TimesLeader.com

Drilling plan includes recycling

By Rory Sweeney rsweeney@timesleader.com
Staff Writer

TUNKHANNOCK – As if responding to previous community criticism about a similar facility, company officials hoping to build a drilling-waste treatment plant near Meshoppen said Tuesday recycling water is part of their plans.

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“It makes sense to reuse this water,” said Ron Schlicher, an engineer consulting for the treatment company. “The goal here is to strive for 100-percent reuse, so we don’t have to discharge.”

Wyoming Somerset Regional Water Resources Corp. is proposing a facility in Lemon Township in Wyoming County to treat water contaminated during natural-gas drilling in a process called hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”

To do so, it requires a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit from the state Department of Environmental Protection.

That process includes a period of public comment, for which the hearing at the Tunkhannock Middle School on Tuesday evening was held.

Wyoming Somerset is the second company to propose such a facility in Wyoming County. Two weeks ago, DEP held a similar hearing for North Branch Processing LLC, which wants to build a plant just outside Tunkhannock in Eaton Township to discharge up to 500,000 gallons daily of the treated waste into the Susquehanna River.

Citizens attending that hearing complained that the discharges could potentially harm the river’s ecology and suggested that the waste simply be recycled into other fracking jobs.

Wyoming Somerset’s proposal is to discharge up to 380,000 gallons daily into the Meshoppen Creek, but company officials said they hoped to sell it all back to drillers instead.

“The discharges need to be in place to make sure that the weather doesn’t have an adverse effect on operations of cleaning the water,” said Larry Mostoller, Wyoming Somerset’s president. “I’ll be willing to drink what we produce. I’ll be willing to drink what comes out of this plant, and you can hold me to that.”

That promise and the vague goal of full reuse didn’t sit well with the roughly 75 citizens who attended the hearing. Questioning everything from why the facility couldn’t guarantee zero discharges to its proposed site, residents came out squarely against the plan.

Many non-residents joined them, including two from Bucks County, one an environmental scientist and the other a lawyer, and a man from New Jersey.

Don Williams, a Susquehanna River advocate from Lycoming County, warned that cashing in on the gas-laden Marcellus Shale is “jeopardizing our land and our feature for the false promise of jobs” and money.

Of particular frustration for many were the unknown details about the plant’s design. Schlicher presented an overview of it, noting reverse-osmosis filters, evaporation tanks and a three-tiered output to provide drillers with water at various levels of treatment.

The water that could potentially be discharged would be “essentially meeting drinking water standards for most things,” Schlicher said, but not everything, including lead, aluminum and iron “because the surface water body can handle them,” he said.

Design specifics won’t be known until the second part of the application, when the company proposes how it will meet its discharge limits. That part likely won’t have a public hearing, DEP officials noted.

Those wishing to comment on the proposed facility may do so until Oct. 30 by contacting the DEP. The number for its Wilkes-Barre office is (570) 826-2511.