Natural gas drilling might not just be an environmental concern

It might hit you in the pocketbook.

Communities and farmers are under mandates to reduce pollutants going into the Chesapeake Bay. The byproducts of drilling also are going into the bay but are largely unaccounted for.

The natural gas companies aren’t going to be held responsible for that. Farmers and communities will be, and they will have to spend more money to get rid of stuff they’re not producing.

In other words, it’s not your fault. But it might be your responsibility.

That’s the argument behind the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s call for a comprehensive study of drilling impacts. The foundation made the pitch at the opening meeting of the Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission, a panel appointed by Gov. Tom Corbett.

It’s not so much about the well-publicized drilling waste discharged into rivers, but rather the myriad other impacts of the industry that, for the most part, get little attention.

With drilling comes a lot of land disturbance and deforestation, which impacts water quality.

And it’s not a matter of drillers flouting regulations, they say. Even if the drilling industry follows existing law to the letter, studies show it has an impact on rivers and streams.

But at the moment, that impact is not part of the equation in plans to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.

Former Secretary of Environmental Protection John Hanger says it doesn’t need to be. If the current plan is followed, he said, “the bay will be cleaned up by 2025 … no matter what happens to the Marcellus industry.”

Others aren’t so confident, including the environmental group John Hanger founded: PennFuture.

PennFuture and a list of others, including the National Parks Conservation Association, the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment, and the Mid-Atlantic Council Trout Unlimited, have expressed support for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s call for a comprehensive study.

Industry exemptions

Although Corbett has said he’s open to the idea of an impact fee on drillers, that fee would go to the communities in which the drilling occurs. It would not hold the industry accountable for impacts farther downriver.

From the drilling industry’s perspective, Marcellus Shale Coalition spokesman Travis Windle said, “It’s critical to recognize the fact that natural gas production in the commonwealth is aggressively and ably regulated under a host of laws.”

Harry Campbell, a senior scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, doesn’t dispute that. But he said the industry is often exempted from specific provisions of those laws.

The industry is “exempted explicitly” from being required to have an environmental impact statement of the direct, indirect and cumulative impacts of drilling under the National Environmental Policy Act, Campbell said.

Pennsylvania law has no provision for conducting its own statewide environmental impact statement, Campbell said.

New York, however, does, and the famous moratorium on drilling in the Marcellus Shale there is a result of that state conducting its own environmental review.

Maryland also is now poised to do its own environmental assessment, which might result in a two-year drilling moratorium on natural gas drilling.

Additional pollution flowing into the Chesapeake was one of the factors informing the Maryland bill, which passed the House and is expected to pass the Senate.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is not calling for a moratorium on natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania.

“We are certainly not anti-gas,” Campbell said. But he said, “We need to have an idea of what we’re going to be facing over the next decade.”

Pennsylvania contributes the most water — and the most pollution — to the bay, and it’s under orders from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reduce the volume of sediment, nitrogen and phosphorus by 20 percent or more in the next 15 years.

Farmers continue to change their practices and upgrade their operations, often at great expense, to reduce runoff from their fields.

Local municipalities are under increasing pressure to mitigate dirty stormwater flowing off their streets. The fixes are rarely cheap and often borne by taxpayers.

Sewage treatment plants are tightly monitored to make sure they don’t contribute more pollution to rivers and streams, and plenty of midstate towns have already seen rising sewer bills as towns upgrade their systems to meet bay mandates.

Even if all the efforts of those folks are successful, they might still be held accountable for not meeting the pollution reduction goals fast enough.

Those goals might not be met because another industry upstream is contributing an unaccounted share.

“The largest share of the work to improve the bay is in south-central Pennsylvania,” Campbell said. “The majority of activity for Marcellus is in the northern tier, in the most sensitive ecosystems. … The downriver water coming to Harrisburg is going to make it all that much harder for south-central to achieve and maintain the load reduction requirements.”

The impact on water from drilling isn’t accounted for in Pennsylvania’s official plan to clean up its rivers and the bay, Campbell said.

It’s not just about blue crabs and oysters.

The tab for drilling is likely to be paid downstream regardless of the Chesapeake and the EPA.

Campbell notes that 70 percent to 80 percent of Pennsylvanians get their drinking water from streams and rivers.

“The way we restore the bay is to restore our rivers and streams,” he said. “Every dollar spent on improving water quality saves $27 in treatment costs to drinking water. It makes sense: the cleaner the water coming into the plant, the less expensive to treat it.”

A ‘black hole’ of data

So how much pollution is the drilling industry contributing to rivers and streams?

No one really knows for sure.

“Technically, the answer to that question, as a scientist, is: I do not know,” Campbell said.

Campbell said there’s a “black hole” of information when it comes to how the Marcellus industry impacts the environment.

“We have data from agriculture and from home construction, for example,” he said. “We have much of that data because of regulation, but because of the exemptions this industry enjoys, that information is largely nonexistent.”

The well-publicized issue of fracking waste being discharged into rivers through treatment plants is not what Campbell is talking about. Though much of the dissolved solids from that waste does go into the rivers, it is accounted for, and the treatment plants are held responsible for it.

It’s all the other impacts of the industry that are unknown.

Windle, at the Marcellus Shale Coalition, said advances in drilling technology have reduced the impact on the surface of the land.

“We can reach miles worth of natural gas resources from one single well pad,” he said.

That’s true. Marcellus rigs can drill horizontally for a mile or more from the well pad, and, thus, there are fewer rigs than would be required using the old technology.

But there’s still land disturbance: 5-acre well pads, massive water ponds, access roads, pipelines and compressor stations.

How that activity impacts streams is largely undocumented and unknown, Campbell said.

Though there is little scientific study thus far, “What there is clearly shows the potential for impact,” Campbell said.

He cited a 2008 study in Texas that suggests drilling “is on par with the type of pollution that comes with building a new strip mall or subdivision.”

Pennsylvania does regulate the natural gas industry, and many regulations were recently strengthened.

“Various regulations, implemented through DEP, are in place to protect surface water and groundwater from erosion and sedimentation due to earth disturbances,” Windle said.

He said all Marcellus Shale drilling operators must use the proper “best management practices” to control erosion, sedimentation and stormwater, and develop an erosion and sediment control plan.

Best practices “must minimize point source discharges to surface waters, preserve the integrity of stream channels and protect the quality of the receiving waterway,” he said.

John Hanger called the rules for drillers “stringent” and said they need to be enforced.

But Campbell pointed to the DEP’s “expedited review” process, a regulatory perk “enjoyed by no other industry in Pennsylvania.”

The forms relating to erosion and sedimentation controls at drilling sites “simply asks, yes or no: Have you controlled the stormwater runoff on site?” Campbell said. “All you have to do is say yes, you have.”

Everyone else, home builders and strip mall developers, has to quantify it to prove it, he said.

“This industry just has to check yes or no, and it’s based on the honor system,” Campbell said.

But Hanger said the drilling industry faces closer scrutiny than other developments.

“DEP has that responsibility for Marcellus, and there are all kinds of inspections,” he said.

Campbell said even if companies are honorable and following best practices, “the regulations are set up to minimize impact, not prevent it.”

Even an honorable, perfectly run and regulated well site increases the volume of sediment in streams. That is currently unaccounted for.

And accidents do happen.

Just two weeks ago, the DEP shut down a drilling operation in Potter County because it discharged “a significant amount of sediment and silt” into a stream that contributes to a water source for a local town’s public water supply.

No well site construction had begun on the site, a company spokesman said.

The safety of the town’s water was never in question, town officials said.

Impact on aquatic systems

Does a little sediment really matter?

Campbell pointed to a recent study from the Academy of Natural Sciences that suggests when drill sites are close together, yes it does.

The results of that study, conducted by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, showed high-density well drilling in Susquehanna County was statistically correlated with higher levels of contamination and a degradation of macroinvertebrates, aquatic bugs that are a key indicator of healthy streams.

The wells in that study were presumably already meeting their requirements under state law, Campbell said.

“The sheer presence and density of drilling has an impact on aquatic systems,” he said, “which justifies the concern we have.”

And then there are the cash costs.

Based on the current pollution reduction plan, Pennsylvania must scrub at least 230,000 tons of sediment out its rivers by 2025.

With drilling activity rampant in the northern tier, that’s going to be more difficult, Campbell said.

Hanger disagreed.

“I frankly think they are paying attention to something that is at the fringe of the fringe of the fringe of what impacts the bay,” he said. “The bay is not going to be saved or killed by what the Marcellus industry does at its drilling sites. There’s a loss of perspective here.”

Hanger said the focus needs to be on following the existing plan, regardless of its failure to address impacts of drilling.

Campbell said that’s fundamentally unfair.

“If we don’t quantify it and account for it and have the industry take care of it, agriculture, communities and sewage treatment plants will have to carry the water of the industry, no pun intended,” he said.

“They’re going to get off relatively scot-free while the rest of Pennsylvania is going to have to shoulder that burden,” Campbell said.

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/04/post_187.html
Published: Saturday, April 02, 2011, 11:27 PM