Water Supplies Pollution Near Drilling Sites

Pennsylvania Regulators Found an Array of Contaminants in the Roughly 240 Private Water Supplies They Said Were Damaged by Oil and Gas Operations During the Past Seven Years

Most were the usual culprits: methane, metals and salt that had apparently seeped from well sites or been stirred up by the activity of extracting fossil fuels from the earth.

But on May 14, after the Department of Environmental Protection responded to a Susquehanna County resident's complaint of rank, foamy water, inspectors said they foundsomething else. The water contained volatile organic compounds, ethylene glycol and 2-butoxyethanol —chemicals regulators said were consistent with the surfactant Air Foam that was used to drill a natural gas well 1,500 feet away.

That discovery is contained in records DEP released on Aug. 28, when the department posted for the first time anofficial tallyand supporting documents of water supplies that were damaged by oil and gas activities since the end of 2007. It is the only case where DEP explicitly linked a drilling operation to the presence of industrial chemicals in drinking water.

DEP spokeswoman Colleen Connolly said the chemicals were introduced to the groundwater during the drilling process, not hydraulic fracturing, or fracking —the method of freeing oil or gas from deep rock by cracking it with a high-pressure injection of water, sand and chemicals.

The most recent sampling event did not detect the chemicals in the water, she said, and the company presumed responsible for the contamination, Chief Oil and Gas, is providing the home with a temporary replacement water supply.

A Chief spokeswoman said the company "worked closely and immediately with the landowner and DEP to investigate the cause of the temporary impact to the individual water well and to resolve it in a timely manner."

But the state and the company do not yet know how the drilling chemicals got into the aquifer that feeds the residential water well.

"That's what we're trying to determine," Ms. Connolly said.

Details released

DEP's list of water supply impacts reveals interesting if inconsistent details about the types of disruptions that have affected homes, businesses, a church camp, even an orchard with 15 goats, as well as how long those problems last and who is blamed.

Regulators are required by law to determine within 45 days of getting a drilling-related water complaint if oil and gas operations caused contamination or diminished the flow of water. DEP reports its findings in letters to property owners. On some occasions, it also issues orders to companies to fix the damage when the agency determines —or presumes, based on proximity —that a company was responsible for causing the problems.

According to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette analysis of the letters and enforcement orders detailing the 243 incidents, oil and gas activities degraded water quality in 234 of the cases, either by introducing compounds that weren't there before or by raising them above standards set for reasons of health, safety, taste or appearance. Sixteen water supplies diminished in flow or went dry because of nearby drilling activities, and seven of the water supplies were affected by both pollution and diminution.

Fewer than 200 of the letters and orders identify which compounds were found in the water above drinking water standards or the background levels measured in the water supply before drilling began.

The drilling chemicals found this year in the Susquehanna County water well may be the most alarming contaminants on the list, but by far, the most common pollutant is methane, which was reported in 115 of the damaged water supplies. As DEP describes in the letters, methane can be hazardous when it escapes from water and concentrates in confined spaces, creating a danger of fire or explosion.

After methane, the most commonly elevated compounds are iron (79 water supplies) and manganese (76 water supplies), followed by two markers of salinity: total dissolved solids (29) and chlorides (25).

DEP says many of the complaints have been resolved and the list does not necessarily reflect ongoing impacts. Records for 86 of the incidents specify when the water supply was restored, either on its own or through a remedy provided by a drilling company. Many other letters report steps that operators will or have taken —installing treatment systems, drilling new water wells, paying settlements, patching leaking gas wells. The letters describe 44 of the disturbances as temporary.

Only three-quarters of the letters and orders name a company in connection with a disruption, but 47 different oil and gas well operators are represented on the list. Chesapeake Energy is named in the most letters and orders (25), followed by Cabot Oil and Gas (23), Catalyst Energy (17), Schreiner Oil and Gas (14) and U.S. Energy Development Corp. (12).

Nearly 40 of the letters and orders note that oil and gas operations are presumed —not proven —liable for the problems based on the distance from a water well and the time of the impact.

Few of the documents describe what exactly went wrong, but some provide a glimpse of recurring problems: Methane channels through flawed well bores and abandoned wells or is displaced from shallow pockets during drilling to sputter out of faucets, infiltrate basements and bubble up in streams. Sediment from road, pipeline and pit construction clogs spring boxes. The briny fluids and rock waste that are a byproduct of oil and gas extraction seep into shallow water sources from spills, breached pits or other pathways left undefined.

Source: Power Source

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Taxonomy

• Pollution
• Fracking
• Water Supply