Campaigns heat
By PETER JACKSON
ASSOCIATED PREss WRITER
The state's candidates for
governor and U.S. Senate
reported on their fundraising
progress Monday, just before the
Democratic and Republican state
committees consider making
endorsements for the nominations
at stake in the May primary.
Dan Onorato's campaign had
$6.5 million at the end of 2009
considerably more than any other
gubernatorial candidate in either
party, according to a summary of
its campaign finance report.
The total includes surplus funds
from the county committee that
Drilling
worry
BY VICKI SMITH
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITERS
A drilling technique that is
beginning to unlock staggering
quantities of natural gas
underneath Appalachia also
yields a troubling byproduct:
powerfully briny wastewater
that can kill fish and give tap
water a foul taste and odor.
With fortunes, water quality
and cheap energy hanging in the
balance, exploration companies,
scientists and entrepreneurs are
scrambling for an economical
way to recycle the wastewater.
"Everybody and his brother is
trying to come up with the 11
herbs and spices," said Nicholas
DeMarco, executive director
of the West Virginia Oil and
Natural Gas Association.
Drilling crews across the country
have been flocking since late
2008 to the Marcellus Shale, a
rock bed the size of Greece that
lies about 6,000 feet beneath
New York, Pennsylvania, West
Virginia and Ohio. Geologists
say it could become the most
productive natural gas field in
the U.S., capable of supplying
the entire country's needs for
up to two decades by some
estimates.
Before that can happen, the
industry is realizing that it must
solve the challenge of what to
do with its wastewater. As a
result, the Marcellus Shale in
helped get Onorato elected to two
terms as the Allegheny County
executive and $3.7 million that
the Democrat raised last year for
his gubernatorial campaign.
"We are confident we will have
the resources we need to educate
voters about Dan's record of
accomplishment and his vision
for Pennsylvania," said Kevin
Kinross, Onorato's campaign
manager.
In the U.S. Senate race,
Republican-turned-Democrat
Arlen Specter had $8.7 million
on hand at year's end more
than U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak,
who is opposing Specter in
the D e mocratic primary, or
conservative Republican Pat
Toomey, the former congressman
productive, yet scientists
about dying ecosystem
on its way to being the nation's
first gas field where drilling
water is widely reused.
The polluted water comes
from a drilling technique
known as hydraulic fracturing,
or "fracking," in which millions
of gallons of water, sand and
chemicals are blasted into
each well to fracture tightly
compacted shale and release
trapped natural gas.
Fracking has been around
for decades. But the drilling
companies are now using it
in conjunction with a new
horizontal drilling technique
they brought to Appalachia after
it was proven in the 1990 s to be
effective on a shale formation
beneath Texas.
Fracking a horizontal well
costs more money and uses
more water, but it produces
more natural gas from shale
than a traditional vertical well.
Once the rock is fractured,
some of the water estimates
range from 15 to 40 percent
comes back up the well.
When it does, it can be five
times saltier than seawater and
laden with dissolved solids
such as sulfates and chlorides,
which conventional sewage and
drinking water treatment plants
aren't equipped to remove.
At first, many drilling
companies hauled away the
wastewater in tanker trucks
to sewage treatment plants
that processed the water and
discharged it into rivers the
up as fundraising begins
who nearly ousted Specter in the
GOP primary in 2004 and is the
front-runner for the Republican
nod this year.
The fifth-term senator received
$l.l million in contributions
during the fourth quarter, but sent
out more than $602,000 in refunds
mostly to contributors who
were unhappy with Specter's party
switch and took him up on his
promise to make refunds to donors
who requested them, according to
a campaign spokesman.
Sestak reported ending 2009 with
$5.1 million on hand, including
money he raised through
his congressional campaign
committee.
Toomey ended the year with $2.8
million, but he raised $1.7 million
same rivers from which water
utilities then drew drinking
water
But in October 2008, something
happened that stunned
environmental regulators: The
levels of dissolved solids spiked
above government standards in
southwestern Pennsylvania's
Monongahela River, a source
of drinking water for more than
700,000 people.
Regulators said the brine
posed no serious threat to
human health. But the area's
tap water carried an unpleasant
gritty or earthy taste and smell
and left a white film on dishes.
And industrial users noticed
corrosive deposits on valuable
machinery.
One 11-year-old suburban
Pittsburgh boy with an allergy to
sulfates, Jay Miller, developed
hives that itched for two weeks
until his mother learned about
the Monongahela's pollution
and switched him to bottled or
filtered water.
No harm to aquatic life was
reported, though high levels
of salts and other minerals can
kill fish and other creatures,
regulators say.
Pennsylvania officials
immediately ordered five
sewage treatment plants on the
Monongahela or its tributaries
to sharply limit the amount of
frack water they accepted to 1
percent of their daily flow.
"It is a very great risk
that what happened on the
in the fourth quarter more than
Specter.
Candidates' ability to raise money
is a litmus test of the strength of
their candidacies and especially
crucial in statewide campaigns
that depend on expensive TV
advertising.
The federal and state finance
reports periodically force
candidates to put their fundraising
cards on the table and disclose the
sources of their money, although
only financial summaries were
available for nearly all the
candidates Monday, the filing
deadline.
The Democratic State Committee
meets Saturday in Lancaster to
consider endorsing candidates
for governor and Senate. The
Monongahela could happen in
many watersheds," said Ronald
Furlan, a wastewater treatment
official for the Pennsylvania
Department of Environmental
Protection. "And so that's why
we're trying to pre-empt and get
ahead of it to ensure it doesn't
happen again."
Regulators in Pennsylvania
are trying to push through
a new standard for the level
of dissolved solids in water
released from a treatment plant.
West Virginia authorities,
meanwhile, have asked sewage
treatment plants not to accept
frack water while the state
develops an approach to
regulating dissolved solids.
And in New York, fracking
is largely on hold while
companies await a new set of
state permitting guidelines.
For now, the Marcellus Shale
exploration is in its infancy.
Terry Engelder, a geoscientist at
Penn State University, estimates
the reserve could yield as much
as 489 trillion cubic feet of
gas. To date, the industry's
production from Pennsylvania,
where drilling is most active, is
approaching 100 billion cubic
feet.
Wastewater from drilling has
not threatened plans to develop
the nation's other gas reserves.
Brine is injected into deep
underground wells in places
such as Louisiana, Texas and
Oklahoma, or left in evaporation
ponds in arid states such as
Republican State Committee
plans a similar meeting Feb. 13 in
Harrisburg.
In the GOP nomination race for
governor, state Attorney General
Tom Corbett reported $4.2 million
in contributions and a year-end
balance of $3.2 million. His only
opponent, state Rep. Sam Rohrer
of Berks County, raised more than
$130,000 through his legislative
and gubernatorial committees and
had $62,330 on hand.
TrailingOnoratoontheDemocratic
side were state Auditor General
Jack Wagner of Pittsburgh, who
reported $676,450 on hand at the
end of the year; former U.S. Rep.
Joe Hoeffel, with $229,079; and
Scranton Mayor Chris Doherty,
with $94,514.
Colorado and Wyoming.
However, many doubt the
hard Appalachian geology is
porous enough to absorb all
the wastewater, and the climate
is too humid for evaporating
ponds. That leaves recycling as
the most obvious option.
Entrepreneurs are marketing
portable systems that distill
frack water at the well site.
Also, in southwestern
Pennsylvania, Range Resources
Corp., one of the gas field's
most active operators, pipes
wastewater into a central holding
pond, dilutes it with fresh water
and reuses it for fracking. Range
says the practice saves about
$200,000 per well, or about 5
percent.
In addition, a $l5 million
treatment plant that distills frack
water is opening in Fairmont,
W.Va. The 200,000 gallons it
can treat each day can then be
trucked back for use at a new
drilling site.
For years, regulators let sewage
treatment plants take mining
and drilling wastewater under
the assumption that rivers would
safely dilute. But fracking a
horizontal well requires huge
amounts of water up to
5 million gallons per well,
compared with 50,000 gallons
in some conventional wells.
"In this case," said John
Keeling of MSES Consultants,
which designed the Fairmont
plant, "dilution is not the
solution to pollution."