Cities can't treat brine from new gas wells-just say NO to Fracking!

[irishbobcat]

A VICTORY AGAINST THE PRO FRACKING NUTS LIKE SHRIMPY-HEAD!!!!!

Cities can't treat brine from new gas wells
Tuesday, May 17, 2011  03:06 AM
By Spencer Hunt

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Ohio Environmental Protection Agency officials announced yesterday that cities can't treat millions of gallons of salty wastewater from new natural gas wells in their sewage plants and dump it into streams.

The agency says it is concerned that the wastewater, called brine, poses a pollution risk.

"I think the agency is concerned about anything that could negatively impact drinking water or the salt content of state waters," said Chris Abbruzzese, an Ohio EPA spokesman.

Story continues belowAdvertisement The decision, sent in a letter yesterday to state and local officials, was a setback for Steubenville, East Liverpool and Warren, where officials hoped to make money from energy companies eager to get rid of their brine.

Warren was the only city to treat waste. In January, the Ohio EPA let the city collect and treat as much as 100,000 gallons of brine a day from a Lisbon-based company, Patriot Water Treatment, and dump it into the Mahoning River.

The city's treatment process does not remove salt from the wastewater.

Abbruzzese said the state won't renew a change in the city's water-pollution-control permit that lets it dump the brine. That change expires next year.

Andrew Blocksom, Patriot's president, said he already has hired 45 people and invested $3 million. He said he hopes to meet with Ohio EPA officials to try to change their minds.

"It's a complete surprise," Blocksom said. "If this was their intent, we wouldn't have spent all the money that we've invested or have all of these families who are relying on our business."

The decision is the latest development in what state officials hope will be a new boom in natural gas drilling in Ohio.

In eastern Ohio, energy companies are offering landowners as much as $1,500 an acre for the right to drill into the Marcellus and Utica shales.

A drilling technique called "fracking" sends millions of gallons of water laced with industrial chemicals down the wells to fracture the shale and release the gas.

The wastewater contains high concentrations of salt, minerals and hazardous metals that can include barium, cadmium and chromium.

Marcellus wells in Pennsylvania have produced so much brine that state officials said it fouled the Monongahela and Susquehanna rivers. In April, Pennsylvania urged energy companies to stop taking brine to 15 sewage plants because compounds called bromides posed a pollution risk to drinking-water supplies.

The Ohio EPA's letter lists injection wells, in which liquid wastes are injected thousands of feet underground, as the top disposal option.

Tom Angelo, director of Warren's water-pollution-control plant, had hoped to charge as much as $150,000 a year to take the brine.

"We have almost 4 1/2 months of operation that demonstrates no problems to the environment or the treatment plant," he said.