Pro Publica, Inc., is a nonprofit organization based in New York City dedicated to investigative journalism. ProPublica states that its investigations are conducted by its staff of full-time investigative reporters, and the resulting stories are distributed to news partners for publication or broadcast. In some cases, reporters from both ProPublica and its partners work together on a story. ProPublica has partnered with more than 90 different news organizations and has won six Pulitzer Prizes.
Joaquin Sapien and Sabrina Shankman. Drilling Wastewater Disposal Options in N.Y. Report Have Problems of Their Own. December 29, 2009. ProPublica.
Environmentalists, state regulators and even energy companies agree that the problem most likely to slow natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale in New York is safely disposing of the billions of gallons of contaminated wastewater the industry will produce…
…Of the six injection wells that operate in New York, only one is licensed to accept oil and gas wastewater. It’s owned by Lenape Resources Inc., which uses it exclusively for wastewater from its own gas fields [near Rochester, NY].
…High TDS levels have already caused problems for drinking water in Pennsylvania, where Marcellus Shale gas drilling accelerated in the spring of 2008. Much of Pennsylvania’s wastewater was originally sent to municipal sewage treatment plants along the Monongahela River, a drinking water source for 250,000 people. TDS levels in the river were already high because of leakage from abandoned mines and other industrial waste, but after drilling wastewater was released into the river, TDS skyrocketed. Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection is holding public hearings on new regulations (PDF) that would dramatically reduce the amount of TDS that can be discharged into waterways after Jan. 1, 2011.
New York’s municipal and industrial treatment plants are also unequipped to remove TDS, which is one reason so many plant operators say they don’t want to take the wastewater. Their biggest fear is that TDS or some other contaminant in the wastewater might kill the freshwater organisms that they use in their treatment process, leaving untreated sewage flowing into rivers and streams where they release their water.
…Katherine Nadeau, a water and natural resources associate for Environmental Advocates of New York, thinks the operators’ concerns about drilling wastewater are well-founded.
Last year Nadeau studied the records of 32 New York sewage plants and found that many were discharging more pollutants (PDF) than they are allowed to under state and federal laws and that some hadn’t received a full compliance review from the DEC in decades. She thinks the DEC staff is stretched too thin to make sure New York’s drinking water is protected from drilling.
James Tierney, the DEC’s assistant commissioner of water resources, raised the staffing issue in testimony (PDF) submitted to a New York State Senate committee in October, the day after the draft environmental review came out.
Joaquin Sapien and Sabrina Shankman. Drilling Wastewater Disposal Options in N.Y. Report Have Problems of Their Own. December 29, 2009. ProPublica.
