The State Journal
22 January 2009
By Pam Kasey
MORGANTOWN -- Cooperation among regulators in West Virginia and Pennsylvania may help prevent a 2009 Monongahela River water quality emergency like the one that took place in fall 2008.
"Both states have bent over backwards," said Patrick Campbell, assistant director of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection's Division of Water and Waste Management.
The problem of high total dissolved solids, or TDS, first showed up in October 2008 after drinking water systems drawing from the river in Pennsylvania found an unpleasant taste and odor in the finished product. Industrial facilities using river water also noticed a problem: increased scaling from the water.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection traced the problem to municipal sewage treatment plants that accepted gas well drilling brine they weren't designed to treat. The problem was aggravated by seasonally low river flows.
It was solved, temporarily, when PADEP ordered treatment plants to cut back on gas well drilling brine and when rainfall restored normal river flows.
Production of natural gas from the mile-deep Marcellus shale has only just begun and is expected to be big in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Drilling in the Marcellus generates large volumes of water high in chlorides, one type of TDS. When discharged to the Monongahela River, that brine adds to base levels of another type of TDS: sulfates from coal mine drainage.
The two together sent the river over Pennsylvania's TDS standard of 500 milligrams per liter last fall.
With drilling on the increase, some believe the problem will reappear in fall 2009.
"I don't think anybody anticipates that this isn't going to occur again this year," said DWWM Director Scott Mandirola at a Jan. 9 meeting in Morgantown on the problem.
Because of that fear, meetings in Morgantown regarding the issue have been well-attended by water quality and water flow regulators from both states, officials from riverside counties and cities, industrial and drinking water system operators, scientists, fishermen and boaters.
During the meetings, regulators and scientists have reported their current understanding, and attendees have brainstormed solutions. Chief among the solutions now in play is simple cooperation between the states.
Campbell said he meets regularly with his water quality counterparts in Pennsylvania to coordinate monitoring and permitting.
Such efforts, he said, will ensure that the right information is gathered. The efforts also will ensure that industrial facilities on either side of the state line are treated equitably.
For example, Pennsylvania recently placed a TDS limit on discharges from air quality scrubbers Allegheny Energy is installing on its Hatfield's Ferry power plant -- a change that will add $61 million to Allegheny's capital cost and $4 million to annual operating expenses.
"(Allegheny Energy's) Fort Martin power station (on the river in West Virginia) is also installing scrubbers," Campbell said. "Will West Virginia be giving them the same limit?"
The ongoing flow of mine drainage, some of which is pumped and discharged by coal mine operators, also is an issue for both states.
As the downriver party in this situation, Pennsylvania is at a disadvantage: Any TDS discharged in West Virginia reduces the river's capacity to dilute TDS for Pennsylvania dischargers.
If cooperative management should fail, Pennsylvania regulators could choose to establish a "Total Maximum Daily Load" watershed-wide clean-up plan.
A TMDL process would give PADEP the right to set tighter limits on dischargers of TDS in the river basin -- for example, those coal mine operators -- both north and south of the state boundary.
Campbell doesn't think it will come to that.
"TMDLs take time," he said of the several-year process. "This problem is in our face. ... The focus right now is just trying to deal with it with the tools we have."
But a TMDL could put teeth in both states' regulatory actions if dischargers balk: Allegheny, for example, has said it plans to appeal the Hatfield's Ferry discharge limit.
Little drilling brine enters the Monongahela River in West Virginia so far, largely because the typical practice here, unlike in Pennsylvania, is to inject the brine into permitted underground injection wells.
But the fall 2008 experience, during which PADEP asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to increase releases from already drought-low Stonewall Jackson and Tygart lakes in West Virginia, showed how complexly bound the two states are in this situation.
Several participants at the Jan. 9 meeting advocated for a comprehensive, watershed-wide authority.
"All of these things tie into each other," said Morgantown City Councilman Don Spencer. "Unless we are more savvy ... in looking at the total interests of our area, we're just asking for trouble."
"We need a river basin commission," said Rose Reilly of the Corps' Pittsburgh District.
Such a commission, based on the model of the Susquehanna River Basin Commission in New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland, would coordinate agency efforts across the entire watershed.