By Kate Mishkin, Charleston Gazette, Nov 23, 2018

The Antero Landfill in Doddridge County was cited this summer for environmental problems, and a local watershed organization says this kind of violation is exactly what it warned officials about.

The Antero complex, which is on the Doddridge-Ritchie county line and includes a water treatment and adjacent landfill, was built to help get water to drill gas and then dispose the water that’s contaminated with salt and chemicals used to release the gas. Residents in the region were worried from the beginning that the treatment facility would pollute the drinking water, among other things.

The environmental problems began in April, when Antero noticed elevated chloride levels in a stormwater pond, and found liquid had been escaping through the landfill, according to an inspection report from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.

Almost a month later, Antero found another section of the liner at the landfill had been torn. Antero didn’t call its designated spill line, didn’t tell the Division of Water and Waste Management, didn’t provide a five-day written submission with a description of the incident and a plan to fix it, and didn’t call the Hughes River Water Board, like it’s required to. The DEP didn’t know about the spill until it inspected the site in May, the violation notice says.

The violation notice also cites Antero for letting the leachate escape in the first place.

A response to the notice of violation was due at the end of July, but the DEP granted Antero an additional 10 days. In its response, Antero said it “agrees that a courtesy notification was in order.” Moving forward, the company said it would notify the Division of Water and Waste Management, the spill line and Hughes River Water Board out of “an abundance of caution and in a spirit of cooperation.”

But, Antero noted, it did try to contact the DEP on May 4 to describe the April 25 chloride levels and didn’t hear back from the DEP until May 17, “when it was informed that DEP would be inspecting the nearby Antero Clearwater Facility that day.”

This violation is exactly what Friends of Hughes was concerned about, said Jim Shreves, president of the citizen group. “It’s your responsibility to make sure the operator calls in the reported spill. Everything’s going undocumented, there are no answers for why this is getting into the water,” Shreves said.

Antero did not respond to requests for more information for this article. The DEP confirmed the Notice of Violation did not include a monetary fine but did not comment on the quality of the drinking water.

In October, Shreves wrote to the DEP asking for more information about the status of the facility. “Allowing them to continue operation and go on with a leaking liner is negligence to the people of this county,” he wrote.

In response, Dennis Stottlemyer, deputy environmental advocate for the DEP, said the top layer of the landfill liner was repaired and nothing had released into the environment.

About an hour later, Stottlemyer wrote back to Shreves: “I stand corrected. Very corrected as you can see in the attachments that I am sending you.” He attached the Notice of Violation and Antero’s subsequent response.

But, Shreves said in an interview, the landfill has remained an “environmental nightmare.” “We’ve gotta get these laws and regulations enforced,” Shreves said. “It was put there for a reason.”

A conference call between Friends of Hughes and the DEP is scheduled for later this month.

Article by Jamison Cocklin, NGI Shale Daily, December 22, 2017

An Antero Midstream Partners LP subsidiary has reached a settlement with two West Virginia environmental groups that resolves their appeal of permits for a 60,000 barrels/day wastewater treatment facility in Doddridge County that will require the company to monitor more closely for radioactivity there.

The West Virginia Rivers Coalition and the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy filed an appeal with the state Environmental Quality Board in June protesting the stormwater and solid waste permits for Antero’s Clearwater Facility and the landfill next to it. They claimed the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection failed to adequately evaluate the potential for disposal of radioactive waste at the site and asked that the permits be vacated and modified to protect against potential harms.

Instead, Antero Treatment LLC has agreed to file a plan with state regulators to comply with the more stringent requirements to guard against radioactive discharges. The settlement requires monthly analysis of salt samples randomly selected from trucks delivering to the landfill for a year. It also requires Antero to take monthly groundwater sampling for different types of radium over the same time and expands the company’s surface water monitoring to include bromide and total dissolved solids. Those results are to be shared with the environmental groups.

Antero, which soon expects to place the facility into service, has invested $275 million on the project. One of the largest facilities of its kind in the Appalachian Basin, the plant would process wastewater from Antero Resources Corp. shale wells in Ohio and West Virginia.It would produce salt and sludge byproducts in the process.

While the sludge can be trucked off site, the landfill would dispose of any salt the company can’t sell to third parties such as those that manufacture rock salt for roads. Oil and gas waste is known to have radioactive properties after coming into contact with naturally occuring materials deep below the earth’s surface.

The plant is centrally located in Antero’s core acreage position and is set to treat 95% of the producer’s water, eliminating the need for disposal wells and providing 41,000 barrels/day of freshwater for reuse in new wells.

The company’s permits allow it to discharge stormwater and other wastes into tributaries of the Hughes River and dispose of waste in the landfill. The settlement is legally binding and set to expire once the permits are renewed.

There was no evaluation for the potential for radioactivity from waste to be disposed of at this site, and no numeric effluent limitation sufficient to protect water quality standards related to radioactivity.

https://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/112842-settlement-requires-more-radioactivity-monitoring-at-antero-treatment-facility-in-west-virginia