Home > Pittsburgh companies to start testing water for radiation

Pittsburgh companies to start testing water for radiation

Two large Pittsburgh-area water companies will start to monitor freshwater intake points for radioactive wastes, as Democratic members of Congress on Thursday peppered their energy committees and the US Environmental Protection Agency with questions about what would become of low-level radioactive waste created by hydraulic fracturing.

A series of articles in The New York Times has noted there is a paucity of data on what happens to normally occurring radioactive material -- commonly radium and uranium isotopes -- that is dislodged by high-pressure frack thousands of feet underground and flows back up the well bore mixed in with rest of a well's wastewater.

In Pennsylvania, which lacks underground re-injection waste wells found in the south, at least 70% of that flowback water is recycled into new fracks, the new head of the state Department of Environmental Protection said at his confirmation hearings Wednesday in Harrisburg.

But the remaining 30% is most often trucked to a wastewater treatment plant. None of those plants in Pennsylvania that are certified to treat drilling wastes can remove the radioactive materials and so an unknown quantity of NORMs flow through treatment and back into the state's freshwater supply system.

While dangerous alpha rays from radium are easily blocked by human skin, when radium enters freshwater and then into plants and fish, it can work its way up the food chain to humans where, if ingested, it can lead to cancers and blood disorders, according to the EPA.

There is little data as to how much NORM is coming up the well bore and finding its way into freshwater creeks and rivers but the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, which supplies drinking water to the city, said it was renting radiation detectors and crews to monitor its intakes on the Allegheny River starting as soon as possible and continuing monthly.

Pennsylvania American Water, which supplies drinking water to portions of the city as well as the suburbs south of Pittsburgh, said Wednesday it would start conducting a "battery" or radiological tests on its freshwater intakes on the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Clarion Rivers, to alleviate public concern raised by news stories.

"With these tests, we will be able to measure levels of radium, gross alpha and uranium in the raw water sources. In addition, our water-quality experts will sample for other potential drinking water contaminants, including metals, and volatile organic compounds. When completed, the test results will be reported to the regulatory agencies, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and ... Environmental Protection Agency, for analysis before being released to the public," External Affairs Manager Gary Lobaugh said Thursday.

Pennsylvania American last surveyed its freshwater inlets in 2008 for alpha radiation and in 2003 for radium specifically. In both cases, testing showed the water well within federal and state guidelines, Lobaugh said.

The gas industry's biggest trade group in the state, the Marcellus Shale Coalition, won't stand in the way of further testing of Pennsylvania's water.

"We support moving forward on a workable framework for increased testing," said spokesman Travis Windle said, adding that the MSC was ready to work with other stakeholders to collect more data.

The state DEP, which has said for four days it is "discussing" the issue, has made no public announcements all week as to whether it would mandate radiological testing for Pennsylvania's water treatment plants and freshwater sources.

The Susquehanna River Basin Commission, which has seen an explosion of shale drilling in its jurisdiction covering most of the eastern half of Pennsylvania, has detected no increase in radiation on the 37 sites it samples far upstream in the watershed, spokeswoman Susan Obleski said.

She noted that all those monitoring sites are not only far upstream from the 10 facilities under SRBC jurisdiction that treat drilling wastewater, most are located in southern New York counties where drilling is still banned.

Obleski said the SRBC also has a network of older monitoring sites, many of which are downstream from the 10 wastewater plants, which could be quickly outfitted to detect the presence of NORMs in the water supply, but so far the SRBC hasn't decided to increase its radiological surveillance of those waters.

Officials at the neighboring Delaware River Basin Commission, which is effectively closed for drilling while it works out its own set of drilling regulations, had no comment Thursday on any plans to test water at treatment plants in its jurisdiction in eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Southern New York.

In Washington, three US Congress members representing New York -- including Representative Maurice Hinchey, whose district lies atop the Marcellus Shale -- wrote the Republican heads of the House Energy and Commerce and the Transportation and Infrastructure committees demanding hearings be held into the impact of fracking on the environment and health.

"We hope that both committees will hold hearings to determine whether our drinking water is safe," said Hinchey and Representatives Jerry Nadler and Carol Maloney. "If federal and state regulations have not kept pace with this growing industry, we need to know before it creates a public health concern."

At the same time, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee and Rush Holt of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Energy and Mineral Resources subcommittee, fired off a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson demanding documents related to the design of the agency's upcoming study on fracking, wanting to know if the study would include the presence and effects of NORMs.

According to the EPA's draft document outlining the range of the fracking study, the agency will examine the amounts of radioactive materials in wastewater in parallel with a study the Department of Energy already is conducting on NORMs present in flowback water.

Source: 

Washington (Platts)--3Mar2011/558 pm EST/2258 GMT

--Bill Holland, bill_holland@platts.com