Will PA. Allow Fracking Wastewater to Be Used as Brine Solution on Public Roads?

[JPZenger]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/06/1185027/-Pennsylvania-wants-to-use-fracking-waste-as-road-salt

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/state/dep-pulls-permit-to-allow-comment-672442/#ixzz2R3bXQMd7

Fracking produces an enormous amount of salty wastewater. It is expensive for the companies to properly treat the wastewater, so they are always looking for a shortcut. At the same time, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of salty brine solution as a pre-treatment on roads during winter conditions. In many neighboring states (notably Ohio), the wastewater has been used to make road brine solution. The problem comes in what hazardous materials come with the salty water?

The link describes how PA DEP had quietly authorized reclassification of some fracking chemicals so that processed wastewater could be used as a road de-icer and as a supplement for farm soils. Mmmmmm.

However, they got caught, and had not provided adequate public notice. So now they are having to move forward under at least a little bit of sunlight.

Excerpts of Post-Gazette article:

"The DEP's original public notice described the permit narrowly -- for the treatment and processing of wastewater from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operations at Marcellus Shale gas wells. But after meeting privately with officials of the firm, the DEP issued a permit that allowed two chemical compounds originally classified as waste to be classified as "beneficial use" material that could be used as road and sidewalk de-icer, for roadway dust suppression and for soil stabilization in fields.

"And, according to that altered permit, issued in August without public participation on those changes, those salty compounds -- crystallized sodium chloride and liquid calcium chloride -- also can contain limited amounts of arsenic, lead, mercury, ammonia, volatile organic compounds and diesel hydrocarbons."

Well at least we won't need to worry about roadside weeds anymore.

[haikugal]

1. Of course!!

[WCGreen]

2. What could possibly go wrong...

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. My thought exactly!

[Newest Reality]

4. Oh, a wee bit

more toxicity is not going to make much difference, ey?

[Buzz Clik]

5. "supplement for farm soils"???!!! Are you fucking kidding me?

That crap will render a soil useless in a wink.

Pennsylvania is losing its mind and losing its way.

The produced water from fracking is laden with a ton of crap beyond brine. It isn't necessarily wildly hazardous, but spraying it untreated on roads is pure insanity.

This guy is holding a jar of produced water:



Good luck getting that shit off your car/windshield. Take shallow breaths.

Now, it is possible to treat the water to get a lot of the crap out, to create a series of "improved" water that looks like this:



Most of the residual petroleum and some of the gunk is gone, but, sweet jesus!

[femmocrat]

6. Good lord.

They won't be happy until they poison us all.

[enough]

7. It's Pennsylvania, spread it around! That's the way we do things here. (nt)

[Curmudgeoness]

8. I drive most of my miles in Ohio

and that stuff is just nasty. I would be interested in having a Geiger counter to make sure that the car is safe after particularly bad weather. And that is only one of the things I worry about.