Complaints Continue About Amount of PA Wastewater Injected in Ohio Wells
From The Herald:
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VIENNA, Ohio – This eastern Ohio hamlet is home to about 1,000 people, a traffic light and a high school. Businesses are few; the only grocery in town closed last summer.
But there’s something big in Vienna – a facility that tethers the town to the sprawling natural gas industry across the border in Pennsylvania.
About a mile from the town center, a cluster of five injection wells pours gas drillers’ wastewater deep into the earth. In the first half of this year alone, these wells accepted and deposited underground 350,000 barrels of waste from Pennsylvania – more than 14 million gallons – according to records kept by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
Those numbers don’t surprise residents along a country road that leads from the four-lane highway, Route 82, to the farm that is home to the KDA Inc. injection wells.
Trucks rumble down Sodom Hutchings Road at all hours, seven days a week. Engine brakes roar as trucks struggle to lose speed.
“It’s constant,” said Russell Grimes, who lives a few houses from the KDA operation.Read the rest of the article by clicking here.
The Vienna wells – and more than 200 others like them across Ohio – figure prominently into the natural gas industry’s growth in neighboring Pennsylvania over the past six years.
While drillers treat and reuse 90 percent of their liquid leftovers, according to industry estimates, the remaining 10 percent that gets sent to injection wells adds up. And it’s far easier to dispose of it in the Buckeye State than over the border – so much that last year Pennsylvania exported enough drilling wastewater to Ohio to fill 200 Olympic-sized pools.
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