Pennsylvania Faces A Tainted Wastewater Onslaught Due To Natural Gas Drilling

ProPublica:

Workers at a steel mill and a power plant were the first to notice something strange about the Monongahela River last summer. The water that U.S. Steel and Allegheny Energy used to power their plants contained so much salty sediment that it was corroding their machinery [1]. Nearby residents saw something odd, too. Dishwashers were malfunctioning, and plates were coming out with spots that couldn't easily be rinsed off.

Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection soon identified the likely cause [2] and came up with a quick fix. The Monongahela, a drinking water source for 350,000 people, had apparently been contaminated by chemically tainted wastewater from the state's growing natural gas industry. So the DEP reduced the amount of drilling wastewater that was being discharged into the river and unlocked dams upstream to dilute the contamination.

Read the whole story: ProPublica

Comments

[research]

This is T Boone Pickens great new Natural gas supply:

We being Fracked.

[jeanruss]

I bought a point-of-entry water filter from www.equinoxproducts.com and I LOVE my water. The difference in the taste as weel as many other benefits has really improved my health. I researched many options for a book I have written and their system was the best. It costs around $1500.00 including the fluoride removal and lasts for 7 years. It doesn't waste any water like the R/O systems do. The staff of the company is very helpful. They also sell small systems for under the sink and shower for alot less, but I had already used this approach and was ready to clean up all of my water.

[jsarets]

Only in our surreal financial system could it be less expensive to produce natural gas from fossil deposits than to produce methane and/or ethanol from landfills or municipal and agricultural waste.

We have all the biomass we could ever want right here on the surface where it's easy to collect. Why in the world are we drilling hundreds of feet into the earth to extract prehistoric biomass that has high concentrations of heavy metals, sulfur compounds, benzene compounds and other natural toxins?

[Yeah-Me]

Man... The Great Destroyer.

[StJames]

So the Gas industry poisons the water supply of 350,000 people but nothing is done until the machinery starts to rust. Nice going; people are not as important as machinery.

[hellboundtrain]

Fracking, with the nearly countless highly poisonous chemicals, may have destroyed the clean drinking water for nearly the entire nation. You don't poison your people!

Who is responsible here?

[research]

Fracking Sucks!