Delco wastewater treatment permit rescinded

Months ago, with little public awareness, the Delaware County wastewater treatment plant got a state permit to accept wastewater from natural gas-drilling operations hundreds of miles away.

The plan was to take the polluted water from the burgeoning - and contentious - industry in the Marcellus Shale region, transport it by truck or train to the Chester facility, treat it there, and then discharge it into the Delaware River.

Until yesterday, that is, when the permit was abruptly rescinded.

State Department of Environmental Protection Secretary John Hanger admitted his agency had made mistakes.

Meanwhile, more permits - including a nod from the Delaware River Basin Commission - are needed before the plant could actually start taking the water.

But the DRBC is considering that request now. Agency scientists said a recommendation could be made by March.

Joseph Salvucci, executive director of the authority that owns the plant, said it may reapply for DEP approval if and when it gets the nod from the DRBC.

All of which means that the wastewater could still come to Chester.

If so, said the Rev. Horace Strand, head of the grassroots Chester Environmental Partnership, "they've got a fight on their hands that they cannot imagine."

Issues related to drilling for natural gas have been vigorously debated from the southwest corner of the state to the northeast, where a geologic formation known as the Marcellus Shale holds vast reserves of natural gas - enough to power the entire country for 15 years, according to some estimates.

Yet getting the gas out of the ground requires millions of gallons of water to fracture - or "frack" - the shale. Companies add various chemicals to increase the water's effectiveness, and the fracking process deep underground can contaminate the wastewater with toxics and natural radioactivity.

Companies need ways to deal with the wastewater. Options include treating it on-site, reusing it, injecting it into deep wells and transporting it to wastewater treatment plants.

But treatment has been problematic because the water has impurities known as "total dissolved solids" and other contaminants, such as chlorides (salt) and sulfates.

Most plants cannot remove the solids. On April 16, the DEP announced discharge standards limiting the solids in the wastewater effluent.

But just five weeks earlier, on March 9, the state approved a permit for the Delaware County Regional Water Quality Control Authority, which was already discharging levels of solids that were higher than the new standards, to accept this solids-laden water in Chester.

The approval meant that the plant would be "grandfathered," not having to comply with the new standards until its permit was changed for other reasons, DEP officials acknowledged.

In some ways, the plant might be considered a good candidate for the wastewater. There are no public drinking-water intakes on the Delaware River below the plant.

The river's flow at that point is high, which means it has more capacity to dilute any wastewater. And because it often carries a lot of sediment and is somewhat salty because of its proximity to the bay, the river there naturally has a high background level of solids.

Salvucci said earlier that the plant had received inquiries from fracking wastewater companies but had no agreements with anyone.

He pursued the matter because of the potential revenue, which he said "might be as much as a million dollars," adding that the figure was "highly speculative."

But he said it could "help us mitigate rate increases in Delaware County, particularly the residents in Chester, who can ill afford higher rates."

Community and environmental advocates were nevertheless outraged to learn that such a plan was even under consideration.

"This facility is so far from where most of the drilling is going to happen," requiring hundreds of truckloads or trainloads to transport, said David Masur, director of PennEnvironment, an advocacy group. "It adds one more black eye to the process, as if it didn't have enough already."

Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, called the permit "a huge oversight.. . . DEP never should have rushed this permit before they adopted their strategy."

And, said Strand, the fact that no one from the authority or the DEP notified the community about the permit was "a real breach of trust." His group meets with both agencies regularly - including several times since March - "and not one time did DEP or DELCORA reveal they were amending this permit to take in this toxic water."

Salvucci countered, "I know Rev. Strand would like us to notify him about all sorts of things. My problem is if I do that for him, I have to do that for everyone else who may have a special interest one way or another."

The DEP's Jenifer Fields, who heads the southeast regional water management program, said all policies had been followed. The pending permit approval had been published in the Pennsylvania Bulletin.

But Hanger acknowledged last night that "it may well be that more public input and comment should have been done on this. I personally take responsibility for any lack of it."

The Inquirer first asked the DEP about the permit two weeks ago, and spokespeople there first gave vague and conflicting accounts of whether the permit had been issued and what it would allow the plant to do, then asked for more time to check into it.

According to the DEP, things began to take on a new light yesterday morning when officials there were copied on an e-mail from a DELCORA engineer to the basin commission.

The DRBC's review process was taking longer than DELCORA had hoped, and the engineer wondered whether things could be speeded up if they separated the shale-wastewater issue from other permit requests.

The DEP permit involved many other issues, and Salvucci said the agency's southeastern director, Joseph Feola, called him later that day, "and asked me would I mind them revising the permit. . . to take that approval out, pending the final approval from the DRBC. My answer was, 'No, I don't mind.' "

Salvucci sent a letter officially making the request to "delete the approval to accept the drilling wastewater."

State Rep. Gregory S. Vitali (D., Delaware), who had already expressed his doubts about the wisdom of sending the fracked water to Chester, said he personally talked to Hanger, who said the permit had been issued in error.

"The cart may have been put before the horse here," Hanger said last night.

He said it was the first such request involving the DEP and the DRBC, and the sequence of necessary approvals is "being worked out by all the parties."

Carluccio wonders if this is how a watchdog agency should operate.

"Is this the way permitting in Pennsylvania is going to go?" she said. "Issuing permits right and left, and if somebody calls them on it, then they'll look at it more closely?"