Western PA wastewater treatment facility

Public Radio International — Living on Earth: “Fingerprinting Frackwater”

From Steve Curwood, et al., Living on Earth, PRI, July 10, 2015

STEVE CURWOOD: Now, as he [Allegheny Front’s Reid Frazier] was explaining, pinpointing the precise source of groundwater contamination can be tough. Many fracking chemicals are naturally occurring, or are used in other industries. But a study published a few months ago in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology lays out a new forensic approach to help track down the exact source of fracking water pollution. One of the authors is Robert Jackson, who teaches at Stanford University. He spoke with Living on Earth’s Emmett Fitzgerald.

EMMETT FITZGERALD: So tell me about a little bit about what you’ve done, about your study, and how that’s addressing some of these problems.

ROBERT JACKSON: Well, for a number years now, we’ve been interested in tracing the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing fluids and also elements found naturally deep underground that might contaminate groundwater. That contamination could occur through a well that’s made improperly or poorly, but it can also happen if wastewater leaks out into the environment. And oil and gas operations in United States generate a trillion gallons of wastewater every year. There’s a lot of it.

FITZGERALD: How are you able to determine whether water has fracking fluids present in it.

JACKSON: Well, in this paper we focused on a handful of elements. Boron, lithium, in particular, but also salts, such as chloride, and even bromide. And we’re focusing on these elements because some of them are added into hydraulic fracturing fluids – boron in particular – but all these things are found naturally deep underground. When the company pumps water deep underground to extract the oil and gas, some of that water flows back to the surface. When it does it carries those elements back with them, sometimes in very high concentrations. In the Marcellus [shale region], for instance, the water that comes back out of the well might be 10 times saltier than seawater, and so if that water that is produced out of the oil and gas well leaks onto the surface, then we can use the presence of these elements and their chemical signatures, the isotopes, to identify them.

FITZGERALD: So you call boron and lithium, in particular, tracers. What do you mean by tracers? So this kind of approach allows us to disentangle, to distinguish those kinds of situations. We can separate different waste streams and tag them back to their source.

JACKSON: A tracer is a compound that you can use to tell different sources apart. So when I talk about a tracer I’m thinking about something that might be found in different concentrations in different sources. It might be found in one source but not the other at all, or it might have a different chemical signature like its isotopic composition. So these compounds allow us, even at very low concentrations, to identify the source in the environment. So I’ll give you an example. A few years ago, in the Monongahela River in Ohio and downstream there was this really big controversy about increases in bromine and other salts in the river water potentially impacting people’s drinking water, and there was a lot of discussion about what the source of that was. Was it old coal mines, was it conventional oil and gas wells, or was it the newly hydraulic fracturing wells that were popping up all over the place in the watershed, or at least in the wastewater that was being brought to the watershed?

FITZGERALD: So basically you’re looking at the chemical, the presence, the concentration, the isotopic situation with these different compounds and indirectly you’re able to say well this possibly came through fracking chemicals rather than the way it would occur naturally.

JACKSON: That’s right. These tracers and many others that we’ve developed and many other groups around the world have developed allow us to identify the source of contamination in the environment really well.

FITZGERAL: Professor Jackson, you called this a “forensic approach”…can you explain what you mean?

JACKSON: We want to be able to keep track of wastewater in the environment. We might want to see if a wastewater treatment facility is working properly. We might want to identify the source of a potential spill, if somebody thinks a spill has happened in their neighborhood or in their stream or river, has it actually happened and if it’s happened what caused it? This allows us to go in and identify the sources of contamination in the environment and that’s really important and very useful.

JACKSON: Well, at a crime scene, investigators will go in and apply a forensic approach. They might gather DNA. They might gather blood types. They might gather hair, and they assemble a set of evidence to assess a probable cause, a probable weapon, even sometimes a probable person. So in science we can talk about forensics in the same way, we can gather and apply a suite of chemical analyses and then apply them to a particular situation and try to figure out what caused the problem.

FITZGERALD: You’re fingerprinting fracking wastewater?

JACKSON: We are fingerprinting fracking wastewater. It’s not the same scale of resolution as a DNA identification. It’s not a one in 100 million or one and 1 billion chance. The tools are not that accurate, but they’re pretty accurate.

FITZGERALD: In the end, what do you hope comes out of this research?

JACKSON: All of the research that I do in this area has a single purpose in mind. We want to improve things to make things better so we can provide some tools that companies and regulators can use to keep spills from happening, to track wastewater in the environment better and ultimately to make the entire process safer, then I think that’s a good reason for doing the work. There’s also a basic science component to this we’re learning about what’s found naturally deep underground so when I get a basic science project and a project with strong relevance today, I’m happy about that.

CURWOOD: Robert Jackson is a co-developer of the frackwater forensic fingerprint technique. He teaches at Stanford University, and spoke with Living on Earth’s Emmett Fitzgerald.

>>> Robert Jackson is a Professor of Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford University and co-author on the study “New Tracers Identify Hydraulic Fracturing Fluids and Accidental Releases from Oil and Gas Operations” published in the Journal of Environmental Science & Technology.

Related links:
- Read the original study
- Duke’s press release on “New Tracers Can Identify Fracking Fluids in the Environment”
- Study co-author and Professor Robert Jackson’s Stanford University webpage
- Locate over 1.1 million active oil and gas wells, spills and wastewater injection on FracTracker
- Difficulty making frackwater clean-up profitable, our piece.
- ThinkProgress’ piece on tracking fracking waste
- Inappropriate disposal of solid, radioactive frackwaste contaminates water, our story.

Decker's Creek Rail Trail

ENERGY CORPORATION OF AMERICA

501 56th Street, S.E.,  Charleston, W.Va.

For Immediate Release: April 18, 2014

ECA elects not to pursue “injection well project” in Preston County

This week, Energy Corporation of America (ECA) determined not to pursue an injection well the company has been exploring near Masontown in Preston County.

A number of different factors led to this decision.  It is a complicated and involved process, which took nearly a year to complete.  Throughout this process we considered all of the factors necessary to determine if the project would be practical to pursue.  These factors included well integrity, ease of site access, environmental sensitivities, and many others.  In the end, our exploration simply concluded this well is not a good candidate for conversion to a Class II injection well at this time.

While we had hoped the project would come to fruition, our approach was responsible and produced the most comprehensive decision possible.  We will continue to operate as we have for more than 50 years, focusing on the wellbeing of our employees, safety of the environment, and ongoing commitment to the communities where we operate.         -30-

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

WV DEP Issues Cease Operations Orders to Antero at Sites in Harrison & Doddridge Counties

From an Article by Kim Freda, WBOY News 12, Clarksburg, April 18, 2014

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection and the Office of Oil and Gas have issued violation notices to Antero Resources in relation to an April 11 tank rupture at a well pad located in Doddridge County and an April 15 tank rupture at a well pad in Harrison County.

Two storage tanks at the Antero’s Marsden Well Pad in Doddridge County ruptured due to a build up of pressure, said DEP spokeswoman Kelley Gillenwater. The first notice of violation was issued for the imminent danger to people on or around the pad and issued a cease operations order that will remain in effect until the order is complied with.

A second notice of violation was issued for pollution, due to an undetermined amount of produced water that spilled onto the well pad during the rupture, said Gillenwater. As a result of the violations, Antero is required to produce information to help determine the cause of the rupture, to sample and analyze soil, and to develop and submit a plan to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future. Remediation may be required upon completion of the soil analysis.

Additionally, the DEP issued an imminent danger notice of violation to Antero in connection to an April 15 tank rupture at the Varner-West well pad in Harrison County. The notice of violation also requires Antero to cease operations at the well pad until detailed information related to the cause of the rupture and an accident prevention plan are provided. In this incident, the DEP said no produced water spilled onto nearby soil. Similar to the Marsden well pad incident, the tank rupture occurred due to a build up of pressure inside the tank, said Gillenwater.

No injuries or fires were reported as the result of either incident.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Dunkard Creek is on Mason-Dixon Line

Greene County creeks leased for drilling by PA-DCNR

From an Article by Emily Petsko, Washington PA Observer-Reporter, April 4, 2014

Two Greene County creeks are doubling as drilling sites for local energy companies, joining the more than 1,400 acres of public waterways across Pennsylvania leased to natural gas companies by the state in the past year. Sections of Ten Mile and Dunkard creeks, both state-owned waterways, were recently leased by the PA Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to three separate companies for horizontal drilling.

According to the state’s Conservation and Natural Resources Act, DCNR is permitted to enter into lease agreements for the extraction of fuel, oil, natural gas or any other mineral deposits on commonwealth-owned lands. DCNR receives the bonus and royalty payments, which are deposited into the Oil and Gas Lease Fund for conservation, recreation and flood control programs.

“Although DCNR does not manage the riverbeds as it does state parks and forests, the agreements are negotiated by DCNR because we have expertise based on our more than 60-year history of gas leasing on state forest land,” said Christina Novak, DCNR press secretary. Novak said drilling activity is “nothing you would notice on the surface” because it occurs deep below the waterway.

DCNR netted nearly $6 million since last year. While most waterway leases were signed during Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration, Novak said one $6 million waterway lease occurred in May 2010 during Gov. Ed Rendell’s term. Eight of nine waterway leases were signed between March 2012 and March 2014.

Most recently, Chevron signed a lease March 12 for 57 acres of Dunkard Creek for $228,000 with DCNR. Two-and-a-half acres of Ten Mile were leased to EQT Production Co., which has a local office in Washington. The company will pay a $10,200 bonus to DCNR.

Underneath another section of Ten Mile, Colorado-based Vantage Energy signed a lease January  31^st for 80 acres at a cost of $321,692. In addition to the bonus payment, all companies are required to pay a 20 percent royalty rate.

Media spokespersons for EQT and Chevron did not respond to calls seeking comment Tuesday. State Rep. Pam Snyder, D-Jefferson, said she was not made aware of the drilling leases for Ten Mile and Dunkard creeks.

NOTE: Greene county is the SW corner county in Pennsylvania bordering WV on its west and south.  Dunkard Creek is about 38 miles in length weaving back and forth across the Mason-Dixon line.  Ten Mile Creek flows thru Waynesburg (center of Greene county) and on east to the Monongahela River.