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Range Resources has
provided gas well completion reports to FracFocus indicating that
many of their Marcellus Shale wells in Washington County, Pa have
required around 3-million gallons of water to frack each well.
Following the hydraulic fracturing process, a large volume of these fluids come
back out of the shale contaminated with frac fluids, a high salt
level, naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM)
and other toxics that exist in the shale layer.
Men walking around in what looks like the bottom of a cesspool
May 6, 2012
Range Resources has often used
temporary pipelines to move this initial flowback from fracked
wells to large
impoundment
dams, or visa versa. Some of the newer impoundments are the size of football
fields, holding 13-million gallons of fluids. These 'residual
waste' frac pits are easy to distinguish from freshwater
impoundments due to the white salty-looking stains on the exposed
portions of their black liners. By using a network of these
impoundments and temporary pipelines, Range can stockpile liquids
for upcoming fracks.
Plastic pipeline used by Range Resources to move fluids from
an
impoundment to a fracking location. These temporary pipelines
are often several miles long and have been known to leak.
On several occasions, Range Resources operations
have experienced
spills from these temporary pipelines in Washington County, the
most notable being the
spill and fish kill in Cross Creek Park in May 2009. Five months
later the company had another spill and fish kill in a tributary of
Brush Run Creek near a fracking operation. Both locations
were supposed to have extra careful treatment as 'Special Protection Watersheds."
Below is a letter sent to Range concerning one of these special
areas, in this case, the Cross Creek Park watershed:
These temporary pipeline spills usually result in thousands of
gallons (over 10,000 gallons in the
Brush Run incident) of residual waste escaping into the environment,
killing fish and aquatic life, and causing other damage. In most of
these spill incidents only a small percentage of the toxic fluids
has been recovered. Very little regulation, if any, exists for these
temporary pipelines. They are usually routed helter-skelter along
roadways, through culverts and across the countryside.
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NEARBY RANGE RESOURCES FRACKING
OPERATION DURING DECEMBER 2011
Range Resources piped fluids 2-miles through
temporary pipelines for hydraulic fracturing of the
Chiarelli Pad gas wells in December 2011. Below is a
look at those rusty-looking fluids in the Carter
Impoundment.
Carter Impoundment Dam - December 10, 2011
MARCH 21, 2011 - The Pa.
DEP issued two
violations for Range's Carter Impoundment:
Failure to properly store, transport, process or dispose
of a residual waste.
Failure to properly control or dispose of industrial or
residual waste to prevent pollution of the waters of the
Commonwealth.
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Range's
Carol Baker Centralized Impoundment Dam also has multiple violations
in its first two years of existence, failing to prevent "pollution of the
waters of the Commonwealth."
"Failure to properly
store, transport, process or dispose of a residual waste."
"Failure to properly
control or dispose of industrial or residual waste to prevent
pollution of the waters of the Commonwealth."
"Failure to properly
control or dispose of industrial or residual waste to prevent
pollution of the waters of the Commonwealth."
"Residual Waste is
mismanaged."
Carol Baker Centralized Impoundment Dam
May 6, 2012
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