Water, Water, Everywhere

• Susan Phillips
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  Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

A new report sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council examines wastewater disposal methods used in Pennsylvania and comes to the conclusion that, well, none of them are safe. It’s a good explainer on what happens to both “flowback” water (what comes up after a well is fracked) and “produced” water (what comes up after the well starts producing gas). Both can contain high levels of salts, hydrocarbons, heavy metals and naturally occurring radioactive material.
The report is co-authored by Carnegie Mellon University professor Jeanne VanBriesen, and partly funded by the William Penn Foundation. It looks at the methods and impacts of five wastewater disposal options including recycling and reuse for drilling operations, treatment and discharge, deep well injection disposal, and reuse for outside benefits such as dust cover, and road ice removal.
Natural gas producers in Pennsylvania have been increasing their use of recycled wastewater by using it again to frack a new well. VanBriesen writes that although recycling wastewater is the best option, it still requires some disposal.

“Regardless of the treatment option selected, there will be residuals: concentrated brines and solids containing the chemicals removed from the produced water. Management of these residuals is just as critical as management of the original produced water.”

For more of the reports’ analysis of the wastewater treatment methods and their impacts, click here.

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