Water Issues

The paragraphs in blue were written by people in Wayne County. The black at the bottom contains local information and is current. Needless to say, water must be considered in our addenda.

I have an added comment about this well water issue and the drilling. Stop to think a moment. They will not be using ground water as a source it is just not practical. If the drilling of a gas well requires a minimum of 1 million gallons it would take way to long to get that from a water well. A very good well could put out 50 gallons per min. even at that rate it would take 2 weeks to get the water tankers filled to drill just one well. Its not efficient to get the water this slowly.

They will not be pumping out of a ground well. They will be taking it from a surface source of water some where. Time is money for these drilling teams and they wont be sitting around for 2 weeks to fill their tanks.

Ask around in other areas. Its not coming out of a well. They will pump it from a surface source or pay someone to pump it out of their pond or lake, stream or river.

Does the water quality group know that the energy companies are going to try to use lakes, ponds and streams to pull water for the fracing? Long Consulting/Chesapeake basically told us that at the Jan 9 meeting. They do not play to drill water wells for fracing. They still may drill wells for other purposes and in any event the current domestic wells must be tested and the aquifer protected from infiltration of hydrocarbons and toxics. Also the use of surface water, I would presume, would be controlled by the addenda.

It has been said time and time again, by the DEP, that the permitted party would be responsible to correct any problems associated with the drilling of the well. The DEP has specific procedures it follows when notified of any infractions. Though it has been said the gas companies have vested interest to do the best job possible, environmentally speaking, there have been instances where something has gone wrong.
On a brighter note it seems the cement casing is responsible for less destruction and contamination of the aquifers.
Water testing should be done (seasonally) before the well is drilled. It's standard operating procedure for the gas companies to test the water before they start drilling.

Anyway, at some point in the process the wells are fractured with water.

The O&G people say they use about 1 million gallons (about 40 tractor trailer tankers) to accomplish this. As far as I know, this process is complete on the county's 3 existing wells. The good news is that they can, and do, recycle the water from one well to the next. They simply truck it. At XXX they pulled the water from the creek, by the dairy barn. It's taken out over a period of several days; a small percentage of the total flow. At some point the water needs to be disposed of and they need to truck it to a willing sewer plant. They pay the plant operator a fee based on gallons. the last I heard from O&G they were still looking for an interested local sewer plant.