MARC LEVY
Associated Press
HARRISBURG, Pa. – Several tests of western Pennsylvania river water prompted by fears of contamination from the state’s rapidly growing natural gas drilling industry didn’t turn up elevated or harmful levels of radioactivity or other pollutants not routinely monitored, a private water utility said Monday.
The Pennsylvania American Water Co. said its tests showed that its water quality complies with federal and states standards.
Water for one set of tests was drawn from Pennsylvania American’s intakes along the Allegheny, Clarion and Monongahela rivers and Two Lick Creek, which serve the cities of Pittsburgh, Clarion, Kittanning and Indiana. In addition, Pennsylvania American said it found the same result after testing treated drinking water at three plants in late March. Two of the plants serve Pittsburgh, while the third serves Clarion.
State regulators have previously said that tests from samples they collected in November through February of water downriver from western Pennsylvania treatment plants raised no red flags for radioactivity. The treatment plants have been handling wastewater from drilling in the vast Marcellus Shale natural gas reservoir – a practice that is scheduled to end this week because of concerns over how it could affect drinking water.
Since the beginning of 2008, more than 3,000 Marcellus Shale wells have been drilled in Pennsylvania, raising fears of river contamination in part because ill-equipped riverside treatment plants were used to get rid of millions of barrels of ultra-salty, chemically tainted wastewater that gushed annually from the gas wells.
Pennsylvania American spokeswoman Josephine Posti said Monday that the utility did not have test results for the same contaminants to compare from 2009 or 2010, because the testing is done on a three-year cycle as required by state regulators. Tests in 2008 recorded no elevated or harmful levels, and neither did a test for uranium in the Clarion River in January, Posti said.
Over the past year, some of the biggest drilling companies working in Pennsylvania have sought to avoid using the treatment plants and find other ways to reuse or dispose of their wastewater.
Shale drilling requires injecting huge volumes of water under high pressure into the ground to help shatter the thick rock – a process called hydraulic fracturing. Some of that water returns to the surface, in addition to the gas, as brine potentially tainted with metals like barium and strontium, trace radioactivity and small amounts of toxic chemicals injected by the drilling companies.
The treatment facilities were unable to remove many of the pollutants in the drilling water. Substances of concern, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has pressed Pennsylvania state regulators to require expanded testing, include radioactive contaminants, organic chemicals, metals and salty dissolved solids.
In March, the state Department of Environmental Protection asked water and wastewater authorities, largely in western Pennsylvania, to check regularly for radium, uranium and the salty dissolved solids that could potentially make drilling wastewater harmful to human health and the aquatic environment.
Then in April, state officials asked Marcellus Shale drillers to stop using riverside treatment plants to get rid of wastewater after some researchers presented evidence that the discharges were altering river chemistry in a way that had the potential to affect drinking water. The deadline to stop using the treatment plants is Thursday.
That’s great, but since it doesn’t show any contamination, it will be brushed off as unreliable, or bought off by the production companies, or what ever. I find it frustrating that official report after official report showing no problems are somehow not as truthful as sensational hearsay stories that always seem to be started with “a friend of my neighbors uncle says his water is contaminated”.