SRBC Expands Its Water Withdrawal Ban

A quick update on the Susque­hanna River Basin Commission’s week-old freeze on water with­drawals: it’s still in effect.

In fact, the ban has expanded from 36 to 41 dif­fer­ent loca­tions along the river and its trib­u­taries, and will stay in place until water lev­els rise and stay ele­vated for 48 hours.

The mora­to­rium impacts nat­ural gas drilling, because energy com­pa­nies use thou­sands of gal­lons of fluid dur­ing the hydraulic frac­tur­ing process, and get much of their liq­uid from nearby streams.

There’s no blan­ket water level that trig­gers the mora­to­rium. Each with­drawal source “has [its own] pre­de­ter­mined trig­ger level,” explained SRBC spokes­woman Susan Obleski. “We estab­lish a very con­ser­v­a­tive num­ber, and when that hits, [with­drawal] has to cease.”

The freeze hasn’t stopped drilling, yet. Chesa­peake Energy has been barred from with­draw­ing water at at least three loca­tions, but com­pany spokesman Rory Sweeney said Chesa­peake drillers antic­i­pate sum­mer­time with­drawal mora­to­ri­ums, and “plan accordingly.”

“Through proper plan­ning and water man­age­ment such as the exten­sive use of fresh­wa­ter stor­age impound­ments and our industry-leading Aqua Renew water recy­cling and reuse pro­gram,” his state­ment con­tin­ued, “these sea­sonal changes in water avail­abil­ity are exten­sively planned for and are not expected to have a sig­nif­i­cant effect on our operations.”

How does the SRBC know whether com­pa­nies are com­ply­ing with the freeze?  Stream gauges run by the United States Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey mon­i­tor every with­drawal point, and the com­mis­sion would be able to tell if com­pa­nies are dip­ping in. The com­mis­sion also sends inspec­tors out into the field to do ran­dom spot checks. Obleski said when SRBC staff vis­ited the water sources dur­ing a 2010 mora­to­rium, they found, “they found 100 per­cent com­pli­ance” by the energy companies.