Posted on 05/05/2012 12:03:00 AM PDT by neverdem
As I report in Friday’s Times, disposing of the waste produced by natural gas drilling will become a larger and more contentious issue if New York State gives the go-ahead to horizontal hydraulic fracturing, which uses millions of gallons of fluids per well to release gas from the Marcellus Shale.
New York already deals with waste from about 6,800 active vertical and horizontal gas wells upstate. Although these wells require just a fraction of the water that would be needed for fracking in the Marcellus, they still produce waste that needs to go somewhere.
Officials with the New York Department of Environmental Conservation say that in 2010, New York’s gas wells produced more than 23 million gallons of waste, 17 million of which stayed in New York. Most of it went to sewage treatment plants or was used for de-icing roads.
Take the sewage treatment plant in Auburn, N.Y., near Syracuse. The sewage plant has treated industrial waste, including wastewater from natural gas wells, for about a decade. But last summer, a jittery city council voted to ban the practice after the state’s proposal to allow fracking brought more attention to the contamination risks of drilling in general.
“We’ve heard the horror stories about the composition of the water,” said Mayor Michael Quill, who voted for the ban.
But the city’s director of municipal utilities, Vicky L. Murphy, pointed out that drilling waste amounted to less than 1 percent of all the waste treated at the plant. The city also stood to lose $600,000 a year in revenue from eight drilling companies that would have to be made up by increasing water rates or taxes, she said.
In March, after new elections in the city of 27,000, a newly configured city council lifted the ban, and the plant is in...
(Excerpt) Read more at green.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Someday waste will be turned into energy and future generations will be disappointed that we didn’t waste more.
Don’t know if it’s practical to store used frack water and take it to other frack sites for reuse. That would be green wouldn’t it?
My understanding is that is what is normally done. I also have heard that different types of rock require slightly different fracking fluids, thus it may be more practical to send the used fluid for disposal than to store for reuse if the frack uses less common mixes.
Yes. However, first, keep in mind that this "hazardous" stuff is not the fracturing fluid itself, but the salts and other minerals brought up from those depths....in other words, this "hazardous" stuff is made by mother nature.
Second, it is illegal to send it back down again.
Third, the industry is near 100% recycling their frac water. The hazardous stuff is separated and disposed properly based on what it is.
The salts can be used for road de-icing.
The radioactive components (uranium, radon, etc) need to be disposed in specialized ways.
Other wastes can simply be burned in a closed system.
The real point here is that the fluid must all come out of the well before it goes into operation. Frac fluid does not remain underground for any period of time more than a few weeks (at most).
So, all this talk of contamination, migration, etc are all nonsense.
Absolutely 100% correct! The anti Fracking hysteria is just that hysterical. The main pollutant from fracking is SALT!
The water is recycled and reused. Anti fracking is the new cause celeb of the radical environmentalists. Anti Fracking hysteria has gripped my entire county here in NY. Most (if not all) the local towns have voted to outlaw fracking.
We need the (CLEAN) energy. We need the JOBS. The State needs the revenue. What's not to love about fracking?
No legitimate study has shown ground water contamination due to fracking. More globull warming type hype.
My county and state will not benefit from the gas drilling boom for now. I think in the end, they will have to come around to the fact that fracking is safe and a good idea for NY.
Ah, the latest scare article from NYT on fracking. “The sky is falling.”
Ask yourself why.
The radical environmentalists know that a clean, safe, domestic source of energy, extracted by American workers earning above-average wages is a threat to their movement.
Cheap, clean, domestic natural gas means no more massive injections of money into solar, wind, algae, etc. It means no dependence on foreign sources. It means no dependence on government for controlling our energy use (elements of the smart grid). It means cheap energy for manufacturing and a return of making products at home.
Natural gas threatens everything the socialist/enviro agenda hoped to create over time.
Recycing doesn't eliminate any of the sensitive compounds, it only concentrates them. Recycling is used for recycling the water which saves money and lessens the depletion of aquifers.
Recycling may reduce the volume of fluid that needs to be disposed of, but it still need to be disposed, and there are two methods.
Where the geology is right, the fluids are injected into disposal wells. Although there is a possibilty that these fluids can migrate from there, we give the disposer the benefit of the doubt and say that the fluids won't migrate. So the worst of it is the disposal wells cause minor earthquakes.
Where the geology is not right, the fluids have to be treated at a waste(sewer) treatment facility and then released into the river.
The Marcellus formation does not have the right geology. The problem there has been that when there is a lot of fracking going on, the volume of fluid to be processed at the local/rural waste treatment plants gets quite large and overwhelms the treater who starts cutting corners because they are being paid significantly and they don't want to turn away the business/money. Then a municipal water dept downstream starts complaining because they have to finish cleaning up the water before they can distribute the water into their supply system and they are not getting paid for that.
Where the geology is not right, the fluids have to be treated at a waste(sewer) treatment facility and then released into the river.
...and both are HIGHLY regulated, and often, gov't-run operations! So, if there is any contamination created, it is by your benevolent protectors.
1. You can go to court and maybe the judge will change or delay the regs
2. You can try to get the regs changed. Either thru local, state, and/or federal govt, depending on who has the authority. Its pretty easy to do this if you have enough money.
So what we see with these fracking fluids is that some companies are publishing their formulas. That the states are going to require the formulas be published , excepting particular compounds that are proprietay. And the feds are going to require publication on federal lands and waters.
Also keep in mind that these compounds are already being published and have been published for a long time within OSHA workplace safety documents at the job site. Material Safety Data Sheets.
They may try to say these fracing fluids are propritary but I can guarantee you that a chemist who has access to the competitors product data sheet and Material Safety Data Sheet can match the formula.
Smile, FReepers - here’s why: “In March, after new elections in the city of 27,000, a newly configured city council lifted the ban, and the plant is in...”
When New Yawk residents can force a change because their elected officials are rightly seen as posing a threat to the well being of the community, then there is hope for America.
Open source fracking.
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