Study: Gas Drilling Threatens Streams
Washington
PA Observer Reporter
13
October 2010
PHILADELPHIA - A preliminary study by researchers with the Academy of
Natural Sciences asserts that rivers and streams could be at risk of
pollution because of a boom in drilling on the Marcellus Shale natural
gas formation, even without spills or accidents.
Researchers at the academy, the nation's oldest natural-science
research center and a leading expert in stream biology, compared
watersheds where there was little or no drilling to those watersheds
where there was drilling and found significant changes, The
Philadelphia Inquirer reported Tuesday.
Not peer-reviewed or published in any scientific journal, the study
found that water conductivity, a barometer of contamination by salts
that are found in drilling waste water, was nearly twice as high in
streams nearby high-density drilling.
The aim of the research was not to look at drilling accidents or other
irregularities, specifically. Instead, it focused on if, and how so,
drilling could pose any potential harm.
David Velinsky, vice president of the academy's Patrick Center for
Environmental Research, told the Inquirer that the early
findings suggested that "there is indeed a threshold at which drilling
- regardless of how it is practiced - will have a significant impact on
an ecosystem."
Researchers hope to use the study as the basis to request state money
to do a much bigger, more comprehensive examination, he said.
Extracting gas from the shale involves a technique called hydraulic
fracturing in which drilling crews pump millions of gallons of
chemical-laced water and sand deep into the earth to splinter the dense
shale and free the natural gas trapped inside.
Some of the water returns as a briny, chemical- and metal-laden brew
and is often stored in open pits until it's trucked to treatment plants
or underground injection wells.
The oil and gas industry steadfastly defends hydraulic fracturing as
having been proven safe over many years and says it is a crucial tool
if the country is going to be able to harvest its gas reserves.
Travis Windle, a spokesman for the Canonsburg-based industry group
Marcellus Shale Coalition, said the group "does not comment on
preliminary, non-peer reviewed, unreleased 'studies' that we have not
even had the opportunity to examine."
He told the paper that the total dissolved solids - another often-used
indicator of salt contamination - in a stream was not necessarily the
fault of drilling.
"Pennsylvania has a long history of high TDS levels in our waterways -
long before Marcellus production commenced just a few years ago,"
Windle wrote in an e-mail.
Velinksky agreed, noting that other sources of salts and solids have
been found from the use of road salt and fertilizer.
Researchers tried to account for other sources of salt as best as they
could in the study," Velinksky said.
Still, "we saw this relationship" between drilling and stream changes,
he said. "It warrants further study."