LEWISBURG — Forty-five people, nearly double the usual turnout for a League of Women Voters’ speaker-luncheon, came out Tuesday to hear a Bucknell University geology student discuss the complex ramifications of drilling for natural gas through the mile-deep Marcellus Shale.
The audience listened intently to her rapid-fire presentation and offered a brisk barrage of questions at the end until they were cut off by time constraints.
Molly Pritz, who studies the wastewater by-product of hydrofracking, the method of extracting natural gas trapped under the shale, detailed its potential to deplete water supplies, contaminate water, pollute air and destroy established ecosystems.
The process of hydrofracking, forcing water and chemicals into the shale to crack open fissures that will release gas, uses enormous amounts of water, Pritz said. Water withdrawals necessary can reduce stream flow, deplete aquifers and impact the habitat of wetlands downstream.
Chemicals added to the water to facilitate the process can be spilled or leak into the fissures and go deep into the ground. Scientists don’t know how to track this seepage, she said.
Solids, sludge and natural salts, which are by-products of the process, will add to landfill mass. And some of it is radioactive due to naturally occurring radioactivity.
Liners used in holding ponds and dumps eventually need to be disposed of as well.
“We’re talking about a lot of salt, a lot of sludge and a lot of solids that have to be disposed of,” she said.
Aquifer contamination is a possibility, which would impact the quality of drinking water sources and the ecosystems that depend on the water.
A damaged site can be rehabilitated, but cannot be returned to its mature state, she said.
Then there are the roads. “Hundred and hundreds of trucks are used to bring the water to each well pad,” she said.
Pipelines need to be built, which affect the ecology and aesthetics of an area, she added.
Air quality is another concern. The internal combustion engines running all those trucks will add to the emissions and create greenhouse gases, which are implicated in global warming.
Well drilling itself adds dust to the air and streams.
East Buffalo Township Supervisor-elect Tom Zorn asked if the impacts have been studied in other locations where this type of drilling is well-established.
Pritz said, for instance, West Virginia’s Monongahela River, which it shares with Ohio, contains a lot more salt that it did before hydrofracking. Texas uses the practice, but environmental standards are nonexistent there, she said, implying damage would go unreported.
“It’s my personal opinion that the more environmental standards we have, the more we can offset the environmental impacts of natural gas drilling,” Pritz said.
We don’t know how far frack water can migrate, she added, and from the audience, Bucknell professor of geology Carl Kirby said the “Halliburton Loophole,” as the exemption in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 is commonly known, protects the industry by exempting frack fluid used in gas or oil drilling from any consequences should the fluid contaminate public supplies of drinking water.
On the positive side, he said, if a company injects something a mile deep, there is little in the way of an ecosystem down there to damage. The hope is it will stay there, well sealed by the geology, he said.
“I’m concerned about leaks,” he said, “Certain things favor it not happening, but it has happened.”
With the very purpose of hydrofracking being to create fissures, and the knowledge that never does 100 percent of the water-chemical mix ever come back, people wanted to know where it goes.
It can’t be tracked, Pritz said.
A proposed Pennsylvania state regulation would clamp down on water leaving the wells damaging stream quality, she said, “but I have no idea how they could enforce it.”
The League of Women Voters of the Lewisburg Area has formed a study panel on natural gas drilling at the request of its state headquarters. Officials at the headquarters will analyze local reports from across the state and report on the results in March.
League member Ann Grundstrom said the attendees’ intensity of interest in what Pritz had to say reflected a lot of community concern over this issue.
Zorn said he shares the concern, tempered by some faith in state and federal regulators. “But fear of the unknown was palpable in the audience,” he said.
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