From the DuBois Courier Express, February 13, 2014

The Environmental Protection Agency has granted a permit for a disposal well in Brady Township that generated widespread opposition when it was proposed in 2012.

The site will be used to store and dispose of the liquid leftovers from the drilling process used to extract natural gas from the Marcellus Shale layer.

Windfall Oil & Gas of Falls Creek applied for the permit to build the injection well at a site just off Highland Street in Brady Township near the DuBois City line.

In announcing its decision, the EPA posted a 13-page summary of the permit requirements and a 16-page summary of its findings with respect to concerns raised by residents during public hearings and subsequent comment periods.

Those concerns included the well’s proximity to water supplies and the potential for contamination, the EPA’s jurisdiction, the safety of the well and the potential for it to induce earthquake activity around the site.

The announcement comes a week after the EPA issued a permit to Seneca Resources for a similar injection well in Highland Township, Elk County.

According to previously published stories, the Brady Township site would be used to store brine water that is extracted from deep wells drilled for Marcellus Shale gas. Once the water has been used in the hydraulic fracturing process, it is often transported to another deep well where it is pumped for storage.

Residents in the immediate area as well as Brady and Sandy townships, the City of DuBois and the DuBois Area School District stated their opposition to the well as a result of its proximity to homes and municipal water supplies.

At a public hearing in Luthersburg in December 2012, Windfall Oil & Gas President Mike Hoover said, “I was born and raised in this community and I intend to stay here. I truly wouldn’t be proposing this if I thought it was going to pose a health hazard to anybody.

“The process is not complicated at all. We bring trucks in, we load them into tanks filled with the fluid and pump it down the hole,” Hoover said. “There will never be any more pressure exerted on that formation that will either initiate new fractures or extend existing fractures.”

The fluid will be stored in steel tanks and all piping in the process is steel as well. The pumps will have safety shutdown features. The facility will be manned during injection operations.

“There will be cement containment wells around the facility that will be designed to hold 1 1/2 times the stored volume on location,” Hoover said.

Windfall would be responsible for monitoring pressure, flow rate and volume continually to be reported to EPA annually and would conduct a mechanical integrity test once every two years and a pressure fall-off test annually.

The EPA said that after the public hearing and an additional comment period in 2013 to address seismicity issues, “Based on all of the public comments received, EPA is issuing a final permit to Windfall Oil and Gas. The final permit has an added provision in Part II, Section C.2 which requires the automatic shut down of injection in the event that the well incurs a mechanical integrity failure.”

The final permit and the EPA’s response to comments can be found online at, respectively,

http://www.epa.gov/reg3wapd/pdf/public_notices/WindfallResponsivenessSummary.pdf and

http://www.epa.gov/reg3wapd/pdf/public_notices/WindfallFinalPermit.pdf

The response to summary comments also describes the procedure for appealing the permit decision. A petition for review of the permit must be filed within 30 days of the date of this notice – Feb. 14, according to the EPA.

Anyone interested in further information regarding the decision may contact Stephen Platt by email at platt.steve@epa.gov or by telephone at (215) 814-5464.

Source: http://www.thecourierexpress.com/content/tncms/live/

This is a very pro-business Commission, dominated by Craig Jennings. He said that anywhere in Preston County you will be impacting streams and that the waste has to go somewhere. He is in favor of Preston County hosting waste disposal and was in favor of the drilling waste landfill that was proposed in Bruceton Mills several years ago.

By: Deven Clarke, WJAC-TV, February, 13, 2014

HIGHLAND TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Residents of this Elk County township are fighting a proposed, and EPA approved, Marcellus Shale waste injection well. Elk County is just north of Interstate 80, north of Pittsburgh, and contains part of the Allegheny National Forest.

Residents packed the Highland Township supervisor meeting Wednesday night to express their outrage that the well could be coming to their neighborhood. They said it will be put within a mile of the James City area drinking water supply.

It was earlier this month that the federal EPA approved the drilling permit to Seneca Resources to inject waste from natural drilling operations deep into the ground. Residents said they fear the waste will leak into ground water and eventually making its way into their drinking water.

Members of the community want to know why Highland Township officials passed an ordinance and why that ordinance won’t block the injection well. The ordinance was passed before EPA approved the well.

“One of the things they said is that they think it’s an impermissible use of the township’s police powers to protect public safety,” said Chad Nicholson from the Environmental Legal Defense Fund. “And that the township can’t use its police power through making law in this way.”

Township supervisors said they plan to appeal the permit. They said it could take up to six months for the EPA to answer.

http://www.wjactv.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/injection-well-fight-packs-township-meeting-1640.shtml#.Uv2Xtmt5mSM