NSF/Park Found. Research Claims Frack Fluid Tracking with Tracers
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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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…
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…
A new research study from Stanford University titled “Enhanced Formation of Disinfection By-Products in Shale Gas Wastewater-Impacted Drinking Water Supplies” proves what we already knew more than three years ago: When you send frack wastewater untreated, or lightly treated, to a municipal sewage treatment plant–the plant can’t get the residual water clean enough to not cause problems down river. Back in 2011, then-PA DEP Sec. Michael Krancer ended the practice of municipal treatment plants without special equipment from processing frack wastewater (see 
In October of last year MDN told you the radical national anti-drilling organization Clean Water Action (CWA) had sued a small Pennsylvania company by the name of Waste Treatment Corporation (WTC) in Warren, PA in federal court claiming the company continued to accept, treat and discharge Marcellus drilling wastewater into the Allegheny River (see