Water Quality Challenges Associated with Energy Resource Extraction from Marcellus Shale.

The rapid pace of natural gas development in the northeastern United States (Marcellus Shale) has prompted many scientists and citizens to begin monitoring water resources. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the Shale Network is a collaboration of members from Pennsylvania State University, University of Pittsburgh, Dickinson College, and the Consortium for Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Sciences, Inc. (CUAHSI). The Shale Network’s intent is to acts as an “honest broker” and facilitate compilation of these disparate data into a database that enables scientists and citizens alike to investigate surface and ground water quality in areas of shale gas extraction. This includes flowback water produced after hydraulic fracturing and production water extracted during well use. The Shale Network is compiling data collected by watershed groups, government agencies, industry stakeholders and universities and organizing and uploading the data for online publication. The mission of the Shale Network is to create a sustainable network among these groups and to develop a database that can be used to establish background concentrations and isotopic signature of contaminants of concern and to assess impacts across extraction regions of shale plays. By doing so, we will generate knowledge from the collected water chemistry, radioactive material levels and isotopic signatures and flow data. This knowledge would contribute to informed decision-making for sustainable water management strategies as well as radioactive/hazardous solid waste management.

            We are using the database to understand possible impacts from the shale gas industry. So far, we have discovered no evidence that large-scale regional water quality has been impacted in PA although the database shows the effects of some incidents (e.g, sediment spills, wastewater discharge, and well blowout) that will be highlighted in the presentation.