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Sewage Plants Struggle To Treat Fracking Wastewater
MTorrice writes "When energy companies extract natural gas trapped deep underground using hydraulic fracturing, they're left with water containing high levels of pollutants, including benzene and barium. Sometimes the gas producers dispose of this fracking wastewater by sending it to treatment plants that deal with sewage and water from other industrial sources. But a new study (abstract) suggests that the plants can't handle this water's high levels of contaminants: Water flowing out of the plants into the environment still has elevated levels of the chemicals from natural gas production."
Pollution rears its ugly rear.
That FRACKING wastewater!
While they struggle to clean the water of benzene and barium, they continue to feed you Flouride and humanity eats it willingly; one of the most deadly neuro-toxins known to man .
Until we rid Fluoride from the natural H20 water supply articles like this will be a complete fucking joke..
...made Tigh the project lead.
Oh boo hoo you work at a fraking wastewater plant, treat the fraking wastewater don't whine about it.
Ever been to Utah? Ra-di-a-tion. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense. Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. They ought to have them, too. When they canceled the project it almost did me in. One day my mind was full to bursting. The next day - nothing. Swept away. But I showed them. I had a lobotomy in the end. Friend of mine had one. Designer of the neutron bomb. You ever hear of the neutron bomb? Destroys people - leaves buildings standing. Fits in a suitcase. It's so small, no one knows it's there until - BLAMMO. Eyes melt, skin explodes, everybody dead. So immoral, working on the thing can drive you mad. That's what happened to this friend of mine. So he had a lobotomy. Now he's well again.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
FRACKING SURPRISE!
http://money.msn.com/investing/unemployed-go-to-north-dakota-cnbc.aspx
"The state's unemployment rate recently hovered a little above 3%, and "Help Wanted" signs litter the landscape of cities such as Williston in the way "For Sale" signs populate the streets of Las Vegas.
"It's a zoo," said Terry Ayers, who came to town from Spokane, Wash., slept in his truck and found a job within hours of arrival, tripling his salary. "It's crazy what's going on out here."
Billions of dollars are coming into the state and thousands of people are following -- all because millions of barrels of oil are flowing out.
Search for North Dakota jobs on Bing
North Dakota jobs
The result: An old-fashioned oil boom."
Employment, what socialism cannot do. This, great, so build better and more efficient waste processing facilities. Win win win.
Fuck socialism.
Very simple way to make sure companies keep waste water clean:
Any company messing with water should be required to have the companies executives regularly drink from the waste water stream.
This is effectivly done in all cities, in that the next city down river drinks the waste water from the city upstream.
How to be successful:
* Socialize the risks
* Privatize the profits
Even commercial car washes have limits on pollutants they pass forward to water treatment plants. I guess someone just conveniently forgot to include these energy companies.
More Twoson than Cupertino
So that simple-minded corporations won't confuse themselves wondering if it might be cheaper to risk getting caught.
There's no excuse for allowing energy companies, some of the most profitable in existence to off-load (externalize) the cost of their operations and subsidize their profits by burdening public utilities with the clean up expense, especially when those facilities were never intended to deal with substances like those used in the 'proprietary mixtures' that fracking companies have protected from the prying eyes of the public.
Setting standards that require these morons to clean up their own mess, and attaching penalties for failure that put violartors out of business is the only thing U.S. corporations understand.
http://www.originoil.com/
Sometimes the gas producers dispose of this fracking wastewater by sending it to treatment plants that deal with sewage and water from other industrial sources.
And Here I thought I heard that they *usually* just dumped it down their unused wells... In fact, that was where MOST of this horrible liquid waste ended up, a few miles down..
Apparently this is a slow news day...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Privatize the profits
Socialize the costs
Define "sometimes?" But never mind the treatment plants can't handle the waste.
Because in a civilised society the polluter pays, he'll have to pay so much for polluting that working clean becomes the logic and easy solution.
The oil industry has plenty of money and the solutions are since years on the shelf, pumping it back into this or a depleted reservoir is generally the cleanest way to get rid of the crud.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
The problem is it has clear environmental risks that the frackers don't want to discuss.
They don't want to tell you what they put into the ground (because they are afraid people will sue them - or steal their wonderful business secrets).
Being in business means you get sued. Deal with it. As for business secrets - ever hear of patents????
The truth is that Frackers are having problems not because the technology they use is more dangerous than other tech, but because they are so damn greedy they want to do so without taking reasonable safety and anti-pollution precautions. Let's be honest here - the EPA is not know for being a hard-ass. They let people get away with amazingly evil misdeeds before they take action.
I am all in favor of fracking - if they publicly reveal everything they pump into the ground and take reasonable steps to ameliorate the problems.
Yes this will cost more. But fracking will still be cheap. We have a right to cheap CLEAN energy, not just cheap energy.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I think the USA should increase fracking. All over the country.
" Center for Healthy Environments and Communities " aka "We Don't Want Any Technology That Will Increase the Use of Fossil Fuels Organization".
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Fracking was explicitly exempted from the federal Clean Water Act http://sites.duke.edu/sjpp/2011/ensuring-safe-drinking-water-in-the-age-of-hydraulic-fracturing/
But I'm not sure if she knows herself.
Why is the waste water treatment plant accepting waste they cannot treat?
Don't accept it and make the driller send it to someone who can handle it if you can't. Seems simple enough to me.
The waste plant has to meet effluent standards, not drinking water standards. Why would you confuse the two? All waste treatment plants operate under this model.
love is just extroverted narcissism
sometimes: adv., when they aren't illegally dumping it: Sometimes the gas producers dispose of this fracking wastewater by sending it to treatment plants that deal with sewage and water from other industrial sources.
Sewage plants struggle to treat f****ing wastewater? Oh my, watch your language!
Does the presence of these contaminants affect the pressure pumps? If not, there's no need to dispose of the water (which is incompressible so the up-to 80% which returns to the surface could just be sent down again instead of replaced with new water).
And when they're done fracking at one site, they can just haul the waste water to the next site for re-use. There are probably some sediments that come up with the water, but those should be pretty easy to filter out.
You must not understand where your IRAs are, because they're in these companies.
Does that mean every mutual fund must pass this punishment on to its customers? There's no way, because that might be a breach of confidence.
You (as the investor) have no way of knowing exactly what gets done because the information doesn't come out until it's too late for you to make an informed decision.
Are you a senator or congress critter? Upper management of a US automaker?
1. Form corporation named Timebomb.
2. Timebomb buys land
3. Timebomb "stores" pollutants in a manner that is safe for a whopping 10 years, charging tiny fees to mother corporation
4. Neighbors see coming disaster (maybe), but efforts gets tied up in courts
5. Mother corporation sloughs off Timebomb as independent legal entity
6. Timebomb poisons the water tables
7. Timebomb dies, and its only assets are poisoned land (which has negative value once it is a proven hazard)
Isn't it awesome how property rights solve all problems?
I'd like to think that more people would have an idea of what is actually in these fluids. There is a lot of information out there. Don't say "BUT.. BUT... THE COMPANIES DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW WHATS IN THEM!" because that's not necessarily the case. Southwestern Energy has a nice inforgraphic as to what can go into a frac fluid, and in approximate quantities. You can find many more online. Even Halliburton tells you what's in their fluids!
We make a host of additives for frac fluids, like viscosifiers (the chemicals guar or xanthan gum), friction reducers like PHPA (the chemical partially hydroxylated polyacrylamide), and sand (the chemical silicon dioxide) or ceramic beads (typically bauxite based).
The items mentioned in the article make it sound like "they are adding benzene and barium to the fluids, and we had no idea that they do this!". I'll help you guys out. Barite (barium sulfate ore) is added to every oil well in the world as a weighting agent for the drilling mud. It's solubility in water is nil. Would water that is flushed down a well that has been drilled capable of picking up barium that has formed a filter cake on the walls of the bore? Sure, but it's also in EVERY WATER OR OIL MUD USED IN EVERY WELL IN THE WORLD.
Benzene in the frac fluid? Nobody adds benzene to frac fluid. Here is most likely how it got there: oil based drilling muds use diesel as a carrier fluid (if the drilling is done on land, not the case offshore). Diesel has 30% aromatic content (ie. benzene, toluene, xylene). IF the well was drilled with an oil mud AND the well was recently finished being drilled AND it was recently cleared out, then the first part of the "waste" frac fluid will probably contain benzene.
They don't care right? WRONG. They do on site testing to make sure the sample doesn't sheen or have any type of oil based fluids in the water. If it does, then the water has to be treated before being disposed (i.e. sewage, lakes, rivers, etc). So my question to the people testing these fluids: At what point did they test for benzene? Did the frac water come from a well that was drilled using diesel? Did the frac water come from a well using water based fluids? Were these random frac waste samples? What part of the country did these frac water samples come from? Did the frac water encounter aromatic hydrocarbons in the formation?
These things are needed to come to a conclusion as to where did these chemicals come from.
To all you virgins: Thanks for nothing.
Fracking created the the waste. But why didn't the treatment plants know they weren't removing the contaminants? Why did they release water into the watershed without testing it first? If you run an industrial waste water treatment plant, and a company says "hey, I've got some water here I'd like you to treat" I would expect a part of the process is asking "what is in the water?" and "can our process handle this?"
It sounds like some due diligence was not done here. It is thankful that the graduate student tested this, and that the treatment plants cooperated. There needs to be mandatory monitoring and reporting not just on the quality of the water in the watershed, but also what the treatment plants are directly outputting.
It's not uncommon to have temporary or ongoing discharges of contaminated waters to public sewers. Many older gas stations around the country have had "pump & treat" groundwater remediation systems, which discharge to the public sewers waters contaminated with benzene and other volatile and semi-volatile compounds like those of concern in frack waste water. Lots of factories have permitted discharges of contaminated waters to the public sewers. Construction sites where they have to dewater "clean" or contaminated groundwater will arrange to discharge it to the public sewer. The municipal fees are usually pretty minimal too. I've set up a few temporary discharges like this for my work (environmental consulting). So, what I'm getting at is that these kind of discharges are nothing new, and it's not really fair to single out an energy company if they are following the regulations that are in place. The only difference I could see is a frack water discharge is probably a really big load on the treatment system at one time, whereas other permitted discharges are spread out over a longer period of time and dilluted significantly the other waters running through the sewers. Anyway, all sewage treatment plants operate and discharge under specific permits requirements set by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP). I'm guessing that the permits the wastewater treatment plants operate under don't set specific effluent standards for some of the potential contaminants related to frack waste water. If frack water discharge to sewage treatment systems is an issue the PADEP could very quickly update the sewage treatment plants' permit requirements. The PADEP already has that authority, it wouldn't even require a partisan vote in the state legislature.
Di-hydrogen oxide in water causes far more damage and health risks than flouride... it should be banned immediately!
Frack the Frackers.
With all the money on chemicals they have spent. they could have purcahsed enough solar panels to power 3 earths for 100 years already. Now they got to crap in our water to make a profit?? Anger mode is now engaged.
particularly, from large chemical plants to (what I have studied lightly) film processing operations. and the usual rule is, if your effluent does not meet certain parameters, you either pre-treat on site or you pay for us to do it and we also charge you whatever we like to run and maintain it. this is determined at time of connection, and contracted, and generally there should be a periodic review of conditions.
meaning in practice, if you have a large fracking field, you have a pretreat system. if you have one well in Herman Township, and one well in Backtracks Township 15 miles away, you have a settling pond and pay whatever municipality a big chunk 'o' change.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Every single thing we do has environmental consequences. It is a question of risks, rewards, and tradeoffs. Due to the rather large amount of free media coverage given towards fracking opponents, the industry has been quite responsive to just about every tax/requirement that has been enacted - many times complying with new regulations before they are imposed. I've also heard of cases where the drillers have improved local infrastructure to better than pre-drilling condition. I am not suggesting they are angels by any means. They are engaged in PR war. They need to conform anyway - conforming early gets points. Restoring to better than original gets points. Our media will spend HOURS discussing the Gasland flammable water video FOR FREE - and barely ANY time talking about how the water there was flammable long before fracking was even invented. To refute that one false claim costs the fracking industry tons of PR dollars. And Parent is wrong here - the Frackers most certainly take safety and environmental issues seriously - one mistake will fry them in the media - the PR costs to fix it would exceed the costs to deal with the environmental issue. Sure, there are accidents - but not the industry wide reckless disregard for the environment that coal mining (both underground and strip) caused in their early days - and hell, even now. For power generation, I'm liking fracking for natural gas (given the known environmental risks) over that of the coal industry. The human and environmental costs of mining alone is provably worse than fracking. When it comes to burning each for power, gas winds with no question. I'd rather have some modern nuclear plants over either option, but geez, the only 'today' alternative to high energy costs or fracking is coal. And coal sucks.
Okay. I've heard enough. I have not heard of any private water processing plants so I'm going to go out on a limb and presume that this is a public cost and that the frackers aren't really paying for what they use. So someone out there, if you know, please put my rage to ease by explaining that the frackers are paying for the full cost of the water treatment... better, I see a way that the public can benefit in some way -- let the frackers pay for more than their own clean-up... make it like a TAX! It's not fair to put the tax burden only on the consumer which is more or less how it's done now as I understand it.
Sorry, dork, your tinfoil hat tea party sites may swallow your bullshit, but there are a few here at slashdot who are a little better educated.
You may want to consider adding "culture" to your education. There's a wonderful little film making fun of these tin-foil hats called "Dr. Strangelove" which is arguably the most famous black comedic film of all-time. Type "communism fluoride" into Google and watch General Ripper give a lecture about it. It's supposed to be funny, but you haven't seen the film, so you don't get the joke.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
So? Fracking is bad? Or some idiot running a sewage plant got dollarsigns in his eyes and signed a deal his plant couldn't handle without breaking the law?
0x or or snor perron?!
I've followed this case for decades, and the producer also had a few truckloads of the soil brought back to use on the sound stage, because the color was so intense it would have been noticeable if the earth was a different color in the same scene cuts.
I wonder if all that 'imported' radioactive soil is still on a Hollywood back lot somewhere, or if it got disbursed and has been irradiating unsuspecting people for decades?
There was a company called latitude solutions that came up with an electro precipitation method for cleaning water. It would even clean oil out of the water. Too bad one of their CEO's bankrupted the company by stealing its money and took my stock with it. Maybe somebody will start it up again someday, they certainly have a use for the technology
Private profit public losses.
Republican free type market.
Business secrets & patents to cover them are mutually exclusive. Patent something & its no longer a secret--if it's a good idea a substitute will be reverse engineered faster than you can say Jack Rabbit.
20% (according to TFA) of the poisoned water stays underground, so they don't have to deal with it now. Our children will.
" This research provides [i]preliminary[i] evidence that [i]these and similar[/i] WWTPs [i]may not[/i]be able to provide sufficient treatment for this wastewater stream, and more thorough monitoring is recommended."
Lot of "weasel words" here. Remember that turning in a report that says "everything is just fine" or "this is not worth a huge grant to my school" or "existing laws cover this" is not popular with those who benefit from the "fear du jour" with power, money or both. You have to at least ask for more funds to study the problem; when I wrote grants, I had generic boilerplate text for just that purpose :)
I remember a report sent to congress in the 1800's that the invention of motorized vehicles will make mobile artillery possible! Fortresses will be useless! Rapid troop movement will make cavalry obsolete! The solution was more laws to prevent private ownership of such things, federalization of all stores of gasoline and benzene, etc.
The Romans poisoned themselves by drinking from lead containers...The Americans poisoned themselves and their drinking water by allowing fracking ! Greed and cutting corners has always had consequences it seems !
They aren't recovering most of the fluids. For a single well, it takes 5 million gallons of water mixed with 5% of their fracking fluids with the BETX problems in it. They are only recovering less than 50% of this water. The rest goes into ground water and wells that people have on their properties or into the cities water reservoirs. If you think the wastewater treatment plants are having a hard time dealing with it, how does a homeowner who has a polluted well?
IMHO, it needs to be banned until the full effects are understood and regulations are around it so that this doesn't end up happening. Unfortunately, there are many cases which is already has.