Push on to test water after drilling reports

March 01, 2011|By Andrew Maykuth, Inquirer Staff Writer
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  • The McKeesport Sewage Treatment Plant is one that handles some of the wastewater from Marcellus Shale drilling. A former state official says most of it goes through new wells.
  • The McKeesport Sewage Treatment Plant is one that handles some of the wastewater from Marcellus Shale drilling. A former state official says most of it goes through new wells.
  • Marcellus Shale drilling sites suchas this one near Latrobe, Pa., produce wastewater that has raised concerns about drinking water.

The feuding parties in the Marcellus Shale natural gas debate have finally found something to agree upon.

Environmental and gas-industry advocates called on state and federal regulators Monday to step up testing of Pennsylvania supplies of public water after a newspaper reported that radioactive wastewater from drilling is sometimes sent to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water.

Erika Staaf, PennEnvironment's clean-water advocate, said a Sunday New York Times story that reported some gas-well wastewater contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known affirmed the statewide advocacy group's suspicions. "Clearly, we need to test the water to know what's in it," she said.

Story continues below.

Kathryn Klaber, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, agreed that the water supplies should be tested to put public concerns to rest.

"We'd absolutely support additional testing," Klaber said. "It's important to know the levels that might be entering water supplies."

But beyond the calls for more testing, there was little agreement about the significance of the risk to water supplies. Industry officials played down the threat from radioactive materials that naturally occur in deep rock formations, saying that elevated radioactivity at the well site is far different from the diluted material that is discharged into waterways. Anti-drilling advocates said that radioactive material was only one of many pollutants associated with drilling that require stricter regulation.

U.S. Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey (D., N.Y.), who has introduced legislation to impose more federal regulation on gas drilling, called on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to force states to test waterways for a range of materials associated with hydraulic fracturing, the controversial technique that drillers use to release natural gas locked up in the mile-deep formation.

"Given this new information about natural gas drilling wastewater containing radioactive materials at levels ranging from hundreds and even thousands of times higher than what is considered acceptable, EPA should immediately require that all drinking water intakes within active natural gas drilling areas be tested for radioactivity and all other toxic substances," Hinchey wrote to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

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