Sunday Times review of DEP drilling records reveals water damage, murky testing methods

[Jim Rosenberg]

<http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/sunday-times-review-of-dep-drilling-records-reveals-water-damage-murky-testing-methods-1.1491547>

Sunday Times review of DEP drilling records reveals water damage, murky
testing methods
By laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: May 19, 2013

First of two parts

State environmental regulators determined that oil and gas development
damaged the water supplies for at least 161 Pennsylvania homes, farms,
churches and businesses between 2008 and the fall of 2012, according to a
cache of nearly 1,000 letters and enforcement orders written by Department
of Environmental Protection officials and obtained by The Sunday Times.

The determination letters are sent to water supply owners who ask state
inspectors to investigate whether oil and gas drilling activities have
polluted or diminished the flow of water to their wells.

View interactive map:

Gas Drilling Complaints Map
<http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/gas-drilling-complaints-map-1.1490926>

Inspectors declared the vast majority of complaints - 77 percent of 969
records - unfounded, lacking enough evidence to tie them definitively to
drilling or caused by a different source than oil and gas exploration, like
legacy pollution, natural conditions or mining.

One in six investigations across the roughly five-year period - 17 percent
of the records - found that oil and gas activity disrupted water supplies
either temporarily or seriously enough to require companies to replace the
spoiled source.

The letters confirming contamination or water loss from drilling and the
orders that require companies to fix the damage provide what is likely the
best official count of the industry's impact on individual water supplies
in Pennsylvania because the state does not track the disruptions.

The Sunday Times requested the records in late 2011, and received access to
them late last year after a state appeals court ruled that the DEP had to
release the documents regardless of whether it was hard for the agency to
find them in its files.

While the records compiled by the newspaper offer a more complete tally of
the number of affected properties than was previously available, the count
is not exhaustive:

- DEP tracks oil and gas-related disruptions to water supplies based on
broad incidents, each of which might affect one or many water supplies,
making comparisons between the totals difficult. A case of gas migrating
into Dimock Twp. drinking water, for example, is considered one incident by
DEP even though the state determined it affected 18 water wells used by 19
families. DEP spokesman Kevin Sunday said the agency compiles "some
information" on the number of affected water wells and springs, but DEP's
statistics on impacted water supplies differ from the numbers documented in
the letters and orders released to The Sunday Times. Between 2010 and 2012,
DEP counted 103 impacted water supplies - six more than were documented for
those years in the records released to the newspaper.

- DEP repeatedly argued in court filings during the open records case that
it does not count how many determination letters it issues, track where
they are kept in its files or maintain its records in a way that would
allow a comprehensive search for the letters, so there is no way to assess
the completeness of the released documents.

- Before a 2011 regulatory update, solutions worked out privately between
homeowners and drillers were not required to be reported to the department.
The Sunday Times requested the notices of potential water contamination
that now have to be passed on to DEP by drilling companies that receive
them from residents, but the request was denied by DEP and the state's
Office of Open Records because the documents are considered part of
protected investigations.

- The conclusions described in the determination letters are seldom
absolute because substances read as signals of drilling-related
contamination are also routine signs of other man-made or natural
influences.

For regulators, tracking broad cases is more useful from a technical
standpoint than counting impacted water wells, Mr. Sunday said in an email.

"The number of water supplies impacted is not always reflective of the
scope of the problem," he said.

Using its definition of incidents, DEP counted 83 cases of drilling-related
impacts on water supplies between 2008 and 2012, roughly the same period
covered by the records released to The Sunday Times. The state has
confirmed water supply impacts in 128 broad cases since 1987, he said.

The state's case-based tally suggests the rate of drilling-related
contamination incidents increased with the start of the Marcellus boom:
Drilling damaged water supplies at a rate of more than 16 cases per year
during the past five years, according to the state's accounting. For the 20
years prior to 2008, the incidence rate was fewer than three cases per year.

Mr. Sunday said the increase can be attributed to a shift from drilling in
western areas of the Commonwealth with a long history of oil and gas
extraction to central and eastern regions where the shallow geology is
complex, gas-rich and less studied. Those factors mean "that there will be
an adjustment period during which operators refine casing and cementing
practices in order to most effectively establish and maintain the highest
standards of well integrity," he said.

The most recent trends - DEP counted five contamination cases that impacted
roughly 19 water supplies in 2012 compared to 18 cases that impacted 27
water supplies in 2011 - suggest that the improvements are working, he said.

Transparency questioned

The department's water testing and reporting protocols have come under
scrutiny in recent months as environmental activists and homeowners whose
drilling-related complaints were dismissed have come to doubt the
determinations' accuracy and value.

DEP recently changed its policy for issuing water contamination notices to
require administrators in Harrisburg to approve them before they are sent
out from the regional field offices that conduct the investigations. The
state's laboratory technical director, deposed when a resident appealed the
DEP's conclusion that drilling activities had not polluted his water
supply, acknowledged that DEP reviews and reports back to homeowners only
those contaminants it considers indicative of drilling-related
contamination, not all of the contaminants that might surface in its water
tests - a common practice for tailoring laboratory analysis but one that
spurred critics to question the thoroughness and transparency of DEP's
investigations.

In January, state Auditor General Eugene A. DePasquale announced his office
is conducting a performance audit of the DEP's water testing program to
"determine the adequacy and effectiveness of DEP's monitoring of water
quality as potentially impacted by shale gas development activities"
between 2009 and 2012.

Debate over the safety of oil and gas extraction - especially the combined
tools of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing used in pursuit of
fuel from unconventional sources like the Marcellus Shale - is often
characterized as an argument between activists who exaggerate claims of
damage and industry public relations teams who minimize them.

But the determination letters released by the state reveal a widespread
suspicion among water supply owners - farmers and summer residents, school
board members and mini-mart operators, churches and a Wyoming County
municipal water authority - that when their water seems soured, gas
drilling operations might be to blame.

According to the state's records, they are sometimes right and for a myriad
of reasons.

More than half of the records of contaminated water supplies confirmed by
the state involved gas, loosened by drilling, seeping into drinking water
aquifers. Faulty natural gas wells channeled methane into the water
supplies for 90 properties, the letters show. Three of those cases were
tied to old wells, one of which caused an explosion at a home after gas
entered through a floor drain and accumulated in a basement.

Drilling-related road construction contaminated water at two homes, while
construction for a large water-storage pond called an impoundment
contaminated another. Pipeline construction twice polluted water supplies
with sediment. Stray cement or rock waste displaced by drilling, called
cuttings, contaminated seven water supplies.

The state has never implicated the underground gas extraction process known
as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in a contamination incident, but
inspectors noted that brine contamination suggesting "an infiltration of
frac water into the shallow ground water," damaged six fresh-water springs
used for drinking water in northwestern Pennsylvania.

Some of the problems were short-lived: the DEP letters describe 20 of the
confirmed contamination incidents as temporary.

Regulations needed

The incidents documented in the letters reinforce why the state and
industry have focused on strengthening standards for above-ground
activities so materials don't infiltrate the surface and well construction
to ensure the cemented casings that protect groundwater are sound,
Marcellus Shale Coalition CEO Kathryn Klaber said.

The natural gas industry has worked on several fronts to investigate and
respond to contamination complaints, including providing drinking water to
homeowners while their concerns are investigated, she said. The
organization and university partners are also compiling a database of
pre-drilling groundwater quality to help researchers assess background
water quality and insulate operators from misplaced blame.

The letters obtained by The Sunday Times describe an array of problems that
exist in Pennsylvania water supplies unrelated to oil and gas exploration,
like high metal, salt and methane content and bacteria from surface water
or nesting creatures invading poorly built water wells.

A 2011 Penn State study found that about 40 percent of water wells it
tested prior to gas well drilling failed at least one federal drinking
water standard, usually for coliform bacteria, turbidity or manganese.
Pennsylvania is one of only a few states in the nation that does not have
private water well construction standards.

"It really is time for Pennsylvania to put in place some standards for
private water wells," Ms. Klaber said.

Regulations could help address pre-existing water quality problems and make
sure water wells are stable enough to handle any nearby industrial
activity, including oil and gas operations, she said. "When you've got
vibration and activity proximate to an unlined water well you're going to
get infiltration of dirt and other materials. That turbidity, usually
temporary, is going to affect that water."

Presumed responsible

Indicators of drilling-related contamination might equally point to past
pollution or natural systems changing with weather or seasons, so the
contaminants DEP cites as evidence of a drilling impact in one letter can
be cited as evidence of background water conditions in another.

Manganese, iron and a measure of the salts and minerals dissolved in the
water known as total dissolved solids (TDS) are among the elevated
parameters most frequently noted by DEP inspectors in water wells they
determined were not influenced by drilling, but in at least 30 cases where
the DEP determined that oil and gas drilling had contaminated water
supplies, increases in manganese, iron or TDS were described as a primary
or sole indicator of a problem.

Letters sent to nine McKean County homeowners during an involved
investigation of drilling-related contamination captured the difficulty of
drawing conclusions based on substances that can indicate both normal
conditions and harm: "An elevated level of these compounds is not uncommon
in this region and can occur naturally," the investigator in the case
wrote, "but it is also recognized that they can become elevated as a result
of drilling oil and gas wells."

DEP does not rely only on water test results to determine whether a water
supply was affected by drilling, Mr. Sunday said. "We employ a very complex
analysis in these investigations." Inspectors "consider things like local
water well and gas well integrity, a geochemical evaluation of the water
supply, and the local rock formations and how water flows through them," he
said.

In many cases, the failure that led to contamination is left as opaque as
turbid water.

DEP blamed a Marcellus Shale driller in Susquehanna County for water
contamination in 2010 after the salt, barium, strontium and gas
concentrations in the Rush Twp. home's water supply spiked after the
company drilled and fracked a well 600 feet away.

The post-drilling barium levels reached 47 milligrams per liter - more than
23 times the safe level of the toxic metal in drinking water - while the
TDS, chloride and sodium levels peaked at more than 10,800, 5,800 and 3,800
milligrams per liter, respectively - more than 20 times the guidance levels
set for aesthetic reasons like taste and appearance.

The determination letter and the subsequent order requiring the driller,
Stone Energy, to replace the water well do not describe the mechanism for
the pollution. Instead, Mr. Sunday said, the company was presumed
responsible for the contamination based on the timing of the impact and the
distance from the gas well and the company did not rebut the state's
finding.

Stone Energy believed its drilling activity was not to blame for the
pollution, but agreed to drill the homeowner a new water well and repay him
for out-of-pocket living expenses without admitting to causing the problem,
according to the enforcement order.

High TDS, chlorides, sodium, barium and strontium - all potential
signatures of contamination from Marcellus development wastewaters - "also
occur in brackish or saline groundwater which have been documented at
relatively shallow depths in this part of the state," Mr. Sunday said.
Although the concentrations of those elements surged to levels between 46
and 142 times the pre-drill concentration measured on the property, the
post-drilling samples were taken from a different, deeper water well and so
could have been affected by the shallow brine.

Critics of natural gas drilling say the ambiguity left by DEP
investigations means the state needs more robust tools and a stronger will
to pursue clues about contamination to its source.

Anthony Ingraffea, Ph.D., an engineering professor at Cornell University
and a vocal critic of the oil and gas industry he once worked for, said
that when DEP says it cannot find a connection between water well
contamination and nearby gas activity it does not mean there is no link.

"If DEP sent me a letter that said, 'We can find no connection,' my natural
question as a scientist would be, 'How did you look?'" he said.

He was concerned by DEP's practice of counting cases without counting
individually impacted water supplies, which he said "makes their statistics
look better."

"It doesn't help answer the question, which is how many individual
families' private drinking water wells have been contaminated by oil and
gas activities," he said. "No one knows the answer. Who should know the
answer? DEP."

Contact the writer: lle...@timesshamrock.com