Pennsylvania Watersheds at Risk: Drought and Fracking

The Marcellus shale play is a type of shale that spreads across parts of Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia, Ohio, Maryland, and Virginia. Natural gas extraction and processing from Marcellus shale accelerated in 2008 after advancements in high-volume slick-water hydraulic fracturing technology, commonly known as fracking. The Marcellus shale play was the third-largest unconventional gas producer in the world in 2021. The number of permitted unconventional gas wells in the region as of 2023:

• Pennsylvania: 22,723 wells permitted.
• Ohio: 3,988 wells permitted.
• West Virginia: around 5,386 wells permitted.

In Pennsylvania, freshwater used in the fracking process is typically drawn from surface water sources such as streams and rivers. The Oil & Gas Act of 2012 in Pennsylvania requires operators of hydraulically fractured wells to disclose some chemicals used in the process to a database called FracFocus. It’s important to note that many chemicals, including hazardous ones, are usually left out of the disclosure under protections of trade secrets.

Efforts are being made to make FracFocus less challenging to use, like Open-FF. This is an open-source, public service project that transforms the fracking industry’s FracFocus disclosure data into a usable resource. It uses python code stored at CodeOcean to convert FracFocus data into CSVs, making it easier to decipher and track chemicals used during operations.

FracFocus also includes information on water usage by fracking operators. Between 2008 and 2022, FracFocus received 8,653 well disclosures across the state of Pennsylvania. However, there is a discrepancy between the number of wells that exist (PA DEP claims over 23,000) and the number of wells reported to FracFocus (8,653), suggesting that conclusions drawn from FracFocus data severely underestimate the true impact of fracking.

The withdrawal of surface water for fracking purposes can have a significant impact on the hydrologic regime of nearby streams and rivers. This water is removed permanently from the water cycle, which in turn affects the surrounding ecosystem. This highlights the potential environmental consequences of consuming large amounts of water for fracking operations. These withdrawals undergo permitting processes prior to well development, and one of those is to produce a Water Management Plan.

A Water Management Plan (WMP) is a plan associated with drilling or completing a well in an unconventional formation, as required by the PA DEP. It demonstrates that the withdrawal and use of water sources within Pennsylvania waters protect those sources as required by law and it takes into account contamination, water quantities, and safety practices. In PA, WMP’s are reviewed by their respective River Basin Commission and the PA DEP before fracking operations begin.