Two 18-wheel tractor trailers carry fresh water to natural gas wells being drilled by hydrofracking in the Marcellus Shale on September 10, 2012, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
Wastewater dumping is an open secret on Pennsylvania roads. At a legislative hearing this spring, state senators Katie Muth and Carolyn Comitta, both Democrats, said they witnessed companies spreading wastewater last fall during a tour of new fracking wells. Lawson, who has become a public face of opposition to wastewater dumping, experiences sinus pains and believes her symptoms are connected to living near roads coated with wastewater.
The agency rarely asks. In 2021, the DEP requested justification for claiming coproduct status from 16 companies. Only 10 responded. The DEP told them that the materials they submitted were “inadequate.” Shader, the DEP spokesperson, told Grist that the coproduct term will no longer appear in waste reports because oil and gas companies “have been using the product type incorrectly,” likely misunderstanding the term’s purpose. The agency “investigates reports of unauthorized roadspreading of brine and will take enforcement action as appropriate,” he said. “DEP encourages members of the public who observe potentially unauthorized roadspreading of brine to report the activity to DEP.
The DEP has denied Feridun’s interpretation of its decision. The agency was attempting to “readily identify” which companies had already conducted waste toxicity assessments as a precursor to dumping their wastewater, Shader said. “The addition of this product type code was in no way intended to imply that the requirements did not need to be satisfied.”
Lawson’s experiences, new research, and the findings from Feridun’s records request have thrust oil and gas companies’ behavior back into the state’s political spotlight. At a state senate hearing in April, Bill Burgos, a professor of environmental engineering at Pennsylvania State University, told lawmakers “there is no more research that needs to be done” to determine whether oil and gas wastewater is safe and effective for treating roads.
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