DOH to Use Gas Well Brine to Treat Roads

A new agreement will allow state road crews to use natural gas well brines to prevent and remove ice from roads in the winter.

The State Journal
12 August 2010
By Pam Kasey

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has entered an agreement with the state Division of Highways setting standards for natural gas well brines used for winter road safety.

“This allows us a more readily available source of brine,” said Department of Transportation spokesman Brent Walker.

The agreement allows the use of natural gas well brines for pre-wetting, or mixing with rock salt to prevent clumping; anti-icing, or applying to roads before precipitation; and deicing, or applying during and after precipitation.

The agreement has been in the works for more than a year, according to DEP Water and Waste Management Director Scott Mandirola, and was set in motion when someone suggested that natural gas well brines could replace the brine DOH was mixing from rock salt mined in the Great Lakes region.

“That ended up containing a fair amount of soil, and with that you get iron and other metals,” Mandirola said. “It was going relatively unchecked. We sat down and looked at some specs and came up with some limits that were better than the quality of what was currently being used.”

With regard to salts, the agreement sets maximum concentration levels for chloride and sodium and a minimum level for the combination of those salts and calcium — all related to the brine’s freezing temperature.

With regard to other aspects of natural gas well brine, the memo establishes levels for pH, iron, barium, lead, oil and grease, benzene and ethylbenzene.

For each new source of brine to be used on roadways, DOH has to submit an analysis of these criteria to the DEP.

The intention behind the agreement was to use brine that is generated during the ongoing production of natural gas, Mandirola said, not to use the hydraulic fracturing fluid that comes back when Marcellus Shale wells are “fracked.” That fluid contains additives to make it thicker and slicker.

However, Louis Bonasso, owner of the AOP Clearwater facility in Fairmont that distills frack flowback and leaves behind a concentrated brine, said that just a little more treatment would qualify his brine under the standards set out in the agreement.

“We are currently making 50,000 gallons minimum a day,” said Bonasso, who would like to sell his brine as a byproduct. “I’m excited by this.”

Mandirola expressed concerns about using this fluid.

He specifically mentioned what’s known as Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material, or NORM, which has been found in some Marcellus Shale “hot spots” in Pennsylvania. NORM hasn’t been ruled out in West Virginia.

In addition, when operators at the Clarksburg wastewater treatment plant wanted to treat Marcellus Shale brine, the DEP required the plant to test for about 30 other substances that are not mentioned in the agreement with DOH, including arsenic, mercury and selenium.

While Mandirola conceded that some brine applied to roadways will find its way to the state’s waters, he said the standards set in the agreement were not aimed at maintaining water quality standards. “What we came up with here is equal to or better than what’s been happening,” he said.

“From a public safety perspective, you have to allow de-icing,” he said. “I wouldn’t necessarily say it outweighs the water quality issues, but in most cases during storm events you’ve got high flow conditions and a lot more dilution available to assimilate the potential contaminants that are used in road salt.”

He noted the agreement establishes application rates aimed at minimizing runoff — 10 gallons per ton for pre-wetting, 50 gallons per lane-mile for anti-icing and 100 gallons per lane-mile for de-icing.

Walker said DOH maintains 76,000 lane-miles statewide.

The department will bid the brine out and is looking for a price of about 5 cents per gallon, he said. It will probably distribute about 1.2 million gallons of brine at 123 sites around the state to start the road treatment season and will purchase further brine as needed.