Pa. Water Plants Fined by EPA for Drilling Waste

Washington PA Observer Reporter
24 May 2013

CANONSBURG – Two wastewater plants, which merged into a company that was later acquired by Canonsburg-based Aquatech, were fined by the federal Environmental Protection Agency for discharging natural gas drilling wastewater into the Allegheny River or tributaries that feed it.

The fines are contained in a consent agreement with Hart Resources Technology Inc. and Pennsylvania Brine Treatment Inc., which ran the plants in Indiana and Venango counties when the discharges occurred between February 2007 and August 2011.

This was before the two merged to form Fluid Recovery Services, an Indiana County operator of a network of central, satellite and mobile water management services in the Marcellus and Utica Shale plays.
Aquatech, a global leader in water treatment technology and service solutions, said May 13 that it had acquired FRS.

Ann Seamonds, president of Seamonds & Co., a Boston firm that handles public relations for Aquatech, said in a news release that Hart Resources and Brine Treatment paid the fines. She added that the issues occurred before FRS was formed and that FRS operates in compliance with regulatory requirements.

In a news release announcing the acquisition two weeks ago, Aquatech said FRS provides environmentally compliant and economically viable water management services, as well as numerous water management service options such as storage, transport services (rail and truck) and disposal (nonreturn) across the state.

PBT and HRT had a 25-year history of providing water management services to the oil and gas industry in Pennsylvania and had treated more water than any other service provider in the Marcellus and Utica Shale region.