Big Sandy River in KY & WV

WKYT Investigates: Polluting the Big Sandy

Article by Kristin Kennedy, WKYT, July 8, 2013

LAWRENCE COUNTY, KY  - He came to WKYT to apologize for what he did. A man working for a natural gas company in Eastern Kentucky claims he dumped countless numbers of harmful pollutants into the Big Sandy River. He says his bosses told him to, so he told the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Big Sandy snakes through eastern Kentucky, acting as the natural divide between our state and West Virginia. You can call it scenic, serene, and now, polluted.

“I’m not a green tree hugger or nothing, but I knew that it was wrong, and it would kill me every load I put in it, said Deno Miller, who described in detail the fracking water he would dump into the Big Sandy after using it to extract natural gas. He says it came out of a rig on a property right outside Louisa. He told us it was water his employer, Eagle Well Service, was supposed to recycle, treat, or bury in a disposal well.

“The first load I was guilty as they were. I put my first load in the creek just down the road. Gray, slimy water. I was tore up all day. I told my truck boss I was gonna quit if I had to do it again, so he made it a little easier on me I guess by telling me to put it in the pit by the river,” Miller claimed.

“You can’t just dump the water that you got from a well out onto the ground or into the environment because it’s not just water. The key environmental concern is that the fluid they use to inject into the well for fracking, it includes several other chemicals,” notes the University of Kentucky’s Dr. Audrey Sawyer, “the things that are impacted range from frogs to fish to people who are swimming or drinking downstream.”

The Big Sandy stretches through several towns, around 30 miles of northeastern Kentucky land. When the state came out to investigate Miller’s claims they say they smelled strong petroleum and chloride odors in the area, and they saw a very visible sheen in the water. They issued violations on the spot to three men they say are responsible. Jack Justice, Jordan Keene, and Russell Parsons all received a Notice of Violation from the state’s Department of Environmental Protection.

Russell Parsons is the man who owns the business cited on the violations, Eagle Well Service. Its headquarters is listed at a home address in Salyersville.

In a 15-minute conversation, Parsons claimed our whistle blower was actually an extortionist. Parsons said Miller wanted $50,000 out of him, and when Parsons didn’t pay, Miller dumped water where it’s not allowed. After repeated requests for the Eagle Well Service owner to talk on camera, Parsons declined

We asked Miller about the extortion claims. He said when he quit, he asked for backpay owed for working overtime.

The EPA has cited Russell Parsons and Eagle Well Service in the past. In 2009, they made him pay almost $2,700 because he was late performing a required mechanical integrity demonstration on a well. Those demonstrations are the most common way to show a well isn’t leaking, contaminating, or polluting underground sources of drinking water.

Miller says he went to the EPA back in April, after months of illegal dumping. May 1, 2013, the state issued violations, but the violations have yet to be enforced. When we called the Kentucky Division of Enforcement, they hadn’t approved actual enforcement of the issued violations. So far no one has approved enforcement or assessed penalties. We’re told the case is currently under review. The next step is to interview parties named in the case.

The Kentucky Oil & Gas Association issued their own statement in regards to the violations – “While regulators are still sorting out the facts related to this specific allegation of an un-permitted discharge of water, Kentucky’s oil and gas operators are strongly committed to fully complying with the law and ensuring our environment and waterways are protected.”

Conceptual Well Diagram

Letter to the Editor by Larry Harris, Morgantown Dominion Post, May 23, 2013

I read with interest the article on injection wells (Dominion Post – Sunday, May 19th) used for storage of spent fracking water. I had no idea that there were 65 of these wells in the state, as well as one so close to Morgantown as the one featured on Snake Hill Road (in Monongalia County).

The underground injection of fracking water, with toxic chemicals and radioactivity, is apparently the only solution for the drillers, as cleaning the water is too expensive. Underground injection, the article points out, has been challenged by “fracking watchdogs” because of the danger of contamination of water tables and causing earthquakes.

There are other concerns related to this process other than those two, namely, spills at the site or during transportation to the injection well. Pump failures might also be a problem. But the most serious issue, in my mind, is the removal of water from the water cycle.

Hydrofracking of wells involves the use of many millions of gallons of fresh water to fracture the shale and release the gas. Some of this water stays underground and some returns, heavily contaminated with toxic chemicals added by the driller and released from the shale.

Chesapeake claims to recycle the produced water, diluting it and using it to frack until eventually being disposed of in wells. In the end, adding up all of the wells here and in the western United States, many millions of gallons of fresh water gets removed from the surface waters and pumped down out of the system.

The article explains why the industry pumps the produced water underground, since they do not know how to clean up the water they have contaminated. What is not discussed is the large-scale removal of our fresh water from the system. This water will never return to us and the natural world is not making any new water — we have all we shall ever have.

Clean water is a commodity that all life forms on Earth cannot live without. As the planet warms some of us may find ourselves in a climate where we need less heat, and others where we need more cooling. We will never be in a place where we need less clean water.

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NOTE: Water withdrawls are becoming more important as the volume of water being permanently consumed in fracking continues to dramatically increase.  The average citizen is challenged by truckers pumping from local streams without any apparent license to do so.  This situation occurred this past week on Indian Creek of Middle Island Creek in Tyler County, for example, in spite of a recognized condition that stream flows were quite low. 

See the following web-site presenting background information on “water for fracking”  for more perspective on this situation.

Also, an article entitled “New Fracking Rules Leave Drought-Ridden States High and Dry” reports on the new guidelines from the US Department of the Interior for frack water consumption on federal lands and Indian lands, primarily but not exclusively in the Western States.

Early Marcellus Sites: Ohio Co. WV

Warwood Frack Water Plant on Ohio River

From the Article by Casey Junkins, Wheeling Intelligencer, May 12, 2013

NEW MATAMORAS, OH – John Jack is confident that GreenHunter Water’s plans to store nearly 800,000 gallons of natural gas frack water in the Warwood section of Wheeling will become a reality.

John Jack, GreenHunter vice president, shows the storage tanks the company refurbished upon purchasing this facility along Ohio 7 in New Matamoras. He also hopes that once built, the local community will grow to appreciate the recycling facility.

“I am encouraged – it is going to happen,” Jack said regarding the Wheeling barging and frack recycling plant proposed for North 28th Street at the former Seidler’s Oil Service. “Ultimately, Wheeling will benefit from this.”

Strong opposition to GreenHunter’s Wheeling project persists, though, as a group of residents calling themselves the “Wheeling Water Warriors” continue collecting signatures of people who oppose the plant. They recently held a protest in Warwood’s Garden Park, emphasizing they do not want frack wastewater stored only about a mile north of the Wheeling Water Plant.

Jack realizes some do not support his company’s work, as Washington County, Ohio sheriff’s deputies arrested 10 people in February for protesting at the New Matamoras facility, including one man who climbed to the top of one of the storage tanks.

“Once we get our two variances approved, we will submit a final site plan,” he said of the papers that would go to the Wheeling Planning Commission. “We are moving as quickly as we can.”

He said the first variance is a request to reduce the number of required parking spaces from 27 to 13. The second is a request to cover the site’s surface with gravel, rather than asphalt. “Those are not major issues. If they say they want us to have 27, we’ll have 27. If they want asphalt, we’ll use asphalt,” he said.

But it appears as if the city is gearing up for a legal fight with GreenHunter. City Manager Robert Herron said Wheeling leaders believe the company will need to request a zone change to cross the Wheeling Heritage Trail to reach the barging terminal along the Ohio River. Although the main site of GreenHunter’s project is zoned for industrial use, the area from the trail to the river is zoned residential.

He said the Wheeling facility will operate 24 hours per day every day, though he said “90 percent to 95 percent” of the trucks that come through each day will do so during daytime hours. Though Jack said the number of trucks entering and exiting the facility each day could vary widely, he said a “good daily estimate” would be 30.

Though the 12 full-time workers GreenHunter plans to have on site may seem small, Jack noted the company will also be paying business and occupation taxes and fire service fees to the city. “Whatever the tax obligations are to work in Wheeling, we will meet those obligations,” he said.

After treating the frack water, GreenHunter plans to ship brine water – the vast majority of its volume, according to Jack – by truck back to well sites for re-use. Solid waste would go to a landfill outside Parkersburg, with liquid waste taken by barge for disposal at one of several deep injection wells.

The U.S. Coast Guard continues to review whether fracking waste can be shipped on inland waterways via barge. Jack contends there is less chance of an accident on the river compared to roadways. “There are hydrocarbons on the river all day long,” Jack said in terms of coal and gasoline shipments. “What will be going out on our barges is non-hazardous.”

Though GreenHunter’s recycling process removes the suspended solids from the frack water, Jack admits trace amounts of chemicals and salts will remain in the water. Though radium and uranium are considered radioactive, he said these elements will be minuscule in volume. He said the Coast Guard will eventually allow the Marcellus and Utica frack waste to be barged, noting, “It is not a matter of if, but when.”

However, residents need not fear huge amounts of barge traffic, as Jack estimates only one such vessel will leave the Warwood dock each week.