Drilling pollution

Some on here thought whatever the drillers did to get the product was ok, appears not too good for PA residents.

The natural gas boom gripping parts of the U.S. has a nasty byproduct: wastewater so salty, and so polluted with metals like barium and strontium, that most states require drillers to get rid of the stuff by injecting it down shafts thousands of feet deep.

Not in Pennsylvania, one of the states at the center of the gas rush.

There, the liquid that gushes from gas wells is only partially treated for substances that could be environmentally harmful, then dumped into rivers and streams from which communities get their drinking water........
here

I know when they came to drill a test well on the farm when I was about 11-12 years old, they made a mess of the place. Especially during the fracking process. They dragged 20-some-odd trucks in through the mud with a big bulldozer.

Unfortunately, the previous owner had sold the mineral rights for a handful of magic beans just before he put the place up for sale.

None of them were worrying about when they were pocketing that money........

In most states saltwater disposal wells have been used for decades. In Pennsylvania most production waste water has long been sent to treatment plants which provides business for trucking companies and jobs for people, not a bad bargain. Do you think the operator would hire a company to truck the waste water and pay for the water to be treated if they could just turn around and reinject it in a disposal well on or close to the production location? The waste water plants dump the water into the streams after they have supposedly treated it to remove the impurities.

Hopefully the politicos don't over react to what probably is a minor problem.
One friend of mine just sold out his operations in Pa. not for anything he might have done or would do in the future, but because he fears over zealous regulators.
Water out of treatment plant usually is safe to drink.
In the near future I hope to be able to use production water that has gone thru a plant for irrigation.
If they put to many restriction on, they will be back drilling on my ranch which is a plus for me. my county and my state.

Water out of some of those treatment plants is nowhere near safe to drink and they do not reomove many chemicals or heavy metals. We have similar systems here in NY where drilling exploration is now under way. And when we get times of heavy rain, these plants sometimes shut-down and send the raw stuff straight into the river. That's why Oneonta did, here in Central NY for months - during the last bad wet-spell we had.

In this area, gas drillers want to dump their waste underground. To drill deep holes in the ground . . . in areas with pristine aquifers . . . and injecting chemically polluted wastewater into those holes . . . is pure insanity.

Funny things is - if the conservation police caught ME pouring a shot-glass full of old gasoline down a woodchuck hole - I could wind up in jail (happened in my area last year to another guy).

One thing I didn't mention is that a large percentage of the production water and returned frac fluids are cleaned up and reused in the drilling process. Water is like gold here. the water that on our ranch is provably worth more than the ground,land without water takes 2-3 acres per month to support a cow.

Different parts of the country (and world) have different assets. Central NY, along with the Adirondacks both have some of the cleaneset ground-water in the 48 contiguous United States.
We should do all we can to protect it. Once it's gone, they'll be no getting it back. Several areas have aleady got wells ruined just by road-salt. Clean water, hardwood trees, and liberals - are our three top "resouces" around here. Now, if I had to just pick one of those to misuse, hmmm. It would NOT be our clean ground water.

So what would you suggest we do? Disallow drilling here? Buy more from the arabs? What??

im in pa right in the middle of the gas boom i see good and bad coming from it the biggest problem is the laws for doing such work no 2 agencys have the same rules so the drillers are confused about who to follow plus as you all know the state gov. is screwed up there is a big water polution problem in dimmok pa gov. solution is fo the drilling co. to pay for a public water line well gee whiz what about the polluted water? guess just leave that for the next guy i think they need to find a way to fix it not just go around it. and of course everything that happens now is blamed on the gas industry truth be known alot of has been going on for years just no one payed attention for instance the methane gas bubbles in the susquahanna river last summer is blamed on a gas well. theres documentation of it happen clear back in the great depression wasnt any gas wells here at that time

Yep, it can get messy.

So why did you post this, tlak? Do you offer any ideas of how to do it better? Should we make them do more so we can pay more for the final product? Should there be a federal regulator for every 20 feet of pipe?

We are all aware that these things happen. So again, what's your point? You've enlightned no one with this article, except, perhaps, for yourself.

You've still never posted or replied to anything tractor related. You know, it's one thing if tractor guys want to mix up the conversation every once in a while, it's another thing for a non-tractor enthusiast to continually troll around the site with nothing to add but this kind of stuff.

Tiring of your constantly negative posts. Must be hell living inside your head.

Many things have been going on for years, and many weren't all that good in the long run. To make it worse, collectively, we knew better when we first did it. Look what's going on now with General Electric dredging the Hudson River, trying to take out the the tons of PCBs they dumped in there. And, when they did it, it was legal!

Same goes with much of this hydrofracking. Just about every "civilized" nation on the planet has a history of seeking short-term fixes instead of long-term solutions or plans, and that is exactly what is happening right now. When it comes down to it - seems that's what most people want.

Drilling deep gas wells with hydrofracking, while we keep wasting incredible amount of fuel every day, makes little sense. It makes about as much sense as our economic model where we must grow every year - or die. Common sense ought to dictate that a finite world cannot grow forever. Same goes for our "growing" energy use, while supplies get shorter all the time.

We could put limits on frivolous air-travel and save a heck of a lot more fuel, then we're going to find drilling deep holes and sending chemicals into them (and yeah, I know it's not that simple).

If people in general truly cared about making good use of our limited resources, you wouldn't hear all the whining and groaning about things so trivial as CFL light-bulbs, or gasoline going up by 50 cents per gallon. The bulbs DO use 1/3 the energy to make near equal light as Edison bulbs - yet people complain.

Froghorn:
How much fosil fuel do you waste each day. Can YOU make less trips to town each week, can you turn off non essential equipment when not in use, ( shop air compressor with leaky hose as an example) Most people can reduce energy consumption by 10-20% without spending a nickel. Start using your brain and become ENERGY SMART. If you are willing to spend minimal dollars you can make your home or buildings heat better, tune up your vehicles, buy energy efficient appliances, and the list goes on and on. We don't need to produce more, just use less, and EVERYONE CAN.

Wondered was was wrong with you yesterday, you actually tried to have an intelligent conversation, given your limitations, no education and kicked out of the Navy. Back to the old IR, everybody's a troll but you.
Everything is six degrees of separation. A farmer or a supposed tractor owner like you drinks some of this polluted water and gets the sh@ts and then can't farm or ride his tractor.
How do you know that somebody on this very board may have started drinking bottled water because of what I posted.

Well would it surprise You to know that in times of heavy rains, that many sewage treatment plants here in PA. open the big valve and blow it in the rivers so as not to flood their plants? DEP knows all bout they it just look the other way gas drillers get blamed for bout 75% of stuff they don't do, I do agree with you 100% bout them wanting to shoot it in the groun.

Thanks for asking, but I don't waste any fuel on any day. I went through all that back in 2007 when oil reached $140/barrel. I even heat my house with corn that I grow myself using biodiesel. I am as green as I can be, but my question still stands and you didn't answer it.

I know that Fountain Quail Water Management is up there with a couple of their rigs. I do alot of work for them here in N Texas and helped prep the units that went up there. They take the heavy water which is bad stuff. Flow back and drilling stuff and run it through there process. They get 90% good drinkable water and about 10% waste product that was then put into the injection wells here in N Texas. I am not at liberty to discuss the process on how the system works because it is all propritary information. JJ

That is funny that you should mention that. Every year or two when we have one of those "100 year rains", the city of Chicago opens their "Deep Tunnel" that runs from its western suburbs into a waste canal, but has a hatch into Lake Michigan. That tunnel is absolutely huge in diameter. When I lived and worked downtown Chicago decades ago, there was a huge rain that caused them to open the gate into Lake Michigan for what they said was four seconds to relieve pressure from sewer water that has waste sewers dumping into them...and let out an astounding several BILLION gallons of waste, raw sewage into Lake Michigan. Now, if you ever saw this tunnel, there is no way that gate can be opened and closed in 4 seconds as the city of Chicago told the news papers, but you can see how once opened while full, they could let out BILLIONS in waste water before it gets closed.

The city of Chicago has done that several times that I'm aware of, and after they do it, beaches in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin get shutdown because of "ecoli" outbreaks, and no one ever questions why these outbreaks always seem to coincide with releasing BILLIONS of gallons of raw sewage into Lake Michigan. And a year or two ago there was even a front page picture in the Chicago Tribune showing a lady standing on a beach getting ready to dive into Lake Michigan to train for the Chicago Triathon standing ringht next to a human turd that had washed up into the sand. One can search the online version of the Trib, its there.

Now in Indiana, Hammond I think, is a BP Amoco refinery or chemical plant that dumps something way out into Lake Michigan that they probably should not, but the EPA says that they can, and whatever it is that they are dumping is far below the allowed legal levels. A year or two ago, BP announced that they were going to increase the amount that they would be dumping, and that it was still below allowed levels, and the EPA confirmed that it was, BUT Mayor Daley in Chicago got word of it and went nuts. It got so bad that the Attorney General of Illinois, Lisa Madigan said that she would sue BP Amoco on behalf of Illinois, so I wrote her a letter, giving her plenty of information, facts, links to photos, etc of the city of Chicago contaminating Lake Michigan for not only surrounding states, but also Illinois suburbs that get their drinking water out of Lake Michigan and asked her is she intended to sue the city of Chicago. She had one of her staffers write me back telling me NO. Her father, Michael is the head of the Illinois state Senate or House, and for her to do the right thing and sue the city of Chicago would be the end of her political career, and there is no way that will happen.

Funny is that a couple of years ago, the city of Chicago called the EPA on either Milwaukee or Kenosha Wisconsin because they too opened their sewers into Lake Michigan to relive pressure, but nowhere near what Chicago does, BILLIONS of gallons of raw sewage everytime it opens its deep tunnel into lake Michigan.

Mark
Photos Chicago Deep Tunnel Massive

And your tractor related comment is. . .???

Nonexistent. . .

Yer just wantin' to gripe. . .

Paul

Seems pretty obvious, I don't know what answer you're looking for. Bush signed into law that the coal mines could operate too close to waters and I bet the law bled over to these a-holes that they're not doing anything wrong by polluting. As in the article and as others have posted there is a process to clean and dispose of this waste.

MY ADVICE TO YOU,,, get video evidence corraborated by several witnesses,Get samples,over several days and have them analized by at least four different independent labs,then call the epa.no place is this legal!,, (if in fact levels are over epa's guidlines).Now if you dont trust the EPA to protect you,or dont agree with their limits thats a different story.All you have to do there is a twenty year or so study,prove they are killing you and the environment downstream,go to the epa and prove to them your facts are good .Then they will do another twenty year study,corroberating your suspicions and then take 5-10 yrs to change regs(LOL).Disposal wells are very tightly controlled,Its unbelievable how many regs there are.Basically water has to be able to sustain fresh water marine life BEFORE its pumped in ground.In fact,lots of places use crawfish and frogs as signs of water purity.if frogs and crawfish can naturally reproduce,(and they are the first animals to be effected by pollution),then water is clean enough to be TESTED by the epa as safe enough to be pumped down wells.I have good freinds who do this and have for years.The water that is eventually pumped down wells is probably cleaner than most natural well water in the country. It is not simply taken from a drilling rig and pumped down hole,and every gallon that leaves a rig costs hundreds of dollars to the oil companies for treatment. So the majority of it is reused.