PA DEP Caves to Radicals, Revokes PGE Injection Well Permit
This is truly disappointing. A few weeks ago we told you that Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ruled a long-running lawsuit involving Grant Township (Indiana County, PA) will continue on through the court system (see Grant Lawsuit Using ERA Threatens PA Injection Wells & Fracking). Grant, a town that passed an ordinance cooked up by the extreme radical Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) to try and block a state-approved injection well, is attempting to use the state’s so-called Environmental Rights Act to justify its illegal ordinance. The court gave its blessing to that effort. And because the court is sending the signal it’s OK to invoke the ERA to justify just about anything, the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) is now going along by revoking a permit issued to Pennsylvania General Energy (PGE) to build an injection well in Grant.
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In a disappointing decision, Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court recently ruled a long-running lawsuit filed against Grant Township (Indiana County, PA) will continue on through the court system. For the past several years we’ve reported on the case of Grant Township, a town that passed an ordinance cooked up by the radical Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) to try and block a state-approved injection well. Part of the ordinance was tossed. However, Commonwealth Court has decided the town can continue to try and make a case that it should be able to override state law with its home-cooked regulations because by doing so they will somehow protect citizens’ health, which the town says is allowed under PA’s poorly-written Environmental Rights Amendment (ERA).
Water is the lifeblood of shale drilling. Water must get to the pad for use in drilling and fracking. But then, after the drilling is done and the well is connected, produced water continues to flow from the borehole for years to come. All that water must be managed. In the early days of Marcellus/Utica drilling every spare gallon of produced water got recycled for reuse drilling the next well. With a slowdown in new M-U drilling, produced water is piling up. What can be done to manage it? The 
University of Texas at Austin researchers have just published two new wastewater studies in two different peer-reviewed journals. One study quantifies, for the first time, how much water is produced from oil and natural gas operations in major shale plays (including the Marcellus) compared with how much is needed for fracking. In some plays, there is so much water coming out of the ground from oil and gas wells (after fracking, called produced water) that the volume coming out is more than enough to drill and frack all of the new wells in those plays. No freshwater sources required. In the Marcellus, we use more water than could be provided by recycling produced water from our wells. The second study looks at the potential for using produced water in other sectors, like agriculture, for those plays where there is an abundance of extra produced water.
Empire Pipeline LLC, based in New Orleans, Louisiana, NOT to be confused with the National Fuel Gas Company subsidiary Empire Pipeline (in NY and PA), has purchased “an operational and financial interest” in TROO Clean Environmental LLC, based in Belmont County, Ohio. TROO provides recycling of Marcellus/Utica frack wastewater.
Keystone Clearwater Solutions, a company that provides water services for shale drillers in the Marcellus/Utica, is “coming home” in a sense. We told you in November that SC Water, LLC, a Pennsylvania-based natural gas and oil industry investment group, announced it had signed an agreement to buy Keystone Clearwater from American Water for an undisclosed amount (see 
Southwestern Energy continues to be a trailblazer among Marcellus/Utica shale drillers. The company voluntarily participates in several environmental programs aimed at lowering methane emissions, including the TrustWell™ Responsible Gas Program and the ONE Future organization (see 
Eureka Resources, which owns and operates a centralized treatment/recycling facility in Bradford County, PA to process Marcellus watewater, is getting a $1.5 million state Redevelopment Assistance Capital Projects grant to help the plant launch a high tech solution to recover lithium from Marcellus wastewater. Yes, lithium, like that used to manufacture rechargeable batteries.
For the past several years we’ve reported on the case of Grant Township, PA, a town that passed an ordinance cooked up by the radical Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) to try and block a state-approved injection well. Part of the ordinance was tossed, and earlier this year a judge ordered the town to pay $102,000 in legal fees incurred by the operator the town has harmed by its action (see 
Last September MDN brought you news that six men had been charged with conspiring to illegally alter emission systems on 30+ trucks with heavy-duty diesel engines used to haul water and wastewater to and from Marcellus Shale wells (see 
In March MDN reported that work has restarted, after eight years, to complete an injection well in Mahoning County, OH (see