Air quality concerns raised as gas compressor stations multiply

The number of natural gas compressor stations planned for Northeastern Pennsylvania is multiplying as companies lay more pipelines to carry Marcellus Shale gas to customers.

The state has issued or is considering 29 air quality permits for separate stations in the northeast region, all of them in Susquehanna, Wyoming and Luzerne counties, according to a tally by the Department of Environmental Protection. Nearly two dozen of the permits are for stations planned within a 15-mile radius of the Susquehanna County seat in Montrose.

DEP has issued 383 of the permits statewide since October 2005, according to the agency’s tally. Not all of the permitted stations have been built and some may never materialize.

The permits cover facilities related to gas production, including compressor stations and dehydration units that strip liquid from the gas and speed it up for transport through interstate pipelines.

Each station emits a mix of pollutants – volatile organic compounds (VOCs), nitrogen oxides (NOx), formaldehyde and greenhouse gasses – in varying amounts that are limited by the type of permit governing the site.

Residents concerned about the proliferating stations’ impact on air quality have brought basic questions to public hearings in the region that are sometimes held as the state considers issuing permits: How many compressor stations will be built here? What is the combined impact of all these new pollution sources? When, if ever, can the state say stop?

The state considers the cumulative effect of the compressors using an existing network of monitoring stations that measure the ambient air quality, mostly in urban areas, Mark Wejkszner, DEP’s regional air  quality program manager, told an audience at a hearing this spring in Susquehanna County. The closest monitors are in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, about 30 miles away.

Pollution levels above federal air quality standards measured at those stations would determine if the state issues fewer or stricter permits, he said, but “right now, we’re in compliance with all of them with a lot of leeway.”

Environmental groups have criticized the state in lawsuits, letters to federal regulators and in public comments on proposed permits and regulations arguing that DEP is not doing all it can under the law to limit the amount of pollution the oil and gas facilities are allowed to emit.

They say that the state’s current air quality monitoring network is inadequate to measure the impacts of gas drilling and infrastructure in rural areas far from the established monitors clustered in population centers and point out that it is too late now – years into the development of the gas-rich shale – to measure what the air was like before the wells, pipelines and compressors were built.

“DEP does not have a comprehensive monitoring program to monitor contaminants in the air throughout the shale play regions of the state,” PennFuture president George Jugovic Jr. said. “We’re not monitoring for VOCs in these rural areas. We’re not monitoring for toxics. Having already begun this development, baseline is not really a question anymore. Now the question is can we get monitoring to ensure there are  no local or regional impacts as we move forward.”

Jugovic was the director of DEP’s southwest regional office prior to joining PennFuture last year. He testified at a state House Democratic Policy Committee hearing in February that his former regional office alone has permitted over 13,000 tons per year of NOx emissions from compressor stations. If each station emitted the maximum allowed by its permit, it would add up to about 10 percent of the NOx emissions from all sources of air pollution statewide.

Nitrogen oxides, which are commonly released in car exhaust and cigarette smoke and by burning fossil fuels, can contribute to respiratory problems and lung damage on their own as well as when they are combined with sunlight and volatile organic compounds to form smog.

Environmental groups also say the state is not using a tool frequently enough that would limit emissions by considering connected wells, pipelines and compressors owned by the same company and built near one another as one pollution source governed by one, stricter permit – a process called aggregation.

None of the oil and gas air pollution sources permitted in Northeastern Pennsylvania have been aggregated, a DEP spokeswoman said, but all of them have been evaluated to see if the aggregation rules apply.

“It’s like a cumulative impact assessment,” Jugovic said. “If you look at each pollution source individually, it never looks like a significant impact on the air or the water. But whenever you look at it more holistically, you start seeing a bigger potential impact, which may lead you to regulate it differently.”
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