You are here
Marcellus Shale Press Coverage
Secondary tabs
Report: Auburn’s treatment plant is unable to accept gas drilling wastewater
AUBURN, N.Y. -- Some are calling a report about gas drilling wastewater a step in the right direction for the city of Auburn. The report concludes the city's treatment plant is unable to accept gas drilling wastewater.
It cites a number of heavy chemical contaminants. In 2011 the city banned the acceptance of this type of wastewater in its facility. Several months later, the ban was rescinded. At the request of the DEC and EPA, the city hasn't actually taken that wastewater in until analysis was done.
Now that it's complete, activists are looking to the state to stop a practice they say would endanger the environment and public health.
"Governor Cuomo really has to respond to this Headworks Analysis, ban gas drilling wastewater dumping in municipal plants and withdraw the revised draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement and adopt comprehensive standards," Walter Hang, Toxics Targeting President.
Auburn's mayor said he received the report this week and isn't prepared to make a statement because he hasn't sat down with the city manager and others to discuss it.
City Councilor Terrance Cuddy says in the future he may push to have the city ban reinstated.
To view the full analysis visit:
www.toxicstargeting.com/sites/default/files/ghd_headworks_analysis.pdf
To read Hang’s letter to Governor Cuomo visit:
www.toxicstargeting.com/MarcellusShale/documents/letters/2014/04/22/cuom...
Fracking issues raised by Auburn wastewater report
In this 2011 file photo, protesters outside of Auburn Memorial City Hall rally against the city's policy of accepting wastewater created during natural gas drilling.
AUBURN, N.Y. -- An engineering firm hired by Auburn to clear the way for the city to accept wastewater from gas drilling has concluded the city's wastewater treatment plant can't handle it.
The firm's study could have broad implications in New York's debate about hydrofracking.
The report, by the engineering firm GHD, Inc., in Cazenovia, said that because of the high levels of chlorides (a constituent of salt) in gas drilling wastewater, the Auburn wastewater treatment plant "has no additional capacity to accept vertical natural gas well wastewater."
While the report, for the moment, stalls Auburn's consideration of accepting gas drilling wastewater of any kind, it also raises questions about the capabilities of any municipal waste water treatment plant in New York state to handle the wastes of high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking, without greatly modifying wastewater treatment systems. The horizontal wells of hydrofracking typically extend farther and deeper than vertical gas drilling wells, and their by-products can contain higher concentrations of chlorides and other pollutants.
Walter Hang, an environmental consultant with Toxic Targeting, in Ithaca, said the report speaks to a core issue of gas extraction, including hydrofracking.
"This report is an indication that a lot of these technical questions about gas drilling wastewater can't be answered on a comprehensive basis," said Hang.
Auburn's waste water treatment plant discharges into the Owasco River, which drains into the Seneca River, which empties into Lake Ontario.
In addition to processing human sewage, Auburn's wastewater treatment plant, handles lots of other industrial wastes, including leachate from landfills, water from General Electric/Powerex - an US EPA SuperFund site outside of Auburn, as well as wastewater from factories like McQuay, Goulds Pumps, Nucor Steel and Owens-Illinois, according to the report. Those users contribute to the plant's "atypically large chloride load," the report said.
"Chloride is already high in our waste stream, and adding the gas well water that's got chloride in it would possibly create issues with our biological process that nitrifies the water, that converts ammonia to an inert form," said Douglas Selby, Auburn city manager.
The report notes that Auburn could possibly handle gas drilling waste water if it underwent additional studies and changes to its treatment system.
Selby said he would not recommend that to city councilors, given the costs of studies, the fact that "the regulatory climate may be against us getting permission," and the uncertainty of getting back clients the city lost two years ago when Auburn enacted a ban on accepting drilling wastewater.
"We're not really eager to jump forward on it right now," Selby said.
Three years ago, Auburn, a city of 27,000 west of Syracuse, found itself at the center of the fracking debate as its city councilors weighed the income from the natural gas industry against the risks of pollution. The year before the ban went into effect, the city brought in $815,000, treating 16.5 million gallons of water from natural gas wells in Pennsylvania and in Seneca, Cayuga, Yates, Steuben and Chemung counties, according to documents with the report.
Eight months after the ban was enacted, and after an election that brought new members to Auburn's city council, the city lifted the ban.
But before the city could accept gas drilling wastewater, it had to conduct this study, called a headworks analysis, according to state Department of Environmental Conservation and U.S. EPA guidelines.
Auburn's previous headworks analysis had been conducted in 2001. In the intervening years, water monitoring requirements of the EPA have become stricter, the new report says.
"This gives an objective accounting of what our wastewater treatment plant can or cannot take," said Terry Cuddy, Auburn city councilor, and a founding member of the Cayuga Anti-Fracking Alliance, which worked to implement Auburn's ban on gas drilling wastewater.
Libby Ford, co-chair of the hydrofracking committee of the New York Water Environment Association, an association of water treatment plant operators, and a senior environmental health engineer for Nixon Peabody, in Rochester, said that Auburn's wastewater treatment plant is a biologically-based system, and that biological systems on their own "are not designed to take out dissolved constituents such as chlorides."
Only one wastewater treatment system in New York is non-biological - the Niagara Falls plant.
"That plant was built when they still had a lot of heavy chemical industry in the Niagara Falls area," she said.
Two years ago Niagara Falls city council voted to not allow any natural gas drilling activity in the city, including trucks moving drilling wastewater to the regional treatment plant.
Hang, who opposes hydrofracking in New York, says Auburn's report reveals lax oversight by the DEC over the city's handling of gas drilling wastewater. The city was accepting the wastewater after getting DEC approval in a phone message, according to a document in the report.
"The report basically says this plant can't handle the gas drilling wastewater because of the extraordinarily high chloride content of the gas drilling wastewater," said Hang. "And they (Auburn) obviously accepted like 16 million gallons of this stuff."
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 Auburn-Headworks-Analysis.pdf | 12.3 MB |
| Fracking_issues_raised_by_Auburn_wastewater_report_140423.pdf | 162.72 KB |
The Maybe State
Anti-Fracking Protesters in Albany
They’ve become a fixture at the governor’s public appearances: Dozens, hundreds, sometimes more than a thousand activists bearing signs that read “No Fracking Way” and “Don’t Frack With Our Future.” Some have beards and bang on drums, some wear business attire. Sometimes they’re joined by Mark Ruffalo, who played the Incredible Hulk in the Avengers movie. And sometimes Pete Seeger turns up to sing “This Land is Your Land.”
These days, they follow Andrew Cuomo just about everywhere—a campaign fund-raiser in Buffalo, a Harvard Club chat in New York, his State of the State address in Albany—in droves.
Cuomo doesn’t like to acknowledge them, but their very presence provides a constant reminder of the tough spot he’s in as he decides whether to allow fracking to take root in New York or to ban it altogether. Or, rather, as he doesn’t decide.
While 30 other states have declared the practice safe, Cuomo has placed the decision in the hands of his health commissioner, where it remains, pending further study. In the meantime, the prospect of fracking exists here in a state of suspended animation.
The politics of making a decision either way, for Cuomo, aren’t good.
If he allows fracking in New York, even on a limited basis, he risks depressing enthusiasm among the liberal base he’s counting on to deliver him the overwhelming, status-affirming re-election victory he’s looking for this year.
If he bans it, he’ll run afoul of many of the upstate voters he’s worked so hard to court.
The state’s Southern Tier, which stretches over the gas-rich Marcellus shale, is among New York’s poorest regions. High-volume hydraulic fracturing would create 25,000 direct jobs, according to the state’s projections, in a region that has been hemorrhaging employers and residents for generations.
Even the state’s key environmental groups are not in agreement over what New York should do about its natural gas reserves. Some, such as Frack Action, are pushing for the outright ban. Others, including the highly influential Natural Resources Defense Council, haven’t ruled out fracking as an energy source, though they are pushing for tight regulations.
The decision, if it ever comes, won’t be a simple one. But the process is, technically speaking, ongoing.
Walter Hang spends a lot of time warning his fellow activists not to get complacent. Hang, who founded Toxics Targeting, an environmental data firm in Ithaca, said too many of them feel that they’ve already won—that the governor has already spoken by way of his inaction, and will punt the decision on fracking indefinitely.
Hang doesn’t believe it.
“It is an ongoing battle,” he said. “Nothing has been resolved.”
On that score, he’s in perfect agreement with Karen Moreau, executive director of the New York Petroleum Council. She says that if fracking were approved tomorrow, companies would flood back into the state.
“They look at this long-term, this is not a short-term investment,” Moreau said. “This is a 100-year plan for companies like Exxon.”
She pointed to the half billion dollars paid out in royalties in two Pennsylvania counties that border New York’s southern tier, and said that oil-industry executives tell her they don’t understand how New York can spurn so much tax revenue.
Clearly, though, the New York fracking proposition is turning out to be a bit too long-term for some would-be investors. Companies like Norse Energy, which leased 130,000 acres for gas exploration, have declared bankruptcy and left. The state’s primary industry group, the Independent Oil and Gas Association, has lost a good chunk of its membership and cut lobbying and public relations ties to save money.
In 2012, Exxon Mobil spent $2 million on an advertising campaign promoting fracking, but didn’t repeat its push in 2013. Chesapeake Energy has spent more than $2 million to push for fracking in New York; it walked away from 13,000 leased acres in September.
The industry isn’t waiting for the state to make up its mind on fracking, even as America’s natural gas production is expected to surge past Russia’s and Saudi Arabia’s. The question of whether any of it will come from New York can only be answered by Cuomo, and he’s not talking.
Cuomo speech draws anti-fracking protesters
More than 2,000 anti-fracking protesters from across New York gathered in the corridor of Empire State Plaza before, during and after the 2014 State of the State Address, Wed., Jan. 8. The demonstrators called for a statewide ban on the controversial hydraulic fracturing process. For the third year in a row, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo did not mention hydrofracking in his speech. The assembled environmentalists stretched for a quarter of a mile chanting, with signs and information disputing safety claims, emphasizing the health and environmental risks of fracking. No apparent pro-frackers appeared at this year’s event. The rally was organized by dozens of groups statewide, including New Yorkers Against Fracking, Food and Water Watch, The Sierra Club and Catskill Mountainkeeper.
