Tag Archives: dunkard creek

DEP to Propose New Water Standards on Dissolved Solids

Source : Charleston Gazette

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia regulators plan to propose a new water quality standard aimed at least in part at protecting state rivers and streams from pollution created by large-scale natural gas drilling.

State Department of Environmental Protection officials unveiled their proposal during a meeting Wednesday in Charleston, and plan to issue it formally for public comment early next month.

The DEP proposal would set a legal limit for “total dissolved solids,” or TDS, of 500 milligrams per liter. It would apply in-stream to waterways statewide, making it more stringent than the existing standard in Pennsylvania, which applies a 500-milligram-per-liter standard only at the intake pipes for public drinking water systems.

“This is proactive to keep West Virginia waters suitable for consumption by our citizens and use by our industries,” said Pat Campbell, an assistant director in the DEP Division of Water and Waste Management.

DEP officials have been considering the proposal for more than a year already. Their studies were prompted by TDS problems that brought complaints about unpleasant odors and tastes in drinking water drawn from the Monongahela River in the fall of 2008. Then last fall, a massive fish kill in Dunkard Creek along the West Virginia-Pennsylvania border was blamed at least in part on TDS pollution.

Hydraulic Fracturing – How’d it Work Out at Other Sites in Our Region

Excerpts:

Documented Problems in WV & PA:
Chemicals coming out with wastewater from wells in Pennsylvania and West Virginia were found to include 4-nitroquinoline N-oxide, used to induce tumors in laboratory animals, and benzene, a known carcinogen.

Targeting poor communities

Much of this area is in the impoverished northern Appalachia region, dotted by isolated small towns and farms that are no longer productive, and are communities with high rates of unemployment. The poverty and relative isolation of the region have made residents prime targets of corporate salespeople, who have pushed them into leasing land for oil wells.

Problems stemming from fracking are surfacing in communities throughout the Marcellus Shale region. In Dimrock, considered “ground zero” for drilling, several drinking-water wells have exploded.

In Dimock, Pa., one out of seven residents was out of work and people were facing foreclosure of their homes. When Cabot offered $25 an acre for the right to drill for five years, plus royalties when gas started flowing, it sounded like a good deal to people who owned vacant fields but little else.

In September, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection officials charged Cabot with five violations after nearly 8,000 gallons of hydraulic fracturing fluids spilled in two separate incidents near Dimock. It took a third spill for Cabot to voluntarily halt the fracking. According to Halliburton the substance spilled was a lubricating gel that poses “a substantial threat to human health” and was a “potential carcinogen” that has caused skin cancer in animals.

Workers at U.S. Steel and Allegheny Energy near McKeesport found that water used to power their plant contained so much salty sediment it was corroding their machinery. An estimated 10,000 fish died on a 33-mile stretch of Dunkard Creek in this area.

International Disaster:
Dec. 3 marked the 25th anniversary of the widespread and continued contamination resulting from the Union Carbide chemical leak in Bhopal, India, that claimed tens of thousands of lives. Without any serious regulation of hydraulic fracturing practices, is the U.S. facing a disaster of that magnitude?

SOURCE: http://www.workers.org/2009/us/fracking_1217/