Entrepreneur hopes to make money purifying wastewater from gas drilling

Marcellus Shale gas wells have proven to be prodigious producers not just of natural gas, but of toxic wastewater, too.

Ted Leisenring thinks he can make money off both.

Leisenring, 57, a Berwyn businessman, is cooking up a project to build a power plant to generate electricity by burning Marcellus gas, and then use the plant's heat to purify wastewater from the hydraulic fracturing process.

"This is a no-discharge solution for frack water," said Leisenring, whose venture is called Marcellus Power Solutions L.L.C.

Leisenring joins a crowd of entrepreneurs with schemes to treat or dispose of the shale-drilling wastewater, which is laden with salty compounds, toxic metals, and some radioactive particles disgorged from the earth during fracking. Wastewater disposal has become a critical environmental challenge of shale-drilling, which has unlocked vast new reserves of fossil fuels across the nation.

Michael Krancer, Gov. Corbett's secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection, in April ordered Marcellus drillers to stop sending wastewater to 16 plants that discharge inadequately treated waste into Pennsylvania's rivers. Katherine Gresh, DEP's spokeswoman, said the industry appeared to have complied by the May 19 deadline and lauded the "dramatic sea change" in disposal practices.

It will become clearer later this month when drillers file semiannual disposal reports on where the wastewater has been diverted since the DEP's ban went into effect. Leisenring will study the reports, because those waste streams represent potential cash streams for his plan.

The industry says most wastewater is being recycled by mixing it with fresh water to hydraulically fracture new wells. Before it is reused, the wastewater is minimally treated to remove some metals and solids, but not the salty chlorides, so it cannot be discharged into streams.

Not all is recycled. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported last week that Ohio environmental officials are seeing an upswing in Pennsylvania wastewater being trucked to licensed disposal wells in the Buckeye State, an expensive solution that requires fleets of tanker trucks.

Some is also being sent to Eureka Resources L.L.C., a Williamsport plant that is Pennsylvania's only facility equipped to purify the waste to meet the DEP's new disposal standards, which went into effect last year.

"Our guys are scrambling to keep up," said Daniel J. Ertel, the owner of Eureka Resources.