Water Groups Meet to Discuss Area Waterways

Morgantown Dominion Post
28 September 2010
By David Beard

How to balance water quality against the economic interests of coal and gas extraction is a tricky affair, and a panel of local water resource advocates looked at possible solutions Monday night.

It was the fall meeting of the Corps of Engineers and River Recreational Users Summit at the Morgantown Airport.

The Pittsburgh District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers oversees the watershed basins in a 26,000-square-mile area including parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. Its territory includes the Upper Monongahela, which is fed by local waterways such as Dunkard Creek and Scotts Run.

The problem: “We don’t have enough water. We’ve got to realize that,” said Frank Jernejcic, Division of Natural Resources District 1 fisheries biologist.

Once upon a time, it seemed we did, but such things as the 2009 Dunkard Creek fish kill showed that isn’t the case.

Coal mining and Marcellus Shale gas-well drilling put total dissolved solids (TDS) — which affect aquatic life and drinking water quality — into waterways, he said. Erosion — natural and man-made — also affects water quality.

From his view, three steps are needed: Control TDS, control erosion, and enact enforceable regulation.

“Guidance doesn’t work,” he said.

In the case of gas drilling, for instance, he said, rules need to cover where and when to withdraw water, how much and who decides.

Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of the West Virginia Water Research Institute, looked at another, complementary approach that requires no regulation.

It’s called a load-weighted discharge program, and it relies on voluntary cooperation by mining and gas drilling companies.

Dunkard Creek and other streams, he said, have predictable high- and low-flow periods.

Companies can develop a coordinate pumping plan — extract water and discharge mine waste or frack water during high flows. For the mines, discharging during high-flow periods allows them to open storage space for low flows.

Dumping waste during high flows doesn’t change the annual amount of TDS going into the streams, he said. It instead dilutes it, reducing the pollutant effects — meaning the fish can survive and the drinking water is cleaner.

He noted that mines along Dunkard Creek have adopted such a plan, and the TDS level this year “is a lot better than last year” when the fish kill occurred.

Duane Nichols, a member of the Upper Mon River Association — composed of 19 watershed groups across West Virginia and Pennsylvania — spoke on behalf of a new coalition, the West Virginia Pennsylvania Mon River Area Compact, of which UMRA is a member.

He observed that companies don’t always respect lowflow issues.Monday,for example was a low-flow day on the Tygart River, but Friends of the Tygart observers logged Marcellus water extraction trucks removing 84,000 gallons from the river during the course of two hours.

The Compact has drawn up a set of four resolutions to present to legislators and the Army Corps.

They are:
  1. Water withdrawal for Marcellus fracking and other operations must be regulated and permitted.
  2. A state Department of Environmental Protection review of oil and gas extraction has proven inadequate, and a special legislative session is needed to review the issues. In addition, the extraction industry should be responsible for the costs of all environmental and socioeconomic impacts resulting from its activities.
  3. Because the issues cross state lines, the Army Corps, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Geological Society should prepare a “guidance document” to apply to the issues in all affected states.
  4. The U.S. government needs to create an interagency task force to examine all the existing extraction problems and then establish a long-range planning office to handle them.