W.Va. DEP Proposes New Water Standards
Morgantown Dominion Post
21 May 2010
Associated Press
CHARLESTON — The Department of Environmental Protection has a recipe
for cleaning up West Virginia waterways: It calls for less salt and
sewage, and a little more iron.
The DEP this week unveiled three proposed water-quality standards it
hopes to present to legislators next year. All are subject to a 45-day
public comment period and review by the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency.
To address concern that is growing with the proliferation of Marcellus
shale gas drilling operations, DEP wants to establish a legal limit for
total dissolved solids, including salts and chlorides. Gas drilling
produces vast amounts of a briny wastewater, and how to dispose of it
without contaminating rivers and streams is a challenge facing the
industry and environmental regulators.
The DEP would limit dissolved solids to 500 milligrams per liter in
streams, a standard that would be more stringent than neighboring
Pennsylvania. That state has the same limit, but only at intake pipes
for public drinking water systems.
Dissolved solids can harm aquatic life and make water taste and smell
bad. They come from a variety of sources, including coal mines.
Pat Campbell, an assistant director of DEP’s Division of Water and
Waste Management, said the goal is to keep all waters ‘‘suitable for
consumption by our citizens and use by our industries.’’
Dissolved solids became a concern after Pennsylvania residents
complained about the quality of water in the Monongahela River. The
anxiety intensified after a massive fish kill last year on Dunkard
Creek, a stream that runs for 43 miles along the Pennsylvania-West
Virginia border.
Regulators concluded that golden algae killed the fish, but dissolved
solids in the water created conditions that helped that algae bloom,
choking off oxygen to countless fish, mussels, salamanders and other
aquatic life.
The Water Research Institute at WVU began monitoring water quality on
the Monongahela and some tributaries last summer to come up with
baseline data that could help indicate how new industrial activity is
affecting the waterways.
‘‘We have gas drilling that we didn’t have before. We have coal mines
going deeper into the basin and turning up different kinds of water. So
we’re not just looking at the old time acidity and metals like we did
with acid mine drainage; we have a different suite of problems,’’ said
Paul Ziemkiewicz, the institute’s director.
The DEP also issued a proposal Wednesday to help control algae blooms
in parts of the Greenbrier River, where pollution from sewage plants
are affecting water quality.