy and the Chesapeake Bay
Foundation.
The EPA's letter came after the agency's administrator, Lisa Jackson,
visited the agency's regional offices in Philadelphia Friday to discuss
growing concerns about the industry. Among the topics discussed was
whether monitoring at wastewater treatment plants was good enough to
determine whether drilling is contaminating rivers.
It represents an escalation of EPA's involvement in gas drilling issues
in Pennsylvania since 2008, when the riches of the Marcellus Shale
began attracting a rush of hundreds of companies drilling thousands of
wells. Regulation of the industry has been largely left to the state
DEP, because under federal rules it is primarily responsible for
enforcing federal laws like the Clean Water Act.
Records kept by the state show that in the last six months of 2010, at
least 2.77 million barrels, or around 116 million gallons, of
wastewater from the drilling industry was sent for processing at plants
that discharge into the state's rivers and streams.
The great majority of that waste went to seven plants that discharge
into the Allegheny River, the Mahoning River, the Conemaugh River, the
Blacklick Creek, the Monongahela River, the Susquehanna River and the
South Fork Tenmile Creek.
Energy companies have argued that those treatment plants have adequate
systems in place to remove radium and other pollutants found in
drilling waste, like barium and strontium.
Public water suppliers don't always test frequently for those
substances, however, to see if the industry's claims are correct. Water
suppliers currently test only occasionally for radium. It has been
years since the utilities drawing from rivers in the affected drilling
region have done those tests.
"To ensure public safety, additional sampling is needed," Garvin said,
adding that he hoped testing could begin within 30 days.
On Monday, the state DEP announced it has for several months tested
water downriver from treatment plants that handle gas drilling
wastewater and had found no cause for concern. The initial DEP tests
showed levels of radionuclides - radioactive contaminants in water - to
be at or below the naturally occurring background levels of
radioactivity.
Radium, swallowed or inhaled, can accumulate in human bones, EPA says,
and long-term exposure can increase the risk of such diseases as
lymphoma and bone cancer.
Garvin acknowledged the initial DEP tests but suggested the testing is
not sufficient to account for such variables as the volume of
wastewater and the concentrations of its radioactivity.
The wastewater plants do not remove the salty dissolved solids that
could potentially make the waste stream environmentally damaging, so
the Department of Environmental Protection strengthened rules last year
that will make it difficult for any new treatment plants to be built
unless they have expensive distilling equipment.
The rules, however, rely partly on tight controls of which plants are
discharging the waste, and Pennsylvania has not always been able to
track where all of the water is going. An Associated Press review,
published in January, found that a good portion of the wastewater was
unaccounted for, and some was going to at least one plant that hadn't
received the proper permissions from regulatory bodies.
In the meantime, the industry has been working to reduce the amount of
waste sent to rivers.
Drilling for gas in deep shale deposits requires injecting huge volumes
of water underground to help shatter the rock - a process called
hydraulic fracturing. Some of that water then returns to the surface.
Lately, drillers have been reusing that water in new wells, rather than
simply discarding it. These recycling efforts now account for at least
65 percent of all wastewater generated by the industry, according to
state records.
The percentage of wastewater being recycled has grown tremendously, up
from nearly nothing 18 months ago, but it has been offset to a degree
by an overall increase in drilling activity.
The EPA is currently planning a nationwide study on the environmental
consequences, particularly the impact on the quality and quantity of
water.