The Pennsylvania Environmental Quality Board will hold four public hearings this week, the first in Cranberry today, on new state water quality standards aimed at controlling new sources of wastewater pollution, including discharges produced by Marcellus Shale gas drilling.

The state Department of Environmental Protection proposed the new standards that target the new discharges of total dissolved solids. TDS causes toxicity in streams and rivers by increasing salinity, and water analyses of the state’s major watersheds show that many rivers and streams have “a very limited ability to assimilate additional TDS, sulfates and chlorides,” according to the Pennsylvania Bulletin notice of proposed rulemaking.

A significant source of such pollution is the hundreds of gas drilling operations that use hydraulic fracturing to release the natural gas from the Marcellus Shale, a rock layer 5,000 to 8,000 feet below the surface beneath two-thirds of the state. Each well can use 4 million to 8 million gallons of water and discharge up to half that amount.

Mine wastewater can also have very high TDS levels.

Read the full Post-Gazette article here

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