Marcellus Shale - Gas Wells

October 29, 2010

WVSA wants treatment partner

By Steve Mocarsky smocarsky@timesleader.com
Staff Writer
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HANOVER TWP. – The board of the Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority will soon be looking for a business partner to design, build and run a treatment plant for wastewater from natural gas drilling operations.

“We’re taking solicitations of interest to see what kind of interest there is in a public/private partnership,” said John Minora, president of Pennsylvania Northeast Aqua Resources, the authority’s consultant.

A request for proposals is being written and soon will be advertised, he said.

Minora said he believes that building a plant to treat the wastewater would be beneficial on numerous levels.

The wastewater would be a product of a process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in which millions of gallons of water with a relatively small concentration of chemicals and sand are shot into well bores to release the natural gas from the Marcellus Shale formation more than a mile underground.

When the water, about 12 percent of the 4 million to 6 million gallons that would be injected into wells, returns to the surface, it’s extremely salty and, if diluted, can be re-used by the fracking companies, Minora said.

The authority could lease some land near its plant to a company interested in building a frack water treatment plant and sell that company treated water from the authority’s existing plant that the company would use to dilute frack water.

Leasing land and selling water would be new revenue for the authority and providing treated water to the frack water treatment plant would reduce the amount of treated water the authority releases into the Susquehanna River, in turn lowering the nitrogen levels in the Chesapeake Bay, Minora said.

Minora said he believes three frack water treatment plants in the region are either at or near their capacity.

Norm Zeller, operations support manager with one of the treatment plants – Sunbury Generation in Snyder County – confirmed that is the case at his plant. Sunbury Generation is at capacity, he said.

Zeller said plant officials have no immediate plans to expand because it’s a big investment and it’s uncertain whether new stringent regulations on the release of wastewater proposed by the state Department of Environmental Protection will be enacted.

Attempts to reach operators of the other treatment plants were unsuccessful.

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