‘Frack’ water scrutinized in drought conditions

Twenty-four of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, including Luzerne, are now under a state Department of Environmental Protection-issued drought warning. The rest are in a drought watch.

As municipal water suppliers request customers to reduce their water consumption, as the Pennsylvania American Water Co. asked Luzerne County customers to do Friday, some are asking, shouldn’t natural gas drillers do the same?

The hydraulic fracturing process used to extract gas from shale uses large quantities of water. A vertical well requires roughly 1 million gallons of water to frack, while a horizontal well requires six times that amount.

“I think it’s ironic that average citizens are limited,” Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition founder Tom Jiunta said Tuesday, “yet the gas company can still take water. I don’t know how they could still allow hundreds of gallons to be taken out when the average citizen can have restrictions put on them.”

Susquehanna River Basin Commission spokesman Susan Obleski said her organization has received numerous calls from citizens expressing concerns like Jiunta’s, but that the commission actually began restricting use of water by gas drillers well before the DEP issued a drought warning last week.

“This is the time of year when streams are at their lowest,” Obleski said. “Because of the natural gas (drilling), people are more alert to the stream flows and are making the connection that there’s an impact.”

The commission oversees the conservation, development and administration of water resources in the Susquehanna basin, including the approval of water withdrawal. The commission places pass-by flow monitors at withdrawal sites belonging to consumers that use large quantities of water, and can order activities to be terminated at a site when flow dips below a certain level.

Large withdrawals of water, like those made by gas drillers and golf courses, can damage the environment in drought conditions, Obleski said, but the monitoring system has been established to stop the withdrawals before they become problematic.

“That’s the basis of our pass-by,” Obleski said. “We get them off before they can have an impact.”

Sixty-two withdrawal points in the river basin are currently under suspension due to low flow, Obleski said.

“There are a few golf courses, but predominantly they are natural gas companies,” she said.

The only surface water withdrawal currently under suspension in Luzerne County is for a golf course, Obleski added, though in Wyoming County to the north, one drilling company and three companies that supply water to drill sites have had withdrawals suspended due to low flow. The Susquehanna River Basin Commission began issuing withdrawal restrictions weeks before DEP began issuing drought warnings in anticipation of the current situation.

Obleski said the commission has been “aggressively” monitoring withdrawals since conditions began turning dry several months ago, visiting sites at random times, including in the evenings and on weekends. So far, drilling companies have been 100 percent compliant with restrictions, she said.

Brian Grove, spokesman for gas driller Chesapeake Energy Solutions, said his company employs an automated monitoring system that automatically shuts down withdrawal stations when U.S. Geological Survey flow gages approach minimum levels. The system does not allow withdrawal to restart for at least 48 hours, Grove added.

DEP spokesman Tom Rathbun said withdrawal stop points were set with a worst case scenario in mind.

“We don’t overload a stream. We look at what a stream is capable of doing, using worst case scenarios,” Rathbun said. “If a stream is damaged, it’s going to be from lack of rainfall.”

Rathbun added that many gas companies have opted to buy water from public water suppliers rather than go through the surface water withdrawal application process, and that DEP is drafting a letter to water suppliers asking them to update their drought emergency contingency plans to address their supply to drillers.

Rathbun said natural gas drilling accounts for slightly less than one percent of approved water withdrawals statewide, and ranks seventh on the list of approved withdrawals by volume within the Susquehanna River Basin.

He said the Susquehanna River Basin Commission created a category to track withdrawals by natural gas drillers in 2008, and anticipated at that time that it would rise as high as fourth on the list, behind only public water suppliers, agriculture and power generation, due to the high volume of water used to frack wells.

Reuse of fracking fluid, the combination of water, sand and chemicals used to extract gas from shale, has kept that from happening so far, Rathbun said. The so-called “produced water” backflow that returns to the surface after fracking is collected and often trucked to other well sites for reuse.

“Recycling water cuts down on water use dramatically,” Rathbun said, adding that the water used by drillers is “not as much as people believe it’s going to be.”

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Marcellus Shale - Gas Wells

Official says limits on drillers actually started before drought watches and warnings issued.

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