Residents say no to frack water

MATT HUGHES

mhughes@timesleader.com

HANOVER TWP. – The plan to build a natural gas drilling wastewater treatment plant at the Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority met with heavy resistance from township residents and environmental advocates at the WVSA board meeting Tuesday.

Wyoming Valley Sewer Authority Chairman James Hankey tries to keep order during public comment when the topic of treating frack water at the sewer authority is brought up during Tuesday’s board meeting in Hanover Township.

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The sanitary authority has consulted PA Northeast Aqua Resources to conduct a feasibility study on building a plant to treat wastewater produced by Marcellus Shale gas drilling.

John Minora of PA Northeast Aqua Resources said the initial study is complete, and the sanitary authority is now working on a second study with Red Desert/Cate Street Capital, a company seeking to build the plant next to the WVSA’s current facility.

Public comment at the meeting began with Scott Cannon of the Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition asking the board to “agree that this is a bad idea and put it to rest right now,” and ended with a chant of “no plant” ringing through the audience of about 75 people.

Speakers in the public comment segment, which lasted just under an hour, spoke unilaterally against building the plant, and questioned board members’ knowledge of the drilling wastewater treatment process.

“These are my grandchildren,” said Bill Falls, of the Lyndwood section of Hanover Township, as he held up photographs of two children. “I live right across the street, and I put up with the smell every day; now I have to put up with this? What life are they going to have?”

Leeann Wallace, a resident of the Bresleau section of Hanover Township and head of a newly-formed citizens group opposing the plan, asked individual members of the board questions about frack water treatment, which they couldn’t answer.

“They’re supposed to be educating their townships,” Wallace said. “How can they educate their townships when they don’t know what’s going on?”

Minora called Wallace’s method of questioning unfair and said the board hired his firm to conduct the feasibility study.

Minora said 80 percent of the water treated at the plant would be returned to drillers for reuse in drilling, and the remaining 20 percent would be treated a second time using a reverse osmosis process that removes salt and dissolved solids from the water.

“It’s much cleaner than the treated effluent that we currently discharge, and it’s cleaner than the water that’s already in the Susquehanna,” he said, adding that many of the chemicals that would be removed from the water are found in much higher concentrations in gasoline and diesel fuel than they are in frack water.

The WVSA is considering three options for bringing water to the plant for treatment: pipe, rail and trucking. If trucks are used, the authority is planning to construct a road along the rear edge of Cohen Recycling Resources leading from the San Souci Parkway to WVSA Drive, so that no vehicles headed to the plant would pass by homes in the neighborhood around the authority.

He also said building the plant would generate income for the authority that would provide funding to build EPA upgrades at the current WVSA facility and alleviate the need for future rate increases. It would also directly add as many as 20 jobs in the community as well as indirectly create jobs for truck drivers, inject money into the local economy and improve road conditions in the township, Minora said.

Audience members questioned all those points, at times booing Minora and the board and shouting out of turn.

“We still live in a democracy, and if the people of Hanover don’t want this… being crammed down their throats, they should have the opportunity to say no, and the board should listen,” Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition founder Tom Jiunta said after the meeting.

Minora and board Chairman James Hankey said they would take opposition to the plan voiced at the meeting into consideration.

“You’ve got the gas people here and the anti-gas people here, and somewhere in the middle, there’s the truth,” Hankey said after the meeting.

“Everybody has their spin on things.”