Most natural gas wells, once they’re past their prime, are plugged and abandoned. But not Trenton-Black River wells; they might find new life serving as disposal wells for brine and frackwater. “There is renewed interest in the [TBR] formation as a potential site for underground injection wells,” says Tom Murphy, a Penn State extension agent in Lycoming County, Pa.

Residents of the tiny Town of Pulteney discovered this about a month ago. Pulteney overlooks the most western shore of Keuka Lake, a scenic area best known for its wineries and summer tourists. The last gas well there was drilled nearly a decade ago. Now Chesapeake Energy wants to convert one of those wells into a disposal well for wastewater from Marcellus Shale and other gas wells in New York and Pennsylvania. Chesapeake plans to inject up to 181,440 gallons a day into the well, though they haven’t done any tests to see how well the rock formation will absorb wastewater.

Transporting that many gallons of wastewater will take about 35 tanker trucks each day, which is a lot of traffic up and down the narrow, twisty country roads along the Keuka Lake Wine Trail. Trucks will dock at one of six concrete bays and pump their brine into one of the above-ground tanks. A series of pipelines will carry the wastewater to a filtration vessel before it is injected under high pressure (3,200 psi) into the disposal well.

But wastewater won’t be the only thing stored at the well site. Chesapeake will probably store corrosion inhibitors and biocides on site as well.

Pulteney area residents don’t like the idea of turning their bucolic town into a toxic waste dump. They are concerned that the extra traffic will damage their roads, leaving taxpayers to foot the repair bills. They’re very concerned that the toxic chemicals and brine pumped into the disposal well, located less than a mile away from Keuka Lake, may contaminate groundwater and even the lake itself.

They worry that a toxic waste dump in the heart of wine country will jeopardize the local wine and tourist industries, which bring millions of dollars into state and local coffers.

On Feb. 7 some 400 people crowded into the Pulteney Fire Hall to voice their objections to the project. Rep. Eric Massa offered his support to residents, saying, “I will do anything in my power to stop it.” Massa has filed a formal protest with Chesapeake. The response: Chesapeake is “no longer actively pushing for resolution of our local permit request.” But they have not withdrawn that permit application.

Massa vowed to lay down on the road in front of the waste-hauling trucks. “And we’ll be lining up behind you,” shouted a person in the crowd.

Other speakers at the Pulteney forum included Cornell engineering professor Tony Ingraffea; Walter Hang, president of Toxics Targeting; Art Hunt, owner of Hunt Country Vineyards; SUNY Geneseo geology professor Richard Young; Steve Coffman of the Committee to Preserve the Finger Lakes; and Rachel Treichler, an attorney and environmental advocate.

Ingraffea has been studying rock fracture mechanics for 30 years. He doesn’t ask “if” disposal wells are safe; as an engineer his concern is how to reduce the probability of accidents to an acceptable (and very low) level.

“Engineers base their designs on what they are allowed to do or not allowed to do,” Ingraffea said. And, he emphasized, one thing they are allowed to do is design underground injection wells for the disposal of wastewater produced by oil and gas development.

Currently there are about 144,000 Class II injection wells operating in the U.S., most of them used for brine disposal. “There are no underground injection wells for frack fluid,” Ingraffea said. States using underground injection require that the brine be injected into the originating formation, or into formations that are similar to those from which it was extracted.

“But,” asked Ingraffea, “what about ethylene glycol? Biocides?” The regulations say nothing about injecting fracking chemicals into the disposal wells.

With the Bergstresser well located less than a mile from Keuka Lake, Ingraffea said engineers need to know as much as possible about its structural integrity. Furthermore, because it is surrounded by another 17 existing wells within a five-mile radius, engineers must be certain there is no inter-connectivity among the wells.

Engineers need to know what is going down the well, how much wastewater there will be, the structural capacity of the well, the geology (whether the formation will accept the wastewater) and how long the disposal well will be used. All of this information becomes part of the calculation that determines injection pressure and the requirements for on-site storage of brine.

“And all of these have some failure potential,” Ingraffea said. For Walter Hang, the only way to fight the storage well is political. The first thing the town needs to do is, he said, is ask Chesapeake to rescind their proposal. The second thing is for the town to take back their status as lead agency.

In December the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) asked the town to let DEC act as lead agency for the State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR) of the project. Without consulting the rest of the town board, Pulteney Town Supervisor William Weber gave DEC the nod to take over.

“You need to get that lead agency status back,” said Hang. “You should be the ones to control this process.” DEC, he said, is eager to find ways to get rid of drilling wastewater because, to get a drilling permit, companies must declare where their wastewater will go.”

[On Feb. 8 the Pulteney Town Planning Board voted unanimously to request lead agency status from the DEC.]

And Pulteney residents should worry about more than just this single well. “An injection well here sets precedent for others in New York,” Hang said. “If this disposal well is successfully built, it will only be the first of many.”

Currently there are only two Trenton-Black River wells in Tompkins County: a “temporarily abandoned” well in Newfield and the yet-to-be-drilled Cook well in Dryden. But once horizontal Marcellus drilling takes off, the question of what to do with the millions of gallons of wastewater will become more acute. And for gas companies, right now depleted Trenton-Black River wells look like a good option

TAGGED WITH: gas drilling, Marcellus Shale, waste water