Drilling & fracking can contaminate water in many different ways

Article by Reid Frazier, NPR StateImpact Pennsylvania, July 11, 2018

A State College-based fracking company recently paid $159,000 to settle water contamination claims brought by a group of families in Butler County. Rex Energy revealed the settlements in bankruptcy documents filed this month.

The documents were part of the company’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which it filed in May. In its “Statement of Financial Affairs,” the company listed the settlements, of between $11,750 and $27,125, which were paid out on April 17.

The settlements went to eight families in the Woodlands, a section of Connoquenessing Township, who began complaining about their water quality in early 2011, shortly after Rex began drilling gas wells near their homes.

Several sued Rex. One couple, Janet and Fred McIntyre, claimed in their lawsuit that they experienced severe “vomiting, headaches, and diarrhea,” and said their water “had a strong smell and bad taste, as well as an oily sheen” shortly after Rex began operating in the neighborhood.

Federal and state regulators did not think Rex Energy’s activities were the cause of the problem. Both the Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. EPA examined water tests from before and after drilling, and concluded that oil and gas activities hadn’t damaged the water supplies.

But the residents still complained. For a time, Rex provided them with water, but the company stopped in 2012. Many of the families buy their own water or receive it from a local church that runs a “water-drive” for the local community.

John Stolz, an environmental microbiologist at Duquesne University, tested the water at 150 households in the Woodlands. He found 50 families had “significant changes” either in water quality or quantity since drilling began there. He was retained by the families that sued Rex as an expert witness, but the case never went to court.

He said the water in the Woodlands is still bad. “It hasn’t changed–they’re still dependent on the volunteer water drive,” he said. “The other families that weren’t part of the case of course didn’t get any compensation whatsoever.”

Stolz said the settlement would help those who received it, but doesn’t pay for a permanent solution. He estimated a publicly-treated water line would cost $1 million to install there.

“The fact of the matter is they still don’t have water and the real issue hasn’t been resolved yet,” Stolz said.

In its bankruptcy filing, the company listed another payment of $139,000 to Joshua and Lisa Meyer of Zelionople, about 15 miles from the Woodlands, to settle their water contamination claim.

In a statement, the company said: “While we cannot comment on the settlement, Rex Energy continues to deny any wrongdoing related to this matter.”

LISTEN: “Rex Energy Pays $159K to Woodlands Families to Settle Water Claims”

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Many scientific studies confirm fracking water contamination | Letters | athensnews.com

To the Editor of the Athens News, Athens, Ohio, July 15, 2018

Bill Theisen has myopia (Letter to the Editor, The NEWS, June 27). He misleads the public just as industry does by using a small preliminary study to come to absolute conclusions about fracking and drinking water contamination. The results of the study are just what we would hope for! Now there is a baseline against which possible future contamination will be compared, just as the University of Cincinnati study concludes.

The following are links to articles about drinking water contamination caused by horizontal fracking including reference to the federal EPA Drinking Water Study which concluded there can be drinking water contamination caused by fracking.

• Federal EPA Drinking Water Study: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/us/reversing-course-epa-says-fracking-can-contaminate-drinking-water.html.

• Contamination in Pavillion Wyoming: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fracking-can-contaminate-drinking-water/.

• Dimock Pennsylvania: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/06/fracking-in-pennsylvania-201006.

• New York bans fracking because of possible contamination of drinking water: https://www.propublica.org/article/new-york-state-bans-fracking.

• Contamination and health risks from fracking in the Marcellus Shale: https://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2017/02/23/fracking-is-dangerous-to-your-health-heres-why/#6d21103f5945.

The UC study in eastern Ohio was not conclusive. It only examined 22 wells over a short time period with the lead researcher stating that it’s vitally important that “the people of eastern Ohio should have access to regular monitoring so that they know whether well-casing failures or surface spills have occurred and that their drinking water is still safe. Higher methane content has been linked to well-casing issues and spills in other areas, including the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania.”

Further questioned about the water-quality study’s results, the UC professor agreed that “it’s an overstatement to say the study found no evidence of ‘drinking water contamination’ since it had a relatively narrow focus. It wasn’t looking for some types of contaminants.”

Bill, I did not ignore the scientific studies. Do your homework.

>>> Roxanne Groff, Amesville, Ohio

Dissolved inorganic "salts" varies widely - DGN

<<< Nothing in testing to indicate Morgantown’s water unsafe >>>

Guest Editorial by Paul Ziemkiewicz, Morgantown Dominion Post, January 10, 2016

As the director of WVU’s Water Research Institute (WRI), I am frequently asked about water quality in the state’s streams and rivers.

In Morgantown, the Monongahela River is critical for recreation, commercial navigation and potable water. Perhaps most importantly, the Morgantown Utility Board (MUB) draws our drinking water from the river.

The WRI has been monitoring the length of the Monongahela River since July 2009, with one of our monitoring stations at the MUB intake in Morgantown. It’s important for the community to know that, despite some recent reports about bromide in the water, our research is conclusive that this is not a problem along the river in West Virginia. We have, however, found elevated concentrations of bromide downstream of Masontown, Pa., where a drinking water utility report an excess of bromide and disinfection byproducts such as trihalomethanes (THM).

We monitor the Monongahela River and its major tributaries for many pollutants including bromide. Bromide is important because when it passes through a drinking water plant’s chlorination system it can attach to naturally occurring methane forming THM. The relationship between intake bromide and output THM is not well understood.

But all public water providers in the United States are required to monitor THM in their distribution systems. The regulatory limit for total THM delivered to customers is 0.08 mg/L. THM is important because under chronic exposure it is considered a carcinogen and is listed as a primary pollutant by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

There is no regulatory limit for bromide but we become concerned when river bromide concentrations exceed 0.08 mg/L. That level has been exceeded only once in the Monongahela River at Morgantown over the past five years on July 10, 2014.

It’s important to remember that THM compliance is based on a rolling four quarter average. So, given the low bromide concentrations in the Mon River, it’s no surprise that MUB’s compliance reporting indicates no exceedances of the total THM limit since monitoring began several decades ago.

You can find MUB’s testing results for the last three years on its website: mub.org/reports-ordinances. Look under Consumer Confidence Reports.

Bromide is highly concentrated in waste water from gas wells. So, the absence of bromide is a good indicator that the local wells are not leaking.

Since 2011, Northeast Natural Energy (NNE) has drilled four wells upriver from the MUB water intake. Bromide levels at the MUB intake have remained low throughout this period.

Before the first NNE wells were developed in summer 2011, there was justifiable concern in the community that a spill on the well pad could contaminate the Morgantown water supply. As a member of MUB’s Technical Advisory Board at the time, I recommended secondary containment on the site to be implemented prior to drilling the first well. NNE agreed and it was, to my knowledge, the first well in the state with this level of protection.

Finally, the NNE well site on the Morgantown Industrial Park is probably the most thoroughly studied shale gas operation in the country. WVU, Ohio State, the National Energy Technology Laboratory and other federal researchers are on site as part of a U.S. Department of Energy-funded project called the Marcellus Shale Energy and Environmental Laboratory (MSEEL).

NNE drilled two new wells last summer and hydrofracking began in October 2015. As part of MSEEL we started monitoring the river, flowback and produced water from the two new wells and will continue for the next four years.

Parameters include organic, inorganic and radiological contaminants. That information will be available to the public. The results will be used to identify risks and further improve the environmental safety of shale gas operations.

To reiterate, there is nothing in our testing to indicate that Morgantown’s drinking water is unsafe, and we will continue to monitor, paying close attention to potential contamination from wells, to ensure it stays that way.

Our Monongahela River monitoring is supported by the Colcom Foundation. The findings are available at http://3riversquest.org.

>>> Paul Ziemkiewicz, Ph.D., is director of WVU’s Water Research Institute. This commentary should be considered another point of view and not necessarily the opinion or editorial policy of The Morgantown Dominion Post.