Thursday, October 15, 2009

Too much wastewater for treatment plants

100 + gas wells planned for Flower Mound. How many "tank farms" or "waste water treatment sites" will be needed?
Read what is happening in Pennsylvania. Below is the link for the whole article.
http://www.propublica.org/feature/wastewater-from-gas-drilling-boom-may-threaten-monongahela-river
Here are a few paragraphs
Pennsylvania is at the forefront of the nation’s gas drilling boom, with at least 4,000 new oil and gas wells drilled here last year alone, more than in any other state except Texas. This rapid expansion has forced state regulators to confront a problem that has been overlooked as gas drilling accelerates nationwide: How will the industry dispose of the enormous amount of wastewater it produces?

Oil and gas wells disgorge about 9 million gallons of wastewater a day in Pennsylvania, according to industry estimates used by the DEP. By 2011 that figure is expected to rise to at least 19 million gallons, enough to fill almost 29 Olympic-sized swimming pools every day. That’s more than all the state’s waterways, combined, can safely absorb, DEP officials say.

"I don’t know that even our [water] program people had any idea about the volumes of water that would be used," said Dana Aunkst, who heads the DEP’s water program.

Much of the wastewater is the byproduct of a drilling process called hydraulic fracturing [5], or fracking, which pumps at least a million gallons of water per well deep into the earth to break layers of rock and release gas. When the water is sucked back out, it contains natural toxins [6] dredged up during drilling, including cadmium and benzene, which both carry cancer risks. It can also contain small amounts of chemicals added to enhance drilling.

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