Wastewater Treatment in Standing Stone, PA

Standing Stone, PA
Susquehanna River

According to Eureka Resources, LLC, the new frack wastewater treatment plant in Standing Stone, PA, will not endanger the environment.  The gas company is planning to dump  discharge up to 200,000 gallons of water a day into the Susquehanna River.  Supposedly the discharged water will be clean enough to meet the standards for drinking water.  I take a really dim view of this opinion.  The types of water the plant will treat include "flowback water from hydraulic fracturing of gas wells and water that comes out of the well bore later on."

I thought this was interesting:  Eureka was planning to discharge treated water into King Creek, a tributary of the Susquehanna River that flows through the property where the plant is being constructed.  But residents that attended an informational session informed the Eureka officials that this creek dries up at times.  OOPS!!  So the company went to Plan B.  It seems to me that the fact of the creek running dry would already be known by a company looking for a source of water to dump treated wastewater into.  Why did this come as a surprise?  It makes me wonder what else they have not adequately researched.

I would like to see all the top executives of Eureka drink this "drinkable" water exclusively for a month and see how they make out with it.  Good luck!

The Definitive Guide to the MYTH of Frack Water "Recycling"

This is a great blog post from Bill Huston of Binghamton, NY. He says:

Fact: You cannot make toxins "go away."  We can concentrate the waste; we can separate the waste. We can transform the waste from one state into another.  But we can't make it disappear from the Earth.

http://williamahuston.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-definitive-guide-to-myth-of-frack.html

See what you think.

The waste MUST GO SOMEWHERE!

Athens Township Says No To Frack Water Treatment Plant

The Athens supervisors turned down an application for a frack water treatment facility in Sayre.  Why?  Because there was concern that it was next to a soccer field and residential areas which depend on well water.  Finally people are thinking about the inevitability of accidents.  Here's the link.

From Penn Future: Update on Gas Well Spill, Waste Water Disposal

From Penn Future:

The spill and its aftermath

Chesapeake Energy shut down all hydraulic fracturing operations in Pennsylvania in the aftermath of a massive spill of 30,000 gallons of frack water in Bradford County. The incident polluted a tributary of Towanda Creek. PennFuture has called on DEP to shut down all Chesapeake operations, not just fracking, until the company can prove it can operate safely.

The Department of Environmental Protection's (DEP) pilot policy that prevents inspectors from citing drillers for violations of environmental laws until approved by Secretary Krancer is more than unwise. It is dangerous and must end immediately.

DEP asks drillers to stop dumping waste at sewage treatment plants

DEP Secretary Michael Krancer this week asked Marcellus Shale drillers to stop delivering gas well waste water to 15 sewage treatment plants. This action came in response to new reports showing that bromides that pass through plants without treatment can interact with drinking water treatment chemicals and form new substances that cause cancer. Last year DEP enacted strict limits on the disposal of toxic and salt-laden wastewater into our waterways, but the 15 plants were exempt from the new regulation.

The drilling industry's reaction to the request has been positive so far. Secretary Krancer should order the drillers to comply if any companies do not promptly honor the request.

Walter Hang Speaks Up About Gas Drilling Dangers in NY

"I believe this could be the Achilles heel of natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale."
Walter Hang

Read the article in the NY Times.

"While the existence of the toxic wastes has been reported, thousands of internal documents obtained by The New York Times from the Environmental Protection Agency, state regulators and drillers show that the dangers to the environment and health are greater than previously understood.


The documents reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle."

ToxicsTargeting website:  LINK

Drilling Wastewater Goes Into PA Rivers

ProPublica reports on the dire situation regarding the disposal of wastewater from gas drilling operations in PA.  One-fifth of the wastewater is apparently unaccounted for.

"As gas-drilling operations proliferated in Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale over the past couple of years, most of the hundreds of millions of gallons of briny wastewater they produced was eventually dumped into the state's rivers. Much of the rest is unaccounted for. That news, from a detailed look [1] at the state's management of drilling wastewater by the Associated Press, should come as no surprise....."

Read more...

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!

In memory of Karen Korell

Splashdown

Fracking Waste Water Will Likely Be Treated In New Plant In Wysox, PA

Hearings set on Wysox treatment plant for hydraulic fracturing waste water

BY JAMES LOEWENSTEIN (STAFF WRITER)

Published: October 4, 2010

WYSOX TOWNSHIP - Two public hearings will be conducted this week on the proposed construction of a treatment plant off Leisure Drive in Wysox Township, which would process waste water from hydraulic fracturing, according to legal ads that were recently published in The Daily Review.

Eureka Resources LLC of Williamsport is proposing to construct the treatment plant on property that is currently owned by the Central Bradford Progress Authority, according to a copy of the Eureka's notice of application for a special exception permit to construct the facility, which was filed with the township. The plant would be located between Leisure Drive and the Susquehanna River, according to one of the legal ads. Bradford County Economic Development Manager Brian Driscoll, who works for the Progress Authority, said the entrance to the plant would be some distance from U.S. Route 6. "We're probably talking 200 to 300 yards from Route 6," he said. "I don't know the exact amount." "I believe they (Eureka Resources) have an option to purchase the property" for the treatment plant, he said.

As long as the township boards are in favor of granting the special exception permit for the plant, "we don't want to stand in the way of it," he said. Driscoll said he did not believe that any of the treated water would be pumped to the Towanda Municipal Authority's sewage treatment plant for further processing. "I think it (the treatment) would consist of a total recycling process," he said. Daniel Ertel, who is one of the owners of Eureka Resources and who serves as a spokesman for the company, was not available for comment, as he is on vacation until Monday.

The Wysox Township Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on Eureka's application for the special exception permit for the treatment plant at 6 p.m. on Tuesday at the Wysox Township Municipal Building.
The Wysox Township Zoning Hearing Board will conduct a hearing on Eureka's application for the special exception permit for the treatment plant at 7 p.m. on Thursday at the Wysox Township Municipal Building. The zoning board's hearing is open to the public. Eureka Resources owns and operates a treatment plant in Williamsport.

James Loewenstein can be reached at (570) 265-1633; or e-mail: jloewenstein@thedailyreview.com.

Reader comment:
notafanofdrilling  wrote:

As many people as possible should attend this hearing. Whether you live, work, shop, or just pass through Wysox you will be affected. Not only do we have a river water withdrawal point on Leisure Drive which brings water trucks into Wysox to clog our intersections and roads, now we will have additional residual waste trucks clogging Route 6, further tying up the intersections and dumping their nasty loads into this new facility to be treated, either fully or partially. The article doesn't say what the special exception permit is concerning. An update on this point would be good to have in tomorrow's paper so people know what aspects of the permitting to comment on in the public hearing, since only those aspects of comments which are relevent to the special exception permit will have impact on the decision. An additional article could also cover just what the plant capacity is so that we know just how many more trucks we are in for. Let's think ahead to the future of Wysox and deny this permit for what will be just one more gas infrastructure project which will not serve our community in the long term. Wysox is becoming an industrial wasteland, and will be no place to live, work or shop in the future. I wouldn't even want to stay in the new 40 room Riverstone hotel addition with passing residual waste trucks and a water treatment facility just down the road. I guess it is better to stay at the new hotel though, than to have to live in one of the approximately 5 RV's parked discretely behind the long yellowish building behind Shoney's Restaurant. These RV's are likely not an approved land use for the lot, and sit next to approximately 23 red dumpsters which were recently brought in with unknown contents. Several tanker trucks complete the pretty picture. The RV's look occupied based on the vehicles sitting near them, and other indicators of habitation. At least in the days of the coal barons, miners were given substandard shack housing to live in. We as a community have relegated gas workers to living in RV's wherever anyone can conveniently, discretely, and most often, illegally tuck one. Though I am not a fan of drilling, even I think that our area's guest workers deserve better. Planning by the townships and county must be at rock bottom to allow these "facilities" to go unnoticed for the most part.

LINK (to the above article in the Towanda Daily Review)

For more information about the problems with disposal of frack fluid (also known as flowback or brine), click here.

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!

Williamsport Proposed Site for Wastewater Treatment Plant

A discharge permit for a gas well wastewater treament plant on the West Branch of the Susquehanna River has been published by the PA DEP. It was published on May 2, 2009, for a 30-day public comment period. The permit is the first for the DEP. Northcentral Regional Director Robert Yowell said:

When approved, this permit will establish specific treatment parameters for gas well drilling wastewater, which includes frac water, brine water and drill water.

The permit would allow between 54,412 and 522,245 pounds per day of total dissolved solids to be discharged to the river. A maximum of 400,000 gallons a day of typical well-drilling wastewater would be treated and discharged from a facility to be constructed on the Water Tower Square property in Williamsport. Ten more permits are in the works for the West Branch of the river, all of which will be published by the end of June 2009.

An article in the Williamsport newspaper, The Sun-Gazette, reports:

"The DEP has adopted a strategy for allowable dissolved solids entering the river. Effective Jan. 1, 2011, an average monthly limit of 500 parts per million of total dissolved solids, and 250 parts per million of chlorides and sulfates will be allowed to be discharged into the river.

In the meantime, the river's assimilative capacity - its ability to take in toxic materials without harming aquatic life or humans who consume the water - will be divided among 10 proposed dischargers, including Terra-Aqua Resource Management LLC."

Discharging treated frac water into the river is a troubling proposition. Will the treatment process remove all toxins? Doesn't the phrase "assimilative capacity" mean that it will be acceptable to pollute the river as long as the fish don't die or develop tumors and people don't get sick after swimming in the water?

Read the whole article here. More here.

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!