Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
13 January 2009
By Don Hopey
The state Department of Environmental Protection will work with the oil and gas industry to develop new standards to control growing waste water pollution from the booming drilling operations and new methods to treat the wastewater.
The state-industry partnership, which met for the first time today in Harrisburg, was prompted by an oil and gas well drilling boom that last year saw more than 4,100 wells drilled throughout the state, including deeper wells tapping into the Marcellus Shales formation.
Those Marcellus Shales wells, 5,000 to 8,000 feet deep, use millions of gallons of water to fracture the shale rock and release natural gas and produce lots of waste water that is high in salts and dissolved solids.
"The department is committed to working alongside the drilling industry to develop new treatment technologies to treat this wastewater that will allow our natural gas industry and our economy to thrive while protecting the health of our rivers and streams," said DEP Acting Secretary John Hanger.
The partnership's goal is to limit surface water discharges from wastewater treatment plants by encouraging reuse of the water used to fracture the shale, locating geologic formations capable of safe deep underground storage of the water, and evaluating new technologies for treatment.
Beginning in October, high dissolved solids levels in the Monongahela River, caused in part by discharges of the largely untreated "frac water," caused problems for industrial water users along the river and for public drinking water customers who reported bad tasting and bad smelling water, scaling problems with automatic dishwashers and spotting on glassware.