Fracking ban has engineer’s support

The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) proposes that the State of Pennsylvania should ban all hydraulic fracking and related activities within its area of the Delaware River Basin. The proposed regulations will serve the residents of all of Bucks County well.
Before DRBC should ever consider allowing fracking activity within any compact member state boundary (Pa., N.Y., N.J., Del.) it be partnered with a robust, and fully staffed water resources partner agency in that compact member state. Pennsylvania does not have such resources and lacks staffing, field support, monitoring, and inspectors to partner with DRBC in such a task.
My main reasons for opposing fracking in the basin jurisdiction, and my support for transfers of frack-water or wastewater with another River Basin Compact, are fracking activities threaten the health of our residents and environment. I wish DRBC would add formal processes for local input in these revisions and I suggest a model for doing this.
In 2021 New York (NYS) permanently banned hydraulic fracking. The stark reason is its Legislature prioritized “the health and future of New York’s people and environment” over hydraulic fracking (1). The decision followed a five-year hiatus of fracking in NYS. During this time the health risks, environmental costs, and benefits of this fossil-fuel extraction technology were weighed. Their ban became legal code, such as these proposed regulations are, which makes it permanent; protecting generations to come.
The NYS findings considered it unwise to permit wasting extremely large potable water for this fossil fuel industry and it found the fracking process creates a stubborn industrial wastewater problem. The state identified that the large mixture volumes of water, salt, sand, and undefined proprietary chemicals used to execute the fracking process in a well was too dangerous and most of it escapes below the surface. It also found lacking a robust means of containing, decontaminating, and sufficiently treating residual frack-wastewater and air emissions recaptured at the surface.
Scientific and historical evidence is that the basin’s capacity to assimilate and neutralize hydraulic fracking wastewater is zilch. When a well is fracked the physical mechanism releases huge volumes of waste water into our aquifers, and thousands of unidentified chemicals vaporize into the air. The wastewater that is captured (most remains in the ground) contains high levels of toxic pollutants, and toxic elements and radioactive isotopes.
Science, medicine, and field studies show the fracking pollutants are harmful to human health, linked to cancer, cause mutations, and damage many life forms. In areas of Pennsylvania (not the basin) where fracking is permitted today, the standard, accepted frack-wastewater techniques occasionally failed, which caused spills that kill cattle and livestock in large numbers. (2) There is documented evidence that fracking releases toxic pollutants into the air and sometimes drinking water (3) and is especially damaging to people living nearby.

DRBC water management methods are in collaboration with member states, therefore the proposed revisions are to Pa. Code Title 25 Chapter 901 and 903. I underscore this because DRBC member states provide most water-resources programs, and provide nearly all field staffing, local management, and oversite within the basin. If Pa. permitted fracking in its basin area, then staffing, management, inspections, and most resources for a regulatory activity would be in PaDEP-Office of Oil and Gas Management (OGM.) The OGM is hardly staffed or capable for responsibly executing the task because there are insufficient funds. In other major natural gas producing states natural gas producers are levied a severance tax, but not Pennsylvania. Resident taxpayers are not going to pay the overhead expenses for this private venture. Because of this situation, DRBC would not have a viable collaborator fracking oversight of in Pa.
The proposed regulations should be accompanied by guidance which encourages more local involvement of which I can describe using personal experience. In the 1990s, I represented my township on a groundwater management committee of 11 municipalities in Bucks County. Our objective was to help sustain the healthfulness and supply of our water. (4) Several of our member municipalities were in the DRBC Southeastern-Pennsylvania Ground-Water Management District (SEPA-GWMD). Our committee explored technical, legal, and cultural bases for creating municipal water-resources ordinances and we rediscovered the idea of “The Commons,” which implies that our committee had an obligation for our local water management.
We learned that while some DRBC regulations (i.e., groundwater withdrawal limits) had primacy over municipal ordinances, DRBC was obliged to involve municipalities in these regulations. DRBC issued a guidance for the SEOA-GWMD which formalized a means whereby municipality(s) could submit revisions if they were based on sound scientific, data-driven, knowledge. (5).
I recommend DRBC develop a similar guidance for local parties to effect interbasin transfers for fracking activities or any industrial scale water uses. Municipalities and subbasin scale parties should have an explicit mechanism for petitioning DRBC in these regulations. Local knowledge and cultural interests are especially important where sources may be more informed and new scientific data are available.
Amleto A. Pucci Jr. Ph.D. P.E.
Former Director Bucks County, Bureau of Environmental Health

References: amletopucci@ptd net

---

Join our readers whose generous donations are making it possible for you to read our news coverage. Help keep local journalism alive and our community strong. Donate today.