Mon River Groups Discuss Quality Issues
UMRA meeting dives into Marcellus Shale and other particulars
Morgantown Dominion Post
23 September 2010
By Jim Bissett
Wednesday’s gathering of the Upper Monongahela River Association (UMRA)
had more than a few ripples of urgency.
That’s why the group’s vice president used an analogy more suited to
terra firma and asphalt than aquatic environs to make his point.
“This,” Barry Pallay said, “is where the rubber hits the road. We’re
running out of time here.”
UMRA is made up of 19 watershed groups across West Virginia and
Pennsylvania.
[Note: The reporter is incorrect on this. The meeting was hosted by
UMRA, but is a loose association of 19 watershed groups across West
Virginia and Pennsylvania.]
All of them monitor the rivers, streams and creeks in their regions.
They chronicle everything from how the water is used for fishing to the
effects wrought by drilling into Marcellus Shale.
Groups met Wednesday to draft three more resolutions urging lawmakers,
many of whom are on the November ballot, to wade even deeper into the
use — and misuse — of the water table in the region.
That brings the total to seven. In August, UMRA penned the first four
resolutions, which call for stricter monitoring of drilling and
deep-mining practices, as related to rivers and streams.
The environmental ramifications of employing Marcellus Shale gas as an
energy source continue to concern UMRA and other watershed advocates,
even as they all agree that it is a viable wellspring in the years
ahead for a U.S. thirsting for energy.
Marcellus Shale is a 450,000-year-old geographic formation that runs
thousands of feet below a large chunk of Appalachia and the Allegheny
Mountains, including West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia
and parts of Ohio.
Experts say that the natural gas the formation contains can supply
energy needs in the U.S. for at least 10 years, and maybe even 15.
But it isn’t giving up its treasures easily. The formation lies as deep
as 8,000 feet below the terrain, which, more often than not, is rural
and rugged.
Drilling into Marcellus Shale means using millions of gallons of
chemically treated water to fracture, or “frack,” stone below the
ground to release the gas.
That means pulling the water out of streams first.
And then figuring out what to do with chemically treated “frack water”
once the work is done.
Either way, said Paul Ziemkiewicz, who directs the WVU-based West
Virginia Water Research Institute, the environment is compromised.
And Marcellus Shale isn’t the main culprit,the researcher said. Most of
the water issues come from the region’s mealticket of coal mining.
Ziemkiewicz said a state road official in Pennsylvania last February
tried to tell him that elevated levels of sodium and chloride found in
Dunkard Creek, near Bobtown, Pa., came from road salt that crews dumped
on nearby routes because of February’s unprecedented snowfall.
Water with those levels, though, is found in deep mines.
“This ain’t road salt,” he said, being ungrammatical to make his point.
UMRA’s point of the day, Pallay said, came in the three new resolutions
unanimously approved by members Wednesday.
They are:
- Statewide reviews of oil and gas production practices in
West Virginia, followed by a special session of the Legislature to act
on those findings.
- A high-level panel of watchdog-experts from the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Geological Survey looking for
better ways to flush out contaminated water after natural gas
extraction from the Marcellus Shale formation.
- The formation of a federal task force to look at the
infrastructure particulars of Marcellus Shale production, including
rural roads damaged by heavy truck traffic.
Pallay said this is a chance for UMRA to make a splash.
“Let your lawmakers know,” he said. “This is important.”