State calls for stop in using plants to treat tainted water. Drillers ready to comply.
End near for drill pollution
by DAVID B. CARUSO
April 24, 2011
Pennsylvania’s top environmental regulator says he is confident that the natural gas industry is just weeks away from ending one of its more troubling environmental practices: the discharge of vast amounts of polluted brine into rivers used for drinking water.
On Tuesday, the state’s new Republican administration called on drillers to stop using riverside treatment plants to get rid of the millions of barrels of ultra-salty, chemically tainted wastewater that gush annually from gas wells.
As drillers have swarmed Pennsylvania’s rich Marcellus Shale gas fields, the industry’s use and handling of water has been a subject of intense scrutiny.
The state’s request was made after some researchers presented evidence that the discharges were altering river chemistry in a way that had the potential to affect drinking water.
Locally, the Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority has run into strong public opposition to a potential plan to build a treatment facility for the wastewater in Hanover Township. Many residents say they are concerned about environmental contamination as well as increased truck traffic bringing tainted water in for treatment.
The sanitary authority has consulted PA Northeast Aqua Resources to conduct a feasibility study on building a plant to treat wastewater produced by Marcellus Shale gas drilling.
John Minora of PA Northeast Aqua Resources said the initial study is complete, and the sanitary authority is now working on a second study with Red Desert/Cate Street Capital, a company seeking to build the plant next to the WVSA’s current facility.
For years, the gas industry has bristled and resisted when its environmental practices have been criticized.
But last week, it abruptly took a different tone.
Even before the initiative to end river discharges was announced publicly, it had received the support of drillers. By Wednesday evening, a leading industry group, the Marcellus Shale Coalition, had announced that its members were committed to halting the practice by the state’s stated goal of May 19.
“Basically, I see this as a huge success story,” said Michael Krancer, acting secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection. “This will be a vestige of the past very quickly.”
After May 19, almost all drillers will either be sending the waste to deep disposal wells — mostly in Ohio — or recycling it in new well projects, he said.
While the movement to end the wastewater discharges followed years of environmentalists’ criticism, the most influential push may have come from within the industry itself.
Among major gas-producing states, Pennsylvania is the only one that allowed the bulk of its well brine to be treated and dumped in rivers and streams. Other states required it to be injected into deep underground shafts.
Publicly, the industry — and the state — argued that the river discharges were harmless to humans and wildlife.
Just months ago, the industry was actively opposing new state regulations intended to protect streams from the brine, saying fears about the river discharges were overblown.
But simultaneously, some companies were concerned.
John Hanger, Krancer’s predecessor as the state’s environmental secretary, said that as early as 2008 he had been approached by two of the state’s most active drillers — Range Resources, of Fort Worth, Texas, and Atlas Energy, now a subsidiary of Chevron, warning that the state’s permissive rules had left rivers and streams at risk from the salty dissolved solids, particularly bromides, present in produced well water.
“They came to me and said, if this rule doesn’t change, there could be enormous amounts of wastewater high in (total dissolved solids) pouring into the rivers,” Hanger said.
Almost since then, the companies have been working on alternative disposal methods.
“We never thought that it was a good practice to begin with,” said Range Resources spokesman Matt Pitzarella.
For months, drillers have been introducing technology that returns brine to deep wells, rather than discarding it as waste. By the end of last year, this reuse was being considered by most big drillers as the industry’s future.
Efforts to curtail the waste flow accelerated, though, after a series of critical media reports, increased pressure from the Environmental Protection Agency, and new research that raised questions about whether drinking water was being compromised.
After reviewing that research, Range Resources began lobbying other drillers to confront the problem once and for all, and to do it publicly, Pitzarella said.
The water that flows from active wells is often contaminated with traces of chemicals injected into the wells during a drilling procedure called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which breaks up the shale and frees natural gas. The flowback water also brings back from underground such naturally existing contaminants as barium, strontium, and radium.
Worries about the contaminants took on added urgency after the Monongahela River, a western Pennsylvania waterway that serves as a major source of drinking water for Pittsburgh and communities to its south, became so salty in 2008 that people began complaining about the taste.
The Department of Environmental Protection responded by curtailing the amount of wastewater sent to plants on the Monongahela. It also wrote new rules barring wastewater treatment plants from accepting more drilling wastewater than already permitted unless they were capable of turning out effluent with salt levels that met drinking water standards.
Those rules, though, left most of the existing wastewater treatment plants alone, and between 15 and 27 continued to pump out millions of gallons of water that scientists said was still high in some pollutants.
Over the past year and a half, a handful of researchers, including Jeanne VanBriesen, a professor of civil engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, and Stanley States, director of water quality at the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, have been collecting evidence on an increase in bromide in rivers that were being used for gas wastewater disposal.
The industry has, until now, expressed mostly skepticism about any possible link between drilling waste and water quality problems.
When The Associated Press reported in January that some drinking water systems close to gas wastewater treatment plants had struggled to meet EPA standards for trihalomethanes, the article was written off by industry groups as irresponsible, as was a similar report by The New York Times in February that focused on the presence of radium in drilling waste.
But in recent weeks, Range Resources arranged for VanBriesen and States to present some of their preliminary findings on bromide to a gathering of industry representatives.
VanBriesen said she cautioned that her own findings didn’t necessarily point the finger decisively at natural gas waste as the main culprit behind rising bromide levels.
Still, her presentations had an impact, she said.
“I think what you are seeing is a realization that the problem isn’t going away,” VanBriesen said. “I’m not pushing the panic button … but it’s a directional change that you don’t want to continue.”
Marcellus Shale Coalition President Kathryn Klaber said that after reviewing those findings, her group now believes the industry is partly responsible for the rising bromide levels.
In her letter to Krancer on Wednesday, she promised that the industry was taking action, but also encouraged state officials to evaluate whether other “sources” were contributing to the problem.
Krancer promised that evaluation would indeed happen, but he said he believed the gas industry’s actions would lead to immediate improvements in river bromide levels.
Advocate: Driller’s fines low
MATT HUGHES mhughes@timesleader.com
April 23, 2011
http://www.timesleader.com/news/Advocate__Driller_rsquo_s_fines_low_04-22-2011.html
Environmental advocate: DEP hasn’t fined Chesapeake enough in past; heavy fine merited if violations caused the blowout.
A state environmental advocate said Friday that Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection has handled natural gas driller Chesapeake with kid gloves in the past and should fine the company heavily for any violations related to a blowout in Bradford County.
A blowout Wednesday at Chesapeake’s Atgas H2 well in LeRoy Township, Bradford County, spilled a reported 30,000 gallons of salt-saturated and chemical-laced produced water from the well pad and into a tributary of Towanda Creek.
Crews successfully plugged the leak Thursday, and Chesapeake has been sent a notice of violation by DEP.
Jan Jarrett, president of Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future, or PennFuture, a nonprofit environmental and energy advocacy organization, said state fines levied against the company have been too low to provide a deterrent effect and have been significantly lower than fines assessed other gas drillers for similar violations.
In February, Chesapeake allowed vapors to catch fire at a well site in Washington County, creating a danger to the nearby community.
In March, DEP ordered Chesapeake to stop work on a well pad in Galeton, Potter County, because the company failed to implement proper erosion controls, allowing sediment from the pad to pollute a stream that provided drinking water to the local community.
DEP did not fine the driller for either incident, Jarrett said, and she questioned why.
Following a blowout at an EOG Resources well in Clearfield County, which like Wednesday’s blowout spilled flowback water into the surrounding environment, DEP fined the driller $400,000 and temporarily suspended EOG’s operations statewide.
If Chesapeake is found to be at fault for the Bradford County blowout, she said a similar tough penalty is warranted, if not overdue.
“You don’t fine somebody if they are not breaking any laws, but if the investigation finds that they have, then they should be fined and fined heavily,” Jarrett said, adding, “they should not be allowed to operate until they can prove that they can drill safely.”
Chesapeake has voluntarily suspended all hydraulic fracturing operations at its wells in Pennsylvania and West Virginia while it determines what went wrong.
“A full investigation will be conducted to determine the root cause of the failure, evaluate best management practices and make any and all necessary corrections before returning to normal operations,” Chesapeake spokesman Brian Grove said in a statement Wednesday.
With 344 wells drilled, Chesapeake ranks among the most active companies drilling in the Marcellus Shale, rivaled by other giants Range Resources and Atlas Energy. The company has also been issued 1,229 drilling permits, 17 percent of all Marcellus Shale permits issued through April 1.
The company also ranks among the most frequent violators of DEP regulations. DEP inspectors found 364 violations at Chesapeake Marcellus Shale gas wells between January 2008 and March 31, ranking the company second only to Cabot Oil & Gas, now infamous for its alleged contamination of drinking water wells in Dimock, in number of violations.
Jarrett said Chesapeake ranks only eighth in the value of total fines assessed in the last five years, paying $61,000.
Jarrett said that’s too low.
“Fines are meant to motivate; it’s not just punishing a company for any particular incident or for violating environmental law, but fines motivate companies to focus on the future,” she said. “It’s a deterrent.”
DEP spokesman Kevin Sunday responded that “DEP has pursued aggressive enforcement actions in the past, and will continue to pursue aggressive enforcement actions as necessary.”
“The enforcement process is a vital and integral component of the department’s commitment to overseeing this important industry grow in an environmentally and economically conscious manner,” Sunday said.
Chesapeake did not respond to a reporter’s request for a reaction to Jarrett’s statements.
Gas well blowout: Operator suspends fracking in state
Chesapeake: Flow from leak in Bradford County well stopped. Cause of breach still unknown.
LEROY TWP. – As a natural gas well in Bradford County continued to leak super-salty flow-back water after a blowout Wednesday, well operator Chesapeake Energy suspended all hydraulic fracturing operations in Pennsylvania on Thursday.
The leak, which began in an accident Tuesday night, produced water and natural gas until about 10 p.m. Thursday, when Chesapeake said it had stopped the flow.
Chesapeake’s Atgas H2 gas well in LeRoy Township, near Canton, suffered a blowout when a piece of equipment failed during hydraulic fracturing just before midnight Tuesday into Wednesday, sending a reported 30,000 gallons of water spilling from the well pad, some of it reaching a tributary of Towanda Creek.
The creek flows into the Susquehanna River.
Chesapeake said fluids still seeping from the leaking piece of equipment had been contained by midday Wednesday, and a secondary containment mechanism was diverting the flow of fluids away from Towanda Creek.
Equipment was removed from the well head, and crews worked to plug the leak and seal the well. Chesapeake said after 10 p.m. Thursday that workers had successfully stemmed the flow of the leak, and that they would continue to monitor it overnight.
Chesapeake spokesman Brian Grove said the exact cause of the breach remained unknown Thursday, but that it took place in a wellhead connection.
“Chesapeake has voluntarily suspended all completion operations in Pennsylvania as we evaluate this incident,” Grove said in a statement Thursday, later adding, “a full investigation will be conducted to determine the root cause of the failure, evaluate best management practices and make any and all necessary corrections before returning to normal operations.”Seven families living near the well were temporarily evacuated Wednesday morning but returned later in the day.
Chesapeake spokesman Rory Sweeney said fluid injected into the well during fracking contained chemical additives that aid the process, including corrosion and bacteria inhibitors, but the main environmental concern is with brine, naturally occurring underground salt water now back-flowing from the well with the frack fluid.
“Highly briny liquid can have some effects,” Sweeney said. “That’s why we’ve been very diligent and worked very hard to mitigate and minimize the effects to the environment.”
The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency’s daily summary report Thursday stated approximately 30,000 gallons of water leaked from the well. Chesapeake and the state Department of Environmental Protection could not confirm that figure.
DEP spokesman Daniel Spadoni said Thursday that well-containment specialist Boots and Coots International Well Control Inc., of Texas, pumped ground up tires, plastic bits and other rubber material into the well to plug the leak, and will then pump heavy mud into the hole to kill the well.
Spadoni said DEP sampled seven private wells Wednesday and eight surface water locations but had not received the results.
A field test of water from Towanda Creek entering the Susquehanna River did not indicate an impact, Spadoni added.
Grove said the well also began emitting limited amounts of natural gas early Thursday morning, and that Chesapeake and the Bradford County Emergency Management Agency performed gas-plume modeling and found that any natural-gas releases will not pose a risk to the area’s public safety.
MATT HUGHES mhughes@timesleader.com
April 22, 2011
http://www.timesleader.com/news/Operator_suspends_fracking_in_state_04-21-2011.html
More News About the Blowout:
Chesapeake suspends well completion operations
http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/chesapeake-suspends-well-completion-operations-1.1136178#axzz1Jb4OFfes
Chesapeake stops fluid leak
http://citizensvoice.com/news/chesapeake-stops-fluid-leak-1.1136067#axzz1K40icpUb
After gas well leak in northern Pa., company suspends some operations
http://republicanherald.com/news/after-gas-well-leak-in-northern-pa-company-suspends-some-operations-1.1136148
Natural gas well suffers blowout, releasing fluids in Bradford County
Thousands of gallons of natural gas drilling waste fluids spilled onto a farm and streams for more than 12 hours Wednesday after a driller in Bradford County lost control of a well late Tuesday.
The Atgas 2H well operated by Chesapeake Energy Corp. in LeRoy Twp. blew out during the hydraulic fracturing process at around 11:45 p.m., swamping the lined well pad and overflowing into a field, a small tributary and Towanda Creek, state environmental regulators said
Seven families were asked to evacuate the area until the well could be brought back under control, Chesapeake said in a statement, adding that no one was injured in the incident and no gas was emitted into the atmosphere.
The identities of those evacuated from the area were unknown late Wednesday. However, Canton Fire Chief Kim Jennings reported that the evacuees were placed in local motels.
Chief Jennings said that Canton firefighters as well as Western Alliance Ambulance personnel were on the scene throughout the day, standing by and making certain that any equipment needs were met. Chief Jennings said the Canton Fire Department left the scene late Wednesday.
Chesapeake described the problem as “an equipment failure.” Neither the company nor regulators with the state Department of Environmental Protection could provide a precise estimate of how much fluid was spilled.
Emergency crews were able to stop the fluid from flowing into Towanda Creek by Wednesday afternoon, but crews struggled to regain control of the well into Wednesday evening. The-well control specialty firm Boots and Coots was brought to the site from Texas, Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman Katy Gresh said.
It was unclear Wednesday where exactly the well was leaking or why, but officials on site described the leak as originating from below the frack valve stack, an above-ground piece of equipment that controls pressure during the fracking process.
“Evidently the crack is in the top part of the well below the blowout preventer,” Skip Roupp, the deputy director of the Bradford County Emergency Management Agency said Wednesday afternoon, referring to a device used in emergency situations to choke off flow from a well. “They don’t really know what happened yet because they don’t have it controlled yet.”
At least eight DEP personnel were on scene sampling the unnamed tributary and Towanda Creek as well as eight private water supplies, Ms. Gresh said. There was no evidence the spill killed fish, she said.
The Atgas 2H well is part of a six-well pad in a remote area on LeRoy Mountain about 13 miles west of Towanda.
The hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, stage of well development takes place after a well is drilled and involves injecting millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals underground at high pressures to crack the rock and release the gas trapped there.
A portion of that fluid returns to the surface laden with salts, metals and radioactivity that occurs naturally in the shale formation and is mobilized by the fracturing process. The wastewater, called flowback water, spewed from the Atgas well on Wednesday. The exact composition of the spilled fluid had not been determined.
Chesapeake Energy, one of the state’s most active Marcellus Shale drillers, has been issued 30 notices of violations from the DEP for its operations in the state this year. The company has been cited 284 times for violations since the start of 2008 and has been subject to 58 enforcement actions by environmental regulators, according to DEP records.
Unlike a blowout at a Clearfield County gas well in June – the most serious well control incident in the state’s Marcellus Shale to date – the blowout in LeRoy Twp. never spewed a geyser of waste fluid into the air, Ms. Gresh said.
In the June incident, at a well owned by EOG Resources, natural gas and wastewater shot 75 feet into the air after drillers hit unexpectedly high pressures underground.
Ms. Gresh reported around 9 p.m. that DEP representatives were still at the scene and she had not yet been informed that the situation was under control.
When asked at the site if Chesapeake will later resume drilling the well, Brian Grove, director of corporate development for Chesapeake Energy, said he could not say until the situation is brought under control, allowing the company to make that determination.
BY LAURA LEGERE (STAFF WRITER)Published: April 21, 2011
Contact the writer: llegere@timesshamrock.com
http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/gas-drilling/natural-gas-well-suffers-blowout-releasing-fluids-in-bradford-county-1.1135253#axzz1KA1cXuZt
State calls for halt to shale wastewater treatment at 15 plants
State environmental regulators called Tuesday for Marcellus Shale natural gas drillers to voluntarily stop taking wastewater to 15 treatment plants that do not have to meet strict discharge standards that went into effect last year.
Citing concerns about high levels of bromides in western Pennsylvania rivers, acting Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Krancer gave the drillers until May 19 to stop taking the waste to treatment facilities that were grandfathered into state rules that curb how much salt can be discharged into streams.
The request – which does not have the legal weight of an order – comes after federal environmental regulators, scientists and drinking water suppliers raised concerns about the drilling wastewater, which is laden with salts, metals and naturally occurring radioactive material that cannot be completely removed by conventional treatment plants.
The request came on the same day that the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry group, acknowledged that drilling wastewater is contributing to elevated bromide levels in the Allegheny and Beaver rivers.
Reducing the amount of salts, or total dissolved solids, in the wastewater also reduces bromides, which are nontoxic but can turn into cancer-causing compounds called brominated trihalomethanes when combined with chlorine at drinking water treatment facilities.
“Now is the time to take action to end this practice,” Krancer said, citing “more definitive scientific data, improved technology and increased voluntary wastewater recycling by industry” since the facilities were given special exemptions to the state total dissolved solids standards when they were implemented last year.
Krancer said there are other possible sources for the elevated bromides in waterways, but the agency believes that bromide concentrations “would quickly and significantly decrease” if Marcellus drillers stopped taking the water to the grandfathered plants.
Citing research by Carnegie Mellon University and the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority that suggests the gas industry is contributing to the river bromide levels, Marcellus Shale Coalition President Kathryn Klaber said the industry “supports the appropriate action taken by DEP today” and is “committed to leading efforts, and working alongside DEP and other stakeholders, to address these issues quickly and straightforwardly.”
The majority of Marcellus Shale wastewater generated in the state is either recycled by drillers, taken to out-of-state disposal wells or treated at plants that meet the new standards, but a significant amount of the waste is still taken to plants that are not designed to treat it. That has raised concerns about toxins allowed to enter waterways upstream from drinking water intakes, especially in western Pennsylvania.
The 15 grandfathered plants are located in Allegheny, Cambria, Elk, Greene, Indiana, Jefferson, Lawrence, Snyder, Venango, Warren and Westmoreland counties. There are no grandfathered treatment plants in or upstream of Lackawanna County.
State environmental groups praised the DEP action on Tuesday, but some also expressed reservations about the voluntary nature of the request.
“It is very hard for the public to be assured that their drinking water will be protected if there is only a voluntary requirement,” Pennsylvania State Director for Clean Water Action Myron Arnowitt said.
“While DEP is taking a first step here, we hope that they will order a full stop to all Marcellus wastewater discharges to our rivers.”
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: April 20, 2011
http://standardspeaker.com/news/state-calls-for-halt-to-shale-wastewater-treatment-at-15-plants-1.1134958
Gas permits rubber stamped
Pennsylvania environmental regulators say they spend as little as 35 minutes reviewing each of the thousands of applications for natural gas well permits they get each year from drillers intent on tapping the state’s lucrative and vast Marcellus Shale reserves.
ALLENTOWN — Pennsylvania environmental regulators say they spend as little as 35 minutes reviewing each of the thousands of applications for natural gas well permits they get each year from drillers intent on tapping the state’s lucrative and vast Marcellus Shale reserves.
And the regulators say they do not give any additional scrutiny to requests to drill near high-quality streams and rivers even though the waterways are protected by state and federal law.
Staffers in the state Department of Environmental Protection testified behind closed doors last month as part of a lawsuit filed by residents and environmental groups over a permit that DEP issued for an exploratory gas well in Northeastern Pennsylvania, less than a half-mile from the Delaware River and about 300 feet from a pristine stream.
Their statements, obtained by The Associated Press, call into question whether regulators are overburdened and merely rubber-stamping permit applications during the unprecedented drilling boom that has turned Pennsylvania into a major player in the natural gas market, while also raising fears about polluted aquifers and air.
The agency has denied few requests to drill in the Marcellus Shale formation, the world’s second-largest gas field. Of the 7,019 applications that DEP has processed since 2005, only 31 have been rejected — less than one-half of 1 percent.
“Even those of us who are skeptics of the DEP, I think we all want to assume that they’re doing the basics. And they’re really just not,” said Jordan Yeager, a plaintiffs’ attorney who is challenging the drilling permit awarded to Newfield Appalachia PA LLC, a unit of Houston-based Newfield Exploration Co.
The agency declined to comment about any aspect of its permit review process, even to answer general questions.
But the depositions of four DEP staffers responsible for processing permits — taken in late March and filed with a regional water agency this week — reveal that:
• The agency doesn’t consider potential impacts on legally protected high-quality watersheds, beyond checking that wells meet minimum setbacks required of all gas wells in the state.
• Staffers don’t consider whether proposed gas wells comply with municipal or regional zoning and planning laws.
• They don’t consider the cumulative impact of wide-scale development of wells in a concentrated area.
• They appear to have a fuzzy understanding of laws that are supposed to govern their work. A supervisor was unable to define the requirements of a key anti-degradation regulation that says pristine waterways “shall be maintained and protected,” while a geologist said he didn’t know that streams and rivers legally designated as “high quality” or “exceptional value” are entitled to an extra layer of protection.
Asked by Yeager whether he had “any understanding of what it means to be an HQ watershed,” DEP geologist Joseph Lichtinger replied: “Only that it means high quality.”
“Any understanding what high quality means?” Yeager persisted.
“No.”
“Do you know what that means in terms of the level of protection that they have under the law?”
Lichtinger, who performed the substantive technical analysis of drilling permit applications, shook his head, then answered no.
Lichtinger and his supervisors also acknowledged they did not take into account that Newfield’s test well would be drilled within the federally protected wild and scenic Delaware River corridor.
The geologist testified he spent as little as a half-hour, and up to a full day, scrutinizing each individual application. His direct supervisor, Brian Babb, testified he took an average of two minutes per application to review Lichtinger’s work. Finally, Craig Lobins, a regional manager with the oil and gas program, told plaintiffs’ attorneys he typically spent another two minutes on each application before signing off on the permit.
“What these depositions reveal is that the state is doing next to nothing in approving permits, even in the Delaware River basin, even in high quality watersheds, even in the wild and scenic river corridor,” Yeager told The AP. “All together, they are spending less than 35 minutes in approving these $5 million industrial sites that have the ability to pollute the water that’s relied upon by (millions of) people. It is unconscionable.”
But Yeager said he didn’t fault the DEP rank-and-file.
“They’ve got limited time to do a massive job. What we have allowed DEP to do is to terribly understaff this permitting process,” he said. “If we’re getting it wrong in this case, we’re getting it wrong for every well site that’s being developed.”
State law generally requires DEP to process applications within 45 days. It’s DEP policy to give drilling companies their money back if they fail to consider permits in a timely fashion. Permit fees for Marcellus Shale wells — raised recently to pay for additional enforcement staff — cost between $900 and $3,000, depending on the depth of the well bore.
Citing the lawsuit, former DEP Secretary John Hanger declined comment on the specifics of the depositions, or on the sufficiency of the permit review process. But he pointed out that overall staffing in the oil and gas division increased from 88 in 2008 to 202 in 2010, and that some of those positions were in permit review.
“The staffing issues are ones the department needs to review constantly as this industry evolves and changes,” said Hanger, who left office in January when Republican Gov. Tom Corbett took office.
Hanger also repeated his call for modernization of Pennsylvania’s 25-year-old oil and gas law, though he said a new regulation that mandates 150-foot buffers from pristine waterways will help protect more than 25,000 miles of high-quality streams and rivers.
DEP awarded a drilling permit to Newfield last May. It was among a handful of exploratory wells grandfathered by the Delaware River Basin Commission, a federal-interstate agency that monitors water supplies for 15 million people, including half the population of New York City. DRBC has declared a moratorium on almost all Marcellus Shale drilling in the watershed while it drafts regulations.
The Newfield well was sunk about 300 feet from Hollister Creek, whose legal designation as high quality means it supports an abundance of fish and other wildlife. In November, DEP site inspectors found deficiencies in Newfield’s erosion and sedimentation control plan and required the company to make fixes.
The plaintiffs, which include the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, the Damascus Citizens for Sustainability and three nearby property owners, have appealed Newfield’s DEP permit to the state Environmental Hearing Board. They want the well decommissioned and the site restored to its original state. A hearing on the appeal is scheduled for late May.
April 14, 2011
MICHAEL RUBINKAM
http://www.timesleader.com/news/AP__Gas_permits__rubber_stamped_04-13-2011.html
State may limit drilling byproduct from being spread on farms
Pennsylvania is seeking to limit the use of sewage sludge as a fertilizer on farmers’ fields if the sludge comes from sewer plants that treat wastewater from natural gas drilling.
Environmental regulators’ concerns about the sludge were highlighted in a New York Times article on Friday that described the risks of radioactive contaminants in the drilling wastewater concentrating in the sludge during treatment. The sludge, also called biosolids, is sometimes sold or given away to farmers and gardeners as fertilizer if it meets certain standards for pathogens and metals.
The Times article quotes from a transcript of a March 15 conference call between officials with the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environmental Protection about how to better regulate discharges of the wastewater that can be high in salts, metals and naturally occurring radioactive materials.
DEP is developing a guidance document about how to include new wastewater treatment standards into permits for new or expanding treatment plants that handle the drilling fluids. The new standards limit the amount of salty discharge, called total dissolved solids, that can enter state streams.
The draft guidance document would also bar treatment plants that receive untreated drilling wastewater from using their sludge for land application.
Ron Furlan, a division manager for DEP’s Bureau of Water Standards and Facility Regulation, is quoted in the the New York Times as saying sludge was included in the guidance document because “we don’t have a good handle on the radiological concerns right now, and in any case we don’t want people land-applying biosolids that may be contaminated to any significant level by radium 226-228 or other emitters.”
The guidance does not carry the legal weight of a regulation and would not be imposed on treatment plants unless their discharge permit is up for renewal or they apply for a new or expanded permit.
The draft guidance also proposes that treatment plants accepting untreated drilling wastewater develop radiation protection “action plans” and have monitoring requirements for radium 226 and 228, gross alpha and uranium established in their permits.
In a letter this week to the EPA, DEP Acting Secretary Michael Krancer wrote that the state has directed 14 public water supplies that draw from rivers downstream from treatment plants that accept Marcellus Shale wastewater to test the finished drinking water for radioactive contaminants and other pollutants. The state also called on 25 treatment plants that accept the wastewater to begin twice monthly testing for radioactivity in their discharges.
Tests of seven state rivers at sites downstream from wastewater treatment plants last fall showed that levels of radioactivity were at or below normal levels.
In the conference call quoted by the New York Times, environmental regulators also expressed concerns about radionuclides settling in the sediment of rivers where the incompletely treated wastewater is discharged from sewer plants.
“If you were really looking for radionuclides, that’s the first place I would look,” Furlan said.
DEP spokeswoman Katy Gresh said Friday that there are currently no plans to begin testing river sediment for radionuclides.
“We will use the results of the increased testing/monitoring to see what is being discharged before making that decision,” she said.
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: April 9, 2011
http://citizensvoice.com/news/state-may-limit-drilling-byproduct-from-being-spread-on-farms-1.1130088#axzz1J1xZtYwG
State expanding water tests for contaminants from drilling
Most treatment facilities unable to remove many pollutants, EPA letter says.
HARRISBURG — Prodded by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the state said it is expanding the scope of water tests to screen for radioactive pollutants and other contaminants from the state’s booming natural gas drilling industry.
The state Department of Environmental Protection’s acting secretary, Michael Krancer, wrote Wednesday to the EPA to say that he has requested additional testing from some public water suppliers and wastewater treatment facilities.
Those steps, he said, were in the works before the EPA’s regional administrator, Shawn Garvin, sent a March 7 letter asking Pennsylvania to begin more water testing to make sure drinking water isn’t being contaminated by drillers. The state’s requests for additional testing, however, were made later in March, Krancer said.
The tests should check for radium, uranium and the salty dissolved solids that could potentially make drilling wastewater environmentally damaging, according to copies of letters the DEP said it sent to 14 public water authorities and 25 wastewater facilities.
In his letter last month, Garvin said most treatment facilities are unable to remove many of the pollutants in the often-toxic drilling water. Substances of concern, he said, include radioactive contaminants, organic chemicals, metals and salty dissolved solids.
In his letter to Garvin, Krancer seemed to bridle at the perceived suggestion that the state isn’t doing its job keeping up with the drilling industry’s hot pursuit of the nation’s largest-known natural gas reservoir, the Marcellus Shale.
“Rest assured that well before receiving your letter, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has been focusing on issues relating to natural gas drilling, and prioritizes protecting the environment and public health and safety above all else,” Krancer wrote.
Garvin also had asked the state to re-examine permits previously issued to the treatment plants handling the waste, saying they lacked “critical provisions.” Krancer responded that requirements to monitor for substances of concern will be added to permits upon renewal and where warranted.”
An EPA spokeswoman, Donna Heron, said Thursday that her agency received Pennsylvania’s letter and is reviewing it.
Pennsylvania is the center of Marcellus Shale drilling activity, with more than 2,000 wells drilled in the past three years and many thousands more planned.
Drilling for gas in deep shale deposits is emerging as a major new source of energy that supporters say is homegrown, cheap and friendlier environmentally than coal or oil.
But shale drilling requires injecting huge volumes of water underground to help shatter the rock — a process called hydraulic fracturing. Some of that water then returns to the surface. In addition to producing gas, the Marcellus Shale wells produce large amounts of ultra-salty water tainted with metals like barium and strontium, trace radioactivity and small amounts of toxic chemicals injected by energy companies.
Most big gas states require drillers to dump their wastewater into deep shafts drilled into the earth to prevent it from contaminating surface or ground water. Pennsylvania, however, allows partially treated drilling wastewater to be discharged into rivers from which communities draw drinking water.
Before Garvin’s letter, water suppliers typically tested only occasionally for radium, and it had been years since the utilities drawing from rivers in the affected drilling region had done those tests.
Krancer also said his agency is seeking money to add more water-quality testing stations on Pennsylvania’s rivers. The state already is testing at seven spots on Pennsylvania’s waterways that are downriver from treatment plants that discharge partially treated gas-drilling wastewater, but upriver from public drinking water intakes.
Some Pennsylvania drilling wastewater is reused or trucked out-of-state for disposal underground. Of the wastewater taken to treatment plants in recent months, the great majority went to seven plants that discharge into the Allegheny River, the Mahoning River, the Conemaugh River, the Blacklick Creek, the Monongahela River, the Susquehanna River and the South Fork Ten-mile Creek.
Last month, the DEP said earlier tests from those seven waterways showed no harmful levels of radium, which exists naturally underground and is sometimes found in drilling wastewater that gushes from wells.
Radium that is swallowed or inhaled can accumulate in a person’s bones. Long-term exposure increases the risk of developing several diseases, such as lymphoma, bone cancer, and diseases that affect the formation of blood, EPA said.
April 8, 2011
http://www.timesleader.com/news/State_expanding_water_tests_for_contaminants_from_drilling_04-07-2011.html
State orders drilling halt after 2 wells are polluted in Forest County
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The state Department of Environmental Protection has determined that natural gas has contaminated well water at two homes on private properties within the Allegheny National Forest in Forest County and ordered Catalyst Energy Inc. to halt drilling and hydraulic fracturing at 36 non-Marcellus Shale wells in the area.
The order requires Catalyst, headquartered in Cranberry, to halt all drilling operations on new wells and to conduct tests to determine which of the 22 vertical wells it has already drilled in the Yellow Hammer area of Hickory is causing the water contamination.
The 22 vertical wells already drilled are combination oil and gas wells. Eighteen of those 22 wells have also been “fracked,” a procedure that uses water, chemicals and sand pumped down the well under high pressure to fracture the rock layers and release the oil and gas.
The Catalyst wells are all between 1,500 feet and 3,000 feet deep and extend into the Bradford Group, an upper Devonian oil and gas sands formation containing an estimated 250 billion cubic feet of recoverable gas. The Marcellus Shale is a middle Devonian formation and its wells in the state are usually 5,000 feet to 8,000 feet deep.
Residents of the two homes within 2,500 feet of the wells complained to the DEP in January about odors and cloudy water. Notices of violation were issued to Catalyst on Feb. 10 and March 1 for groundwater contamination.
Freda Tarbell, a DEP spokeswoman, said the DEP’s follow-up investigations confirmed that natural gas had contaminated the water supply at both homes.
Catalyst is required by the March 30 order to immediately provide temporary, whole-house water systems to the affected homes and permanently restore or replace the water supplies by July 1.
Catalyst wells already producing in the area will be allowed to continue operations, Ms. Tarbell said.
Phone calls to Catalyst requesting comment were not returned. Catalyst was incorporated in 1992 and, according to the company’s website, has developed and operates more than 400 oil and gas wells in the state.
Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11095/1137024-503.stm
DEP top-down directive on drilling violations draws criticism
HARRISBURG – A new top-down directive from the Department of Environmental Protection on handling Marcellus Shale drilling enforcement actions and violations is drawing sharp criticism from some lawmakers in Northeastern Pennsylvania and calls for more explanation from others.
Sen. Lisa Baker, R-Lehman Township, offered the strongest response to the directive that requires regional DEP officials and inspectors to forward Marcellus enforcement orders involving a fine, remedial action or the initial notice of violation to top officials in Harrisburg for approval.
“This ‘signoff policy’ as it has been reported, is impractical and unacceptable,” said Baker, a member of the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee. “In my district, drilling is taking place in areas that are environmentally sensitive and in places close to critical watersheds. As more inspectors are deployed to monitor more drilling sites, I want to ensure there is comparable thoroughness to the inspections and consistent application of penalties for violations. Nothing in that suggests the need for any sort of upper-level clearance process.”
Sen. John Blake, D-Archbald, said the directive could hamper the ability of DEP inspectors to issue timely notices of violations to drilling companies. He and several other senators questioned state emergency management officials about the policy Thursday during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing.
“The inspectors have an obligation to proceed on what they see as an (environmental) threat and do so in a timely manner,” added Blake.
Rep. Mike Carroll, D-Hughestown, a member of the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, is troubled by the directive.
“The people in the field have the best capacity to make a judgement whether there is a violation,” said Carroll.
Sen. John Yudichak, D-Nanticoke, ranking Democrat on the Senate Environmental Committee, said he’s concerned that just the Marcellus Shale industry is singled out for a streamlined process. The DEP directive requires regional office directors and the director of the bureau of oil and gas management to seek approval for actions involving Marcellus violations from two top agency deputies with final clearance from DEP Secretary-designate Michael Krancer.
This is an effort to ensure that DEP acts consistently in how it enforces Marcellus Shale violations in the different and geographically separate regions of the state where deep drilling occurs, said DEP spokeswoman Katherine Gresh in the agency’s southwest regional office in Pittsburgh.
DEP oil and gas inspectors have traditionally been based in western Pennsylvania, the location of shallow oil and gas drilling as well as a Marcellus boom area. The development of the Marcellus boom area in Northeast Pennsylvania led to the recent opening of a DEP oil and gas office in Scranton.
Gresh said the centralized review is being done on a trial basis and is not yet a permanent policy.
“In order to do our job more effectively and to ensure we are protecting the environment, we must have consistency,” she added.
She said there are cases of well operators carrying out the same practices in separate boom areas and getting notices in one area yet not the other.
However, the Sierra Club, an environmental group, said the directive will “handcuff the environmental cops on the beat.”
“At Pennsylvania well pads, contaminated water can be spilled, workers can be injured and killed from accidents, and local emergency personnel will be put at risk because the notices of violations are not being issued promptly,” said chapter director Jeff Schmidt.
Meanwhile, a bill requiring DEP to post inspection reports of drilling enforcement actions online has been sponsored by Sen. Kim Ward, R-Greensburg. Supported by Senate Republican leaders, the measure would also double civil penalties for drilling well violations under the state oil and gas act to $50,000, plus $2,000 for each day a violation continues. The current penalty is $25,000; plus $1,000 for each day.
By Robert Swift (Harrisburg Bureau Chief)
Published: April 1, 2011
http://citizensvoice.com/news/dep-top-down-directive-on-drilling-violations-draws-criticism-1.1126501#axzz1INGIhedk