10% or 90% - How much fracking waste is recycled? Loose definitions give industry lots of leeway

Shale wastewater released from a treatment plant in Josephine, Pa.
PHOTO CREDIT REID FRAZIER

Bloomberg reporters David Wethe and Peter Ward recently shed a little light on a critical aspect of the shale gas boom – wastewater disposal. Their article last week explains how recycling – once pitched as a market-based panacea for dealing with 21-billion barrels of brine, solvents, metals, and radioactive elements produced annually from domestic oil and gas production – is less of a hit with investors than anticipated. The reason: technological limits.

The article, Fracking Bonanza Eludes Wastewater Recycling Investors, frames the issue in a quote by Mark Kidder, head of an oilfield unit for Schlumberger: “We’ve spent millions and millions of dollars evaluating virtually every available and reasonable-looking technology out there, always hoping we’d find the silver bullet … At this point, we found nothing.”

News outlets looking for accessible material are not likely to find much, either, in the way of simplicity in the fracking waste story. It’s an area clouded by confusion, noise, and lack of baseline reporting standards and enforcement. There is no easy measure to gauge the problem’s impact -- a hallmark of good journalism and one of the first calculations reporters tend to make in considering a subject. But there are still ways to get at this story, and the financially oriented Bloomberg uses an approach that carries the most weight with its readers – economic analysis. Wethe and Ward cite these benchmarks:

Of the $31 billion spent each year on managing water resources in U.S. and Canadian oilfields, $2.8 billion, or less than 10 percent, is spent on recycling, according to PacWest Consulting Partners LLC... 

In Pennsylvania last year, operators cleaned and reused 85 percent of fracking and produced water because state rules, as well as geology, makes water disposal more expensive there. In most other regions, where disposal wells are more plentiful, recycling amounts to 10 percent or less, according to PacWest estimates.

Interesting, to be sure. But the article does not explain the vast discrepancies in other reports attempting to quantify the extent of frack water recycling in the oil patch, or why the PacWest estimates are any truer than other numbers cited by experts, media, and interested parties. Several notable examples come to mind:

The Wall Street Journal, citing figures from the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, reported that 14 percent of frack water in central Pennsylvania was recycled as of November, 2012.

A report in October of this year by San Jose State University and Earthworks, an environmental group, found that about one third of Pennsylvania fracking waste is “reused” and about half is discharged into rivers and streams either through brine/industrial waste treatment plants or municipal sewage treatment plants. The report also found that only about 8 percent of injected fracking solution water is reclaimed from wells in Pennsylvania to begin with, which suggests that many production wells become long-term repositories for unrecovered waste.

Energy In Depth, the industry public relations arm, claims that the industry “reused” or “recycled” 90 percent of flowback water in the last half of 2013.

Adding to this confusion is the problem of definition. “Recycled,” much like “all natural,” is one of those marketing idioms that invites abuse by those seeking to paint something green. Colleen Connolly, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, explained to me this week that the agency in fact does not make a distinction between “reuse” and “recycling” and that “recycling” generally applies to fracking waste that undergoes some sort of treatment. The “recycled” label therefore applies to flowback from shale gas production wells that has been treated and discharged into a river, even if it contains unscreened or unrecovered hazards, such as total dissolved solids, solvents, metals, and radionuclides. Lacking a good-faith statutory definition, the “recycled” label suggests a certain environmental stewardship while in fact allowing the industry convenient options for waste disposal – whether actually reusing it, discharging it, or injecting it in the ground.

As with much of the industry (which is exempt from both federal Safe Drinking Water Act and hazardous waste disposal laws) the fracking-waste reporting “system,” varying in form and rigor from state to state, offers the illusion of transparency while obscuring actual practices. Operators in Pennsylvania and other states are required to report their waste production and disposal on a database that is available on the Internet. But there is little or no oversight, let alone enforcement. Perhaps the biggest telltale sign of a problem is a disclaimer on the DEP website that visitors must agree to before viewing the agency’s files. The DEP 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.

Are we expected to trust this data, even when the DEP clearly doesn’t?

The shale gas boom is taking shape in an age where free market interests are strong and the will to regulate is relatively weak. Rather than looking to government reporting data that is inconsistent, unreliable, or non-existent, the Bloomberg report tackles the recycling analysis in a way that hits home with investors – by gauging economic feasibility rather than regulatory compliance. That’s fair and good, yet there are additional ways to get at this story, and many of them are taking shape in the Ivory Tower rather than the newsroom.

A research team led by Sheila Olmstead of the University of Texas measured water quality changes at thousands of points downstream from waste treatment plants and drilling sites for more than a decade. In a paper published in the National Academy of Sciences early this year, the team found a trend of elevated chlorine concentrations – a marker of fracking pollution -- downstream of waste water treatment facilities, but not downstream of drilling sites. As New York Times blogger Andrew Revkin notes in Dot Earth, the findings suggest that spills and leaks at specific sites are not statistically visible, but impacts of poorly processed wastewater are. In other words, we should be aware of the “cumulative impacts,” or the toll taken in water quality over time as shale gas development becomes more commonplace, even in areas previously untouched by mineral extraction.

Salts are a telltale marker of waste -- known as “flowback” – that is regurgitated from natural gas wells after they are stimulated with hydraulic fracturing fluids. Studies, including one by the USGS in 2011, show that radioactive levels tend to correspond with total dissolved solids (TDS). TDS is a measure of concentration of salts and other impurities dissolved in water that tends to fluctuate depending on operators' production and disposal schedules. They are not visible to the naked eye, and they are flags for water problems, including radioactivity.

SU grad student Sunshyne Hummel works on groundwater study
PHOTO JAMES PITARRESI  

The Olmstead team is one example of a burgeoning field of study focused on fracking and water quality. (There are many others, including one featured in this report I wrote for Syracuse University Magazine.) Yet the subject could use much more reporting than it gets in the mainstream press. The problem is, it requires a level of commitment and investigative wherewithal beyond the reach of many beat reporters working in an age where resources are scarce, staffs are small and growing smaller, and deadlines are more pressing as ever due to Internet immediacy. Instances that do make it to mainstream media outlets often originate with press-releases from NGOs, universities, or government agencies regarding events that are too conspicuous to ignore, including the following examples from Pennsylvania:

Waste Treatment Corp., a plant on the Allegheny River in Warren County, Pa. has been operating under a state permit that sets no limit on the amount of total dissolved solids and chlorides it can send to the river from oil and gas and other waste streams. Late last month, the DEP negotiated an order with the company that allows the plant to send a monthly average of 176,000 pounds per day of total dissolved solids into the river on an interim basis for two more years. The company has until January 2016 to trim the salt discharge to a monthly average of 888 pounds per day of total dissolved solids. As part of the proposed agreement with the state, the company agreed to a $25,000 fine.  Waste Treatment Corp. still faces a law suit filed by Clean Water Action, an environmental group, in U.S. District Court. The group claims that the plant is illegally discharging fracking wastewater containing high levels of salts, heavy metals and radioactive compounds into the Allegheny River.

Samples collected in Blacklick Creek downstream from discharges from the Josephine Brine Treatment Facility, in Indiana County, found radium levels 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,” according to a peer reviewed study by Duke University scholars studying the impact for shale waste.

Last summer, the DEP revoked the permit of Aquatic Synthesis Unlimited after numerous spills and violations at the plant, built on an old rodeo site about 40 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. The plant had problems from the beginning, when it started construction in December 2011 without first getting a permit from the DEP. As the demand for wastewater treatment grew, the DEP issued a conditional permit in April 2012 that allowed the plant to accept flowback, but soon the facility was inundated. It treated some of the wastewater it had on site in July and August last year, but in September it was cited by the DEP for moving wastewater off-site for injection into deep wells, in violation of its permit.

One of the most mysterious and troubling frack-water-treatment messes involves one of the highest-profile and promising plants. Minuteman, a service company in Milton Pa. that handles fracking waste, was heralded by Governor Tom Corbett as “an American success story.” Corbett made a personal visit to showcase the plant as part of a pitch to promote job-creation incentives in February, 2012. Owner Brian Bolus (who happened to be a $10,000 contributor to Corbett’s campaign) began the company in 1991 and built it into a $5 million operation with 200 trucks and 158 employees. In what remains an unexplained turn of events, the FBI, accompanied by agents from the DEP, the IRS, and various local agencies including the Milton Sewer Authority raided the plant in May. Federal agents bound some Minuteman workers in plastic cuffs, also handcuffed Bolus' wife Karen in front of their son, interviewed incoming waste truckers and left with a huge haul of boxes of documents.

Minuteman issued a statement that characterized the probe as "baseless," and a result of unfounded complaints from "disgruntled" employees speaking to the AG's office. There have been no follow-up reports since the event late last spring. Dennis Fisher, a spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office, refused to comment on the status of the investigation or address any of my questions about it.

Of course, there are hundreds of treatment plants profitably treating or “recycling” frack wastewater throughout the Commonwealth without undue attention or incident. (You can view a video of one here by Kirsi Jansa, a Finnish journalist, who takes viewers on a tour of Reserved Environmental Services.)  Many, undoubtedly, follow “best practices” – a term that refers to standards set and policed by industry rather than government. But in the absence of clearly defined federal standards, enforcement, or even a more precise definition of “recycling,” it’s hard to know where the bar is set and who is actually meeting it.

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.