Landfill proposes to mill Marcellus waste
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By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: February 6, 2012
Keystone Sanitary Landfill plans to process rock waste from natural gas drilling at its properties in Throop and Dunmore in a switch from its years-old practice of accepting already processed waste from the region’s Marcellus Shale well sites.
The first-of-its-kind facility in the state, proposed in a permit application to the Department of Environmental Protection in December, has raised concerns in Throop, where community leaders oppose Keystone taking the waste at all.
“Bad enough bringing the stuff here,” Throop council President Thomas Lukasewicz said, “but treating it here is almost like adding insult to injury.”
Keystone proposes to import the rock waste, called cuttings, in “unprocessed or unsolidified form” then mix it in a custom-designed mill with lime-based material to solidify it for disposal or as a replacement for soil to cover the working face of the landfill at the end of each day.
The landfill has been accepting cuttings for years from Marcellus Shale drillers who mix it with lime or sawdust at their well sites. The cuttings are displaced as the drillers bore to and through the gas-bearing rock about a mile underground.
Keystone accepts 600 tons of cuttings daily, the landfill said last spring in an application to increase its total daily waste capacity, which is pending. It wants to increase its daily intake of cuttings to at least 1,000 tons – the processing capacity of the mill.
The cuttings will be captured in water-tight containers placed at drill sites, trucked to the landfill and processed six days a week, according to the application.
Efforts to reach Keystone site manager Joseph Dexter were unsuccessful.
Penn State Cooperative Extension associate David Yoxtheimer, a member of the university’s Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research, said it makes sense for the landfill to want to process the rock waste itself so the finished product used for daily cover is uniform.
“It would ensure they would get a more consistent material that meets their needs,” he said, “rather than get 10 different companies giving them the material which would probably vary in composition and texture.”
It might also be appealing to gas drillers, whose space at a well site is limited and whose costs might be higher with the current practice of processing containers of waste on site, one by one, he said.
Although Keystone refers to the lime-based material – either quick lime or lime kiln dust – as a “bulking” or “drying” agent for the sometimes-saturated cuttings, it is also used to counteract the potential for the rock to produce acidic runoff.
The gas-rich layers of the Marcellus Shale coveted by drillers also contain pyrite, which, when exposed to oxygen and water, can produce acidic, metals-laden fluid similar to the acid mine drainage associated with the region’s abandoned mines.
“If you mix it with enough lime it might counteract those properties,” Yoxtheimer said.
Keystone does not expect the cuttings to change the chemistry of the landfill’s wastewater, called leachate, which is treated then discharged through sewer lines to the Scranton Sewer Authority, according to its application. But it is not entirely sure what might concentrate in the rain and wash water that runs off the mill site into its treatment system.
“Given that this process is the first of its kind in Pennsylvania, there is not data on the exact makeup of the wash water that will be collected, stored and disposed of as a result of Keystone’s drill cuttings processing facility,” the landfill wrote in its application.
Such unknowns have alarmed Throop officials, who petitioned the DEP to consider the mill proposal a “major,” not “minor,” modification of the landfill’s permit – a classification that would trigger a more thorough public vetting of the project.
“Throop Council feels there is enough information confirming the need for a change in the approved leachate collection and treatment method, change in the groundwater monitoring plan, and the submission of a radiation protection action plan,” all items that should trigger a major permit review, council solicitor Louis A. Cimini wrote in a Jan. 11 letter.
DEP continues to consider the proposal a minor permit modification, a spokeswoman said.
Marcellus cuttings can contain elevated levels of naturally occurring metals and radioactive material, including radium-226, which is a key concern for Throop officials.
Recent DEP tests of the cuttings at Keystone found radium-226 “slightly elevated” above the background levels found in the region’s soil, but at a level that “does not present any worker exposure, public health, safety and welfare or environmental concerns,” the agency wrote.
The radiation monitor that screens all incoming waste loads at the landfill was triggered at least 19 times between July and November, but none of those incidents involved drill cuttings, a DEP spokeswoman said.
Throop has hired a contractor to do its own testing and plans to sample loads it suspects might have elevated levels of radioactivity.
Adding to Throop’s concerns is Keystone’s proposal to speed up the approvals necessary for it to accept cuttings from new gas well pads. Instead of having a laboratory analyze and submit the chemical makeup of the waste from each pad, as required by state regulations, the landfill wants to receive a full analysis for a gas operator’s first eight well sites then a summary of that data and an “abbreviated review” for the next 20 sites.
Past data indicated only small variations between the makeup of the drill cuttings from across the region, Keystone argued. The landfill will require drillers to sign a certification form indicating they used the same drilling process and materials for new wells as for past wells.
A full analysis will be submitted to the state and Keystone once a year.
DEP has approved the expedited procedure, a spokeswoman said.
llegere@timesshamrock.com