§ OHIO RIVER WATERSHED in URGENT NEED of PROTECTION (continued) §

Moving fracking wastewater in barges up and down Pittsburgh’s rivers is ill advised (continued)

From an Article by Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 31, 2021

NOTICE — Mil­lions of gal­lons of briny, toxic, waste­wa­ter from shale gas drill­ing and frack­ing op­er­a­tions could soon be loaded onto barges and pushed down the Al­le­gheny, Mo­non­ga­hela and Ohio riv­ers.

Send­ing waste to the State of Ohio

Dis­posal of drill­ing and frack­ing waste­wa­ter from the Mar­cel­lus and Utica shale gas fields in Penn­syl­va­nia, Ohio and West Vir­ginia is now done via tanker truck, rail­road and pipe­line, which trans­port waste­wa­ter to deep in­jec­tion dis­posal wells or dis­til­la­tion fa­cil­i­ties.

Ben Hun­kler, an or­ga­nizer with Con­cerned Ohio River Res­i­dents, said Ohio has be­come “the de facto dump­ing ground for frack­ing waste­wa­ter pro­duced in the Ohio River Val­ley, thanks to the state’s loose in­jec­tion reg­u­la­tion.”

Mr. Hun­kler said Ohio Depart­ment of Nat­u­ral Re­sources records show that nearly half of the 38 mil­lion bar­rels of toxic waste in­jected into Ohio’s 226 dis­posal wells in 2017 was ex­ported from West Vir­ginia and Penn­syl­va­nia. “Barg­ing waste­wa­ter along the Ohio River,” he said, “could sub­ject even more Ohio com­mu­ni­ties to the nox­ious air emis­sions and ground­wa­ter con­tam­i­na­tion com­mon near waste in­jec­tion wells.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Coast Guard doc­u­ments, the waste­wa­ter, in­clud­ing small amounts of oil and liq­uid gas con­den­sate, would be trans­ported on the riv­ers in dou­ble-hulled steel tank barges ca­pa­ble of car­ry­ing flam­ma­ble, com­bus­ti­ble and haz­ard­ous cargo, and owned by Lou­i­si­ana-based Set­toon Tow­ing, which had and has U.S. Coast Guard ap­proval to barge oil and gas in­dus­try waste­wa­ter through Gulf Coast in­land wa­ter­ways for the last 30 years.

Randy Mar­tin-Nez, ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of Set­toon Tow­ing, said the com­pany has re­ceived au­tho­ri­za­tion from the Coast Guard to ex­pand its op­er­a­tion into the Ap­pa­la­chian Ba­sin’s riv­ers, but that move has been de­layed by the eco­nomic down­turn in the drill­ing in­dus­try, op­po­si­tion from “lib­er­als and tree hug­gers,” and what he termed the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion’s anti-frack­ing pol­i­cies.

He said one tanker barge can hold 25,000 bar­rels, or 1 mil­lion gal­lons, of pro­duced wa­ter — the equiv­a­lent of 80 tanker trucks. “To be scared of pro­duced wa­ter is crazy. It’s not dan­ger­ous stuff,” Mr. Mar­tin-Nez said in a phone in­ter­view. “We have the boats and barges au­tho­rized to do this, and we’re wait­ing for DeepRock and Gutt­man to fin­ish their ter­mi­nal up­grades so they can re­ceive tanker trucks.”

Although the Coast Guard has au­tho­rized Set­toon to barge waste­wa­ter in the Ap­pa­la­chian Ba­sin, it clas­si­fies drill­ing and frack­ing waste­wa­ter more re­stric­tively than Mr. Mar­tin-Nez. In let­ters to Set­toon dated Oct. 31, 2018, and Nov. 12, 2019, the Coast Guard noted that its as­sess­ment of the pro­posed pro­duced wa­ter cargo’s chem­i­cal prop­er­ties found it con­tained ben­zene, a known hu­man car­cin­o­gen.

And a Coast Guard di­rec­tive ti­tled “Pro­duced Water Clas­si­fi­ca­tion” from July 2020 noted that a 2013 pol­icy al­low­ing the trans­port of shale gas ex­trac­tion waste by barge, re­quested by the in­dus­try, was with­drawn that same year “pri­mar­ily due to sig­nifi­cant en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns with trans­port­ing a po­ten­tially ra­dio­ac­tive prod­uct.” The doc­u­ment also states that be­cause the chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion and ra­dio­ac­tiv­ity lev­els of the waste­wa­ter from dif­fer­ent wells var­ies con­sid­er­ably, reg­u­lar test­ing will be re­quired.

Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Daniel Velez said if waste­wa­ter is barged on the riv­ers, it will be car­ried by a “red-flagged barge” be­cause its cargo is con­sid­ered “a haz­ard­ous ma­terial while in the barges and be­ing trans­ported.” Be­cause the waste­wa­ter is a mix­ture of ma­teri­als it is also clas­si­fied as a “nox­ious liq­uid,” he stated.

Yuri Gorby, of the FreshWater Ac­count­abil­ity Proj­ect, said al­low­ing the barg­ing of waste­wa­ter would be a fail­ure of reg­u­la­tory over­sight. “This waste is cur­rently only reg­u­lated as a haz­ard­ous ma­terial when it’s on the barge,” Mr. Gorby said. “When it comes into Ohio and West Vir­ginia to be pro­cessed or sent to dis­posal wells, it is not clas­si­fied as a haz­ard­ous waste. People in our re­gion will pay the price in the form of un­nec­es­sary ex­po­sures to ra­dio­ac­tive ma­teri­als.”

Drink­ing wa­ter con­cerns are widespread

The Charle­roi Munic­i­pal Au­thor­ity’s wa­ter in­take is just a half-mile down the Mo­non­ga­hela River from the Speers Ter­mi­nal. And at least a half-dozen pub­lic and pri­vate wa­ter in­takes are also down river, in­clud­ing three op­er­ated by the Penn­syl­va­nia Amer­i­can Water Co., which pro­vides ap­prox­i­mately 583,000 peo­ple in Al­le­gheny, Wash­ing­ton and Fay­ette coun­ties with drink­ing wa­ter sourced from the Mon River.

“Barge traf­fic presents a po­ten­tial risk to drink­ing wa­ter sources due to the po­ten­tial for spills,” Penn­syl­va­nia Amer­i­can stated in a re­lease by spokes­woman Heather DuBose. “This is why Penn­syl­va­nia Amer­i­can Water has in­vested in tech­nol­ogy that con­tin­u­ously mon­i­tors our sources of sup­ply and pro­vides early de­tec­tion of con­tam­i­na­tion events.”

The re­gion’s big­gest wa­ter com­pany also said it de­pends on the Penn­syl­va­nia Depart­ment of En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and the Coast Guard “to take en­vi­ron­men­tal and drink­ing wa­ter pro­tec­tions into con­sid­er­ation in their per­mit­ting pro­cesses.”

Over on the Al­le­gheny River, Dean Mar­lin, di­rec­tor of busi­ness de­vel­op­ment for But­ler-based Nicho­las En­ter­prises Inc., which owns the 17-tank bulk ter­mi­nal at Free­port, said the com­pany was ac­tive in pur­su­ing the waste­wa­ter barg­ing in the past and would like to be again.

“We were in­ter­ested and we would be in­ter­ested, but it was al­ways blocked for one rea­son or an­other and we’ve not ac­tively par­tic­i­pated re­cently,” Mr. Mar­lin said. “If it did hap­pen it would be great, but it would re­quire a lot of in­vest­ment and per­mit­ting work.”

The Nicho­las ter­mi­nal is lo­cated im­me­di­ately up­river from the river wa­ter in­take pipes of the Munic­i­pal Au­thor­ity of Buf­falo Town­ship, which serves 8,000 peo­ple in But­ler and Arm­strong coun­ties, in­clud­ing Free­port.

Freeport Mayor James Swartz said us­ing the Nicho­las ter­mi­nal to load barges with waste­wa­ter in­creases risk to the pub­lic wa­ter sup­ply. “It’s def­i­nitely a con­cern with the … plant as close as it is,” Mr. Swartz said. “A spill would cre­ate a ca­tastro­phe for cus­tom­ers.”

Leatra Harper, who filed the FOIA re­quest for the Fresh Water Ac­count­abil­ity Proj­ect, said barg­ing a “witches’ brew of waste­wa­ter” ig­nores very real pub­lic health and safety risks. “It opens a Pan­dora’s box of waste ma­terial on wa­ter­ways that are our pub­lic drink­ing wa­ter sources,” Ms. Harper said. “And its sole pur­pose is to keep the drill­ing and frack­ing com­pa­nies afloat.”