Legislation aims to close loophole for oil and gas waste; industry says concerns unwarranted
(The Center Square) – Pennsylvania state Rep. Sara Innamorato, D-Allegheny, and Sen. Katie Muth, D-Berks, are reintroducing legislation that would force drilling operations in the oil and gas industry to treat or test drilling waste.
The Pennsylvania Solid Waste Management Act, passed 30 years ago, excluded oil and gas companies from the requirement to thoroughly test or treat waste before disposing of it in municipal landfills and wastewater treatment plants, the lawmakers say. Neither landfills nor wastewater treatment plants can treat such radioactive waste, Innamorato and Muth said in a news release.
“This is a huge oversight in the Solid Waste Management Act that is having severe impacts on our neighbors and our environment,” Innamorato said in the news release. “We cannot allow the current practice of dangerous toxic waste disposal to continue. Pennsylvanians deserve better. Our planet deserves better.”
The Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry organization that advocates for natural gas drillers, has argued that the waste is not being sent to typical water treatment plants.
“The unconventional natural gas industry does not send liquid waste to publicly owned treatment works (POTWs),” the coalition said in a fact sheet last year. “The industry voluntarily discontinued sending liquid waste to POTWs, which treat liquid waste and discharge into waterways, back in 2011. This voluntary action was eventually incorporated as a federal rule and a condition of the discharge permits of POTWs, and no POTW has discharged unconventional liquid waste into a waterway since this time.”
Innamorato and Muth are introducing a package of three bills. Two of the bills would alter language in the Solid Waste Management Act to include drilling waste in the definition of hazardous waste and repeal language that exempts oil and gas industries from testing and treating drilling wastewater before disposal. The third bill would subject oil and gas waste to testing before it can be accepted in or released from municipal and sanitary landfills.
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