Chesapeake Energy Invests $92 Million in Northeast PA Roads, Recycles 100 Percent of Wastewater

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Chesapeake Energy is one of the largest drillers for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale, period. And they are a big driller in Bradford and other counties in Northeastern PA. With so many wells being drilled in the area, roads have been damaged. Many of the roads are what Chesapeake refers to as “pie crust” roads – nothing more than 2 inches of asphalt laid on clay or dirt – the kind of roads that don’t hold up well to any kind of traffic. Chesapeake is not only repairing the damage, but in many cases making the roads better than they originally were:

In 2010 the company invested a little over 90 million dollars to improve road infrastructure through Bradford County and other places they drill. 5 local engineering firms and 27 local contractors were hired to complete the projects throughout northern Pennsylvania.(1)

The Oklahoma-based energy company said it has repaired and upgraded about 300 miles of roads on 40 state routes and 80 township roads throughout Bradford, Wyoming, Sullivan and Susquehanna counties.(2)

As for discharging drilling wastewater into PA rivers and streams, Chesapeake spokesman Brian Grove says:

“We are a zero liquid discharge operation, any liquid waste that is produced is recycled and then reutilized by our operations, which gets rid of the need to use fresh water for production. No we are not discharging any produced water into any surface waters in Pennsylvania whatsoever.”(1)

(1) WENY-TV (Mar 2) – Drilling Company Helps Fix Northern Pennsylvania Roads

(2) Star-Gazette (Mar 2) – Chesapeake Energy invested $92 million in Pa. roads last year