Public has 40 days to Comment on Gas Wastewater Treatment Facilities

Company to Upgrade Treatment and Pay Penalties after Discharge Violations at Western Pa. Oil and Gas Wastewater Treatment Facilities

(PHILADELPHIA – May 22, 2013) U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today announced a Clean Water Act settlement with Fluid Recovery Services, LLC (FRS), which operates three wastewater treatment plants in western Pennsylvania. The settlement resolves discharge permit violations associated with the treatment of wastewater generated from oil and gas extraction activities.

Under the settlement, FRS must seek renewal of their Clean Water Act discharge permits from Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) and request that PADEP include the more stringent discharge limits in Pennsylvania’s wastewater treatment standards. This includes a new standard of 500 milligrams per liter for total dissolved solids in their renewed permits.

In addition, the company will pay an $83,000 penalty for violations that occurred at facilities located in Franklin, Creekside, and Josephine, Pa.

FRS will invest as much as $30 million to upgrade the facilities to comply with the new more stringent discharge limits.   Meeting the more stringent discharge limits will enable the facilities to be eligible to treat wastewater from unconventional oil and gas extraction activities, such as hydrofracking.

The agreement prohibits FRS from discharging wastewater from hydrofracking or other unconventional oil and gas extraction activities until after the facilities have achieved full compliance with the more stringent discharge permit limits.

The facilities, which discharge to the Allegheny River watershed, have not been discharging such wastewater since September 2011 following the issuance of an order to each facility by EPA and a request from PADEP in April of 2011 that asked oil and gas producers not to send their wastewater to treatment facilities that could not meet the more stringent discharge limits.

The former operators of the facilities, Hart Resources Technology, Inc. (Hart) and Pennsylvania Brine Treatment, Inc. (PBT), recently merged to form FRS. As part of the proposed penalty settlements, Hart and PBT neither admitted nor denied responsibility for the violations.

The public has 40 days to comment on the proposed penalty settlements, which can be found at:

  http://www.epa.gov/reg3wapd/public_notices.htm#hartpabrine

Drilling Waste Needs Better Oversight

updated June 12

Last month Environmental Advocates of New York wrote a report, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” that documents how the state is monitoring – or isn’t monitoring – the transport and treatment, or disposal of gas drilling waste. Their conclusion: NY isn’t doing a good job, and based on the proposals under review, the state isn’t ready to oversee the millions of gallons of waste fluids that high-volume fracking will generate.

The group is calling on Governor Cuomo to declare drilling wastes as hazardous hold fracking waste to the same standards as other waste*, prohibit sewage plants from accepting drilling waste, and ban road spreading. 

(* Currently NY classifies drilling waste as industrial, not hazardous. The report calls for this defacto exemption to be repealed and frack waste treated on par with other waste generated in the state: if it contains hazardous material, it would be treated as hazardous waste; if not, it would be treated like other industrial wastes.)

Their report is based on review of nearly 100 Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) permits for the state’s operating gas wells.

Katherine Nadeau, Water & Natural Resources Program Director for Environmental Advocates of New York, says that under state law, DEC asks drillers two questions during the application process regarding waste disposal:

1.    How will drilling fluids and stimulation fluids be contained and disposed of?

2.    If brine will be stored onsite, how will it be stored and disposed of?

Environmental Advocates’ review of drillers’ responses shows that in at least 16 cases, drillers failed to identify where waste was hauled or disposed of. At least 25 permit applications stated that wastes would be disposed of at “approved facilities” without identifying the facilities. Another nine cases indicated that waste would be disposed of per DEC regulations without specifying what this means.

This isn’t a problem unique to NY. The oil & gas boom in North Dakota has seen about 200 wells drilled each month in the northwest part of the state. Now they’re pumping twice as much oil as two years ago – and producing (and spilling) twice as much waste as before. Lines at injection wells have gotten so long that truckers are dumping their waste fluids rather than wait to dispose their waste fluids properly.

No More Drilling Waste for Auburn

A June 2 rally at City Hall calling for ban on wastewater.

Three days ago the Auburn City Council voted 3-1 to stop taking drilling waste fluids at the publicly-owned wastewater treatment plant. For the past decade or more Auburn has padded the city budget with income derived from accepting drilling waste fluids. But no more – and that leaves the city fathers wondering how to plug a $600,000 hole in the budget. You see, drilling companies pay big bucks to get rid of the stuff that comes back out of the “hole”.  

The first hour of the City Council meeting was taken up by public comment. People were concerned about potential threats to water supplies, streams, plants and wildlife from the drilling waste. How can the council support a frack ban and then allow the wastewater treatment plant to accept frack waste, asked one person?

The reason: money. Terry Cuddy who, with his wife Beth, helped found the Cauyuga Anti-Fracking Alliance submitted a FOIL request for documents. They found that from June 2009 to July 2010 the City of Auburn raked in $900,000 for treatment of 16.5 million gallons of drilling waste fluids.

Four companies –  Anschutz, Talisman (Fortuna), Southwest Energy Company and Chesapeake Energy – trucked waste fluids to Auburn. Except for Southwest, who transported drilling waste from Bradford and Susquehanna Counties in PA, the drilling waste fluid came from Trenton-Black River and Queenston wells in NY.

Lab reports show that drillers did not test chlorides, sodium, total dissolved solids, barium or strontium. Also missing in some reports were some data for surfactants, gels and volatile organic chemicals – benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene and xylene.

“We were told that this stuff is OK, that it is from vertical wells,” Cuddy said. “But we realized that ‘vertical’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘good’ drilling wastewater.” This spring PA announced they will no longer allow their plants to accept drilling wastewater. Cuddy’s group worked hard to get similar protections for their community.

The Auburn City Council spent some time on regular business before bringing the resolution to prohibit drilling wastes to the floor. Councilor Matthew Smith had a long list of questions for Vicky Murphy, director of municipal utilities. After pointing out that none of the drilling fluids came from Marcellus or Utica shale, he tried to table the resolution, to no avail. His was the single “Nay”.

“This plant is under capacity,” Smith said. “Our biggest loss will be the revenue.”

DEP to Drillers: Stop Sending Waste Fluid to Wastewater Treatment Plants

Today acting Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary Michael Krancer called on all Marcellus Shale drilling operators to stop delivering waste fluids to the wastewater treatment facilities that currently accept it. He gives them one month – until May 19 – to honor this request.

The reason? Right now the wastewater treatment facilities that are accepting drilling wastes are grandfathered in under special provisions of last year’s Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) regulations. But “conditions have changed since implementation of the TDS regulations,” Krancer said. He pointed to more scientific data, improved technology and “increased voluntary wastewater recycling by industry” as reasons for no longer needing to dispose of drilling wastes through the public treatment facilities.

Twice in his remarks to the press Krancer alluded to the previous administration’s choice to allow wastewater treatment plants that had historically accepted drilling wastewater to continue to accept it, as long as they did not increase their input load of wastewater.

But more than half of those facilities are up for permit renewal. “Now is the time to take action to end this practice,” Krancer told the press.

The 2010 revised regulations require publicly owned treatment works and centralized waste treatment facilities to treat new or increased discharges of TDS to more stringent standards. Removing TDS from water also removes bromides.

Recent surface water sampling has found elevated levels of bromide in rivers in the Western portion of the state, where the majority of natural gas drilling is taking place. Bromide, itself non-toxic, turns into a combination of potentially unsafe compounds called Total Trihalomethanes once it is combined with chlorine for disinfection at water treatment facilities.

“There are several possible sources for bromide other than shale drilling wastewater,” Krancer said. He believes that if wastewater treatment plants stop accepting drilling waste the bromide concentrations would “quickly and significantly decrease.”

You can read the DEP press release here.

PA Environmental Quality Board Adopts tough Regulations to Protect Water from Drilling Waste

Today, the PA Environ-mental Quality Board (EQB) approved regulations that will protect waterways from the effects of natural gas drilling wastewater. Their goal is to enable companies to develop Marcellus Shale reserves without sacrificing the health and quality of Pennsylvania’s vital water resources.

Dept. of Environmental Protection Secretary John Hanger told the press that the new regulations are an appropriate and necessary measure to ensure that drilling wastewater containing high concentrations of Total Dissolved Solids, or TDS, does not pollute drinking water supplies, damage industrial equipment, or endanger delicate aquatic life.

"Drilling wastewater contains TDS levels that are thousands of times more harmful to aquatic life than discharges from other industries," Hanger said. "Without imposing limits on this pollution, treatment costs for this wastewater are passed downstream." Hanger pointed out that other industries in PA are responsible for the waste they generate. "The drilling industry should be no exception," he said. 

The new regulations for TDS would require wastewater discharges from new and expanded facilities to meet a concentration threshold of 2,000 milligrams per liter; wastewater discharges from drilling operations cannot exceed 500 mg/l. The lower standard was set for the drilling industry because drilling wastewater is so heavily polluted. Also, drillers have options other than returning water to rivers and streams, such as reusing and recycling wastefluids or injecting them deep into caverns or EPA-approved underground injection wells. 

New York and several other states, among them Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, Arkansas and Tennessee, prohibit returning any drilling wastewater to streams. That's because drinking water treatment facilities and industrial water users are not equipped to process water with high levels of chlorides and sulfates.

The new PA ruled place limits on the amount of total dissolved solids that can be discharged into surface waters. In the past two years,  TDS levels have exceeded the EPA’s secondary drinking water standards of 500 mg/l in western Pennsylvania’s Monongahela River. The elevated levels led to complaints about foul-smelling water and damage to laundry and dishes. Industrial users complained of equipment damage caused by polluted river water.

In addition, high TDS levels contributed to a toxic algae bloom that killed all fish and aquatic life in a 30-mile section of Dunkard Creek in Greene County last year.

EQB members also approved  rules that will strengthen Pennsylvania’s well construction standards and define a drilling company’s responsibility for responding to gas migration issues, such as when gas escapes a well or rock formation and seeps into homes or water wells. Once finalized, the new rules will require well operators to conduct quarterly inspections of all wells and report the results to DEP. Read more here.