DEP Online Tool Addresses Dry Weather Stream Withdrawals

The tools are designed to advise operators in the natural gas industry when it is safe to withdraw water.

The State Journal
12 August 2010
By Pam Kasey

For the past two years, high salinity in the state’s streams during the dry late summer season has raised concerns over natural gas industry water withdrawals that reduce flows even further. As this summer’s dry season kicks in, residents have a tool: the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s Water Withdrawal Guidance Tool.

“The DEP secretary has made it very plain that we are not tolerant of streams being dried up,” said Mike Stratton, Water Use Section manager at DEP.

It was about mid-August these past two years when the level of dissolved solids — salts, mainly — shot up in parts of the Monongahela River drainage.

In 2008, late summer low stream flows combined with incompletely treated natural gas well brine to cause problems for industrial and drinking water uses on the Mon River in Pennsylvania.

Then, in late summer 2009, salty mine drainage in Dunkard Creek, a major Mon River tributary at the West Virginia-Pennsylvania border, resulted in the death of all of the fish and mussels on more than 30 miles of the creek.

But over this same two years, withdrawals from surface waters by natural gas companies drilling in the Marcellus Shale have increased.

A single Marcellus “frack” job to crack the shale and release trapped hydrocarbons uses millions of gallons of water, sometimes pumped and hauled from streams.

The Marcellus water-use issue has come up in a decade during which the state is getting clear about how much water there is and how to protect water quantity and regulate uses.

It started with the Water Resources Protection Act of 2004 and, with the broader Water Resources Protection and Management Act of 2008, will result in a water resources management plan in 2013.

Midway through this planning process, Stratton said, WVDEP developed the Water Withdrawal Guidance Tool to advise operators in the natural gas industry when it is safe to withdraw and from where.

Stratton said the guidance tool is the first place to go — not only for gas well operators but also for residents concerned about withdrawals.

Users get withdrawal recommendations by clicking in the watershed of interest on an online map of the state.

The map is divided into about 30 regions, each of which delivers recommendations based on readings from a U.S. Geological Survey stream gauge.

Recommendations for withdrawals from any stream in the Northern Panhandle and northern Wetzel County, for instance, are derived from the flow measured at a gauge in Wheeling Creek.

When the flow is over about 150 cubic feet per second, the tool recommends withdrawals anywhere. With flows between 38 and 150 cfs, withdrawals are recommended only from Wheeling Creek, Fish Creek, Grave Creek and the Ohio River — which, because of its size, supports withdrawals at any time.

Flows below 38 cfs result in a recommendation of no withdrawals anywhere but the Ohio River. Recommendations are updated frequently and can reflect rapid changes.

Flow at the Wheeling Creek gauge dropped from about 60 cfs to about 40 on Friday, Aug. 6, all measurements that allow withdrawals from the region’s major streams.

But it dropped below 38 cfs on Saturday morning — no more withdrawals.

And with hot, dry weather, flow measured only in the 20s midday on Sunday and just 17 cfs by Monday afternoon.

For a resident who witnesses a withdrawal that the guidance tool advises against, Stratton suggests documenting the facts: the company, the location, the specifics of the activity observed and the date and time. Time-stamped photographs, he said, are especially helpful.

Jody Jones, WVDEP associate counsel representing the Office of Oil and Gas, said inspectors aim to respond to complaints within 24 hours.

Complaints have infrequently turned up operators who are withdrawing against the advice of the guidance tool, he said, and operators so far have cooperated with inspector requests that they move to larger streams.

State law has not yet gotten to the point of establishing penalties for overwithdrawing a stream, but Jones said those who choose to ignore the guidance tool’s recommendations may be pursued based on statutes regulating oil and gas activity and water quality.

DEP made the guidance tool available in January in combination with a natural gas well permit addendum that requires operators to specify expected water volumes and sources.