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."

Comments

Adama must've...

[Anonymous Coward]

...made Tigh the project lead.

Nothing to see.

[Frosty Piss]

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.

Re:Nothing to see.

[compro01]

It's a movie quote. Specifically, Repo Man.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087995/quotes?qt=qt0280548

Re:Nothing to see.

[MickyTheIdiot]

John Wayne, oddly enough did perform in the last movie Howard Hughes made which was called "The Conqueror."

It's relevant here because they chose a site that was downwind from a nuclear test site. There are pictures that exist of John Wayne holding a Geiger counter on set.

As IMDB notes: As of November 1980, 91 of the 220 cast and crew members had developed cancer. Forty-six had died, including John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Pedro Armendáriz (who shot himself soon after learning he had terminal cancer), Agnes Moorehead, John Hoyt and director Dick Powell. The count did not include several hundred local Native Americans who played extras, or relatives of the cast and crew who visited the set, including John Wayne's son Michael Wayne.
--
I know my posts are good because of all the "Overrated" mods...

Formula for success

[Applekid]

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.

Re:Formula for success

[Grayhand]

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.

Bush Jr, he exempted them from the clean water act. They can legally dump then it's the city and county's problem.

Re:Formula for success

[SirGarlon]

There shouldn't be any "public property", it's an oxymoron, but if there is such a thing, then nobody should be allowed to profit from it, to do business and use it for business.

You have a strangely restrictive idea of who should be allowed to have property rights. If the duly elected representatives of the people determine that is prudent to, for example, build a highway, why should they not be able to purchase the land on which to build it and to operate the highway as the think best for their constituents? You see, if the road were privatized, there is a strong possibility that the highway would never be built at all, and that the owner would seek to maximize his own profit rather than promote the welfare of the general population.

The idea of public property has existed since at least Roman times. To eliminate public property is as much a fantasy as to eliminate private property, and equally misguided.

Re:Flouride..

[MightyYar]

Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.

Re:Externalities Rule

[MightyYar]

This one is particularly easy to fix - make them pay for upgrades to the plants.

The Solution to Pollution is Huge Fines

[Eugriped3z]

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.

Re:The Solution to Pollution is Huge Fines

[AuMatar]

Fines don't do it. Jailtime for CEOs would. My rule of thumb- any crime bad enough to be fined a 100K dollars should include 6 months of jailtime for a CxO or the president of the board of directors. For every 100K after that, add 6 months for another of them. No parole. THAT would get companies to clean up their act.

Re:The Solution to Pollution is Huge Fines

[sribe]

Fines don't do it. Jailtime for CEOs would. My rule of thumb- any crime bad enough to be fined a 100K dollars should include 6 months of jailtime for a CxO or the president of the board of directors. For every 100K after that, add 6 months for another of them. No parole. THAT would get companies to clean up their act.

No, it would merely limit fines actually imposed to $99,999.99 ;-)

Fracking is good technoglogy

[gurps_npc]

The only problem is idiots that don't want to use it responsibly. Fracking makes energy cheaply. That's a good idea.

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.

Re:Unemployed?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Even if your thesis were correct, extraction industries are among the least compelling examples you could choose:

Historically, even your hardcore actually-in-Soviet-Russia-not-as-in-joking-about-it communists successfully managed to run big mining and drilling towns(if anything, more people might have been employed due to questionable capital allocation and lower available tech levels). Minerals are like nature's subsidies, you can get net-positive energy output just for digging a hole in the ground! If the situation is structured so that you don't internalize the externalities, even better.

There are a few ways to fuck up a local extraction boom: if the resource in question doesn't ship well, you are at the mercy of regional demand and sometimes things are so bad that people just don't want what you dig up. If the resource does ship well, you can end up with a situation where(by either market or state coercion, it's been done both ways) the locals end up living in the tailings pile and the surplus value gets shipped out(see also Appalachian coal country, the Niger Delta, Zambian central province, etc.). Finally, you can either exhaust your mine, or get scooped by somebody else who has a much higher quality one(England, for instance, isn't exactly a coal-mining power anymore).

If you want to talk the virtues of capitalist enterprise, try something with a much more complex supply chain, returns to innovation, need for a keen grasp of customer demands, and no history of communists pulling it off. Seriously.

Fracking Exempt from Clean Water Act

[jweller13]

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/

Re:Flouride..

[Anonymous Coward]

Of, for fuck's sake...

Fluoride salts are used to enhance the strength of teeth by the formation of fluorapatite, a naturally occurring component of tooth enamel.[8][9] Although sodium fluoride is also used to fluoridate water and, indeed, is the standard by which other water-fluoridation compounds are gauged, hexafluorosilicic acid (H2SiF6) and its salt sodium hexafluorosilicate (Na2SiF6) are more commonly used additives in the U.S.[10] Toothpaste often contains sodium fluoride to prevent cavities.[11] Alternatively, sodium fluoride is used as a cleaning agent, e.g. as a "laundry sour".[7] A variety of specialty chemical applications exist in synthesis and extractive metallurgy. It reacts with electrophilic chlorides including acyl chlorides, sulfur chlorides, and phosphorus chloride.[12] Like other fluorides, sodium fluoride finds use in desilylation in organic synthesis. The fluoride is the reagent for the synthesis of fluorocarbons.

The lethal dose for a 70 kg (154 lb) human is estimated at 5–10 g.[7] Sodium fluoride is classed as toxic by both inhalation (of dusts or aerosols) and ingestion.[13] In high enough doses, it has been shown to affect the heart and circulatory system.

Consumption of large amounts of caffeine – usually more than 250 mg per day – can lead to a condition known as caffeinism. Caffeinism usually combines caffeine dependency with a wide range of unpleasant physical and mental conditions including nervousness, irritability, restlessness, insomnia, headaches, and heart palpitations after caffeine use.[18]

It takes five to ten THOUSAND times as much sodium flouride to do what coffee will. That 5-10 grams? Swallow ONE gram of benzine and see what happens to you.

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. How about you leave, and go back to NASCAR.com or wherever the hell you came from.

Who gave whoever modded that idiot up mod points????

Re:Externalities Rule

[characterZer0]

Then the government could claim Eminent Domain to take the waterways away and give them to the power companies. Everybody (with enough money to buy politicians) wins!

Re:Externalities Rule

[sjames]

The real answer is to fill the CEO's swimming pool with it. If it fills up, fill the bathtub, kitchen sink, etc finally, just water his lawn with the rest.

I'll bet if we implemented a lottery system where that would happen at random, that water would be sparkling clean coming out of the plants no matter what the cost.

Re:Flouride..

[ColdWetDog]

So are commies. They're everywhere.

Re:BS alarmist article

[Attila Dimedici]

The most important part of the article is completely ignored by the summary. Wastewater treatment plants stopped accepting the waste water from fracking operations because it seemed likely that the results this study found would be the case (the study needed to be done to confirm that what was apparent was what was real). Treating the waste water from fracking operations is a greater expense than treating other waste water. The fracking operations are appropriately forced to absorb this cost. That means that there is no actual problem here.

Private property rights solves nothing

[Comrade Ogilvy]

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 work for a company that makes fluid additives

[Tator Tot]

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.

Re:I work for a company that makes fluid additives

[Tator Tot]

1,2,4- trimethylbenzene is not benzene. Methylbenzene is also known as toluene, and by adding one more carbon you change the physiological effects in the body (benzene is cancerous; toluene isn't). Known carcinogens are not used in frac fluids.

Re:Externalities Rule

[TapeCutter]

It seems a lot of American's have been conned into thinking "free market" means a market that is free from government oversight, it's not hard to work out that this mis-information is pushed by some corporations. What I can't work out is why so many people defend the premise.

What the "free" in free market actually means is "everyone is free to participate", excluding corporations would by definition make it a restricted market. Also an economic "market" is not a mall or an auction room, it's a set of rules governing trade, for example a market cannot exist without property rights. If government does not define and enforce those rules, then who will?

As to the OP, yes, one possible solution to the "tragedy of the commons" would be to privatize the commons, the problem with that is even if it worked ( in an environmental sense), the people would still lose their commons.

Industry-wide reckless disregard - thats COAL!

[BonemanPgh]

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.

Re:Externalities Rule

[lennier]

Severe restrictions on industry by "concerned" people 100 years ago would have left us with, maybe, a cleaner environment, but 1980-level tech instead of 2013. Net effect: Magnitudes more deaths, not fewer.

Tell me about it. I remember the 1980s. Those were hard years, man. We had to scrape by with computers with cassette drives. And we had 64 kilobytes of memory and 2400 baud modems.

The horror still haunts me. If we'd only had iPads and Facebook, millions of young lives could have been saved!