Paper trail for Pa. shale waste leads to ex-IBM site in NY Official dismisses DEP record of cuttings shipped upstate

A delivery arrives in the village of Endicott, NY last summer
Photo: NY Friends of Clean Air and Water

ENDICOTT, NY -- An issue over what – exactly -- is arriving in tanker trucks for disposal at a manufacturing plant in Endicott, New York is a recent and vivid example of the fear and uncertainty over the endpoint of waste produced by the shale gas industry, and the lack of regulatory wherewithal to track it.

It’s a matter of record with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation that the tanker trucks in question are importing more than 80,000 gallons of waste a day to the plant in the heart of the village. That sum includes 30,000 gallons of leachate from the Seneca Meadow’s landfill, and 50,000 gallons from the Broome County landfill. But there is much that is not on the record, and I will get to that in a moment. First, some background.

Leachate is the soluable and suspended matter that percolates through landfills with (in this area) 30 inches of rain each year, plus whatever moisture is in the landfill itself. This drainage includes essentially anything that goes into the landfill that can be flushed out with water. Put another way, Leachate consists of landfill dregs.

Municipal sewage treatment plants are generally not equipped to handle landfill leachate, so it’s shipped to commercial plants designed to treat industrial waste. The sprawling manufacturing campus in Endicott, in the middle of a heavily populated retail and residential area of the village, was once home to IBM Corp’s micro electronic division .The industrial park, now owned by Huron Real Estate, includes a plant that has been treating waste produced from onsite operations for decades.

The most recent imports are a new source of income for the current operators, i3 Electronics. They began arriving conspicuously last year from Seneca Meadows landfill in 18-wheel tanker trucks rolling through the village. At that time, the business was owned by EIT, which eventually fell to bankruptcy. Along with the tanker trucks came suspicion and fear that former and current operators of the business are trying to offset steady manufacturing losses and job declines over the years with revenue from waste imports.

The suspicion is not without justification. As far as state regulators are concerned, the plant is processing this new source of landfill waste, without a permit, as part of a pilot study. But no time frame has been allocated, and no public comment period or public notification has been declared. According to Mary Jane Peachey, a regulator with the state Department of Environmental Conservation, the DEC has not monitored the input or output of the plant in at least five years.

And here is another critical piece of background: The i3 Electronics site and the surrounding residential and retail district is a Class 2 state Super Fund site, meaning existing pollution there poses a “significant threat to public health or the environment.” Since 1979, IBM Corp. has been pumping toxic solvents from the ground that have seeped from the micro-electronics plant into the community, affecting more than 470 homes. There have been multiple spills since.

It is no surprise that Endicott residents are generally concerned about becoming a waste destination, and specifically concerned about waste from shale gas development, which have been banned in New York pending a health review.

Much of the controversy over fracking waste involves the chemical solution that goes into shale gas wells to stimulate production, and the liquid mix of brine, chemicals and metals that comes out. But liquid waste – called flowback – is just one part of a broader metric. Shale gas development also involves a viscous solution called drilling mud, and solid waste, including drill cuttings tinged with varying degrees of metals, solvents, and naturally occurring radio active material (NORM) from deep in the ground. It’s a matter for record that drilling cuttings from the Marcellus Shale tend to be radioactive, and the New York State Department of Health has advised officials from the DEC to devise a testing protocol to ensure hot drilling waste is handled and disposed of properly .

Drill cuttings, like flowback, are also exempt from federal hazardous waste handling laws, and they often end up in landfills, like Seneca Meadows.

And that’s how shale gas dregs can end up Endicott, or countless other places where landfill leachate is treated. The shipping of leachate to private plants is not, in itself, sinister, or even especially newsworthy. It’s the exemptions, loopholes, and lack of disclosure about its contents that makes it a problem and rightly invites the attention of activists and media watchdogs.

According to records filed with the state Department of Environmental Protection, the Seneca Lake Meadows landfill was the final destination for Marcellus Shale drill cuttings from 196 wells drilled in Pennsylvania during 2010 and 2011. After tracking this bit of information down on their own, some Endicott residents and area activists wanted to know if this potentially radio active drilling waste stream ended in Endicott via the importation of Seneca Meadows leachaete. If so, were state regulators aware of it?

And that brings us to the part of the story where the record gets muddy.

A citizens group called the Western Broome Environmental Stakeholders Coalition met with the DEC’s Peachey in February to get to the heart of the matter. (A video of the meeting, filmed by activist Bill Huston, is available here.) Early in the meeting, the question came up as to whether the Seneca Meadows leachate arriving in Endicott was tested for radioactivity – a simple question that apparently invited a very confusing answer.

Peachey said that step is unnecessary, unless agency personal “are aware” that the waste comes from a suspected radioactive source. “When we are aware that someone is taking a waste stream that would have those elements we would require them to do appropriate sampling and monitoring for that,” she explained.

When a resident pointed out that Seneca Meadows takes Marcellus drill cuttings, Peachey challenged the source of that information. “If they were taking fracking waste now I think we would know it,” she said. When told that the information came directly from the Pennsylvania DEP database, Peachy replied: “I would question that ... I would like to substantiate that more with what’s currently going on there.”

DEP records show that Peachey is technically correct. Seneca Meadows is not currently taking waste from shale gas wells. But she failed to tell the group – in a meeting that was purportedly intended to inform the public and set the record straight – that the Pennsylvania record also shows the landfill did accept cuttings from nearly 200 wells over a two-year period. In bureaucratic form, Peachey fixated on timing and semantics while ignoring the essence of the matter.

While Peachey’s response could be explained as an attempt to disarm a source of PR headaches for the agency, it did nothing to address the issue at hand: drill cuttings in the Seneca Meadows landfill and their influence on the leachate. And it circumvented the original question – is the leachate from that landfill being checked for radioactivity as it rolls into Endicott?

The answer (as eventually revealed – sort of) is no, and perhaps there is a good reason that it is not. (Addressing a later question from the audience, Peachey explained that it is up to landfill operators to check for radio-activity.) But Peachey’s failure to acknowledge, much less explain, the record of shipments of cuttings from Pennsylvania gas wells to Seneca Meadows does not inspire trust. The error of omission could be a misguided attempt for damage control. Or it might be evidence that the department is out of the loop in what she pointed out was a “transaction between one private company to another private company.”

Another possibility, no more reassuring, is that the Pennsylvania records are untrustworthy. Before gaining access to the DEP website, visitors must agree to this disclaimer that notes that the data is self-reported, unchecked, unverified, and possibly incomplete:

DEP makes no claims, promises or guarantees regarding the accuracy, completeness or timeliness of the operators’ data that DEP is required to post. DEP expressly disclaims any liability for errors or omissions related to the production data contained within these reports. No warranty of any kind is given by DEP with respect to the production data contained within these reports posted on its website.

All of this uncertainty points to an overarching problem: the industry’s exemption from federal laws that mandate a clear tracking and specific kind of handling of hazardous waste. States are left with that job, and more often than not, state officials – citing a lack of resources -- defer to the industry to get the job done.

The issue of where the waste goes, which I have written about in several posts, is especially pressing these days, as tens of thousands of shale gas wells come on line in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and tens of thousands more elsewhere in the country.In the absence of federal hazardous waste laws and lack of regional planning, placing the waste becomes a process of default as various states consider legislation to ban it. (New Jersey legislators are crafting a second attempt at a ban after the first was vetoed by Gov. Chris Christie, and the issue is also being considered in New York and Connecticut.) Hence, rather than guided by a master plan, the waste is following the path of least social and political resistance. Much of what comes from the Marcellus, as far as we can tell from industry’s self policing records, goes to injection wells in Ohio, and various landfills and private treatment plants in Pennsylvania and New York.

In addition to Seneca Meadows, DEP records show that New York destinations for waste from the Marcellus Shale include Hyland in Angelica, the Hakes Landfill in Painted Post, the Chemung Landfill near Elmira, Seneca Meadows Landfill in Waterloo and the Allied/BFI Waste Systems landfill in Niagara Falls.

Communities like Niagara Falls (and notably Love Canal) tied to a history of toxic waste disposal are especially sensitive to the possibility of a future tied to more of the same. Even though the Buffalo area does not sit over a viable shale reserve, I have found during book signings there that community members are keenly attuned to the issues of shale gas development and, specifically, the lack of assurances about its waste stream.

Endicott is also one of those places. People in the village are angry that they were not notified about waste imports to the i3 Electronics plant. Matters were made worse last year when a corroded tank holding the contents of a Seneca Meadows shipment failed and at least 6,000 gallons of leachate spilled out, much if it soaking into the ground. Residents were not informed of the shipments or the spill. They were left piecing together information until a year later, when John Okesson, Peachey’s colleague at the DEC, explained details at the February meeting after sustained community pressure for the agency to account for it.

Rick White, a community member and labor advocate, summed up feelings at the end of the meeting. He referred to decades of spills, a pattern of secrecy, and a resulting legacy of environmental problems that, in his words, “stack up.” He continued:

This whole community is very sensitive to the idea that if there is additional toxic fluid, whether it is fracking waste or landfill waste or whatever it might be, and it’s coming into the village of Endicott for whatever the reason, whether it’s to make money or to enrich somebody’s pockets or it its simply to do a good service to the community, the negatives outweigh the positives. And this is why we are asking these questions.

His comments were met with applause from the 50 or so people in attendance.

Western NY brine plant becomes emblem of fracking flap Town officials: negotiations between industry, DEC secret

Update Oct. 21 New York state officials will hold a forum in early November to address community concerns and questions about the status of the failed Akso salt mine and related pollution and treatment operations. Representatives from DEC and the State Attorney General’s Office will lead a discussion by technical experts at Geneseo University, Newton Lecture Building, on Nov. 6 from 6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m., followed by a public comments and questions. DEC spokesman Peter Constantakes said the forum is a result of concerns expressed by local officials about the future of brine treatment operations to protect water supplies in Livingston County.

* * *

Shortly after the Marcellus Shale gas boom began in 2009, a tanker truck delivered 3,000 gallons of fracking waste from a Pennsylvania drill site to a treatment plant in a rural community outside of Rochester, New York. The delivery – a drop in the bucket by shale gas standards  -- was an experiment. The plant was designed to treat waste leaching from an imploded salt mine in the Town of Leicester -- the product of a mandate from the New York DEC after the geological catastrophe in 1994.  The mine’s owner, AkzoNobel, ever vigilant of costs of the ongoing operation and ways to reduce or offset them, is now negotiating terms with the DEC to shut the plant down. Meanwhile, interested parties have considered the potential to repurpose the plant – which employs 15 people and is running far under capacity -- to receive fracking waste. In that regard, the 3,000-gallon test was a success, at least in the minds of those eager to see the plant remain in operation, or perhaps even dismantled and moved to Pennsylvania.

Some of these facts, which I confirmed this week through an informed source speaking on the condition of anonymity, are just coming to light at town and county meetings as residents try to piece together something they feel has a lot to do with their well-being: the status and future of a treatment plant that was originally built to protect their aquifer from the threats of brine leaking from a failed salt mine, and now being considered for decommission or possibly as a source for fracking waste.

The mine collapse that started it all was a major event that ruined water supplies and swallowed significant portions of the landscape. In a recent overview of the dilemma, Gannett’s Steve Orr aptly describes lingering associations:

People can't help but remember the sinkholes, land subsidence, a creek that disappeared underground and basements suddenly filled with explosive methane, the closed roads and ruined bridge that marked 1994 and 1995 in western Livingston County.

Orr also summarizes the conclusions of conflicting geological reports -- one by a U.S. Geologic Survey researcher and the other by a consultant in Albany -- regarding the consequences of shutting down the treatment operation after more than 15 years. Without the treatment, the salt will drain into a deep aquifer not currently used as a fresh water source. There is a debate whether the current quality of the aquifer justifies saving it from the discharge, and whether it might in fact be a necessary source of freshwater in the future.

It’s about the aquifer, but the DEC’s handling of the situation behind closed doors represents a broader political issue: the degree local governments trust the state’s ability, willingness, and sincerity in openly overseeing environmental protection in the face of industry interests. Perhaps nowhere is this issue hotter than with shale gas development.

Town of Leicester supervisor Lisa Semmel was among a small party of local officials who met with staff from the DEC and the Attorney General’s office last month. It was here she first learned of Akzo’ negotiations with the state to close the treatment plant, she said, but she could get details. The state officials asked her to keep the meeting confidential, she added, a request that she finds unacceptable. “We’re not keeping it quiet any longer because they are not giving us any answers,” she told me this week. “We’re kept in the dark, like everybody else.” Semmel is especially concerned about the implications of the undisclosed delivery of fracking waste at the plant – which she learned through a report last month in the Genessee Sun.

The production of shale gas from a single well produces millions of gallons of flowback  -- liquid waste that contains additives and naturally occurring hazardous substances including metals, solvents, chemicals, radionuclides, and various dissolved constituents. But its most obvious ingredient is brine, which can foul fresh water systems if not removed before the effluent is discharged into rivers and streams. Because drilling waste is exempt from federal hazardous waste laws, operators can run flowback through conventional treatment and desalinization plants not equipped to remove hazardous waste.

New York currently has a moratorium on shale gas production due to unknowns about its impacts on health and environment. But a lack of a stated policy on waste imports from Pennsylvania, an air of secrecy regarding the health department’s current evaluation of health risks, and general difficulty local officials are experiencing in prying loose information have encouraged town boards to challenge the state’s qualifications to oversee the industry in the best interest of the public. For these reasons, and questions over the state’s handling of the Leicester treatment plant in particular, the Avon Town board passed a resolution last month to re-impose a 12-month moratorium on natural gas exploration and extraction.

Avon Town Supervisor David Lefeber, quoted by Genessee Sun reporter Josh Williams, explained it this way:  “Since we talked about this operation [hydrofracking], we thought the State was going to issue permits, the State was going to monitor things, the State was going to make sure that our resources are protected … Businesses come and go, but our ability to produce food and have fresh water is a huge thing and somebody’s got to protect that.”

Avon’s resolution is one of more than 170 bans imposed or considered by municipalities statewide, and the validity of many of them rest on the outcome of a landmark case now before the state’s Court of Appeals testing jurisdictional limits of shale gas regulation known as Home Rule. (More on that here.) After five years, the state is yet to finalize its own policy on permitting shale gas development. Although Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration is not allowing fracking until its review is complete, it has not prohibited the importation of fracking waste from other states.

In response to my email query this week, DEC spokesman Peter Constantakes said Akso and its insurance carrier, Zurich, want to discontinue operations to treat the discharges from the ruins of the salt mine in Leicester, which they characterize as “impractical and not cost-effective,” The DEC is considering a monetary settlement for the plant’s closure, but no decision has been made. Constantakes did not address whether the plant could be repurposed for fracking waste.

Robert Middaugh, a spokesman for New York State Attorney General’s Office, said Akso is planning to dismantle the plant, and he knew of no plans to process fracking waste there. The AG’s office has been in touch with county officials about the plant’s status, he added, and has asked that only matters dealing with litigation be kept private.

Those matters could be varied, numerous, and far reaching, of course, and it’s hard to reconcile this vague answer with the claim from local town officials telling reporters they are being kept in the dark, including this in the Genessee Sun from Jim Campbell, an attorney who represents the Towns of Avon, Leicester and York:

These towns are justifiably concerned that the State and the DEC are attempting to delay this information from being made available to the public … Our concern is that the ink might already be dry on a deal between the New York State Attorney General, the DEC, and Zurich. Such a deal could have profound impacts for Livingston County and should only be considered after adequate dissemination of the facts and an opportunity for public input.

“We need a public discussion of exactly what’s going on,” Livingston County Administrator Ian Coyle told me this week. He has asked DEC officials to hold a hearing on the matter in a school or auditorium. He is still waiting for a response.

While the politically explosive option of allowing the Leicester plant to process fracking fluid may be off the table (or not), it’s hard to know exactly what’s going on behind the scenes. If the state has allowed this kind of testing for one plant, what about others? The current draft of the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement – the state’s pending overview of permitting considerations for high volume hydraulic fracturing -- identifies 130 municipal waste treatment plants in appendix 21 that have equipment that makes them eligible for fracking waste permits.

Liquid waste from gas production is just one part of a much broader metric. Shale gas development also produces solid waste, including drill cuttings tinged with varying degrees of metals, solvents, and naturally occurring radio active material (NORM) from deep in the ground. Like flowback, this waste is also exempt from federal hazardous waste handling laws, and at least four New York landfills are accepting it under protocols designed for industrial waste: Hakes Landfill in Painted Post, the Chemung Landfill near Elmira, Seneca Meadows Landfill in Waterloo and the Allied/BFI Waste Systems landfill in Niagara Falls. According to figures compiled by Fractracker (which compliles industry reports filed with the state) operators in Pennsylvania imported 29,662 tons of solid waste and 6,000 gallons – a relatively small amount -- of fracking fluid to New York destinations in the first half of 2013.

There are incentives and rationale for accepting waste from shale gas operations: It has to go somewhere; it is an unpreventable byproduct of cheap energy that we all use; it is not perceived as dangerous; it is handled appropriately and sufficiently as industrial waste; and it can generate millions of dollars of revenues for municipalities and private companies as part of the larger economic incentive for shale gas development.  But given the tenacious and organized resistance that has stalled fracking in New York, it will be a hard political sell for most New York communities to knowingly allow the importation of Pennsylvania fracking waste under incomplete and seemingly discretionary state policy and it’s growing reputation for secrecy. Yet, as things stand, it remains a legally viable option, one that does not require public hearings, and one that is difficult to track.

Duke study finds radioactive hot spots in PA tributaries Levels below shale discharge 200 X above background

Radioactive waste discharged into rivers from shale gas operations in Pennsylvania exceed regulatory thresholds and pose an environmental risk, according to a study released today by Duke University.

The peer-reviewed study, published in Environmental Science and Technology, found that radium levels of sediment samples collected in Blacklick Creek downstream from a treatment plant in Western Pennsylvania were 200 times greater than samples upstream and background sediments. The levels exceed thresholds for radioactive waste disposal and pose “potential environmental risks of radium bioaccumulation in localized areas of shale gas wastewater disposal.” The samples were collected downstream from discharges from the Josephine Brine Treatment Facility, in Indiana County, which treats wastewater from oil and gas drilling.

Waste from oil and gas drilling is exempt from both federal hazardous waste handling and disposal regulations and the Safe Drining Water Act. Oversight is left up to states, including New York and Pennsylvania, which have no standards or protocol to test drilling waste for radio-active material. The Duke study is sure to heat up a debate in both states over health risks from extracting shale gas through high volume hydraulic fracturing. Researchers attempting to clarify the issues face a tall task due to a lack of public records and disclosure about chemicals used and waste produced. The Duke study is one in a small but growing field attempting to quantifying environmental hazards of shale gas development -- a key requisite for gauging health risks. It will likely take years if not decades for answers that carry the weight of science, and even those will likely be debatable without mandatory disclosure requirements for the industry.

Currently, at least five landfills in upstate New York accept drilling waste from Pennsylvania drilling operators: Hyland in Angelica, the Hakes Landfill in Painted Post, the Chemung Landfill near Elmira, Seneca Meadows Landfill in Waterloo, and the Allied/BFI Waste Systems landfill in Niagara Falls. Landfill waste includes cuttings and mud from well drilling. Although it’s different from the effluent discharged into streams, it also tends to include high levels of radium.

The Pennsylvania DEP tested water downstream of some wastewater treatment plants in late 2010, and found levels to be at or below background. Tests by the Pittsburgh Water & Sewer Authority also showed no  excessive readings at intakes to its treatment plant on the Allegheny River near Aspinwall. But other studies, including one by the USGS, showed that radio-active levels tend to correspond with shale gas waste, and that tends to fluctuates depending on operators production and disposal schedules.

As a follow-up, the DEP announced earlier this year a plan to sample and analyze the naturally occurring radioactivity levels in flowback waters, treatment solids and drill cuttings, as well as associated matters such as the transportation, storage and disposal of drilling wastes “at dozens of sites.” DEP spokeswoman Colleen Connolly said today that results of the study, which is underway, will likely be available early next year.

The following is from a SGR post on Feb. 2, 2013, which is relevant in light of the Duke study:

Reports about radioactive production waste from the Marcellus Shale have been circulating for years, but in the absence of public oversight and testing protocols, they are hard to gauge. A report by the USGS in 2011 found that high radium levels correspond with saltiness and total dissolved solids (TDS), all of which are characteristic properties of waste from Devonian shales, including the Marcellus and Utica formations underlying parts of New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Maryland. TDS is a measure of concentration of salts and other impurities dissolved in water. They are not visible to the naked eye, and they are flags for water problems apart from radioactivity. 

Concerns over hot fracking waste are not new, and they are not limited to Pennsylvania. While reporting for Gannett, I uncovered a 2008 memo from the New York State Department of Health to the Department of Environmental Conservation warning of the dangers of radio-active flowback. The memo, unreleased to the public, referenced an analysis of wastewater samples by state health officials that found levels of radium-226, and related alpha and beta radiation up to 10,000 times higher than drinking water standards. Based on that finding, the Health Department urged the DEC to design a testing protocol to ensure hot drilling waste is handled and disposed of properly. "The issues raised are not trivial but are also not insurmountable," the memo concluded. "Many can be addressed using common engineering controls and industry best practices."

That is reassuring, to a degree. But what are “best practices,” exactly, and how effective are they if they are optional? For now, they are left to the discretion of operators who assure us that all is being handled properly, and to private waste plant operators who echo these reassurances.

H20 consumption for fracking exceeds industry projections Lack of reporting requirements discourages clear picture

Workers pump water from a lake to an impoundment
 for fracking in the Fayetteville Shale in Arkansas.
Photo provided by USGS 

The amount of water needed for hydraulic fracturing, like much information we wish we could count on from the industry, is not well documented and varies case by case. But as shale gas plays ramp up throughout the country, evidence suggests actual quantities tend to exceed projections.

Assessing potential for high volume hydraulic fracturing to stress local water supplies is an elusive task. Lack of centralized and uniform reporting requirements leave reporters and researchers to compile trends from piecemeal and sometimes conflicting sources and extrapolations. Last week Forrest Wilder of the Texas Observer, wrestling with this very problem, reported:

If you want to know how much crude oil was produced in Texas in March, the numbers are available to the barrel (50,087,778). If you need a monthly rig count for the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas or the number of drilling permits issued in 2012 (4,143), the Texas Railroad Commission can provide that information. But if you want to know how much water was used to frack wells for any time period anywhere in Texas’ shale plays… Well, get out your calculator.

Wilder did just that, focusing on a three-county area—Dimmit, LaSalle and Zavala counties—in the southwestern portion of the shale play between San Antonio and Laredo. It’s a region of scarce rainfall and growing prospects of competition for water between burgeoning shale gas development and agriculture. Wilder found that, depending on the source of information, shale gas water consumption in 2012 ranged between 10,000 and 15,000 acre-feet. It’s a range that suggests, if nothing else, an astounding disconnect between industry projections and realistic values for water use. Based on the Texas Observer analysis, in 2012 shale gas developers in the three county-area used between one third and one half of what the Texas Railroad Commission -- relying on informal and unpublished industry estimates -- projected for the entire 24-county Eagle Ford Shale at its peak 10 years from now.

The Observer analysis was based on records by FrackFocus.org, a site that compiles information submitted voluntarily by “participating oil and gas companies.” In Texas, as with other places, some groundwater authorities require companies using water for fracking to obtain a permit, while others do not. Interpretation of the law “depends on which lawyer you talk to,” Slate Williams told Kate Galbraith of the Texas Tribune. Williams, general manager of the Crockett County Groundwater Conservation District in West Texas, asks drillers to report the amount of water they withdraw. “They don’t always do that, but it’s something we ask,” Williams said.

I came across similar contradictions last year raised by Lisa Wright, a fracking opponent trying to reconcile disparities between information from New York state officials and geologist Geoffrey Thyne. According to New York’s draft policy for shale gas development (the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement or SGEIS), horizontal shale wells use between 2 million and 7 million gallons each. Thyne is a researcher who worked first at the Colorado School of Mines and later at the University of Wyoming. He lost assignments with both institutions amid controversy over his critique of the industry, and figures he provided for Boulder Weekly reporter Shauna Stephenson that indicate a long gas well used between 48 million and 70 million gallons of fluid –  a calculation that was dismissed by the industry as ridiculous and misleading.

In addition to questions about consumption, Wright wondered why there was so much uncertainty about the amount of waste each well produces.  She cited a Stony Brook University study, published last year in the journal Risk Analysis, that found flowback from a given well ranges from between 10 percent and 80 percent of the volumes injected. (Fresh water that remains in the ground is removed from the eco-system – a status known as “consumptive use.” What comes out is laden with salts, unknown chemical mixtures, metals, and radium. Some of it comes from deep gas baring zones, some if it is injected with fresh water, and all of it is exempt from hazardous waste laws.)

Either end of the flowback range offered by Stony Brook study - 10 percent or 80 percent - poses problems that must be recognized and dealt with. Wells that produce little flowback consume relatively high amounts of fresh water. (They also become, in effect, disposal wells.) Those with high volumes of flowback produce corresponding amounts of polluted water. Wright raises a fair question: “With so many eyes on this issue, and with increasing drought conditions-- how can we NOT know this stuff?”

Looking for some clarity, I checked in with Tony Ingraffea, a Cornell University engineering professor and former hydraulic fracturing consultant for the industry, and Terry Engelder, a geologist and industry consultant from Penn State. Tony sees shale gas development as a net loser when ecological costs are factored, while Terry believes it’s a winner. But both agreed that reliable information on water consumption is hard to get at; that there are many variables that can be manipulated to suit interpretations; and volumes will likely tend to increase over time as technology allows for wells that extend greater distances.

A 70-million-gallon frack job (a prospect raised by Thyne) would be logistically improbable if not impossible in Pennsylvania, Engelder said. He cited an example of a frack job in Bradford County, however, that used 8 million gallons to stimulate a mile-long Chesapeake well in Bradford County, and he acknowledged that wells in the future could extend twice that far, thereby using twice the volume. Ingraffea cited some wells in Michigan extending for miles that will use as much as 23 million gallons each.

“Laterals are getting longer everywhere, because many stages are unproductive, and operators have to justify the drilling expense,” Ingraffea said. “Longer laterals, all else being equal, more frac fluid.”

When industry proponents talk about the need for water to develop shale gas, they often put fracking in the context of other ways we use water, like sprinkling lawns, gardens, or golf courses. (See David Blackman’s recent piece in Forbes as the latest example.) The irrigation comparison, however, fails to recognize that watering a lawn and fracking a gas well are two entirely different things. For starters, water on lawns and golf courses is not forever removed from the eco-system, nor is it reintroduced with an array of hazards.

The industry’s water needs are not merely a concern among liberals and greens. As reported recently by Norimitsu Onishi of the New York Times, competition for water in California is raising tensions between farmers and operators as the drilling industry pushes into fertile farm regions in pursuit of unexplored shale gas reserves. And concerns over water lead community leaders in Mora County, a small town in energy-rich New Mexico, to pass the nation’s first countywide ban on hydraulic fracturing. (Hear report by Carrie Jung of KUNM radio here.)

Engelder agreed that competition for water between agriculture and drilling in Texas and elsewhere will become more of a problem if things don’t change. “I think frackers are going to have to learn to use salt water from the Gulf of Mexico in very short order if they wish to continue,” he said. “Otherwise, get 'em all on wind from west Texas and electric vehicles…  We are going to need all the water we can get for AG.”

Areas not prone to drought also have water conflicts. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, an ardent drilling supporter and opponent of industry regulation, recently accused the Delaware River Basin Commission of hindering the economy and violating property rights by holding off shale gas development in its ecologically sensitive jurisdiction. The agency monitors the drinking-water supply of more than 15 million people, including Philadelphia and half the population of New York City, and prohibits Marcellus Shale drilling in the basin that covers parts four states - New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware – as it considers policy.

 If shale gas develops along its current trajectory, the industry will need more water tomorrow than it does today. In short, we will have more wells with longer laterals tapping shale reserves extending under dozens of states, including many areas where drilling is new and unfamiliar. If the current anti-regulatory attitude persists nationwide, the public will have little control over what it cannot see coming. As the industry has fought hard to preserve federal loopholes that exempt it from Safe Drinking Water Act and hazardous waste laws, it’s a safe bet that it will not be eager to provide accessible information on its water consumption habits. It’s the kind of information that invites regional planning initiatives that pro-drillers characterize as a drag on the industry, even if they are vital to long-term community safeguards.

Sustainable shale development… hype, hope or hoax? CSSD “standards” reflect chronic transparency problem

We learned last month from the Associated Press that “Energy firms, environmental groups agree on tough new fracking standards.” Specifically, the report by Kevin Begos characterized these standards as a breakthrough, a product of “an unlikely partnership between longtime adversaries” once at odds over assessing merits and risks of shale gas development. The reconciled parties include the Environmental Defense Fund, the Heinz Endowments, and a group called “Clean Air Task Force” representing environmental interests, and Shell, Chevron and others representing industry.

The group established 15 voluntary “performance standards” that operators can follow to attain certification -- and an implicit stamp of approval for consumers. The standards range from the best way to case a well to least harmful waste disposal practices. Compliance will be self-reported and subject to audits from the sanctioning body -- a recently formed agency called the Center for Sustainable Shale Development made up of representatives from industry, environmental groups and independent stakeholders.

This was a story worth checking into. My search for what exactly the standards said took me to the CSSD website. Those who don’t like a lot of packaging with their policy information, beware. If you go here, you will spend a few minutes navigating pages of vague preamble about “unprecedented collaboration”, “constructive engagement”, “rigorous performance standards” and “commitment of various strategic partners ensuring safe and environmentally responsible development of our abundant shale resources,” along with carousel billboards of fern-lined trout streams and primary-colored drilling rigs.  With some clicking and negotiation, I came upon an outline of the standards themselves, and learned quickly where the bar was set. Here are a few examples:

Performance Standard No. 7 states:

Operators will not use diesel fuel in their hydraulic fracturing fluids

Performance Standard No. 8 states:

In the event of spill or release, beyond the well pad, Operators shall immediately provide notification to the local governing body and any affected landowner.

Some standards were more sophisticated. Some were not. Performance Standard No. 2 stated that the industry should recycle waste water “to the maximum extent possible” until a standard is set next year. A theme throughout seemed to be a lack of critical definitions – such as what precisely “recycling” is.

Searching for a point of clarity, I turned to an issue that, in my mind, would be a decisive test of how sincere this whole effort was, and whether my feeling of creeping skepticism was justified. Would the CSSD’s “rigorous performance standards” require operators to fully disclose fracking compounds?

The answer, I found in Performance Standard No. 7, is yes.

Operators will publically disclose the chemical constituents intentionally used in well stimulation fluids.

Followed by a no.

If an operator, service company or vendor claims that the identity of a chemical
ingredient is entitled to trade secret protection, the operator will include in its disclosures a notation that trade secret protection has been asserted and will instead disclose the relevant chemical family name. 

Note: The difference between knowing a specific compound rather than a general family can be huge in assessing exposure impacts to health and ecology. And the company can invoke the “trade secret” clause for just about anything.

And then came another qualification:

Operators will implement measures consistent with state law to assist medical professionals in quickly obtaining trade secret information from the operator, service company or vendor holding the trade secret that may be needed for clinical diagnosis or treatment purposes.

There was no explanation in the rules or anywhere on the CSSD website for that matter that, Under a law enacted by the Corbett administration in Pennsylvania, doctors cannot get the name of a fracking compound in an exposure case, even in an emergency, without first signing a contract that forbids them to share the information with anybody.

These, then, are the kinds of standards the oil and gas industry are aspiring to. Something that takes the guise of transparency dressed up on a green-looking website, with broad loopholes and no practical enforcement mechanism.

And in our country, the industry is understood to be better regulated than anyplace else in the world – a claim that has some credibility. Yet I saw nothing in the CSSD template that spoke to the monumental weaknesses in industry oversight – lack of regional planning for waste disposal and water consumption and other impacts, and exemptions from federal hazardous waste disposal and disclosure laws that allow the industry to operate with one foot in the pre-regulatory era.

So why are the EDF and the Heinz Foundation on board? The answer seems to be, it’s a start, and that in itself is something of an achievement.

“This coalition is a step in the right direction to better protect the quality of life for people living among the gas fields,” Mark Brownstein wrote in defense of the program after it received anticipated backlash from environmental groups representing both mainstream organizations and grass roots activists. Brownstein, Vice President & Chief Counsel of the US Energy and Climate Program at Environmental Defense Fund, was instrumental in arranging the CSSD collaboration, and he felt obligated to defend the program under attack with some points not mentioned on the CSSD web site.  The organization’s voluntary standards are no substitute for the real thing, he stressed.

“Perhaps the constructive working relationship we’ve developed with the companies participating in CSSD will lead to a broader consensus on the full range of challenges confronting communities in the middle of the shale gale. We hope so, but we know we are not there yet…

Some of our environmental colleagues see the voluntary nature of the new standards as a way for the natural gas industry to avoid real oversight, and I understand their skepticism. But, like I said, CSSD’s standards aren’t being put forward in place of regulation and enforcement. To the contrary, by demonstrating that industry leaders have what it takes to produce shale gas safer, CSSD can help build a broad industry-environmentalist coalition in favor of getting the rules right.

The agency is “committed to setting clear guidelines for a rigorous certification and auditing process,” he said.  (The CSSD is yet to release any specifics about how that will work.) “The operative word is ‘can,’ Brownstein concluded. “Time will tell how effective this effort is, and whether it can or should to be replicated elsewhere.”

There are other factors at work. Last year the EDF received a three-year, $6-million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies to “minimize the environmental impacts of natural gas operations through hydraulic fracturing,” according to an agency press release at the time. The funding is to “support EDF’s strategy of securing strong rules and developing industry best practices in the 14 states with 85 percent of the country’s unconventional gas reserves.” The charity is tied to its name sake, billionaire philanthropist Michael Bloomberg, who also happens to be the mayor of New York City, one of the largest energy consumers in the world.

Representatives from mainstream environmental groups were quick to distance themselves from the EDF’s involvement with the CSSD. Deb Nardone, Director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Natural Gas Campaign, felt it necessary to reiterate that the Sierra Club “had no involvement” with the project:

Voluntary certification is in no way a substitute for rigorous safeguards, monitoring, and enforcement. Voluntary safety certification is akin to slapping a band aid on a gaping wound. We know the oil and gas industry cannot be trusted to police itself and we cannot afford to give a free pass to bad actors in the industry.

Sandy Buchanan, Executive Director of a group called Ohio Citizen Action, brought another perspective:

This is not a conflict between oil and gas companies and “environmentalists.” The drillers are up against landowners, neighbors, and taxpayers; people who drink municipal water, people who drink well-water; doctors, nurses, firefighters, EMS technicians, and so on. To portray this as just “environmentalists” makes it seem as though it is just two special interest groups at odds. It sets up a situation where one or more groups with the word “Environment” in their name think they can cut a deal with the drillers.

Criticism, ranging from harsh to caustic, focused on the title of the program as evidence of a sham. Is there really such a thing as sustainable shale gas development? Certainly not in the way the word sustainable is understood (and revered) in the environmental community. Dory Hippauf, a blogger on Shaleshockmedia.org, wrote “Fracking Center and Fluffy Kittens.”

WHOOO-HOOO, Frackers and Environmentalists collaborate!  At least that’s the headlines and spin from the natural gas PR people and the media echo chamber. 

What does this new collaboration have to do with fluffy kittens?  Not much. 

What does this new collaboration have to do with addressing the real issue of fracking?  Not much. 

This new collaboration is called the Center for Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD).  NOTE:  SUSTAINABLE SHALE DEVELOPMENT.

Many in environmental academic and policy circles, both grass roots and institutional, were buzzing. But not everybody was displeased and some influential voices supported the plan. Among them John Hanger, former Secretary for Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Conservation and now an early candidate for the 2014 Pennsylvania gubernatorial race. Hanger characterized the CSSD standards as a “game changing event” that will do for shale gas operators what sustainable certification program did for loggers:

Consumer preferences and this powerful market demand means that smart gas producers will join Consol, Equitable, Shell, and Consol in improving their gas production operations so that they can earn CSSD certification.  Whether gas producers like CSSD or not, CSSD just changed fundamentally their business world by empowering consumers to decide what gas they will buy and what gas they will not.

Maybe so, but Hanger did not explain that, unlike natural gas, forest products are genuinely a sustainable resource.

I will end here with my two cents. Performance standards are well and good. “Best practices” are something every industry should and often does strive for. But the very fact that a vague plan by the gas and oil industry to establish baseline standards becomes big news tells us something about the gas and oil industry. Beyond that, the Madison Avenue packaging and presentation of the new CSSD standards reflects a chronic problem with the industry: It’s short on policy and long on pitch.

Radioactive wildcard flags fracking disposal policy... Testing plans reflect Pa.’s take-it-as-it-comes approach

Don’t worry. Fracking fluids from the Marcellus Shale are safe. We’re checking on that part about it being radioactive…

This, paraphrased, is the message the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection issued in a statement late last week. And it captures the kind of regulatory dilemma-turned-PR-migraine that state agencies throughout the country face as they play a game of catch-up overseeing the burgeoning shale gas industry.

Radioactivity is one of many questions about constituents of the waste stream from high volume hydraulic fracturing (aka fracking), a technique for fracturing bedrock with a pressurized chemical solution that has made the shale gas revolution possible. Fracking waste, called flowback, contains brine, heavy metals, and unknown chemical constituents that are both introduced into well bores by operators to stimulate production and regurgitated with methane flowing from ancient reserves. Because flowback and other drilling waste is exempt from hazardous waste laws, it’s routinely handled through conventional disposal methods, where it ends up in rivers via treatment plants, dumped in landfills, buried in pits, or injected underground. The industry claims to be treating and recycling an undetermined amount of the fluids, and although that sounds good, it’s hard to know exactly what it means because recycling is voluntary and self-defined by the industry.

Reports about radioactive production waste from the Marcellus Shale – a primary pay-zone underlying much of the northeast -- have been circulating for years, but in the absence of public oversight and testing protocols, they are hard to gauge. A report by the USGS in 2011 found that high radium levels correspond with saltiness and total dissolved solids (TDS), all of which are characteristic properties of waste from Devonian shales, including the Marcellus and Utica formations underlying parts of New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Maryland. TDS is a measure of concentration of salts and other impurities dissolved in water. They are not visible to the naked eye, and they are flags for water problems apart from radioactivity.

With the onset of the Pennsylvania shale gas boom from 2008 through 2010, TDS levels spiked in major Pennsylvania watersheds, corresponding with the disposal of drilling waste to municipal wastewater plants unequipped to treat it. After TDS in the Monongahela River hit crises levels, the Pennsylvania DEP drafted new rules, under Chapter 95 of Pennsylvania’s Clean Streams Laws, to discourage the disposal of drilling waste at treatment plants by setting TDS ceilings for incoming shipments. But many plants ended up grandfathered into the old standard, and the industry found other ways around the new rule, and the problem persisted. After repeated calls for the industry to voluntarily stop taking drilling waste to municipal plants, TDS levels have recently dropped in the Mon River. But they remain high in the Alleghany. Meanwhile, standards the Corbett administration is moving to relax standards. The Pennsylvania DEP is proposing to drop Chapter 93 Water Quality Standards for the discharge of molybdenum, sulfates, chlorides, and 1-4 dioxane, in response to industry complaints that restricting the discharge of these pollutants would hurt business.

In response to concerns over radioactivity, the DEP has tested water downstream of some wastewater treatment plants, and found levels to be at or below background. Update Feb. 6: A reader has pointed out that the Pittsburgh Water & Sewer Authority also tracks levels of radiation in rivers, and has not found excessive readings at intakes to its treatment plant on the Allegheny River near Aspinwall.

Naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM) comes from many elements buried in the earth. People who live in homes with basements in the northeast are familiar with radon, which sometimes presents an exposure risk requiring mitigation systems to divert gas emitted from radioactive bedrock under the foundations. A critical factor in determining risks from radioactive fracking waste is its half-life, which measures its potency over time. There are other variables, and they tend to vary from site to site, making it difficult to uniformly characterize risks. But there is a common factor. According to the USGS report, co-authored by Mark Engle:

Produced water salinities from reservoirs in rocks of Cambrian-Devonion age in the Appalachian Basin commonly exceed 100,000 mg/L, and far exceed the salinities of many other oil- and gas-producing regions in the United States, including basins in California, the Great Plains, and Colorado Plateau. In many basins, radium activity is correlated with salinity, and particularly among samples from lithologically homogeneous reservoirs, salinity may be used as an indicator of radium activity.

In other words, where there is TDS (specifically salts), there is greater potential for radium, and Marcellus waste is highly saline.

The Pennsylvania DEP responded to these concerns last week, by announcing a plan to sample and analyze the naturally occurring radioactivity levels in flowback waters, treatment solids and drill cuttings, as well as associated matters such as the transportation, storage and disposal of drilling wastes “at dozens of sites.” Details and timing of the plan were not yet public as they are pending peer review.

Why this and why now? The study was announced after reports that fracking waste trucked to conventional landfills periodically began tripping radiation alarms.
To their credit, DEP officials are trying to stay on top of the issues. The plan would go well beyond a few data points down stream from water treatment disposal sites and include points in the industry’s poorly defined waste delivery system. Yet, the wording from one DEP overview the plan represents a kind of agency-speak that appears to try very hard to tell us a lot without telling us anything.

“Current industry practices are such that data do not indicate the public or workers face any health risk from exposure to radiation ... The data will assist in
determining the need with respect to any issues as they exist during extraction,
transportation, treatment and disposal.”

Whether or not this explanation intends to obfuscate, it’s guaranteed to raise suspicion among skeptics, especially phrases like “Current industry practices are such that data do not indicate...”

Third party reports instill little confidence:

“At present, there is no concerted effort that our Radiation Protection Program is aware of concerns measuring radium concentrations or activities in brine,” DEP spokesman John Poister was quoted in TheTimesOnLine last week . “We did some surveys years ago, but nothing’s been done that routinely measures radium production during fracking operations.”

Kevin Sunday, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania DEP, has not responded to my own calls and emails this week seeking clarification.

Concerns over hot fracking waste are not new, and they are not limited to Pennsylvania. While reporting for Gannett, I uncovered a 2008 memo from the New York State Department of Health to the Department of Environmental Conservation warning of the dangers of radio-active flowback. The memo, unreleased to the public, referenced an analysis of wastewater samples by state health officials found levels of radium-226, and related alpha and beta radiation up to 10,000 times higher than drinking water standards. Based on that finding, the Health Department urged the DEC to design a testing protocol to ensure hot drilling waste is handled and disposed of properly. "The issues raised are not trivial but are also not insurmountable," the memo concluded. "Many can be addressed using common engineering controls and industry best practices."

That is reassuring, to a degree. But what are “best practices,” exactly, and how effective are they if they are optional? For now, they are left to the discretion of operators who assure us that all is being handled properly, and to private waste plant operators who echo these reassurances. Last week I wrote about
Reserved Environmental Services, a Pennsylvania company that processes fracking waste, as chronicled by documentarian Kirsi Jansa. Plant operator Andy Kicinski tells viewers that the salty water contains no detectable levels of radiation, and the radiation in sludge is below the 140 micro-rems-per-hour that is the limit for sanitary landfills. So where is the waste coming from that is periodically tripping screening alarms at landfills, and who is checking?

Clarification and definitive answers have been hard to come by, partly because the HVHF industry is still new compared to other energy industries. Ultimately, it must be tried in the field like other emerging technologies– where kinks are naturally ironed out -- for its impacts to be fully understood. It’s success or failure hopefully will not simply be a function of conventional economics, but tied to measures put in place to protect people from dangers – not just the sensational kinds of dangers like blow-outs – but chronic and cumulative dangers of waste disposal that are often easy to brush aside or shift from place to place in the short term rush to get energy on line. As long as there are no mechanisms in place to prevent the industry from passing the cost associated with these risks onto the public, it is bound to happen at least in some instances.

Federal and state policy makers are still trying to assess these risks without appearing to be a killjoy about the fledgling industry’s promises of cheap abundant energy. During his election bid, President Obama characterized shale gas development as “a priority” and a key to energy independence. Meanwhile, in the absence of any overarching federal policy (unlike the nuclear industry) managing shale gas development and the problem of waste disposal has been left to the states, and the states are responding or not responding each in their own fashion. That sometimes includes (in the case of Pennsylvania) sending waste to other states (such as Ohio).

In coming weeks, New York State is expected to unveil an environmental review – four and a half years in the making – that should answer questions about how well the regulators have prepared to oversee the fracking waste stream (and other questions). It’s called the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS). Previous drafts have fallen well short of offering any kind of comprehensive plan to manage issues on the Devonian-sized scale of shale gas production in the northeast. In the absence of federal waste handling laws, and in the absence of funding for state regulatory staff to match increases in drilling beyond any historical measure, we can hope that the final version of the SGEIS will more comprehensively address what’s in the flowback, where it goes, and who makes sure it gets there. It would be good if the agency positioned itself to head off problems rather than chasing them from behind.