Watertown Council Votes to Accept Frackfluid in Treatment Plant

Watertown Daily Times journalist Robert Brauchle reports that on Monday, April 5 the Watertown City Council voted by a slim majority to continue accepting frackfluid and brine from natural gas wells.

Back in January there was some controversy when the City sewage treatment facility accepted 35,000 gallons of mixed brine and frack fluid from the Ross well in the town of Maryland (Otsego County). The vertical well, drilled 4950 feet into Utica Shale, was hydraulically fractured to release the natural gas trapped in the rock.

At that time, the president of the Canadian company developing the well said they planned to ask the city to treat flowback fluid created by future wells. He estimated that each well would produce from 35,000 to 40,000 gallons of brine and frack-flowback.

According to Brauchle’s report, Councilwoman Roxanne M. Burns moved that Watertown issue a formal declaration stating it will not accept the wastewater. The mayor backed Burn’s motion, but the three other council members voted to continue accepting drilling waste. The drilling company has asked the city to treat an additional 80,000 gallons of flowback fluid. 

Some residents disagree with the council. Wrote one (in comments to Brauchle's article):  We are taking a huge risk of contaminating our beautiful lake and river for an amount of money that is incredibly small. I can't even believe that can be the right amount, $1,125 dollars? That won't pay a lawyer long enough to file a suit against the company if the pollutants get into the river and lake. Of course, by that time they are long gone anyway, it happens all the time. How many waterways do we ruin before we learn?

Pennsylvania DEP Calls for Better Rules to Protect Water from Drilling Waste

Yesterday, April 6, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection issued a call to action. "PA must take action to protect water resources from drilling wastewater and other sources of TDS pollution," they said in comments released to the press.

The problem:  high levels of total dissolved solids (TDS) pollution from natural gas drilling and other sources are threatening Pennsylvania’s streams and rivers, "including aquatic life," warned DEP Secretary John Hanger.

"Treating and disposing of gas drilling brine and fracturing wastewater is a significant challenge for the natural gas industry because of its exceptionally high TDS concentrations,” Hangar said. Pointing to the rapid growth of Marcellus drilling he added, "Our rules must be strengthened now to prevent our waterways from being seriously harmed in the future."

Hanger then listed some recent cases where TDS impaired streams and affected major sources of drinking water. In 2008 and 2009 the TDS levels exceeded drinking water standards along the Monongahela River, a major source of drinking water. And again in early September 2009, excessive TDS levels led to an environmental disaster that wiped out 26 miles of Dunkard Creek in Greene County, as well as many miles of the creek in West Virginia. High TDS concentrations, combined with temperature, nutrients and other environmental factors created the ideal conditions for a golden algae bloom - and inhospitable conditions for other aquatic life. The algae released toxins to the water column that "literally wiped out aquatic life, including at least 16 species of freshwater mussels and 18 species of fish," notes the press release.

"Dunkard Creek is an example of what can happen if TDS is not controlled," said Hanger, calling the loss of this important public resource  an environmental and economic tragedy. You may read the entire press release here.

 

Patriot Water still seeks special use permit

Last Tuesday, February 23, Andy Blocksom tried to convince the Town of Owego Planning Board of the merits of Patriot Water Treatment's request for a special use permit for floodplain development. When the votes were tallied, he came up one short. The board voted 3 to 2 in favor of recommending the permit, but apparently they needed four to make a majority.

As a result, they cannot recommend action for the Zoning Board of Appeals - which is where Blocksom will be arguing his case on March 10.

Though I was not at the planning board meeting, one of my citizen-journalist colleagues took loads of good notes.  According to Frank, more than 100 local residents showed up to hear the the ruminations of the town planning board, filling up the seats and lining the walls of the auditorium.

Prior to the vote, planning board chairman Robert Rieg explained that the board has the responsibility to approve or disapprove proposed site plans. However, because the proposed Patriot Water Treatment facility lies within the 100 current year flood plain, a special use permit is required. That permit must be approved by the zoning board. 

So, explained Rieg, the planning board could only provide a recommendation to the zoning board. If the zoning board approves the special use permit, Rieg said, then the planning board would address Patriot’s site plan.

But, Rieg emphasized, prior to any planning board decision on a site plan, a State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR) must be completed, with either the zoning board or planning board taking on lead agency status. 

As in the Feb. 17 meeting,  Blocksom, assisted this time by civil engineer David Marnicki and attorney Sarah Campbell, answered questions about frack water storage at the facility. Planning board members asked for specifications on the water holding tanks, fresh water impoundment, specifics about treated water leaving the facility and how water was tested and monitored throughout the treatment process. They also asked about qualifications for employees operating the treatment facility as well as plans for entrance and egress for trucks hauling wastewater to the facility.

Even though it was not a public hearing, Rieg opened the meeting for public comment.  He noted that since the October meeting, the planning board had received 25 e-mails and letters commenting on the proposed project. 

Echoing discussion from the previous week, residents raised concerns about truck traffic. Some people commented that four trips inbound means four trips out, a total of eight truck trips per hour along the road. This is a lot of noise and toxic exhaust, they pointed out. Residents did not seem impressed by Blocksom’s description of how the tanks of material would be moved in an imminent flooding situation. They didn't like the idea of having  a facility that treats hazardous waste located in the flood plains and so close to wetlands.

At the end of the night Rieg told Blocksom, “Maybe your process has potential, but you picked a lousy site."

What’s next:  On Wednesday, March 10 the Town of Owego Zoning Board of Appeals will hold a special meeting to consider Patriot Water Treatment’s application for a special use permit for floodplain development. The meeting will be held at 7 pm in the Hubbard Auditorium (56 Main Street). Patriot Water Treatment is the only item on the agenda. For more information please contact the Town of Owego planning department at 687-0123 ext. 6.

Owego residents not enthused about proposed Frackwater Treatment Plant

Last Wednesday, February 17 Andrew Blocksom returned to the Tioga County Planning Board with a revised site plan for his proposed frack-water treatment facility. The planning members voted 5 - 2 in favor of the revised site plan, just shy of the 6 votes needed for a majority (5 members were absent that night). A recommendation is nice, but not necessary. The true hurdle comes this Tuesday, Feb. 23 when Patriot's site plan comes up for review by the Town of Owego Planning Board.

Blocksom is one of the owners of Patriot Water Treatment LLC. Back in October, when he presented his original plan to the county planning board, they approved his site plan and sent him on to the Town of Owego Planning Board.

The members of the town planning board thought Blocksom needed to do some homework. Instead of approving the site plan, they sent him home with a long list of questions.  

The basic plan is the same: convert the old Chevy dealership on Taylor road into a frack-water treatment plant. The site is already located in an industrially-zoned area, and Blocksom feels it's ideally suited for his business. The existing building would house the distilling equipment and the paved lot and driveways provide ingress, egress, and room to park extra tanks if needed. Trucks will drive up to a docking bay and pump their loads of flowback and frack water into a holding tank. From there the water will go through a vacuum distillation process, where metals and other contaminants are separated from the liquid, and the distilled water will be pumped into trucks waiting to haul it back to the drill sites for reuse.

There are some differences, though. For one thing, Patriot had to "flood-proof" their facility, as the old FEMA maps show that area in the flood plain. (The new maps don't, and Blocksom will likely appeal that in a meeting with the town planning board this Wednesday.) Patriot needs to insure that any tanks will not be breached by flood waters.

“We’re putting in tanks for both the frack water and the clean [distilled] water,” Blocksom said. The 1-million gallon tanks will have 2-foot thick foundations as well as containment tanks that will hold any spills or leaks. Tanks holding the solid waste and sludge left at the end of the process will be mobile and, Blocksom said, they will be moved in the event of a flood. 

The facility will treat frack-water and flowback from early in the drilling process, not the heavily-salted “brines” that are produced later with the gas. Blocksom said that the wastewater will be tested

for metals, ethylene glycol and other volatile organics, and radioactivity. He promised that his facility would not take wastewater contaminated with high levels of any of those things - and that trucks hoping to recycle such wastewater would be sent to injection wells for disposal.

 Owego village mayor Ed Arrington raised concerns about the noise from the estimated 4 trucks/hour all day long every day of the week. He pointed out that there are only two routes to get to the proposed facility: one is the steep Bodle Hill Road and the other is right through the heart of the village. 

“Either way you go through a residential area,” Arrington said. “I don’t think 24/7 is reasonable for the residents of my village to put up with.”

Radioactivity Present in Marcellus Brines

When you buy a home in upstate NY, one of the things you do as a matter of course is test for radon. That's because many of the rock layers beneath our homes contain naturally occurring radioactive material - "NORM" for short. And for years the NY Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has held the view that normal disturbances of NORM-rock, such as mining and drilling, do not generally pose a threat to workers or the general public.

But recent tests of brine from Marcellus wells may change that.  In October 2008 and April 2009 the DEC submitted 13 brine samples from twelve Marcellus wells that were actively producing gas last year. Test results came back with higher than expected levels of NORM. Some brines had levels of radium-226 as high as 250 times the allowable level for discharge into the environment and thousands of times higher than the maximum allowed in drinking water. 

Radioactivity in Shale

Radioactivity in Marcellus shale, present as trace elements uranium-238, thorium-232, radium-222, radium-226, and radium-228, is not uniform; it varies from place to place. Over time these radioactive particles decay, with half-lives anywhere from 4 days to 1600 years. And while some exposure to radiation is unavoidable - we're all exposed to a certain amount of background radiation - it doesn't necessarily mean it's harmless.

Exposure to some radionuclides – even at low levels – can cause bone cancer, stomach and lung cancers and other health problems. Radon gas, long known to be associated with Marcellus shale, has been shown to be the primary cause of lung cancer among people who have never smoked.

So the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established guidelines for certain radionuclides: the maximum contaminant level of radium in drinking water as 5 picocuries per liter (pCi/L), for uranium is 30 pCi/L and for the total alpha emitters is 15 pCi/L. They've also established levels that can be put into the environment: the maximum level of radium-226 allowed to be discharged in wastewater is 60 pCi/L and the maximum levels in soil are 5 pCi/g on the surface and 15 pCi/g in subsurface soils.

But in some of the Marcellus brines,  DEC found levels of radium-226 ranging up to 16,030 pCi/L - more than 3200 times higher than the allowable levels in groundwater and 267 times higher than what’s allowed to be discharged into streams. 

Radioactive Waste

These higher-than-expected levels of radionuclides does present a problem, given that the current waste treatment option for gas well brines is to transport them to a public wastewater treatment facility. And this past summer the New York State Department of Health (DOH) raised those concerns. According to a report by ProPublica, the DOH sent a letter to DEC warning of public health issues related to disposing of the drilling waste. Wastewater treatment plants will need to do more thorough testing before accepting drilling fluids, noted DOH, and workers may need to be monitored for radiation in much the same way as workers at nuclear facilities.

Four of the twelve or so active Marcellus wells in NY are operated by Fortuna, and all four of those wells are located in the little town of Orange, in Schuyler County. Given the relatively low volume of wastewater of the current vertical wells - compared to what’s expected from the horizontal Marcellus wells - and given the lack of local industrial wastewater treatment facilities, it is unclear how the gas companies expect to deal with disposal of Marcellus brines.

But one thing is certain: the DEC has not set out any rules regulating radionuclides. Instead, they will run another series of tests, says DEC spokesman Yancey Roy. Rick Kessey, an engineer at Fortuna, agrees that more tests are needed. The DEC’s test results aren’t wrong, Kessey said, but they do seem “out of whack” with previous tests.

Meanwhile, the Marcellus wastewater has to go somewhere. In the past, DEC has allowed brine to be spread on roads to help melt snow and keep down the dust. But public comments at DEC hearings and the recent Marcellus Shale summit held in Owego earlier this week indicate that people aren't comfortable with the idea of "hot salt" on their roads.

There's another problem, too, says Roy. The DEC is concerned about the potential buildup of radioactivity in scale inside casings, pipes and other drilling equipment. That equipment may have to be monitored, Roy said. In addition, the DEC is concerned about potential accumulation of NORM in the sludge from treated wastewater. Radioactive waste can’t be dumped in any municipal landfill in New York State, so that means shipping the waste to Utah, Idaho or other western states that have licensed disposal facilities. 

You can read the results of the brine tests yourself in Appendix 13 of the DEC’s Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement -click on Appendices part 1.
added December 21: You can read more about radioactivity in brines in this article from Broader View Weekly.

Update on Owego Frack Fluid Treatment

On Oct. 27 Andrew Blocksom presented his plans for a frack fluid treatment plant to the Town of Owego Planning Board and was told to do a bit more homework (see Oct 28 entry). Patriot Water Treatment LLC had submitted a site plan and a "short-form" Environmental Assessment Form" (EAF).

The "short form" is indeed short - only two pages in length. Instead of the 20 or so questions about environmental impacts on the longer form, there are only seven concerning potential adverse action on the environment. At the meeting the planning board asked Patriot Water to provide more details - and complete the longer EAF - before bringing the proposal back to the board.

Which, Blocksom says, they are working on. He also says that he is working with the DEC to figure out what other permits may be required, as the type of treatment facility he hopes to build is very different from anything they've permitted. Apparently DEC is going to ask for some air quality information as well.

The biggest concern voiced by both residents and planning board members last week was the lack of detailed information about the recycling treatment process. Blocksom’s overly simplified description left people wondering what happened to the frack fluid when it entered the facility and where would the solids and salts be stored after their removal from the drilling waste fluid. People also wanted more details about the proposed impoundment and what actions Patriot Water Treatment would take in the case of a spill or a flood. Perhaps the thing that bothered people the most was Blocksom’s continual reference to frack waste as “non-hazardous” and “non-toxic” material.

When Blocksom submitted his plans to the town, he included some information about equipment developed by Aqua-Pure Ventures Inc., of Calgary, Alberta, and implied that Patriot would be leasing from that company. So I called up Aqua-Pure and spoke with Patrick Horner, the lead engineer.

The facility proposed for Taylor road will employ a process called “mechanical vapor recompression evaporation” (MVR) said Horner . He explained that Aqua-Pure already has nine well-site units using this process in Texas and they are working with Eureka Resources in Williamsport, PA to establish a permanent facility much like the one proposed for Owego.

IF Patriot does indeed use the NOMAD units built by Aqua-Pure, the frack fluid will go through a series of stages. During the first stage the pH (acidity or alkalinity) of the water is adjusted. This is when metals and solids precipitate, or drop out of the frack fluid. The solids go through a de-watering process and, once they are dried into cakes, transported to an industrial waste facility.

Meanwhile, the remaining liquid is subjected to the MVR process to reduce the salts. One of the problems both Blocksom and Horner raised is that fluid with extremely high levels of salts, above 80,000 to 100,000 parts per million (ppm), are hard to distill. “And the Marcellus wells tend to have higher levels of salinity in their flowback,” Horner said.

Fluid that has low salinity, and distilled water resulting from the treatment process will be trucked back to the wells for use in fracking.

The NOMAD isn't the only type of unit available, and Aqua-Pure isn't the only company developing this technology. In a telephone conversation today, Blocksom indicated that his company is considering other companies as well. With 20 tough questions to answer and some research to do, it's not likely that Patriot Water Treatment LLC will be ready with an updated proposal in time for the November 24 planning board meeting.

Owego Town Planning Board to Patriot Water: You've Got Work to Do

About 50 residents showed up to the Town of Owego Planning Board meeting last night (Oct. 27) to learn more about the Patriot Water Treatment LLC plans for recycling frack fluid. The planning board, which is the lead agency for this project, has the authority to approve or reject the site plan. Last night, after listening to the company's proposal and an hour or more of citizen comments, the board decided that they needed more information before making a decision. They gave Andrew Blocksom, one of the Patriot Water owners, a long list of items they'd like more information on by the next meeting.

Seems like the biggest issue that both residents and planning board had was the lack of detailed information: What exactly is this process of cleaning up the frack waste? Where will the recycled water go? What happens if there is a spill or a flood? Will there be open pits (impoundments) holding frack fluid? And why can't we find your company on the internet?

Turns out Patriot Water Treatment LLC is brand-spankin' new, created only recently by three guys who see the potential in offering a service to the gas companies. They'll be leasing the water treatment equipment from Aqua Pure, a company out of Calgary, Canada that is on the web. The process, Andy explained to me after the meeting, is one that precipitates out the heavy metals and solids (which get transported to a proper waste facility) and then - if the remaining water is not too salty or doesn't have too high a level of TDS (total dissolved solids) - they send it through a distilling process and the "clean" water is trucked back to the wells to re-use for fracking. The brine (wastewater) is sent to an injection well in Ohio - at least for now. (Fortuna has a permit to test a "non-producing" gas well in Van Etten for potential as an injection well - more on that later.)

Aside from the fact that this company is new, and that Andy gave what he called his "kindergarten" presentation [and clearly not enough details to satisfy the locals and the planning board], what really bothered folks was that he constantly said that the frack waste was "not hazardous" and "not toxic". The other issue was the amount of truck traffic - 4 trucks/hour, 24 hours/day, 7 days a week - routed up and down a steep hill near through residential areas.

"Why not follow the regular truck route through town?" asked one guy. Another wanted to know whether the planning board could put a route restriction on the trucks, and quite a few expressed concern about the taxpayers underwriting the road maintenance for repairs, as each truck will weigh something on the order of 80,000 pounds.

So, where will this treatment facility go? On the site of the old Chevy dealership on Taylor Road. This is zoned an "industrial" area, and sure enough there are a bunch of industries there already: Sanmina, Lockheed, Moore's Tires and service center, a bowling alley, a wastewater treatment plant and a small electrical business. There are also four churches and a preschool within a couple minute walk from the site, and the nearest residence is a mere 500 feet from the edge of the pavement, where the frack tanks will be lined up - not 1500 feet as stated a week earlier at the county planning board meeting. As some folks pointed out last night, the area is already zoned industrial, and the idea of recycling frack waste sounds good; it might reduce the amount of water pumped out of the local rivers and streams.

But, as the planning board said last night: there are a lot of unanswered questions.

Frack Waste Treatment Plant in Owego?

While I was deliberating budget matters during our town library board's monthly meeting, the members of the county planning board were deliberating whether or not to allow a frack-fluid treatment plant into the next town over.

Somehow a draft copy of the Tioga County (NY) Planning Board minutes for the Wednesday, October 21 meeting ended up in my in-box; reading them was nearly as exciting as reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Patriot Water, LLC hopes to establish a treatment facility where the old Chevy dealership used to be. The business, they say, will treat hydraulic fracturing flowback fluid and transform it into "distilled water" which can be re-used by gas drillers for further fracking. It will also create a whopping 20 jobs.

The treatment facility will store frack fluid and their treated water in tanks on-site. They plan to build an enclosed impoundment (pool) to store incoming frack fluid - lined with two 36-ml rubber linings and assembled using bolts.

Patriot Water LLC estimates that the average truck traffic to their facility in the near future will be 4 trucks/hour running 24 hr/day - and that will increase over time. They also note that although their proposed site is in the 100-year 500 -year * flood plain (and there have been at least two big floods there in the 20 years I've lived here) that this will not be an issue. In fact - they're not required to obtain a floodplain permit! (corrected 10/ 27 at Owego Town Planning Board meeting)

The real gotta-turn-the-page reading came with the comments. Andy Blocksom, the Patriot Water representative, insisted time and time again that the 200,000 to 240,000 gal/day of frack fluid they'll process is not toxic. "It's just water with a small portion of heavy metals and brine," he said - and we all know how healthy arsenic and cadmium can be, not to mention Radium 226 and 228, just two of the "Normally Occurring Radioactive Materials" (NORM) that are sure to be present in flowback from Marcellus wells.

But, hey, DEC doesn't call this stuff toxic. They don't even call it hazardous. To DEC all this frackin' stuff is simply considered "industrial waste".

On top of that, if there is a flood Patriot Water will simply stop accepting frack fluid and let what they've stored just "dilute and drain" with the floodwater - into the Susquehanna.

At the end of the discussion the Tioga County Planning Board recommended approval of the site plan. Tonight - Tuesday, October 27 - the Town of Owego Planning Board will meet at 7pm to address the Patriot frack fluid ("this is not toxic stuff") treatment facility. Update later....