DEP issues few violations, one fine for Sunoco’s pipeline construction spills

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.
Jon Hurdle

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Jon is an experienced journalist who has covered a wide range of general and business-news stories for national and local media in the U.S. and his native U.K. As a former Reuters reporter, he spent several years covering the early stages of Pennsylvania’s natural gas fracking boom and was one of the first national reporters to write about the effects of gas development on rural communities. Jon trained as a general news reporter with a British newspaper chain and later worked for several business-news organizations including Bloomberg News and Market News International, covering topics including economics, bonds, currencies and monetary policy. Since 2011, he has been a freelance writer, contributing Philadelphia-area news to The New York Times; covering economics for Market News, and writing stories on the environment and other subjects for a number of local outlets including StateImpact. He has written two travel guidebooks to the European Alps; lived in Australia, Switzerland, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, and visited many countries including Ethiopia, Peru, Taiwan, and New Zealand. Outside of work hours, Jon can be found running, birding, cooking, and, when weather permits, gardening in the back yard of a Philadelphia row home where he lives with his partner, Kate.

July 21, 2017 | 6:42 PM

Workers cleared trees to make way for the Mariner East 2 pipeline in Delaware County, where school officials are seeking assurances on safety.

Emily Cohen / StateImpact PA

Workers cleared trees to make way for the Mariner East 2 pipeline in Delaware County in March. The company has spilled at drilling mud in dozens of incidents.. DEP has issued four violations, and one fine.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection has issued four Notices of Violation, one consent order and one fine to Sunoco Pipeline for dozens of drilling mud spills that occurred along the length of the Mariner East 2 pipeline construction project. The DEP released a statement on Friday describing its efforts to manage Sunoco’s construction of the 350-mile long pipeline where drilling has caused water-contamination incidents in recent weeks.

DEP also provided a link to a list of 49 incidents, as well as copies of the Notices of Violations, one of which was issued on Thursday.

The agency fined Sunoco $87,600 and issued a consent decree on June 27 for 13 separate drilling mud spills that occurred between May and June in Cumberland County. The Notices of Violations report 552,000 gallons of bentonite mud spilled into LeTort Spring Run, an Exceptional Value wetland in Cumberland County. Exceptional Value waterways are those that are clean enough to support fish and wildlife, such as wild trout streams, or those that have high value recreational use.

In response to a Notice of Violation, Sunoco said on June 7 that it had “contained, captured and recirculated” the fluid back to the drill rig, and that it was not “discharged throughout the wetland.”

But the consent decree, dated about three weeks later on June 27 reports that Sunoco had not yet remediated the problem, and had shut down operations at DEP’s request on June 9. Up until Friday’s release, no public notification had been made of this incident.

Sunoco spokesman Jeff Shields said there was a release of 1,500-2,000 gallons into the LeTort wetland at the Cumberland County site but the company had recorded the 552,000 gallons because that was the volume of fluid that was recirculated through pumps during the cleanup.

Bentonite mud is non-toxic to humans, but can ruin aquifers, and in large quantities smother aquatic life. A recent spill in an Ohio wetland of several million gallons of drilling mud during pipeline construction resulted in the operation halted by federal authorities. Ohio’s environmental regulators tested the mud and found diesel fuel had been added. The company building the Rover pipeline through Ohio is Energy Transfer Partners, which recently merged with Sunoco.

Violations were also issued as a result of drilling mud spills in Brookhaven, Delaware County in May, and another in Middletown Township, Delaware County due to an incident that occurred earlier this week.

DEP’s statement follows a chorus of complaints from private well owners whose water has turned cloudy or dried up in some places along the line. The incidents have prompted calls for a halt to drilling, or even to all Mariner East 2 construction, from state lawmakers representing some affected parts of the route.

Gov. Tom Wolf responded to angry residents and their representatives on Thursday by ordering the DEP to do what was legally possible to fix the problem.

In Friday’s statement, DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell said he wanted to assure the public that the DEP is taking their complaints seriously.

“With so much concern about the Mariner East 2 pipeline, the public needs to know that DEP is taking its oversight and regulatory enforcement role seriously,” McDonnell said. “This project has raised questions about public health and the health of the environment, and it is important to be transparent about the issues that have arisen over the course of the construction.”

McDonnell said there are “numerous” investigations underway into further possible violations, and that he expects to take more enforcement actions. He described the actions taken so far as “not the end of the road but the beginning.”

There were 61 spills of drilling fluid between April and June, according to documents turned over by DEP as part of a lawsuit challenging permits issued by the agency back in February. The discrepancy in the number of cases between the court filed documents and DEP’s recent release, is unclear.

DEP continues to face accusations that it issued permits for the pipeline even though deficiencies remained in Sunoco’s application, and that it has not required Sunoco to comply with permit conditions.

Critics said the DEP’s enforcement actions, and promises to do more, were not enough to ensure that drinking water and the natural environment are protected from the pipeline project.

“The fines levied by DEP are trivial,” said Eric Friedman, a member of the Middletown Coalition for Community Safety, an anti-pipeline group in Delaware County, where horizontal directional drilling this week resulted in a leak of bentonite, a non-toxic drilling mud, into a creek. “Their ability to deter continued unlawful behavior by Sunoco is insignificant.”

The group urged Gov. Wolf to halt construction, and for DEP to revoke the construction permits pending a public review that includes risks to public safety from the project.

State Rep. Leanne Krueger-Braneky, a Delaware County Democrat, said the DEP’s actions do not deflect her earlier call for a halt to all pipeline construction pending an investigation into the causes and solutions to the leaks.

“I still believe that the responsible thing to do would be to halt construction until their investigations are completed,” she said, referring to the DEP.

She described the enforcement actions as a “positive first step” but argued that they don’t solve the “systemic problem” that Sunoco continues to leak drilling fluid into creeks and impact aquifers.

“A handful of notices of violation don’t seem to be enough to hold Sunoco accountable,” she said.

Sunoco’s Shields noted that the company halted drilling in West Whiteland Township, Chester County on July 13 after some residents’ wells were affected. The company had restarted drilling several days after the accident, but has since shut down operations at the site.

“We are continually evaluating our drilling plans, and while construction continues throughout the rest of the state, we are working to ensure that the Governor’s concerns are addressed,” Shields said.

The 350-mile pipeline will carry natural gas liquids from the Marcellus Shale of southwestern Pennsylvania to an export terminal at Marcus Hook near Philadelphia. The $3 billion project is due for completion by the end of the third quarter.