Thursday, October 15, 2009, By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09288/1005633-113.stm

For the third time in the past 12 months, dissolved contaminants in the Monongahela River have spiked well above federal and state water quality standards for taste and odor, and the situation is expected to get worse.

The state Department of Environmental Protection announced yesterday that high levels of total dissolved solids, or TDS, in the river began showing up two weeks ago near the town of Crucible in Greene County.

Since then, additional violations of the 500 parts per million TDS standard have been recorded in 46 miles of the river to Elizabeth in Allegheny County, where levels peaked on Saturday at about 600 parts per million.

"This is the second time we've noted high TDS levels this fall and that's telling us that this is a problem," said DEP spokeswoman Helen Humphreys. "We'll be continuing to monitor the situation, but there's no reason to think that levels will not go higher again. There's no question we have a challenge before us."

Last fall TDS levels exceeded water quality standards in more than 90 miles of the river and peaked at more than 900 parts per million.

The Monongahela River is the water supply for 350,000 people and the 11 public water treatment facilities that draw water from the river are not equipped to remove TDS, which is a measure of all elements dissolved in water, including carbonates, chlorides, sulfates, nitrates, sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium.

For most, high TDS levels will make the water smell and taste bad and spot dishes and glasses but do not make an affected water source unsafe to drink. But individuals allergic to sulfates can be sickened, and the DEP has once again advised concerned residents to use bottled water for drinking and cooking until river flows increase and TDS levels return to normal.

Sources of TDS include sewage treatment plants, drainage from abandoned and active mines, power plant scrubber and coolant water discharges and wastewater from oil and gas well drilling operations.

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Drilling water may be cause of fish kill --

DEP points to salty discharge from mine

Wednesday, October 14, 2009, By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09287/1005306-113.stm

A heretofore undisclosed underground flow of mine pool and methane gas
well drilling water into Consol Energy's Blacksville No. 2 Mine may have
contributed to the salty, polluted discharges that caused the massive,
month-long fish kill on Dunkard Creek.

But Consol said that's not so, and its investigation, along with those of
federal and state environmental agencies into the now six-week-old
ecological disaster, is continuing.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection said its stream
sampling shows discharges high in dissolved solids and chlorides from the
Blacksville No. 2 Mine are the "primary immediate source" of the fish
kill that last month wiped out aquatic life on 35 miles of Dunkard Creek
along the Pennsylvania-West Virginia border.

The DEP also said in a letter to the West Virginia Department of
Environmental Protection, dated Oct. 2, that it has obtained information
that water from the inactive Blacksville No. 1 Mine in the Pittsburgh
coal seam is flowing into the active Blacksville No. 2 mine pool.

"Our data shows it's the discharge from Blacksville No. 2, but we have a
lot of questions about where all that water originated and we're asking
those questions," said Helen Humphreys, a DEP spokeswoman.

In a letter to Consol dated Oct. 7 but made public yesterday, the DEP
asked the company to provide information on any underground connections
and water flows or pumping between its active Blacksville No. 2 Mine in
West Virginia and its inactive Blacksville No. 1 Mine in Greene County,
Pennsylvania.

It also requested that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency revoke
the federal deep well injection permit that allows Consol to dispose of
coalbed methane drilling waste water in the inactive mine through the
Morris Run Borehole. The EPA ordered Consol to stop injections at the end
of September but has taken no action on the permit.

Consol has repeatedly said that the water in the inactive Blacksville No.
1 mine is not flowing or being pumped into the active Blacksville No. 2
mine. Yesterday Consol spokesman Tom Hoffman said the company's chemical
analysis of water from the active mine shows its chloride level is the
same as it was before it began using the borehole.

That shows, Mr. Hoffman said, that either there is no infiltration of
water into Blacksville No. 2 or the chloride levels of the water in the
two mines are nearly the same.

"We've been discharging from (Blacksville No. 2) for more than a year at
essentially the same levels," Mr. Hoffman said. "No one on our side is
prepared to say that the fish kill is related to the discharge. And I
don't think it's fair to say the Blacksville No. 2 discharge is the
primary factor."

Mr. Hoffman said "multiple environmental factors were involved,"
including toxins released by a non-indigenous golden algae.

The Pennsylvania DEP said that algae -- which may have "hitchhiked" to
the Mason-Dixon Line on drilling rigs brought up from Texas to work in
the Marcellus shale gas fields in Pennsylvania and West Virginia -- was
able to flourish in a brackish Dunkard Creek because of the high levels
of dissolved solids and chlorides discharged into the stream by Consol's
treatment facility.

"We don't agree and don't think the West Virginia DEP agrees," said Mr.
Hoffman.

Fish, freshwater mussels, salamanders and aquatic insects started dying
on Sept. 1, and continued dying throughout the month. According to the
Pennsylvania DEP, the pollution also threatened water quality in the
Monongahela River, which is a source of drinking water for 850,000 people
in southwestern Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania DEP asked the West Virginia DEP, in its Oct. 2 letter,
to "take necessary enforcement measures" to control pollution discharges
of total dissolved solids, chlorides and sulfides from the Blacksville
No. 2 mine treatment facility.

That Consol treatment facility, which does not remove dissolved solids or
salts, stopped treating and pumping mine water into the creek as the fish
kill progressed last month. But Pennsylvania DEP wants assurances that
the previous pollution loads will not be discharged into the creek again
when it becomes necessary for Consol to resume pumping and treating water
from its active mine.

"We have also observed that the levels of chlorides being discharged from
... the Blacksville No. 2 Mine are unusually high for a discharge solely
from a deep mine," the Pennsylvania DEP said in that Oct. 2 letter.

The West Virginia coal seam being mined by Consol has an unusually high
chloride content. The West Virginia DEP approved orders in 2004, 2007 and
2008 allowing the company's treatment facilities to discharge unlimited
amounts of chloride into the creek until 2013. The EPA, which said two
weeks ago it didn't know about those agreements, is reviewing them
because they appear to illegally suspend federal water quality standards.

"The department has been clear all along: This has been a tragic event,"
Ms. Humphreys said. "And we are going to take the necessary steps to
methodically collect all information so that when we determine the
responsible party we can take appropriate enforcement action."

*Release Date: 10/13/2009,  Contact: Delegate Barabara Fleischauer
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*_Legislature to Investigate Dunkard Creek Fish Kill_*

MORGANTOWN, W.Va—The Joint Legislative Oversight Commission on State Water Resources will meet on Thursday, Oct. 15 to examine the 30-mile fish kill in Dunkard Creek. The meeting will take place at the State Capitol from 9-11 a.m. in Room 208-W, the Senate Judiciary Committee Room. It is open to the public.

“The frustrating thing is that folks in the Upper Monongahela River Association predicted that something like this would happen last year. Although our local delegates introduced a bill last session, HB 2960, intended to remedy what happened, sometimes it takes a disaster to get legislation passed,” said Delegate Barbara Evans Fleischauer.

The first report of a fish kill in Dunkard Creek, which criss-crosses the Mason-Dixon line, was recorded on Sept. 1, 2009. The kill has since affected at least 161 aquatic species.

“Some of the thousands of fish that were killed were huge,” said Fleischauer. “It is particularly sad that this occurred in a beautiful stream that local residents had banded together to restore, maintain and protect through their watershed association.”

There is not yet any official conclusion as to the factors which caused or contributed to the fish kill, but the presence of golden algae bloom, Prymnesium Parvum, which has not previously been identified in Mid-Atlantic waters, has been confirmed. Increased levels of total dissolved solids during the relevant time periods have also been recorded.

House Bill 2960 was introduced during the Regular 2009 Session. It was sponsored by Delegates from the Dunkard Creek area including Fleischauer, Marshall, Beach and Shook (all D-Monongalia) and Delegates Manypenny (D-Taylor) and Longstreth (D-Marion). It would have required the DEP to establish standards to control the levels of total dissolved solids in state waters.

In addition, the bill would require submission of data to the DEP regarding withdrawal of water for fracturing and other purposes, as well as treatment for discharge of fluids into state waters. The bill did not pass, but legislators plan to reintroduce it in the 2010 Regular Session.

The Joint Water Resources Committee is chaired by Delegate Tim Manchin (D-Marion) and Senator John Unger (D-Berkeley).

“I hope the interim meeting on Thursday will bring attention to the causes of this modern environmental disaster. I think it is important to look quickly into what other states have done in order to prevent this from spreading to other streams in our state,” said Manchin.

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Joint Legislative Oversight Commission on State Water Resources - Agenda for Thursday, October 15, 2009, 9:00 am - 11:00 am

Location: Senate Judiciary - Room 208W

1. Call to Order, 2. Roll Call,  3. Adoption of Procedural Rules

4. Approval of Minutes for February, June, July and September 2009

5. Representative of EQT Corporation - discussion of Company’s recent contract with a waste water disposal facility to receive and process Marcellus gas well waste water for all the Company’s drilling operations in West Virginia.

6 Staff presentation of memos summarizing other states and West Virginia’s requirements for water use associated with Marcellus formation gas drilling operations.

7. Presentations on the 30-mile fish kill on Dunkard Creek in Monongalia County that occurred this month:

a. Scott Mandirola, West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection;

b. Frank Jernejcic, District Fisheries Biologist, West Virginia Department of Natural Resources.

8. Duane Nichols, Upper Mon River Association;  9. Adjournment

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"Commission" (Committee) Members:

SENATE: John Unger II (Chair, D-Berkeley Co.), John Pat Fanning* (D-McDowell Co.), Mike Green (Vice-Chair, D-Raleigh), Mike Hall* (R-Putnam Co.), Walt Helmick (D-Pocahontas Co.).

HOUSE OF DELEGATES: Tim Manchin* (Chair, D-Marion Co.), Barbara Evans Fleischauer (D-Monongalia), Virginia Mahan (D-Summers), Tim Miley (D-Harrison), Don Perdue (D-Wayne), Bob Schadler* (R-Mineral).

STAFF:  Joe Altizer*, Teri Anderson*, Sandy Johnson*, Jay Lazell*.

*-Legislators and staff members present for this hearing.  Barbara Fleischauer could not attend due to another meeting in Martinsburg.

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NOTES:  This meeting took place as scheduled. It was a little late starting and with the formal part complete by 10:45 giving some time for conversations.  Item 5. refers to the new brine processing facility in Fairmont.  The visitor from EQT (formerly Equitable Gas) was not a technical person and provided essentially no useful information. I did not see the Memos mentioned in Item 6. Numerous questions were asked and three or so reporters were present to collect informal interviews.

EQT-- The Appalachian Basin is bursting with new drilling and production activity, and EQT Production is at the center of it all. With more than 3.4 million acres, approximately 13,000 gross productive wells, and 3 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves, EQT is Appalachia’s largest exploration and production company, developing and implementing advanced drilling technology to tap into unconventional reservoirs such as shale, tight sands and coalbed methane. The Equitable Gas Company is a division of EQT, providing natural gas to over 252,000 customers in 10 counties of southwestern PA and 25 counties of northern WV.

Scott Mandirola, WVDEP, presented the same Power Point slides shown at the UMRA meeting this past Friday at the Morgantown Airport.  [See:  www.uppermon.org ] 

Frank Jernejcic, District Fisheries Biologist, WV DNR presented the same Power Point slides shown by David Wellman this past Friday at the Morgantown Airport.  [See:  www.uppermon.org ].

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Summary of Remarks by Duane Nichols in Charleston, WV, October 15, 2009.

The Upper Mon River Association has conducted 11 monthly Water Quality Forums at the Morgantown Airport in Monongalia County since November of 2008.  The primary impetus was originally the high TDS and low flows in the Monongahela River most noticeable in August of 2008. Since that time, problems of high TDS have continued in the Mon River and in a number of its tributaries. WV and Pennsylvania representatives have cooperated and participated in these Forums. 

The need now exists to establish water quality standards for all the streams of WV, given that the recent fish kill on Dunkard Creek was so devastating.  This was initially a crisis situation which became a disaster and a catastrophe.  Thousands of fish, mussels, and other creatures are dead and no one knows how to regenerate the stream.  The conditions on Dunkard Creek could be repeated on 18 or more other streams throughout West Virginia.   A water quality standard of 500 parts per million, for example, would meet national drinking water standards, and this would be sufficiently low as to remove threats of a golden algae bloom, according to the information currently available. 

UMRA encourages the WV DEP to implement a web-site as soon as possible, to present the most recent data and other information available on the Dunkard Creek disaster and other possibly related sources. We understand that some sort of web-site may be in preparation at WV DEP.  The sharing of information and the coordination among the state agencies of WV and PA as well as the federal agencies is of critical importance at this time.  UMRA intends to continue monthly Water Quality Forums in Monongalia County.

It was noted earlier today that most of the large underground mines in north central WV and southwester PA are interconnected underground such that water flows from one to the under and accumulates at various locations. Pennsylvania is now in the process of establishing a legacy trust fund, to collect monies for future pumping and treating of these waters.  It is suggested that the WV legislature could encourage such funds  and that WV DEP and WV PSC could promote trust funds for future water treatment, given that abandoned mine land monies are scarce.

The UMRA folding display entitled Upper Mon Water Trail was distributed to each member of the committee present along with copies of the two page “11^th MONONGAHELA RIVER WATER QUALITY FORUM, Sponsored by the Upper Monongahela River Association, October 9, 2009 – Morgantown, WV, DRAFT OVERVIEW, 2009 Dunkard Creek Fish Kill”. 

The importance of the Monongahela River was reviewed, given its substantial usage for public water supplies, industrial water supplies and recreational activities.  The high TDS values experienced by the Morgantown Utility Board last summer and this past summer were described.  This results in problems for each household with foul taste, hard water for washing activities, and the clogging of values and pipes. The problems of TDS in the cooling water of the numerous power plants were described including the issue of violating federal emission standards from cooling towers and the accumulation of salt solids within the evaporative cooling towers.  And, the issue of undesirable polluted water for recreational purposes was mentioned.

This talk resulted in a number of comments afterward indicating substantial sympathy among the committee members and the others present.  It is estimated that approximately 25 observers attended this session, in addition to the “Commission” (Committee) and Staff.

Attending the session was Don Garvin, Legislative Coordinator for the WV Environmental Council [www.wvecouncil.org], an umbrella organization representing the various environmental groups of the State.  Beth Little of the Sierra Club attended. Also attending were David McMahon, an attorney for and founder of the WV Surface Owner’s Rights Organization [www.wvsoro.org] and Julie Archer also with wvsoro.org.  Julie can also be reached at the WV Citizens Action Group [wvcag.org].

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Front page Charleston Gazette Friday 16 October 2009:

DEP, DNR worried Dunkard fish kill could spread

By Ken Ward Jr., Staff writer, Charleston Gazettte

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- State regulators are concerned that excess pollution may cause a toxic algae that killed off fish in a 30-mile stretch of Dunkard Creek in Northern West Virginia to spread to more than a dozen other waterways, lawmakers heard Thursday.

Department of Environmental Protection officials don't think they can eradicate the "golden algae" and instead are weighing ways to reduce contaminants that fostered the devastating fish kill in Monongalia County.

"We can't ignore it," said Scott Mandirola, director of DEP's Division of Water and Waste Management. "If we ignore it, we may see an event like this again."

Mandirola and Frank Jernejcic, a fisheries biologist at the state Division of Natural Resources, briefed a legislative interim committee Thursday morning on last month's fish kill, which left Dunkard Creek mostly lifeless.

Jernejcic said the fish kill wiped out 99 percent of the fish in the West Virginia portion of Dunkard Creek, which runs along the Pennsylvania border. Also, it eliminated the creek's "very impressive mussel population," the major stronghold for mussels in the Monongahela River basin, Jernejcic said.

Jernejcic explained that many of the creek's larger fish -- including muskies and smallmouth bass -- appeared to have tried to escape the algae by swimming into tiny tributaries. Many of them died when they swam back out into the main creek or starved in the tributaries, Jernejcic said.

DEP and DNR officials in West Virginia have blamed the fish kill directly on the golden algae, but have conceded that high levels of pollution tied to several CONSOL Energy mine discharges made conditions nearly perfect for the algae to spread.

Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection officials have pointed specifically to the discharge from the pools of polluted underground water at CONSOL's Blacksville No. 1 and No. 2 mines. Those are among two large pools of underground water in the region, where CONSOL has allowed older abandoned mines to fill with water as it pumps water out of active operations to allow

Asked after the legislative meeting about the Pennsylvania conclusions, Mandirola said he does not disagree with them.

Mandirola said high levels of total suspended solids, including salts such as chlorides and sulfates, helped foster the algae growth. Regulators often measure these materials by testing a stream's conductivity, or ionic strength, which is the ability of the water to conduct an electric charge.

Water quality officials aren't sure how the golden algae -- which is normally not found in this part of the United States -- was transported into Dunkard Creek. It could have been brought in by waterfowl, on anglers' boots or in any number of other ways, officials said.

During Thursday's meeting, Mandirola showed lawmakers a chart listing at least 18 other streams across West Virginia that have similar pollution problems. The list included the North Branch of the Potomac River, the Mud River and the Little Coal River.

"Those are all now of concern because of this threat," Mandirola said. DEP plans to test those streams to see if they contain low levels of golden algae that are not yet toxic, Mandirola said.

DEP officials are also considering speeding up a timetable for writing the state's first water quality standard for total suspended solids, or TDS. And, Mandirola said, the agency needs to re-examine its general policy so far of not writing pollution reduction plans for streams with high levels of conductivity.

Duane Nichols, a chemical engineer and spokesman for the Upper Monongahela River Association, said the state should have seen Dunkard Creek coming and now needs to take steps to avoid a repeat of the fish kill.

"What we saw as a crisis became a disaster," Nichols said. "We have a catastrophe on our hands up in Northern West Virginia. If we had done this earlier, we wouldn't have this problem."

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