DEP Fines Water Treatment Facility for Frack Water Spill

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.

January 13, 2012 | 3:18 PM

The Department of Environmental Protection says TerrAqua Resource Management employees spilled between 800 and 1000 gallons of frack water last March. The spill occurred at the company’s treatment facility in Williamsport. DEP fined the company $18,500.

“The spill occurred when TerrAqua employees were in the process of filling three frack water storage tanks that overflowed into the containment system. The containment berms were not elevated enough and were too close to the tanks to contain the frack water.”

A clean up crew was able to recover about 750 gallons of the contaminated water. The rest went into the Susquehanna River. In a press release, DEP says the amount of the discharge was too small to impact the river.