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Permalink Reply by Dee Fulton on December 16, 2009 at 3:35am

State plans regulation of total dissolved solids
Groups say waste polluting waterways
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Environmentalists say a state proposal to regulate discharges of dissolved solids into streams, rivers and lakes is long overdue, but industry and pro-development groups have labeled it ill-advised and too expensive.

Larry Emerson, of Alpha Natural Resources Inc., the second largest mining company in the state, said the state Department of Environmental Protection's proposal to limit total dissolved solids, or TDS, by mining and natural gas drilling industries and power plants isn't supported by adequate research.

"The proposal is not based on sound science and economic realities," Mr. Emerson said at a state Environmental Quality Board public hearing on the proposal in Cranberry last night. "And it will work against the rebound of the Pennsylvania economy."

But Myron Arnowitt, state director for Clean Water Action, said the proposal is a much-needed first step to control TDS discharges from mining and the fast expanding Marcellus shale drilling operations across the state.

"Clean Water Action is pleased to see DEP set a discharge standard for TDS that will go a long way toward ensuring that our rivers and drinking water supplies will not face dangerous levels of these pollutants as they have in the past," Mr. Arnowitt said, adding that TDS will also affect fish and other aquatic species.

High TDS levels in the Monongahela River last year and this fall have raised concerns from industries that cannot use the contaminated water and affected the taste of drinking water provided by public suppliers. Seventeen suppliers draw water from the Monongahela for more than 350,000 people.

Underlining the need for the new regulations, environmentalists say, was the high concentrations of TDS from mine discharges that have been blamed for creating conditions in Dunkard Creek that killed thousands of fish, mussels and other aquatic life in 43 miles of the stream along the Pennsylvania-West Virginia border in Greene County.

TDS causes toxicity in streams and rivers by increasing salinity, and water analyses of the state's major watersheds show that many rivers and streams have "a very limited ability to assimilate additional TDS, sulfates and chlorides," according to the Pennsylvania Bulletin notice announcing the proposed rule making.

Another source of TDS is wastewater from hundreds of gas drilling operations that use hydraulic fracturing to release natural gas from Marcellus shale, a rock layer located 5,000 to 8,000 feet below the surface under two-thirds of the state. Each well can use 4 million to 8 million gallons of water and discharge up to half that amount.

Deborah Goldberg, managing attorney for Earthjustice, said the gas drilling industry will need to dispose of millions of gallons of wastewater a day in the state's waterways by 2011.

"Pennsylvania waterways can't dilute that amount of pollution," she said, "and the problems industry dismisses as extreme will become the norm if the industry continues to expand and this regulation isn't adopted."

The proposed new rules would limit discharges of TDS to concentrations of 500 parts per million, and also set discharge limits on sulfate, chlorides, barium and strontium that would take effect Jan. 1, 2011.

The hearing in Cranberry was the first of four the Pennsylvania Environmental Quality Board will hold across the state this week. The comment period on the proposal closes on Feb. 12. The full text of the rule making was published in the Nov. 7 issue of the Pennsylvania Bulletin and can be read at www.pabulletin.com.

Don Hopey can be reached at dhopey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983.

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Permalink Reply by M. Sean Joyce on December 22, 2009 at 12:38pm

Roy
I am in complete agreement with the sentiment of your post.
I have been at many meetings where the uninformed misinformed express their opinions and views.
i.e The subject is about responsible leasing and they get up and talk about minor frac water accidents recycled over and over from 20 years ago.
Because we live in a PC world (not for long) everyone sits there and listens with their heads about to explode.
I live in New York, my family has 130 acres of unleased land in Chemung County, a prime drilling area.
As many of you know we are essentially on hold in New York thanks to the fascists in our state, mainly in Ithaca.
The land is not owned by the collective it is owned by the landowners. (collectivism is slavery)
If you don't want to lease then don't lease.
It is time we the majority stop suffering these fools that don't do their homework and take them head on.

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