W.Va., Pa. Regulators Wrangle Over Monongahela River

Aug. 24 meeting will review options.


The State Journal
28 August 2009

By Pam Kasey

MORGANTOWN -- West Virginia environmental officials say they are working diligently to manage contaminants in the Monongahela River despite a Pennsylvania official's view that not enough is being done upriver.

Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Secretary John Hanger expressed dissatisfaction in a Aug. 17 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story with West Virginia's cooperation on preventing high levels of total dissolved solids (TDS) in the river.

"I was absolutely surprised," said Patrick Campbell, assistant director of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection's Division of Water and Waste Management.

Campbell, who participated recently in a conference call among the two states' environment secretaries and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said, "I certainly didn't leave the call with the feeling that they thought we hadn't been cooperative."

This situation first arose last fall, when low river flows couldn't dilute TDS discharges below Pennsylvania's water quality standard of 500 milligrams per liter.

West Virginia does not have a standard for TDS, which is made up of substances such as salts that dissolve in water but remain behind when the water evaporates. Common sources in the Monongahela River basin are coal mine and oil and gas well operations.

Pennsylvania DEP reacted last fall by recommending temporary reliance on bottled water for residents whose drinking water tasted foul. The agency also ordered municipal wastewater treatment plants to accept less gas well drilling brine until river flows rebounded in late fall.

And the agency established a TDS strategy for dischargers, effective beginning in January 2011.

Since last fall, agency representatives and water quality scientists in the two states have communicated regularly toward preventing another occurrence this year.

And the problem remained at bay -- until, the Post-Gazette reported, TDS spiked to 600 mg/L where the Monongahela River crosses from West Virginia into Pennsylvania during a low river flow period earlier this month.

Campbell said the West Virginia DEP has been working to identify sources of dissolved solids in the Monongahela River.

"We know the abandoned mine drainage is significant, and also treated mine drainage," Campbell said. "It's never been our belief that West Virginia's TDS concentrations were in any large part tied to oil and gas."

He noted that "half a dozen or so" private-sector mine drainage treatment plants on the mainstem, the West Fork and Dunkard Creek, and another 18 mine drainage sites that are treated by the state.

He also mentioned landfills, power plants and municipal treatment plants as possible sources.

But the agency doesn't yet know how much of the TDS in the river comes from these known sources and how much from untreated, possibly even unidentified, mine drainage.

Because the state has no standard for TDS, there is no history of monitoring data to help identify sources, said Dave Montali, who coordinates stream cleanup plans for the DEP.

"We're starting with nothing," Montali said.

To begin amassing data, West Virginia DEP is rewriting existing discharge permits to require monitoring for TDS, Montali and Campbell said, and DEP has modified a previously planned 2009-10 tributary monitoring effort to include TDS and related substances.

The agency also is considering proposing a water quality standard for TDS in the 2011 Legislature, Campbell said, although there is no plan to pursue an emergency standard.

Unhappy with these efforts, Pennsylvania DEP has initiated a process that could result in the EPA establishing a Total Maximum Daily Load cleanup plan. A TMDL would calculate the total amount of TDS the river can assimilate and would limit dischargers accordingly.

Meanwhile, at a meeting scheduled Aug. 24 for California University of Pennsylvania, state and federal regulators and scientists from the two states will discuss the range of options.

"We could have a TMDL, we could have a West Virginia water quality standard, we could have six facilities treat to 500 (mg/L), and the river would be OK," Campbell said. "That's what the discussion Monday will center around: What is the best way forward given the situation we're in now?"