DEP to issue gas wastewater rules
The state Department of Environmental Protection said it will soon issue new technical guidance designed to ensure compliance with updated natural gas wastewater treatment regulations.
The guidance explains revisions to Title 25 Chapter 95 of the Pennsylvania Code that requires new or expanded producers of natural gas wastewater to treat the wastewater to the federal drinking water standard of less than 500 milligrams per liter of total dissolved solids prior to discharge.
“This technical guidance is another step in this administration’s continuing efforts to protect Pennsylvania’s water resources,” DEP Secretary Mike Krancer said.
“This document clearly communicates to any facility seeking to increase its discharge of treated wastewater or to any facility seeking to start accepting wastewater that they must meet certain obligations.”
In April, the DEP asked the gas industry to voluntarily stop sending unconventional gas production wastewater to facilities that were permitted prior to the Chapter 95 revisions, which took effect in August 2010. The industry complied, but the DEP is now issuing the guidance to ensure protection of waterways.
The technical guidance document, to be published in the Nov. 12 Pennsylvania Bulletin, will help the DEP’s permitting staff implement the new total dissolved solids effluent standard. The most common total dissolved solids in Pennsylvania are chlorides and sulfates.
The guidance also says that all facilities that accept shale gas wastewater that has not been fully pretreated to meet the discharge standards must develop and implement a radiation protection plan.
Such facilities must monitor for radium-226, radium-228, uranium and gross alpha radiation in their effluent, according to the DEP.