How Spills, Holes, and Cracks Release Fracking Chemicals Into the Environment

Six of the sites note impacts to water.

At the Mazzara well pad in Wyoming County, an estimated 220 barrels (9,240 gallons) of brine were released in 2013, and over half of that infiltrated the well pad where it traveled through a family’s backyard and basement, and then a sump pump discharged the wastewater into a garden. This resulted in impacts to stormwater and groundwater. To remediate this spill, the well pad’s operator, Carrizo-Marcellus, collected 45,147 barrels (1,896,174 gallons) of potentially impacted water, and Resource Environmental Management Inc, led efforts to monitor contaminated stormwater in trenches/sumps around the property and groundwater. They found elevated levels of conductivity and contaminants, and while concentrations diminished overtime, it took until 2019 for most of the contaminants to demonstrate attainment for water standards. The monitoring wells continued to show elevated levels of Iron and Manganese, however, but those  exceedances were deemed naturally occurring.

The report notes that the road where this incident occurred has a history of road spreading (likely to melt ice or suppress dust), using substances that contain the same contaminants present in produced water, and that background testing reflected use of road salt. Oil and gas wastewater itself has been used as a readily-available dust suppressant in the state. This makes us question the effectiveness of comparing monitoring samples to background levels of contaminants, which may pose a public health risk already.

In McKean County in 2015, bubbling was observed on a well pad called Potato Creek 1H, and a subsequent investigation revealed elevated conductivity levels on this pad and three other SM Energy well pads. This led investigators to believe that plumes of brine were migrating vertically underground, impacting the Potato Creek 1H, Potato Creek 2H, Potato Creek 3H, and Potato Creek 6 gas well pads. Further adding to the issue, Potato Creek 2H was storing flowback water in an impoundment that was originally constructed for freshwater with a single liner and no leak detection or monitoring wells, and nearby, a 2-acre site located on a former coal strip mine that burned insulation off telephone wire to obtain copper wiring was found to have been also impacting the environment.

Groundwater sampling revealed that Aluminum, Lead, Iron, Manganese, Vanadium, and Chloride exceeded groundwater standards at Potato Creek 1H. However, the report states that many of these contaminants eventually achieved attainment through the 75%/10X rule or by meeting standards during the last eight quarters of groundwater sampling performed at the site. Once again, Iron and Manganese failed to meet groundwater standards, but were eliminated of as Constituents of Concern, by “presenting evidence of a pre-existing prevalence of Iron and Manganese in the groundwater at the Well Site and North-Central Pennsylvania that is unrelated to the release of production brine.” The report states they are naturally occurring in groundwater, and that the well site is surrounded by gas wells, including unpermitted and abandoned wells that could be contributing to elevated concentrations of contaminants, and that the groundwater in the area would be difficult to develop due to shallow petroleum reservoirs and drilling in the area.

The Potato Creek 3H site contained a similar note about eliminating Iron and Manganese as Constituents of Concern, and adds that “since there is no current use of groundwater at the well site or reason to believe it will be used in the future…there is no completed exposure pathway from groundwater that would pose a risk to human health.”

According to Penn State Extension, Iron and Manganese have secondary drinking water standards because “they cause aesthetic problems that make the water undesirable to use in the home and a bitter metallic taste that can make the water unpleasant to drink for both humans and farm animals.” Research on oil and gas wastewater list both chemicals as contaminants of interest related to human health.

We did not see evidence of testing for radionuclides such as radium in these reports, despite the evidence that waterways that have come into contact with fracking waste exhibit higher levels of these chemicals.