Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE)

Associated Press story forwarded by Cheryl Anderson:

In the two years since the frenzy of activity began in the vast underground rock formation known as the Marcellus Shale, Pennsylvania has been the only state allowing waterways to serve as the primary disposal place for the huge amounts of wastewater produced by a drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

State regulators, initially caught flat-footed, tightened the rules this year for any new water treatment plants but allowed any existing operations to continue discharging water into rivers.

Pennsylvania shale gas producers seem to be getting the message, but the industry is once again in a reactive mode. Where was the leadership during the critical first two years?  Why were new regulations needed to address the obvious?

Records verifying industry claims of a major dropoff in wastewater discharges to rivers will not be available until midwinter, but John Hanger, secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection, said he believed that the amount of drilling wastewater being recycled is now about 70 percent — an achievement he credits to tighter state regulation pushing the industry to change its ways.

“The new rules, so far, appear to be working,” he said. “If our rules were not changed … we would have all of it being dumped in the environment, because it is the lowest cost option,” Hanger said.

That last sentence must be painful reading for industry’s true safety and environmental leaders. The Marcellus Coalition, and the rest of us, need to remember this message:

We’re all in this together. We’re all only as good as whoever had a mistake this morning.