Pittsburg Residents Warned About Their Water
By Adam Brandolph
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, March 21,
2011
A West Virginia biology professor recommends that residents worried that
Marcellus shale drilling may contaminate their water should test it at their
taps.
But local water quality officials said residents who test their own water
won't know the difference between contaminants from Marcellus shale and other
factors.
"Certainly, total dissolved solids is one of the parameters that can be
affected by Marcellus shale wastewater," said Stanley States, director of water
quality and production for the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority. "But just
measuring for total dissolved solids is not going tell you anything about other
parameters. It's not an absolute fingerprint."
Wheeling Jesuit University professor Ben Stout and a team of students said
residents should be proactive in protecting themselves by taking three
steps:
• Test water daily with a conductivity pen, which measures the ability of
dissolved materials in the water to conduct electricity.
• Identify those materials, which can be done with a kit certified by the
Environmental Protection Agency.
• Keep a detailed notebook, recording the daily results and observations
about color, taste and odor.
States said levels of contaminants can fluctuate depending on the weather,
and residents can easily check their water quality levels with a regulating
agency or their water provider. The data, he said, is free and available to the
public.
Melody Kight, a law professor at the State University of New York's College
of Environmental Science and Forestry, co-authored a study that concluded that
site-specific groundwater testing before drilling takes place is essential if
landowners ever want to make a case that the well contaminated their drinking
water.
She presented her research Sunday at The Geological Society of America's
annual meeting Downtown.
"The distinct feature of hydraulic fracturing fluid is high salt, but there
are other sources of salt like road salt or water softeners," she said.
Kight's research noted that false positives have occurred in which
contamination is suspected, but where flowback water, which flows back to the
surface during the drilling process, never occurred.
By testing both groundwater and flowback, it is possible to determine
contamination with just a small amount of flowback in the groundwater, she
said.
Gary Lobaugh, a spokesman for Pennsylvania American Water Co., said the water
his company pumps out meets or exceeds all federal standards for quality.
Residents checking their own water quality standards, Lobaugh said, "sounds
like a bit of a redundance to me."
Read more: Residents urged to keep an eye on tap water quality - Pittsburgh
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