HB-4001 Would Have Established A 500 PPM In Stream Limit On Total Dissolved Solids

 

By Duane Nichols,  CLEAR, duane330@aol.com

 

Delegate Barbara Fleischauer and a number of other local house members sponsored HB-4001 during

the last two legislative sessions.   This bill was needed because of the Dunkard Creek disaster in which

over 22,000 fish and 14 species of mussels were destroyed this past September of 2009.    The Bill

would have set a water quality standard for the streams of West Virginia, to be limited to 500 parts

per million of total dissolved solids. 

 

These "solids" represent dissolved inorganic "salts" such as calcium sulfate, aluminum sulfate, sodium chloride, etc. 

The 500 ppm limit is actually quite generous to the polluters; the 500 ppm limit is actually problematic

for public water supplies as well as industrial water supplies.  This is higher than can be used in most

power plants for evaporative cooling water or in the coke plant at Clairton, PA.

 

Unfortunately, this HB-4001 was held up and never released by Delegate Jim Morgan, Chairman of the

House Government Organization Committee.  We appealed to him for his support, but representatitives

of the Marcellus Shale drillers were able to convince him that the Bill is not needed; this is certainly

not true in my opinion.  Consider the disaster on Dunkard Creek or the fact that the Monongahela River

has exceeded the 500 ppm limit on four or more times during the past year.

 

Duane Nichols

 

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HB 4513, "establishing requirements for Marcellus gas well operations’ use of water resources," died in a conference committee on the final night of the session.

 

If it had passed, the bill would have set additional reporting requirements for water withdrawals from streams, the contents of water used for high-volume "slick water" hydraulic fracturing, and where the waste water was to be disposed.

 

The bill would also have required drillers to have plans for handling water withdrawals and waste disposal prior to getting the permit to drill. One of those plans would have covered maintaining minimum instream flows when withdrawing water.

 

HB 4513 passed out of House Judiciary Committee by voice vote, and was later passed by the full House by a vote of 89 to 8.

The Senate referred the bill to two committees: first to Natural Resources, and then to Energy, Industry and Mining (EIM). Senate Natural Resources Chairman John Pat Fanning took the bill up in committee almost immediately, and he allowed a full hour for the public to make presentations to the committee. The committee then passed the bill by a unanimous voice vote.

 

But that second reference to EIM was the kiss of death.

 

Before we go any further, we need to tell you about another oil and gas bill – SB 369, the "deep well/shallow well" bill. SB 369 would have changed the definition of a "shallow well" so that it applies to many vertical Marcellus Shale wells. Industry REALLY wanted this bill. But it’s a terrible bill that would have essentially legalized stealing of gas from neighboring mineral owners, and been worse for the environment by eliminating the need for well spacing (meaning more wells drilled and more land disturbed).

 

So keeping all this in mind, here’s how things played out during that final week, as described by WV CAG lobbyist Julie Archer in this week’s

 

"The House Judiciary Committee essentially held SB 369 hostage in order to encourage the Senate Energy, Industry and Mining (EIM) Committee to act on HB 4513. However, in an unfortunate turn of events, EIM amended the provisions of SB 369 into HB 4513. In addition, the committee also weakened important protections for our water resources, specifically a requirement that operators have a plan to maintain minimum instream flows. What started out as a good bill aimed at protecting our water resources, turned into something that neither WV-SORO nor the WV Environmental Council could support.

 

The bill ended up in a conference committee on the last night of the session. Delegate Tim Manchin (D-Marion), lead sponsor of HB 4513, tried convince the Senate conferees to agree to restore critical language needed to protect our waters. When it became clear no compromise could be reached, HB 4513 died, killing SB 369 along with it."

 

So that’s that. But not quite.

 

The process of attempting to pass this bill in the Legislature has pushed DEP to actually do more for protecting water from oil and gas operations. And as a result, much of what we proposed in the bill is actually now being done by the Office of Oil and Gas in the permit process. So all is not lost.

 

Finally, I want to mention that this bill would never have been proposed in the first place were it not for Delegate Tim Manchin (D-Marion), the House Chairman of the Legislative Oversight Commission on State Water Resources.

 

It was Delegate Manchin who had the bill drafted after a year’s worth of presentations on Marcellus drilling issues. It was Delegate Manchin who became the lead sponsor of the bill. It was Delegate Manchin who orchestrated the advancement of the bill. And it was Delegate Manchin who stood behind the principles of the bill to the bitter end.

 

I have never seen a legislator "work a bill" so hard. You wore me out, Tim!