The Northern Wayne Property Owners Association, which represents 1,300 owners in northeastern Pennsylvania, required the companies drilling on its land to employ closed-loop systems as an environmental precaution.
Tracy Carluccio, the deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, an environmental-advocacy group, calls the buried cuttings "a little time bomb of pollution.
"Pennsylvania should not be allowing the burials of cuttings on-site," she said. "That's definitely a pathway of pollution."
Industry officials say concerns about drill cuttings are exaggerated. "Cuttings are basically just rocks," said Louis D'Amico, president of the Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association.
In some states, operators dispose of drilling debris by plowing it into fields, a practice known as "land-farming." Other "beneficial uses" include using cuttings on gravel roads or mixing them with asphalt as paving material.
Jamie Legenos, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, said the state had received no formal requests for beneficial uses of drill cuttings.
Natural gas drilling has aroused such ardent opposition that even disposing of cuttings at approved landfills has raised alarms, forcing landfill operators to assure local officials that all incoming waste is tested for radioactivity and hazardous materials.
The advent of shale-gas drilling in Pennsylvania is transforming an industry that had been dominated by smaller, shallow-well operators.
"The Marcellus has attracted a whole different scale of operations," said James Erb, a consultant to the Associated Petroleum Industries of Pennsylvania. The larger companies are importing new practices, including closed-loop drilling systems, he said.
