Plant to Stop Dumping Fracking Wastewater

Pennsylvania Wastewater Treatment Plant Has Agreed to Construct a New Treatment Facility, Under a Settlement Announced with an Environmental Organization that Had Filed Suit Against thePlant

Back in 2011, Pennsylvania madenational headlinesbecause the state's treatment plants - including municipal sewage plants and industrial wastewater treatment plants like Waste Treatment Corporation - were accepting drilling and fracking wastewater laden with pollutants that they could notremove.

In July 2013, Clean Water Actionalleged in a lawsuitthat Waste Treatment Corp. of Warren,PAviolated the federal Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, along with Pennsylvania's Clean Streams Law bycontinuing to dischargepartially treated wastewater, carrying corrosive salts, heavy metals and radioactive materials into the river, which serves as the drinking water supply for hundreds of thousands of people, including much of the city ofPittsburgh.

Under the terms of the settlement, within 8 months, Waste Treatment Corporation must install advanced treatment technology that will remove 99% of the contaminants in gas drillingwastewater.

Until those treatment methods are in place, Waste Treatment Corporation agreed to stop accepting wastewater from Marcellus shale wells, notorious for its high levels of radioactivity, and to cut the amount of wastewater it can accept from conventional gas wells by over athird.

"The settlement represents the first time an existing industrial treatment plant discharging gas drilling wastewater in Pennsylvania agreed to install effective treatment technology to protect local rivers," Clean Water Action wrote in a pressrelease.

In January 2013, state regulatorsdiscoveredmany pollutants associated with oil and gas drilling - including chlorides, bromides, strontium and magnesium - immediately downstream of the plant's discharge pipe. Upstream of the plant, those same contaminants were found at levels 1 percent or less than those downstream, or were not present atall.

A significant amount of radioactivity was found in the Allegheny riverbed. Sediments just downstream of the Waste Treatment Corporation's discharge pipe contained over 50 picocuries per gram (pCi/g) of radium-226, state records show. To put that number in rough context, the levels in found in the Allegheny are 10 times those thatEPArequiresthe surface soil at cleaned-up uranium mining sites toachieve.

"We think this is a settlement that is going to protect the Allegheny river," said Myron Arnowitt, attorney for Clean Water Action, "we think it is going to greatly improve waterquality."

In November 2013, the PennsylvaniaDEPproposeda settlement with Waste Treatment Corporation that would have required the plant to upgrade its treatment methods but allowed it to continue accepting wastewater from gas wells at the same rate for two additional years. But things seemed to grind to a half after those terms were madepublic.

"They proposed it, held a public comment period, and then never did anything else with it," Mr. Arnowitt told DeSmog. "We wanted to make sure that we pursued our case because the state really was taking noaction."

The treatment method that Waste Treatment Corporation agreed to install relies on a distillation process, which will remove over 99 percent of the contaminants from gas drilling wastewater, Mr. Arnowittsaid.

While this should bring a halt to the dumping of radioactive materials in the Allegheny,distillationbrings its own headaches. The process produces clean water, but also solid waste - in which contaminants, including radioactive materials, may beconcentrated.

Marcellus shale wastewater often carriesrelatively high levelsof radioactive materials, like radium and uranium, that rise up from deep underground along with the shale gas that drillers target and the salty brines that were trapped along with thegas.

Pennsylvania regulators have a poor track record when it comes to controlling radioactive waste from the state's Marcellus shale drillingrush.

Although some of the solid waste from drill sites, like the shards of rock produced when a deep gas well is drilled (known in the industry as cuttings), can be laced with radium, uranium and other radioactive elements. In 2012 alone, over 15,000 tons of drill cuttings (more than 1,000 truckloads)trippedradiation alarms at Pennsylvania'slandfills.

The levels of radioactivity generally are not high enough to harm anyone who simply stands nearby. But the drill cuttings from the Marcellus have been high enough to contaminate the water that runs off from landfills after rainstorms (calledleachate).

Tests of leachate from one West Virginia landfill that accepted radioactive drill cuttingsshowedan average of 250 picocuries per liter (pci/l) of radioactive materials - and peak levels as high as 4,000 pci/l. To put that in perspective, theEPA'smaximum contaminant levelfor drinking water is 15pci/l.

So knowing where that waste is heading is important - if drill cuttings are illegally dumped, for example, the runoff from that site could be hazardous to people or animals that drank it, or could pollute streams that the runoff flowsinto.

Despite these known hazards, Pennsylvania regulators have failed to keep tabs on what happens to drill cuttings, aninvestigationby the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recentlyrevealed.

It turns out that landfill companies have reported receiving far greater amounts of drilling waste than drillers reportedgenerating.

Although state law requires drillers to report what they do with their waste to the state, an August 31articleby the Post-Gazette reported major discrepancies between what drillers reported to the state and what landfills reported receiving. One drilling company,EQTCorp., told thePADEPthat it had sent 21 tons of drill cuttings to landfills in 2013 - but the landfills' records showed they'd received 95,000tons.

Source: Desmo Blog

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