To spread on icy highways, no less. And then
where does it go?
As the slogan says, "Don't Frack With Our
Water"!
See below.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, August 15, 2010 9:26 AM
Subject: Insane !
This
is insane ! DOH to spread fluid laced with know cancer causing agents on roads
to deice in Winter! Spreading the toxins across the landscape to enter our
rivers and water supply ..... This stuff is what killed all in Dunkard Creek
months back ...... This only aides the gas drillers . in trying to
solve the problem of where to Fracking fluid will go . Now we know.. THere is
only one official Fracking water treatment plant in the state and thats in the
Northern panhandle! Joes a gas man .....
August 13, 2010
State to use gas-well brine on winter
roads
By The Associated Press
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Salty wastewater from natural-gas
wells may end up on West Virginia
roads this winter under a new agreement between the state
departments of Environmental
Protection and Transportation.
The agreement to let highway crews use the brine to treat
snow- and ice-coated roads establishes
new limits for pH, iron, barium, lead, oil and grease,
benzene and ethylbenzene.
DOT spokesman Brent Walker said the brine can also be
mixed with rock salt to prevent clumping
or sprayed on roads before
precipitation.
The Division of Highways will take bids for brine
supply and is hoping to pay about 5 cents a
gallon, Walker said. It plans to distribute about
1.2 million gallons to 123 sites around the state to
start the season.
Highway crews had been relying on brine made with rock
salt mined from the Great Lakes region.
"That ended up containing a fair amount of soil, and with
that you get iron and other metals," said
Scott Mandirola, head of the DEP's Division of Water and
Waste Management. "It was going
relatively unchecked. We sat down and looked at some specs
and came up with some limits that
were better than the quality of what was currently being
used."
Mandirola said some of the brine could run off into state
waterways -- but that's always happened,
and deicing is necessary for public
safety.
"What we came up with here is equal to or better than
what's been happening," he said.
The brine will come from producing wells, Mandirola said,
not from the hydraulic fracturing of
Marcellus Shale wells. That fluid, used
in unconventional horizontal drilling, contains additives
that make it thicker and slicker.
That fracking water also could contain naturally occurring
radioactive material, which Mandirola
said has been found in some spots in
Pennsylvania.