“There is no oversight,” says Robert Green, who works in southwestern Pennsylvania in an industry that insures that pipelines can appropriately handle the complex and often hazardous fuels and waste streams they contain.
“No state agency has authority over how these wastewater pipelines are constructed, operated and monitored, not Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), or the state’s Public Utility Commission, and as a result there are no standards,” says David Hess, who led DEP from 2001 to 2003.
In one fracking wastewater pipeline failure that occurred in 2022, 18,000 gallons of waste spilled from a pipeline operated by Seneca Resources into a wooded landscape in Cameron County contaminating the water well of John Rosenberger, a retired state trooper, and his wife Paige. The Rosenbergers were showering in dangerously toxic and radioactive fracking waste. It was very salty, he reported!
Other spills have been reported around the state and country.
Fracking waste contains elevated levels of hazardous heavy metals like lead, arsenic, and the radioactive metal radium, registering at 5,700 times the safe drinking water limit EPA has set for radium.
Gov. Josh Shapiro has promoted an energy policy that relies on the controversial techniques of modern fracking as a hallmark of his governorship. “My administration is setting a new standard for Pennsylvania natural gas to be produced in a responsible, sustainable way,” Shapiro stated last April.
However, Green, the industry whistleblower, believes Gov. Shapiro and operators like CNX have whitewashed the industry’s problems, and are covering up the dilemma Pennsylvania faces in dealing with the 1.5 billion gallons of oil and gas wastewater the state produces each year.
Disposing of fracking wastwater is an enormously difficult problem for the industry. It has to be transported to sites where it can be injected deep underground—either by truck (also hazardous) or pipeline. The pipelines are made of high-density polyethylene (HDPE), a type of plastic known for strength, and typically about anywhere from 4 to 24 inches in diameter. But they are subject to rupture or degradation by hot sunlight rocks and bulldozers.
It is imperative that DEP oversee and regulate this industry to prevent future pollution of wells and groundwater.
Dr. Robert Little, Harrisburg, Pa.
Published: Jan. 13, 2025 by PennLive Letters to the Editor
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