October, 2009:

via  How the West’s Energy Boom Could Threaten Drinking Water for 1 in 12 Americans – ProPublica 
by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica and David Hasemyer, The San Diego Union-Tribune – - December 21, 2008 11:23 am EDT

The Colorado River, the life vein of the Southwestern United States, is in trouble.

The river’s water is hoarded the moment it trickles out of the mountains of Wyoming and Colorado and begins its 1,450-mile journey to Mexico’s border. It runs south through seven states and the Grand Canyon, delivering water to Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego. Along the way, it powers homes for 3 million people, nourishes 15 percent of the nation’s crops and provides drinking water to one in 12 Americans.

Now a rush to develop domestic oil, gas and uranium deposits along the river and its tributaries threatens its future.

I want to comment here about a commercial on TV that got me thinking about natural gas and the environmental problems getting it out of the ground creates. The commercial’s theme was that natural gas was a cure-all for our energy problems, could help us break our dependence on foreign oil, and there is enough of it to last one hundred years. The commercial was sponsored by the America’s Natural Gas Alliance.

As with all digging, mining, or drilling operations the sight at which it is done is spoiled for all time. Coal mining uses a technique called mountain-top mining (MTM) and is probably the most egregious spoiler in the horrible history of coal mining and the worst government sanctioned environmental catastrophe in US history. Then there are oil wells, off-shore and on, that spill and pollute the ground water for years after, and mishaps –spills- at sea that sterilize the ocean and beaches for decades.

But we never hear of the impact of natural gas. New gas wells were drilled on public lands during the Bush Administration at an alarming rate, and seemingly without concern of the environmental impact. More from ProPublica:

In the eight years George W. Bush has been in office, the Colorado River watershed has seen more oil and gas drilling than at any time in the past 25 years. Uranium claims have reached a 10-year high. Last week the departing administration auctioned off an additional 148,598 acres of federal land for gas drilling projects outside Moab, Utah.

“I believe this country needs to offer domestic resources to be energy independent,” said Tim Spisak, a senior [Bush] official who heads the BLM’s oil and gas development group. “The way to do that is to responsibly develop public resources on our lands.”

In other words, Spisak and the rest of the Bush neo-cons, put forth a policy change (a way to circumvent Congress) to fast-track gas drilling permits to benefit corporate America and rape the land. There are now so many gas wells dotting the western landscape that deer and elk migrations will never happen again.

But how does drilling for natural gas affect the water supply? Gas seems so much cleaner than oil. To answer that, I want to jump from the Colorado River, to the Monongahela in Pennsylvania. If you think the western states are victimized by natural gas drilling, Pennsylvania is worse. Again, from ProPublica, October 3 2009:

Pennsylvania is at the forefront of the nation’s gas drilling boom, with at least 4,000 new oil and gas wells drilled here last year alone [2008], more than in any other state except Texas. This rapid expansion has forced state regulators to confront a problem that has been overlooked as gas drilling accelerates nationwide: How will the industry dispose of the enormous amount of wastewater it produces?

Oil and gas wells disgorge about 9 million gallons of wastewater a day in Pennsylvania, according to industry estimates used by the DEP. By 2011 that figure is expected to rise to at least 19 million gallons, enough to fill almost 29 Olympic-sized swimming pools every day. That’s more than all the state’s waterways, combined, can safely absorb, DEP [Department of Environmental Protection]officials say.

Waste water is created through a process called hydraulic fracturing.

Hydraulic fracturing is a process used in nine out of 10 natural gas wells in the United States, where millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals are pumped underground to break apart the rock and release the gas.

Hydraulic Fracturing

The nasty part of this is that while the water pressure forces open these fissures it also absorbs all the salts, mineral particles and any other chemicals, including carcinogens, that will readily dilute. Dissolved solids are the most problematic and are impossible to remove from the wastewater.

Much of the wastewater is the byproduct of a drilling process called hydraulic fracturing [5], or fracking, which pumps at least a million gallons of water per well deep into the earth to break layers of rock and release gas. When the water is sucked back out, it contains natural toxins [6] dredged up during drilling, including cadmium and benzene, which both carry cancer risks. It can also contain small amounts of chemicals added to enhance drilling.

But DEP officials say one of the most worrisome contaminants in the wastewater is a gritty substance called Total Dissolved Solids, or TDS, a mixture of salt and other minerals that lie deep underground. Drilling wastewater contains so much TDS that it can be five times as salty [7] as sea water.

Large quantities of TDS can clog machinery and affect the color, taste and odor of drinking water – precisely the problems reported along the Monongahela. While TDS isn’t considered particularly harmful to people [8], it can damage freshwater streams, which is what happened when TDS levels spiked in Dunkard Creek this month. West Virginia’s DEP is investigating whether TDS-laden wastewater from a coal mine near the creek could be to blame. It is also investigating reports that wastewater from natural gas wells may have been illegally dumped into the stream.

Illegal dumping is not the subject here and none has been officially alleged. The gas drilling companies have good intentions and have been trucking their wastewater to local municipal waste water treatment facilities. This was a boon for the locals because the gas drillers were paying them to take it, and were paid as much as five cents per gallon.

Gas drilling companies currently dispose of their wastewater in Pennsylvania’s municipal sewage plants, which then discharge it into rivers and streams. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency warns against [8] this form of treatment, because the plants aren’t equipped to remove TDS or any of the chemicals the water may contain. Of even more concern, TDS can disrupt the plants’ treatment of ordinary sewage, including human waste.

And treatment of human waste is their primary concern. But what’s the plan for the TDS?

The technology exists to filter TDS but it is years and millions of dollars away from being implemented. So what’s the plan to fix the water? The DEP is set to emplace monitors along the Monongahela and before they allow a municipal treatment plant to accept wastewater they will sample the tributary that receives the effluent from that particular plant. The gas well contractors will also truck their wastewater to further destinations in order to spread the TDS over a larger water system thereby diluting the TDS keeping the levels of contaminants in the safe zone.

In other words, the gas drillers will be allowed to push the envelope, to pollute more tributaries up to the allowable limit set by the EPA.

The permit process has been streamlined to issue to companies that want to build new treatment facilities.

The DEP also has promised to tighten TDS discharge standards by 2011, so that all drilling wastewater will be treated in plants capable of removing TDS. The agency has streamlined the permitting process for companies that want to build the new plants. But when ProPublica interviewed spokesmen for eight of the 17 plants that have been proposed, all of them said it will be impossible to begin operating by the 2011 deadline.

A spokesman for Larson Design Group, whose application [13] is furthest along in the process, expects that after it gets its permit it will need at least 40 months to build the plant and begin operating.

So there you go. They are working on it.

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Read more at http://www.propublica.org/feature/how-the-wests-energy-boom-could-threaten-drinking-water-for-1-in-12-america

Read more at http://www.propublica.org/feature/wastewater-from-gas-drilling-boom-may-threaten-monongahela-river

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The blog post was constructed and posted to my blog using Windows® Live Writer©.