Conservation Organization Turns Focus to Water Quality
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
16 January 2011
By Richard Robbins
The Westmoreland County chapter of Trout Unlimited, a conservation
group devoted to coldwater fisheries, is training volunteers to monitor
streams to determine any impact on water quality from Marcellus shale
drilling for natural gas.
A workshop to train about 30 volunteers was held Saturday at the Winnie
Palmer Nature Reserve Center in Unity. The training session, the first
in Southwestern Pennsylvania, involved Trout Unlimited members from
Pittsburgh, Johnstown and Connellsville.
Monty R. Murty, president of Trout Unlimited's Forbes Trail
Westmoreland County Chapter, said the goal is to have monitors
collecting "baseline data" from local streams by March.
Weekly monitoring will continue for a year. The results will help
government regulators and others determine if there are changes to
stream quality in areas near drilling sites, group officials said.
Dave Sewak, the nonprofit group's Marcellus shale statewide
coordinator, said he was not certain about the number of volunteer
monitors the group will deploy across Pennsylvania.
A total of eight such workshops will be held across the state, Sewak
said.
Julie Vastine, director of The Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring
at Dickinson College in Carlisle, which is training the volunteers,
said that an important function of monitors in the field will be to
alert drillers that their actions will be assessed by individuals
trained to do so.
Sewak, who likened this region to the "Wild, Wild West" when it comes
to regulatory oversight of Marcellus shale drilling, said the state
Department of Environmental Protection will need extra eyes to monitor
streams that serve as trout habitat.
"There are a lot unknowns," he said.
He stressed that Trout Unlimited, which has headquarters in Arlington,
Va., has taken no position on the merits of drilling to tap into
Marcellus shale, which also runs beneath West Virginia, Ohio, New York
and areas of Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia.
Tapping the Marcellus requires pumping huge amounts of water, sand and
chemicals into the ground in an attempt to crack into the shale to
extract the gas. The hydraulic fracturing method has been used to tap
the Barnett shale in Texas.
The technique involves the use of up to 8 million gallons of water per
well, Sewak said. Older natural gas wells required up to 80,000 gallon,
he said.
Marcellus wells are drilled down about 9,000 feet, much deeper than
conventional gas wells. So far, about 1,100 of the wells have been
drilled in the state, Sewak said.
Milly Gallik of Yukon said she was motivated to volunteer because a
company is drilling wells near her home.
"I am concerned with our well water," she said, noting that she wants
to become a "pro-active" protector of the environment, including the
Little Sewickley Creek near her home.
Richard Robbins can be reached at rrobbins@tribweb.com or 724-836-5660.