Archive for the ‘Wastewater’ Category

11 Jan

Fracking in California and Moviemaking in Pennsylvania

Posted by John Renehan in Chemical Industry, Environmental Activism, Environmental Enforcement, Gas and Oil Leases, Hydraulic Fracturing, Marcellus Shale, Wastewater.

The Promised Land? Photo by Alan Bowring, some rights reserved.

In July, we wrote about the scramble to regulate fracking. Last month, California entered the fray, releasing a “discussion draft” of hydraulic fracturing regulations and seeking comments from interested parties ahead of the formal rulemaking process set to begin in February.

California’s Department of Conservation’s Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Division released the draft, detailing testing, monitoring, operating, and disclosure requirements (thanks to Arnold Porter for their advisory). The Division will operate a chemical disclosure directory to which operators will have to disclose information about the chemicals and concentrations used as well as data on the amount of fluid recovered. There is a trade secret exemption, but in the case of an operator withholding information, they must submit documentation of the type of information withheld, why it was withheld, and that the proprietary information could not be gathered through testing. However, operators would have to be able to provide the information immediately if necessary to investigate a release of fracking fluid or to a doctor to treat an individual exposed to fracking fluid.

Information from required pre-fracking testing would be available to the public before fracking at a particular well begins, and operators would be required to monitor certain variables in and around a well during fracking and for thirty days after.

A personal tidbit of my own says something on the topic as well.

I just saw Matt Damon and John Krasinski’s Promised Land, which seems to encourage viewers to focus on its exploration of selling mineral rights leases to gas companies rather than its characters and story, so I will do just that. Centered on a Pennsylvania town whose struggling farms are sitting on millions of dollars of natural gas, Matt Damon’s character as a representative of Global Crosspower Solutions claims to be offering the town its last chance to fund and prolong the myth of the small town of family-run farms. At a town meeting, an influential local science teacher raises questions about the risks surrounding the type of drilling Global plans to do – fracking – leaving some of the community hesitant to join farmers promised a big payout in their enthusiasm for the gas company’s drilling plans.

And though the appearance of a fake environmental advocate employed by Global to discredit environmental concerns portrays townspeople as uncritical pawns of interest groups, the point that such tactics may not be far from the truth is certainly taken. The questions Promised Land raises are as much emotional and cultural as scientific and political, but maybe with the information gathered through California’s regulations the debate in the future can be informed by a more measured understanding of its risks.

13 Apr

USGS Links Fracking to Earthquakes

Posted by John Renehan in Fracking, Hydraulic Fracturing, Oil Shale, Onshore Drilling, Shale Gas, Wastewater.

A hydraulic fracturing drilling rig. Image by Cliff Weathers. Some rights reserved.

The American Midwest has seen something of an earthquake boom in recent years, and speculation that the earthquakes are related to shale gas drilling has run rampant. In 2001, the frequency of earthquakes from Montana to Alabama began to rise, the number of quakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater reaching 87 in 2009. The 134 quakes of that magnitude recorded in 2011 represent a sixfold increase over 20th century levels.

As shale gas production has grown at a rate of 50 percent per year over the past 5 years, official concern has been growing. Back in November, we wrote about a report from the Secretary of Energy laying out recommendations to improve the safety and reduce the environmental impact of shale gas development, including a section on eliminating the use of diesel in fluids used for hydraulic fracturing.

Hydraulic fracturing, commonly called “fracking,” is a method of extracting gas and petroleum from source rocks. The injection of fracturing fluid into a drilled wellbore creates an extended crack in underground rocks typically under high pressure, allowing petroleum or gas to flow from the porous rocks where it is trapped to a natural reservoir from which it can be extracted.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently released the abstract of its report finding a link between fracking and the sharp jump in earthquakes, the latest in a wave of research on the process. It follows a USGS report from last August that noting a series of 50 small earthquakes that came shortly after fracking operations began in Oklahoma. In November, a British shale gas developer admitted that they likely caused small earthquakes in the vicinity of their operations, and in March, Ohio regulators found that some fracking processes probably induced twelve earthquakes in northeastern Ohio.

The USGS thinks most of the earthquakes are caused not by the fracking itself, but from the disposal of the millions of gallons of wastewater produced by each well – often by injecting it back into the earth, as regulators found in Ohio. The bottom line is that the dramatic increase in earthquakes has never been seen outside of volcanic activity or in the absence of a main earthquake, neither of which exist in this region.

25 Jan

NRC Report Champions the Benefits of Wastewater

Posted by Kyle Hargus in NRC, Uncategorized, Wastewater, Water.

Photo by Pam_Broviak. Some rights reserved.

As the National Research Council made clear way back in 2001, “In this new century, the United States will be challenged to provide sufficient quantities of high-quality water to its growing population.” According to a new report authored and released by the NRC’s Water Science and Technology Board (made up of sixteen government officials, researchers, and industry specialists), approximately 12 billion gallons of used water is discharged each day into oceans, rivers, and groundwater by American municipalities, when this wastewater could be easily “captured and reused.”

As climate change and population growth force the need for more stringent water conservation methods ever higher, this new report argues that the current practice for disposing of this used water is to treat it by recycling it back through larger bodies of water, when in fact this “natural treatment” step may be entirely unnecessary, when this water could be put to immediate use in bolstering out national water supply.

The New York Times points out that in some areas of the U.S., local governments are already implementing such measures. The Southwest Florida Water Management District has been using un-treated wastewater for decades across a broad spectrum of uses (none of which involve any human consumption, which seems to be the biggest hang-up for the American consumer, a POV that was considered in the parameters of the NRC report). Ten percent of total water use in this district employs recycled water, whereas this figure stands at less than three-tenths of 1 percent nationwide.

Despite the obvious benefits, and though the study concludes that there are no significant risks in these potable reuse water projects (finding no comparable differences between common drinking water sources and potable reuse water), the legalities of enforcement of these standards on a larger federal level are somewhat dicier. The EPA is on shaky ground enforcing national water reuse standards under the Clean Water Act, and so, at least for now, the decision to reuse wastewater seems to rest on a district-by-district-level. I’ve linked to the full version of the NRC report above, and you can read a nice summary of the report here.

13 May

Duke University Study Finds Methane Contamination in Drinking Water Near Fracking Sites

Posted by Hester Serebrin in Drinking Water, Global Warming, Hydraulic Fracturing, Wastewater.

Photo by Augapfel. Some rights reserved.

Last month it was Cornell, and this month it’s Duke, but all these universities are telling us the same thing: hydraulic fracturing comes with environmental risks.

While the study from Cornell focused on the global warming effects of methane that escapes from natural gas fracking, a recent study from Duke University found that escaped methane from shale wells is also making it into surrounding groundwater.

Specifically, concentrations of methane in drinking water wells near active drilling and extraction areas were found to be 17-times higher on average than in wells by non-active drilling areas.  “Although dissolved methane in drinking water is not currently classified as a health hazard for ingestion,” the study points out, “it is an asphyxiant in enclosed spaces and an explosion and fire hazard.”

Of course, the results of a study like this won’t go uncontested. One article questioning the study’s reliability points to an industry spokesman who claims that “the authors (of the Duke University study) admit they have no baseline data at all, which makes it impossible to characterize the state of those water wells prior to recent development.”

However, one good – and surprisingly less publicized – piece of news for the gas industry is that this particular study found no evidence of drinking water contamination from the fracturing fluids themselves or from “produced” water (wastewater that results from the fracking process). Still, the EPA announced yesterday that they are continuing to seek information from natural gas drillers on their wastewater disposal processes to “ensure that natural gas production takes place safely and responsibly.”

For more information on the study, check out this Fulbright & Jaworski Briefing.

13 Apr

The Dramatic Dance Between the EPA and CAFOs Continues in Fifth Circuit

Posted by Kyle Hargus in Clean Water Act, Wastewater.

Photo by Iain McDonald. Some rights reserved.

The relationship between the Environmental Protection Agency, environmentalist groups, industry representatives, and the federal court can become easily strained by contention over policy, as perfectly indicated by the long-enduring struggle over the EPA’s ability to regulate Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations’ (CAFOs) waste disposal under the Clean Water Act. The Act in its original form required a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit for any entity intending to discharge any pollutants or toxins from a point source into open U.S. waters. In this original form, CAFOs (which the EPA defines as “agricultural operations where animals are kept and raised in confined situations” – learn more at their “About CAFOs” page) were to be held accountable for any water pollution, although authority was granted to most state departments to regulate these CAFOs themselves.

In 2003, EPA tightened their regulations by issuing a rule requiring all CAFOs to apply for and obtain an NPDES permit even if they had only vague intentions of discharging waste, which was challenged by industry insiders who felt the agency was overstepping its regulatory boundaries. In 2005, an official lawsuit appeared (Waterkeeper Alliance v. EPA) in which the Second Circuit ruled that the EPA did not have the regulatory authority to force CAFOs to apply for waste permits based on potential discharges, and that only CAFOs with discharges on record would be required to first file for an NPDES permit. The EPA reworked these parameters slightly in the published 2008 final rule, which stated that CAFOs with actual waste discharges or the intention to discharge would be held accountable for permits, where unpermitted discharges would now face penalty.

This final rule catalyzed into a larger debate between industry representatives and environmental activist groups, with either side arguing that the rule was either too strict or too lax with its enforcement policies, even as the EPA issued clarifying guidance for CAFOs proposing to discharge. The rule was petitioned for review in a series of courts, until the issue was finally consolidated in the Fifth Circuit. In the most recent case in this string of decade-old litigation, this month’s National Pork Producers Council v. EPA, the Fifth Circuit made the decision that the EPA in fact does not have the administrative power to regulate CAFOs in any “duty to apply” sense under the Clean Water Act, nullifying this most recent advancement of the final rule, and also stripping the EPA of any enforcement power in the case of CAFOs failing to acquire permits.

7 Jan

Clearing Up Oregon’s Definition of Turbidity

Posted by Hester Serebrin in Clean Water Act, NPDES, Permits, Stormwater, Wastewater, Water.

Marten Law published an article earlier this week describing the challenges facing Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) as they revise their 30-year-old definition of “turbidity.”

Photo by John Kratz. Some rights reserved.

What is turbidity? Turbidity is a measure of water clarity or cloudiness, caused by material that is suspended in the water. The material can range from soil particles from eroding watersheds to decaying plant matter to industrial waste discharges. High turbidity can be evidence of pathogens in drinking water, can increase water temperatures, impair photosynthesis, clog fish gills and otherwise harm aquatic life.

While increases in turbidity can often be attributed to human activities such as logging, agricultural practices, or construction, there is also substantial natural variability in a given water body’s turbidity from season to season (as big rains wash excessive sediment into the water) or in mountainous areas (where erosion and glacial flow can cause large changes in turbidity).

Turbidity, as a measure of water quality, is covered by the Clean Water Act (CWA). Under Section 303(c) of CWA, the EPA mandates individual states to develop water quality standards. While the EPA produces publications such as Quality Criteria for Water from time to time, these documents are not regulations in and of themselves, but rather offer data and guidance on which states can develop their own standards.

These standards are used in the evaluation of NPDES permits under CWA Section 402 and dredge and fill permits under CWA Section 404, in determining whether a body of water should be listed as “impaired” under CWA Section 303(d), and also in determining pollutant loading allocations under TMDL programs.

Ideally, states can come up with cold, hard numerical standards – limiting turbidity to a certain number and size of Nephelometric Turbidity Units (NTUs). Of course, actually determining useful absolute standards is much easier said than done. In addition to the inherent variability in a given water body, one must also establish a baseline “background” turbidity for each body of water, as well as grapple with the limitations of differences in instruments and techniques for gathering turbidity data.

Many states, like Oregon, apply a more “relative” approach for turbidity standards. Their current rule (OAR 340-041-0036) states that “No more than a ten percent cumulative increase in natural stream turbidities may be allowed, as measured relative to a control point immediately upstream of the turbidity causing activity.” According to Marten Law, DEQ hasn’t changed the water quality standard in more than 30 years! DEQ’s draft issue paper on the proposed revisions explains that the purpose of the review is to “incorporate best available science regarding the effects of increased turbidity levels.” For a clear explanation of the anticipated changes, don’t forget to check out the Marten Law article.

23 Dec

Icky Sickly Water Woes

Posted by Hester Serebrin in Clean Water Act, Environmental Enforcement, Permits, Stormwater, Wastewater, Water.

Two recent news stories showcase the often uninvited residents of our nation’s water resources.

Photo by freeaussiestock.com. Some rights reserved.

Waterways through and surrounding the city of Boston have been receiving unwelcome and illegal dumps of raw sewage and other pollutants, according to a citizen lawsuit filed by the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) in February of 2010. CLF alleges that defendant Boston Water and Sewer Commission’s (BWSC) “significant water-quality problems and programmatic deficiencies” are in violation of the Clean Water Act.

Then, yesterday, the EPA announced that the United States would be joining CLF’s case on the EPA’s behalf, seeking injunctive relief “in the form of significantly increased resources for BWSC to identify and expeditiously remove all illicit connections, implement stormwater Best Management Practices to mitigate concentrations of pollutants to the maximum extent practicable, establish programs necessary to meet permit conditions, and take actions necessary to mitigate and prevent [Sanitary Sewer Overflows].”

Since it’s winter, one shouldn’t need much more discouragement from taking a dip in the Charles, but just in case you want to know what you’re missing – the term “fecal” appears eight times in the complaint.

A few states down the coast, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson met with ten U.S. senators to discuss a recent report from the Environment Working Group that found chromium-6 (the “carcinogenic ‘Erin Brockovich chemical’”) in the drinking water of 31 out of 35 U.S. cities tested.

While the report claims that, despite its toxicity, the EPA “has not set a legal limit for chromium-6 in tap water,” the EPA was quick to disagree. A defensive statement released on Wednesday argues that the EPA “absolutely has a drinking water standard for total chromium, which includes chromium-6 (also known as Hexavalent Chromium), and we require water systems to test for it.”

Jackson’s slightly less defensive remarks on the senators’ meeting suggest that the EPA is moving quickly in response to the report. Though she maintains that “all public water facilities are in compliance with the existing total chromium standards,” she also laid out a series of steps “that the EPA will take over the coming days to address chromium-6 in our drinking water.”

Though most of the hubbub was centered around D.C., the highest levels of chromium-6 detected were actually in Norman, OK, Honolulu, HI, and Riverside, CA. You can track the status of the EPA’s chromium-6 risk assessment here.

You can review the status of BWSC’s stormwater permits and management reports here.

16 Nov

Feed An Alga, Starve An Ecosystem: Nutrient Pollution in Florida’s Waters

Posted by Hester Serebrin in Climate Change, Global Warming, Toxic Substances, Wastewater, Water.

Photo courtesy of NASA. Some rights reserved.

The EPA today announced the release of finalized “common sense” standards (pending publication in the Federal Register) that will set specific numeric limits on nutrient pollution allowed in Florida’s waters.

Currently, excess nitrogen and phosphorus – attributed to sources such as stormwater runoff, industrial waste water discharges, fertilizer from agriculture and livestock production – are impacting “more than 1,900 rivers and streams, 375,000 acres of lakes, and 500 square miles of estuaries” in Florida. Elevated nitrogen/phosphorus levels, and the toxic algae blooms associated with them, can significantly impact aquatic life and contaminate drinking water. They can also have an economic impact when water quality is degraded to the point that fishing, swimming, or other tourist activities become undesirable (or downright disgusting).

The final rule that sets the standards is actually the result of a 2008 lawsuit against the EPA by the Florida Wildlife Federation, who hoped to compel the EPA to set legal limits on nutrient pollution in Florida waters. Florida currently only has “narrative standards” for water quality, which are difficult to apply in practice. In 2009, a federal court found that nutrient pollution standards are necessary for Florida under the Clean Water Act, and approved a consent decree requiring the EPA to adopt numeric nutrient pollution standards by November 2010.  The final rule, which will take effect 15 months after publication in the Federal Register, complies with the consent decree.

And it turns out that toxic algae blooms aren’t just a problem for coastal regions such as Florida. A recently published study from UC Santa Cruz found that “toxin-producing algae once thought to be limited to coastal waters are also common in the open ocean, where the addition of iron from natural or artificial sources can stimulate rapid growth of the harmful algae.”

This is disappointing news for scientists that had hoped to boost phytoplankton growth in oceans for the purposes of fighting climate change. According to National Geographic, “some scientists argue that by adding iron to areas of the ocean that are iron deficient, populations of iron-starved phytoplankton would blossom.” It was hypothesized that flourishing phytoplankton populations would help combat global warming by removing lots and lots of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by means of their increased photosynthesis. Unfortunately, in this case, the cure may be worse than the disease.

***

Read more about the EPA’s new standards for Florida waters here.

12 Nov

Local Stormwater Management: Yes In My Backyard!

Posted by Hester Serebrin in Incentives, Wastewater, Water.

A cistern expert once told me that there are some areas of Seattle (home to Knowledge Mosaic Inc!) in which, if you implement certain stormwater management practices, your property is then considered part of Seattle Public Utilities. I haven’t found the documentation to back this up, but the point is this: each individual can contribute substantially to their municipalities’ stormwater management.

Photo by Robert Lawton. Some rights reserved.

What is stormwater? Think about how filthy our city streets are – whether oil leaked from vehicles on the roads or runoff from lawns treated with pesticides. In most places, each time it rains, the rain takes all that grime with it to city drains and into city water systems that eventually empty into surrounding waters. In addition to putting a smelly or dangerous damper on your fishing,  swimming or other recreational water activities, stormwater can degrade ecosystems that salmon and other aquatic organisms call home.

Stormwater is regulated at a national level by the EPA’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Stormwater Program. Most states are then authorized by the EPA to implement the program and issue permits for stormwater sources within the state, such as municipal storm sewer systems. To obtain the permit, municipalities’ stormwater management programs must include certain “minimum control measures” to reduce pollutants discharged into receiving waters. These measures include public outreach, illicit discharge detection, and construction site runoff control.

Seattle currently faces an extra hurdle in managing stormwater. Like more than 700 other cities in the US, Seattle uses a Combined Sewer System (CSS) that hooks up stormwater pipes with sewer pipes. Normally, this combined runoff would go through wastewater treatment plants before rejoining local waterways, but during heavy rains, the pipes reach maximum capacity and we get a Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO), in which some untreated wastewater is discharged directly into nearby streams, rivers or lakes. CSSs are not currently covered by NPDES permits. The EPA has policies for controlling CSOs, but authorities are still working to incorporate CSO conditions into the permits “and other enforceable mechanisms.”

Some of the quickest and most economical ways to prevent CSOs are to modify landscapes to prevent stormwater from entering the sewer systems to begin with. Rain gardens and cisterns are two popular options, both of which are being used extensively in Seattle to curb CSOs. Rain gardens work by diverting stormwater from drains – the water is corralled and filtered of pollutants by specially selected rocks, plants and soils. Cisterns typically collect water runoff from residential roofs – again, diverting water from city drains while providing a source of water that can be saved to water your garden during the drier summer months.

Currently, residents in one Seattle neighborhood susceptible to CSOs are eligible for rebates from the city if they install a rain garden or cistern. This helps the city meet regulatory requirements for reducing CSOs and the applicant gets a cheap cistern or aesthetically pleasing landscape. This kind of incentive is nothing new – harvestingrainwater.com has collected links to state and federal financial incentives related to water harvesting from around the world.

***

You can read about Seattle’s RainWise Residential Rebates program here.

More about broader and larger-scale approaches to  “wet weather management” can be found on the EPA’s Green Infrastructure web page.

28 Sep

Open wide for mercury waste rules

Posted by Hester Serebrin in Toxic Substances, Wastewater.

Photo by DeaPeaJay. Some rights reserved.

Dental amalgam is a filling material used in restoring teeth that is usually made of up to 50% mercury. Use of amalgam is in decline as better substitutes become available, but each time a dentist replaces and disposes of an old mercury filing, that mercury then has a chance to make it into the environment.

Because disposal of amalgams accounts for 3.7 tons of mercury discharged each year – that’s approximately 50 percent of all mercury discharges – the EPA is planning to move forward with rulemaking to reduce mercury waste from dental offices. Yesterday, the EPA announced that it hopes to propose a rule next year that will require dental offices to use amalgam separators to capture mercury from old filings, which can then be recycled and reused.

Currently many dental offices will simply flush old dental amalgams into chair-side drains, where the mercury can enter wastewater systems, with some eventually – and inevitably – ending up in rivers and lakes. Once mercury has been deposited into the environment, certain microorganisms can change elemental mercury into methylmercury, a highly toxic organic compound. Fish and shellfish easily accumulate and concentrate mercury in their bodies, making consumption of these fish dangerous to humans. Methylmercury can damage children’s developing brains and nervous systems even before they are born.

Some dental offices already take measures to separate out mercury from the effluent discharged to waste treatment plants. In 2008, the EPA’s Office of Water and the American Dental Association (ADA) signed a Memoranda of Understanding (MOU), intended to have dental offices voluntarily install amalgam separators and recycle the collected amalgam waste. However, the EPA’s decision to pursue rulemaking at this time may have come from dissatisfaction with this voluntary approach. According to the Environment News Service, the Dennis Kucinich-chaired House Domestic Policy Subcommittee found that none of the Memorandum’s commitments, milestones and goals had been satisfactorily fulfilled at the time of a May 2010 hearing entitled “Assessing EPA’s Efforts to Measure and Reduce Mercury Pollution from Dentist Offices.”

Of course, ADA representative William Walsh argued at the hearing that dentists need no further regulation. Walsh claimed that “even without separators, dentists capture in their offices approximately 78 percent of the waste amalgam,” and lauded the ADA’s continually updated “best management practices” for handling waste amalgam. Sorry, Walsh, but the EPA’s in motion, and the agency intends to continue outreach efforts under the MOU during the rulemaking process.

« Older Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 207 other followers

%d bloggers like this: