Mon River Summit Focuses on Regulation, Rehabilitation 

DEP Secretary Randy Huffman says the state has a "dissolved solids issue."

The State Journal
22 April 2010
Story by Pam Kasey

MORGANTOWN -- Regulatory efforts to protect streams from the effects of coal and natural gas extraction have converged on one issue: salts.

But it’s possible to go too far, West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Randy Huffman said April 19 at the fifth annual Monongahela River Summit in Morgantown.

“Whether we’re talking about surface mine drainage, deep mine drainage, Marcellus frack water disposal, or whether we’re talking about (wastewater treatment plants) or any other industrial activity, we’ve got a dissolved solids issue, and we need to be smart about how we approach it,” Huffman said.

Dissolved solids — referred to in water quality lingo as total dissolved solids, or TDS —fouled drinking water for Mon River communities in Pennsylvania in 2008. Poorly treated wastewater from Marcellus Shale gas wells spiked the river over the state’s TDS standard of 500 milligrams/liter.

Then, in 2009, high TDS from Consolidation Coal Co. deep coal mines contributed to a massive fish and mussel kill on Dunkard Creek at the West Virginia–Pennsylvania border.

The two states’ environmental regulators are working to control salty discharges through steps ranging from restrictions on municipal sewage treatment plants, which can’t remove dissolved solids, to requiring Consolidation Coal to treat its mine water.

WVDEP has drafted a protocol for implementing the state’s narrative water quality standards, a “you-know-it-when-you-see-it” regulatory approach to stream health that should supplement numeric standards for contaminants but has been underused by the department.

Meanwhile, though, earlier this month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cut through all of that by issuing a provisional standard for conductivity — another measure of salinity — for surface mine permits. A water quality standard can’t be applied to just one activity, Huffman said. The standard corresponds with about 200-300 mg/L TDS — below the natural level of some healthy streams, he said.

Huffman said he expects to release the draft narrative standards protocol for public comment in “weeks, not months” and said he’s optimistic the EPA will be “reasonable” as the agency considers a final conductivity standard. “My instincts tell me what they want is to stop mountaintop mining,” he said, not impair all economic activity.

Golden Algae, Nutrients


Investigators of the Dunkard Creek incident concluded that high TDS caused a toxic bloom of nonnative golden algae that killed the fish and mussels.

Golden algae have since been found in six more high-TDS West Virginia streams, raising fears that more fish kills will result.

Experience in the southwest, where the algae have been present for years, seems to indicates that it may not be possible to eradicate the algae but only to keep populations down by controlling TDS.

But Mindy Armstead of Potesta and Associates Inc., consultants to Consolidated Coal, noted in her presentation at the summit that their food source also could be limited.

“We have to get a handle on nutrient loads,” she said — mainly, straight sewage pipes from homes and runoff from agriculture. “We need to manage waste-handling systems correctly and keep buffer zones and stream banks intact.”

Rehabilitating Dunkard Creek


As for bringing back Dunkard Creek’s popular fishery, state Division of Natural Resources fish biologist Frank Jernejcic said some mature fish will swim up from the Mon River and minnows will come back from the tributaries.

DNR plans will stock smallmouth bass if necessary and muskellunge in three to four years after small fish populations have rebounded.

Mussels, long-lived and sensitive organisms, are another matter.

Dunkard Creek supported 14 to 17 species, by far the most diverse population in the Mon River basin. “We’ll have to develop a plan,” Jernejcic said.