EPA Shale Wastewater Rule Will Crush PA’s Conventional Drillers

In June MDN reported on yet another new unlegislated law (called a “rule”) issued by the rogue federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that bans the disposal of wastewater from oil and gas drilling via public wastewater/sewage treatment plants (see EPA Bans Disposal of Frack Wastewater at Public Sewer Plants). The rule is meant to ban wastewater coming from unconventional (shale) wells, and not conventionally drilled oil and gas wells, which are shallow wells compared to shale wells. However, conventional drillers in Pennsylvania are raising the alarm that the way the rule is written, it will prevent them from disposing their shallow (and much lower volumes of) wastewater by carting it to the local sewage treatment plant–as many of them do now. The upshot is that the EPA needs to revise its rule…