Water siphoned from the Allegheny River in Tarentum is being used at a Marcellus natural gas well operation.
Several tanker loads of river water are loaded each time at a public launch off Wood Street, Tarentum, and hauled away by Toy Pipe Contracting of Worthington, Armstrong County.
Although the tankers are marked "residual waste" as required by the state, nothing is discharged into the river, according to Toy Pipe Contracting supervisor Ken Long.
"We only get fresh water from the river," he said. "We never dump into a stream."
Marcellus natural gas wells typically use water and chemicals under pressure to fracture rock in drilling.
After the water is mixed with chemicals and used at the gas well, all used water is sent to a treatment plant, Long said.
Tarentum Borough Manager Bill Rossey said the tanker company obtained the necessary state permits as well as permission from the borough before it started to draw river water.
"There's an agreement and they have approval through the DEP (state Department of Environmental Protection)," Rossey said.
The borough received a token payment — about $100 — for access, he said.
Once, when the company's 4,200-gallon tankers were backed up waiting to take water at the river, they got permission for some of them to use borough fire hydrants to fill the trucks, Rossey said.
"In that case, the water was metered and they paid us for it," he said.
He said Toy Pipe has been taking water for more than a year for use at a natural gas well in Fawn and a well being developed in Butler County.
According to a DEP Web site, there are several natural gas well permits for the Thomas Pajer et. al. well in Buffalo Township. They will be operated by Phillips Exploration Inc. based in Warrendale.
Larger text
Smaller text
