D.C. Group Says 1982 Incident Shows Risk of Fracking

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
4 August 2011
By Don Hopey,

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concluded in 1987 that hydraulic fracturing of a 4,000-foot-deep natural gas well in Jackson County, W.Va., contaminated shallower groundwater and private wells, according to a report by Environmental Working Group.

That's significant, the Washington, D.C.-based health and environmental research organization said in a report released Wednesday, because the gas drilling industry has repeatedly maintained that fracking operations in Marcellus Shale natural gas fields in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland and New York pose no threat to rural underground aquifers, groundwater and drinking water wells.

The EPA's 1987 finding, contained in an all-but-forgotten report to Congress, stated that a gas well drilled and "fracked" by the Kaiser Gas Co. in 1982 did contaminate water wells on adjacent properties.

The EPA's finding is the centerpiece of a year-long investigation by Environmental Working Group and its 35-page report on fracking titled "Cracks in the Facade."

According to that EWG report, several abandoned natural gas wells near the Kaiser gas well could have been conduits that allowed fracking gel to migrate into water wells on properties owned by the Parsons and Hagy families.

The gel is a common chemical additive in fracking fluid, which is pumped deep underground under high pressure to crack the shale formation and release the gas it contains.

The report noted parallels between the 1982 well contamination and a 2006 sandstone and shale gas well that was also drilled in Jackson County in western West Virginia and allegedly contaminated two nearby water wells.

There were also abandoned gas wells near the 2006 well that could have provided pathways for contamination of the water wells.

"When you add up the gel in the water, the presence of abandoned wells and the documented ability of drilling fluids to migrate through these wells into underground water supplies, there is a lot of evidence that the EPA got it right and that this was indeed a case of hydraulic fracturing contamination of groundwater," said Dusty Horwitt, EWG's senior oil and gas analyst and author of the organization's report.

"Now it's up to the EPA to pick up where it left off 25 years ago and determine the true risks of fracking so that our drinking water can be protected," he said.

Kathryn Klaber, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, a pro-drilling industry lobbying organization, said the EWG report relies on an isolated, 30-year-old incident and is part of a "campaign to malign the modern-day shale gas revolution underway in America." And it ignores fracking's "long and clear record of environmental safety."

In a phone interview Wednesday, Mr. Horwitt said there was a chance that other parts of the drilling operation could have caused the water well contamination, although West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection reports at the time indicated no problems with well drilling or casings.

But he said documents he reviewed indicated the water well contamination was "representative" of the industry and suggested the contamination of the Parsons and Hagy water wells was not an isolated occurrence.

The report notes that an unnamed EPA official knew of fracking contamination cases but didn't include them in the 1987 report because the details were sealed under confidential settlement between drilling companies and surface property owners.

In 2005 hydraulic fracturing was exempted from regulation and enforcement under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act based on a 2004 EPA study of fracked methane wells in coal beds that found minimal risk to well water supplies and ground water, the source of drinking water for more than 100 million Americans, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The EWG report recommends that local, state and federal governments implement a moratorium on fracking near drinking water supplies until a comprehensive risk evaluation is performed, that fracking's Clean Water Act exemption be repealed and that pre-drilling surveys be required to identify and remediate old abandoned wells that could funnel fracking fluids or gas into groundwater.

A spokeswoman for the EPA declined to comment on the report, saying the agency hadn't seen it. An ongoing $1.9 million EPA study of fracking's impacts, ordered by Congress, is scheduled to be completed in January.

Also on the fracking issue, the nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice announced it is filing a petition Thursday on behalf of more than 100 groups from across the U.S. asking the EPA to draft rules that would, for the first time, require the safety testing of chemicals used in drilling and fracking and the evaluation of health and environmental risks from those mixtures.

The petition also asks the EPA to require that nine fracking chemical manufacturers, including Halliburton, provide information about environmental or health problems associated with the chemicals they manufacture, process, or distribute.

The drilling industry has hydraulically fractured hundreds of thousands of wells in the last 25 years and in 2002 began combining fracking with horizontal drilling in the Barnett Shale formation in Texas.

The fracked 1982 Kaiser well was a vertical well, but the industry has used horizontal drilling and fracking together at hundreds of Marcellus Shale deep gas wells in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Maryland and in other shale formations in the South and West.

According to a recent U.S. Energy Information Agency report, shale gas production, which requires use of fracking technology, will make up about half of the total natural gas production in the United States in the next 25 years.

John Hanger, a former state DEP secretary for Gov. Ed Rendell when many of the shale drilling regulations were enacted, said he's glad the old EPA finding surfaced and thinks the ongoing EPA study is an important next step.

"We tested for frack fluids returning from depths a number of times and never found them," Mr. Hanger said of his time as DEP secretary. "But I think it's important for the EPA to do the work, too."

Because there are thousands of old and abandoned gas wells in the state, Mr. Hanger said it wouldn't be uncommon for drillers to sink Marcellus Shale wells near some of those existing wells, like Dallas-based Kaiser Gas did in West Virginia.

But he said well design and materials -- especially casing cements that line a deep well through shallow groundwater aquifers -- are better than they were when Kaiser drilled in 1982.

"Fracking is not a new technology, but it's an evolving one," Mr. Hanger said. "I'd be very surprised if there have not been significant technical improvements over the years."

Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983.