Wastewater

Air Quality | Health Impacts | Industrialization | Industrywide Issues | Research | Statewide WV | Wastewater | West Virginia

WVU Launches 5-Year Study of Local Frack Site for Air, Noise, H&S
January 13, 2015January 13, 2015

This is very cool. A West Virginia University professor, now interim chairman of WVU’s School of Public Health (Department of Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences), is going to perform some REAL science. Dr. Michael McCawley is someone we’ve highlighted before. He’s done some excellent research on air quality near drill sites (see WVU Prof Keeps Up Pressure on Improved Air Quality at Drill Sites). Dr. McCawley is launching the Marcellus Shale Energy and Environment Laboratory (MSEEL)–a project that will drill a test well and provide real-time air, noise, occupational safety and health monitoring over a five-year period. It is one of three such projects approved and funded (in part) by the U.S. Dept. of Energy…
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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Industrywide Issues | Landfills | Monroe County | Pennsylvania | Wastewater

League of Women Voters Questions New PA Reps on Fracking
January 12, 2015January 12, 2015

Too funny. The League of [Liberal Democrat and Anti-Drilling] Women Voters held their annual beat-up-on-Republicans, er, a, “legislative coffee” with newly minted state representatives on Saturday at the Hughes Library in Stroudsburg (Monroe County), PA. All of the questions were, apparently, asked by the moderator of the event, the liberal Democrat editor of the Pocono Record, Paula Heeschen. On the hot seat were two newly elected Republicans to the PA House: Rep. David Parker, R-115, and Rep. Jack Rader, R-176. Heeschen tried her best to bait the pair with patently loaded and in many cases questions with false premises, like this one about fracking…
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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Industrywide Issues | Ohio | Regulation | Statewide OH | Wastewater

OH Anti Group Wants EPA to Suspend ODNR Injection Well Oversight
December 24, 2014December 24, 2014

Whenever anti-drillers in a given state don’t like how the state environmental authority is doing its job, they run to the federal government like a petulant child clinging to its mother’s skirt. “Mommy, mommy! Johnny hurt my feelings!” Such is the case with Ohio Citizen Action (OCA), an anti-drilling group that is accusing the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) of falling down on the job when it comes to regulating injection wells–wells used to dispose of frack wastewater. OCA’s demand? That the federal EPA suspend ODNR’s oversight of the injection well program in Ohio and that the feds move in and take over. OCA used 16 untrained volunteers (activists), gave them mountains of official paperwork from the ODNR archive, and armed each of them with yellow highlighters. The 16 untrained volunteer activists found every reference they could of what they say is incompetence and malfeasance by the ODNR, stitched it all together in a “report” (full copy below), and are now calling on Mommy EPA to “do something” about it…
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Industrywide Issues | Marshall County | Ohio County | Statewide WV | Wastewater | West Virginia

New Brine Processing Plant Coming to Panhandle of WV
December 2, 2014December 2, 2014

The new owners of what was the AOP Clearwater brine processing plant in Marion County, WV (renamed to Fairmont Brine Processing) plan to grow their successful operation by opening a much larger, second plant in Wheeling, WV. The last time MDN wrote about the AOP Clearwater plant was in March 2010 (see AOP Clearwater Plant in WV a Big Success in Treating Marcellus Shale Wastewater). Apparently the “big success” didn’t last for AOP. An engineering firm was called in to evaluate the plant and told them they would need $10 million in upgrades, so AOP Clearwater cleared out. The guy who owned the engineering firm believed in the project, got some investors and bought the plant himself. Dave Moniot, CEO of both Venture Engineering and now Fairmont Brine Processing, turned the plant around. He’s now using that success to expand with a second plant in Wheeling…
Read More “New Brine Processing Plant Coming to Panhandle of WV”
Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Energy Companies | Indiana County | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pennsylvania | Pennsylvania General Energy | Wastewater

Little Mahoning Watershed to Testify in Court Case (??)
November 21, 2014November 21, 2014

You have to give the silly anti-fossil fuel nutters one thing–they sure are creative. The latest nonsense to come from the extreme left is that artificial constructs like watersheds now have “rights” and can somehow speak for itself. At least that’s what’s being claimed in a “first of its kind” motion by–yes–the Little Mahoning Watershed (Indiana County, PA). We wonder, what does the Watershed’s voice sound like? And where, precisely, did the Watershed scribble down its statement that was recently delivered to the court? We’d like to see that place and behold that miracle. This would all be rolling-on-the-floor funny if extremists weren’t so hellbent on bastardizing our laws and the U.S. Constitution–to the point our legal system becomes meaningless. The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), which hangs its hat in Mercersburg, PA, says Little Mahoning Watershed spoke to it and whispered it doesn’t want to be polluted by nasty frack wastewater…
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Industrywide Issues | Supply Chain | Wastewater

New Report: Water is a $6.4B Part of the U.S. Shale Industry
November 21, 2014November 21, 2014

How much water is used, and how much is generated that needs to be disposed of (or recycled) in oil and gas drilling–particularly in U.S. shale plays? A new report by Bluefield Research says the U.S. fracking industry consumes over 1 billion barrels of water annually, producing 450-500 million barrels of wastewater for disposal. According to Bluefield, the U.S. shale industry will spend $6.38 billion (!) in 2014 on water management: supply, transport, storage, treatment, and disposal. Water is a big deal in shale drilling. The following article by Bluefield sheds interesting light on the topic. Among the things that caught our interest is the breakdown of which shale plays use the most water (how does the Marcellus and Utica stack up? see the graphic below), and the section at the end which talks about new opportunities for supply chain companies in the water space…
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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Industrywide Issues | Landfills | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Statewide PA | Wastewater

PA Dem Congressman Cartwright Continues to Bash DEP
November 21, 2014November 21, 2014

An anti-drilling Democrat Congressman from Pennsylvania’s 17th Congressional District (eastern part of the state), U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright, continues a campaign of smearing the Marcellus Shale industry with a so-called investigation into how frack wastes in PA get handled and disposed. In October Cartwright demanded information from the new acting Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection (see PA Dem Congressman Demands Info from DEP on Frack Waste). Cartwright’s latest media stunt is to send demand letters to WV and OH to ask them how they dispose frack waste in their states…
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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Industrywide Issues | Landfills | Litigation | Ohio | Regulation | Statewide OH | Wastewater

Another Day, Another Lawsuit from Food & Water Watch
November 20, 2014November 20, 2014

The anti-drilling Fresh Water Accountability Project (FWAP)–based in Ohio–along with the odious and litigious (and misnamed) Food & Water Watch have once again, sued. Surprise! This time they’ve sued OH Gov. John Kasich along with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) for what they claim are the “illegal approval of at least 23 fracking waste handling, storage, processing and recycling facilities to operate.” Lea Harper, head of the so-called FWAP, has been involved in other anti-drilling lawsuits, including one against the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District. FWW must have to employ a librarian to keep track of all their anti-drilling lawsuits. Here’s the latest bald-faced lies from these two litigious organizations:
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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Research | Statewide PA | Wastewater

Researchers: Frack Wastewater “Not quite as bad as we thought”
November 10, 2014November 10, 2014

What do you know–some real science has once again popped up with respect to shale drilling. A pair of researchers from Rice University published the results of their analysis of frack wastewater from the PA Marcellus Shale, the TX Eagle Ford Shale, and the NM Barnett Shale. The study, titled “Organic compounds in produced waters from shale gas wells” (full copy below) was just published in the October issue of the journal Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts. The study is a detailed breakdown of the chemical components found in shale wastewater. And what did the study find? According to one of the researchers, the results show the frack water “was not quite as bad as we thought”…
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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Industrywide Issues | Landfills | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Statewide PA | Wastewater

PA Dem Congressman Demands Info from DEP on Frack Waste
October 30, 2014October 30, 2014

An anti-drilling Pennsylvania Democrat Congressman, Matt Cartwright, believes Washington, DC and not the individual states should be the ones regulating shale oil and gas drilling. So Cartwright, under the pretense of seeking information, has sent a letter to the acting Secretary of the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) seeking information on how the state oversees frack waste disposal (wastewater and drill cuttings). Cartwright is the just the latest PA Democrat to bash away at the single industry keeping the PA economy out of the economic crapper. Cartwright, in his letter, refers to the flawed “report” from another high profile PA Dem who is critical of the industry, state Auditor General Eugene DePasquale (see Anti-Drilling PA Auditor General Criticizes DEP in “Report”)…
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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Research | Wastewater

NSF/Park Found. Research Claims Frack Fluid Tracking with Tracers
October 21, 2014October 21, 2014

Last year MDN endorsed a proposal put forth largely by anti-drillers–a proposal that tracers be used in fracking fluids to put to rest, once and for all, the silly notion that frack fluids are rising from the depths to “contaminate” water aquifers (see Using Tracers in Fracking Fluid – Ready for Prime Time?). Using tracers, or unique “fingerprints” that positively identify fluid as coming from shale drilling, can be used to check nearby streams and rivers to ensure such fluids have not somehow been released into the environment after they’ve come back to the surface for disposal by recycling or injection well. Our only concern was/is that the science is solid. Yesterday, the National Science Foundation announced researchers (using NSF and Park Foundation grant money) have field tested and pronounced they now have a solid solution…
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Crime | Greene County (PA) | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Wastewater

Illegal Wastewater Dumping in Greene County, PA?
October 15, 2014October 15, 2014

A disturbing bit of news. Officials in Waynesburg, PA (county seat of Greene County, in the very southwestern tip of PA) say about 4,000 gallons of a “gray, milky substance” flowed through the local sewage treatment plant and that the plant’s flow meters spiked up when it happened. In other words, someone, somewhere dumped something down a manhole and that something got processed by the plant and ultimately discharged into Ten Mile Creek. The disturbing bit is that the plant’s operators, along with the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), think the substance dumped may have been frack wastewater…
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Accidents | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Range Resources Corp | Regulation | Statewide PA | Tioga County (PA) | Washington County | Wastewater

Second Generation Wastewater Impoundments – Truly Safe?
October 13, 2014October 13, 2014

Little did we know it at the time, but former PA Dept. of Environmental Protection Chris Abruzzo’s last public interview was granted to MDN editor, Jim Willis, just three weeks ago before Abruzzo resigned (see PA DEP Sec. Abruzzo’s Last Public Interview…with MDN). Topic A that Jim asked Sec. Abruzzo was about the recent record fine of Range Resources ($4.15 million) for a series of leaky wastewater impoundments. Abruzzo stated during that interview, several times, that newer “next generation” impoudments have come along that are much safer. What are these “next generation” impoundments and are they really safer?…
Read More “Second Generation Wastewater Impoundments – Truly Safe?”
Industrywide Issues | Ohio | Research | Statewide OH | Wastewater

Ohio U Researcher Gets Extra $1.45M to Finalize Wastewater Tech
October 9, 2014October 9, 2014

An ongoing criticism of shale drilling is that the wastewater produced in the process–both the wastewater from fracking and then later, the naturally occurring water from the depths that comes out (called brine or produced water) needs to go someplace. Recycling it increasingly happens–but there’s still a lot that gets disposed of via injection wells. MDN recently told you about an incredible breakthrough technology that turns the nastiest frack wastewater into (yes) drinkable water in about a half hour (see Exclusive: Breakthrough Tech Cleans Frack Wastewater < 30 Minutes). Keystone Pure Water Tech, the company pioneering this new technology, is not the only company to work on cracking the recycle-it-at-the-well-pad technology. A researcher at Ohio University, Dr. Jason Trembly, has been working for two years on the same problem. He got an initial grant/investment of $2 million, and yesterday he got another $1.45 million to complete the project and get his technology released…
Read More “Ohio U Researcher Gets Extra $1.45M to Finalize Wastewater Tech”
Accidents | Energy Companies | EQT Corp | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Tioga County (PA) | Wastewater

PA DEP Levies Biggest Fine Ever, $4.5M Against EQT
October 8, 2014October 8, 2014

We’ve got some bad blood happening between EQT–a big Marcellus driller headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA–and the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). The DEP has just filed a lawsuit against EQT to force the company to cough up a new record–$4.53 million in fines–for a leaky wastewater impoundment in Tioga County, PA. The fine comes a week after the anti-drilling PA Attorney General, Kathleen Kane, once again abused her office’s powers by filing criminal charges against EQT (see today’s companion story). The DEP says EQT filed for and received permission to build a freshwater impoundment at that location in 2012, but after the impoudment was built, they decided to change and use it for frack wastewater. Problem is, with a wastewater impoundment you need monitoring wells drilled around the impoundment and extra protections that were lacking because it was supposed to be used for freshwater only. EQT then built a second impoundment next to it for wastewater and did install monitoring wells, figuring those monitoring wells would cover both impoundments. The first impoundment leaked and, according to the DEP, EQT just doesn’t get how serious the problems were/are that resulted, and so they’ve slapped them with their biggest single fine ever. EQT is already fighting back both legally and with their own press release…
Read More “PA DEP Levies Biggest Fine Ever, $4.5M Against EQT”
Accidents | Energy Companies | EQT Corp | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Tioga County (PA) | Wastewater

PA Attorney Gen. Kane Abuses Office Again, Arrest Warrant for EQT
October 8, 2014October 8, 2014

Last year Pennsylvania’s anti-drilling Attorney General, Kathleen Kane, abused her office and filed criminal charges against XTO Energy over a spill of fracking wastewater at a site in Lycoming County, PA that happened more than three years ago–long before she took office (see PA AG Abuses Her Authority, Files Criminal Charges Against XTO). In a Britney Spears “Oops!…I Did It Again” moment, Kane has filed a second case of criminal charges against a driller over an accident. Last week Kane filed charges against EQT over a leaky wastewater impoundment in Tioga County, PA. Yesterday the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection fined EQT $4.53 million–it’s highest ever fine–over the same incident (see today’s lead story). Kane is claiming that EQT polluted and disturbed PA waterways and committed misdemeanor crimes in the process…
Read More “PA Attorney Gen. Kane Abuses Office Again, Arrest Warrant for EQT”