Assuming the testing for contaminants is adequate, it would be the same amount of salt going onto the highways either way.
While I am concerned about the NORMs and the residual fracking chemicals, benzene and other hydrocarbons in the brines, salt is salt, so I am not ready to jump to a knee jerk reaction. Getting salt from salt mines in the midwest add a certain amount of lead, so conventional road salt is not necessarily an environmentally pure compound either.
Morgantown has been using gas well brines for at least 5 years. That does not make it right, but we should not claim that this is suddenly a novel approach. At least DEP is now requiring some minimal testing.
JBK
>>> "Frank Young" <fyoung@mountain.net> 8/15/2010 8:12 PM >>>
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.