States Impounding Fracking Water to Save Ecology and Money
For the last few election cycles, Ohio has been
known as the key battleground state. But now it may
be known for something else -- helping to establish
a trend in the field of hydraulic fracturing. Ohio's
environmental regulators may soon allow “fracking
wastewater” to be stored in centralized
impoundments.
Those huge pools, which would service multiple well
sites, would replace the above-ground steel
containers. Instead of having tons of trucking
traffic, the used water is basically kept onsite
until it is later re-used. That is, the water goes
through a purification process before it is pumped
back underground -- along with sand and chemicals --
to help loosen the shale gas from rock formations.
“These facilities are critical in the recycling and
reuse process and help to reduce truck traffic and
the need for impoundments for individual well
sites,” says Matt Pitzarella, a spokesman for
Texas-based Range Resources, which does not hold
acreage in Ohio, but is the largest operator of
impoundments in Pennsylvania, where it has extensive
operations, in a
McClatchy-Tribune news story. “Impoundments have
reduced tens of thousands of truck loads in
Pennsylvania and have allowed companies to utilize
larger sources of water like the Ohio River.”
Those impoundments that can hold as much as 16
million gallons of water are widely used elsewhere
in the country and especially in the Marcellus Shale
region. But they are now forbidden in Ohio.
And critics of them are saying it is for good
reason: Skeptics are generally opposed to fracking
because they maintain that the process pollutes
drinking water supplies. With the use of large,
centralized storage facilities, the odds of such an
outcome are increased, they add.
Estimates are that it takes between 2 million and 9
million gallons of water to explore a single well.
Multiply that by the thousands of wells that have
been drilled and one can see why the opposition gets
so riled up.
Storing it in above-ground containers
and centralized impoundments are two viable options.
That water is then treated before it is trucked or
piped to a drilling site, and then injected back
into the ground to help retrieve new shale gas
deposits.
Keen Oversight
But
Jamison Cocklin of Youngstown, Ohio writes in
the well-researched McClatchy story that the
football-sized impoundments are using several forms
of protection: double-lined seals and catch basins
along with leak detections and ground water
monitoring wells.
He references a study by West Virginia University,
which looked at 15 well sites in that state. That
examination found that some pits were poorly
constructed and that the state regulators had little
background to make that kind of structural
assessment. However, the study also said that if
pools were built to standards then they would pose
no environmental risk.
“The problems identified do constitute a real hazard
and present risk if allowed to progress,” says John
Quaranta, an assistant professor of civil and
environmental engineering at WVU and the author of
the paper that is referenced in Cocklin’s story.
"But all problems that were observed in the field
could be corrected."
The professor adds that if Ohio regulators go ahead
and Okay construction of those impoundments that
would be built in the Utica Shale area then they
would need to uphold a strict permitting and
reclamation process. Such pools are intended to be
temporary, although Ohio is still considering a
timetable. Projections are that the impoundments
will be allowed beginning early 2014.
The common goal, nationally, is to advance the
development of shale gas and by extension, the
economies of the regions where such exploration
occurs. Accomplishing that, though, will require the
safe treatment and disposal of fracking water.
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