The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has finalized a process to encourage the use of acid mine drainage for hydraulic fracturing, part of an effort to reduce the use of freshwater in extracting oil and gas from shale.
The DEP's white paper says that proposals to use "mine-influenced" water must include sampling and characterization of the water, as well as details about how the water will be transported, stored and used.
More than 300 million gallons of water is discharged from abandoned coal mines each day, impairing more than 5,500 miles of Pennsylvania waterways.
The DEP's white paper can be obtained on the agency's website: http://bit.ly/TL7hld.
