Blocksom
By Karl Henkel
WARREN
Andrew Blocksom used a local analogy to describe restrictions in the city of Warren’s new permit announced Monday by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.
“It’s like telling [General Motors] Lordstown they can start building playground equipment,” said the president of Patriot Water Treatment LLC, the state’s lone brine-wastewater treatment plant.
The new permit signed by OEPA Director Scott Nally takes effect April 1 and will halt Warren’s ability to accept treated fracking wastewater from Patriot or any other entity.
Patriot can still accept fracking wastewater from Utica and Marcellus shale exploration but has to find a different method of disposal or reuse, such as recycling or injection-well disposal, said Mike Settles, OEPA spokesman.
Separately, OEPA granted Patriot a permit to accept and treat new wastewater sources from other industries, but Blocksom considered it “a smokescreen” because 98 percent of Patriot’s business is treating fracking wastewater.
Patriot can treat up to 100,000 gallons of fluid per day.
Warren’s new permit, which will replace one that expired at the end of January, comes in the middle of a legal battle involving OEPA, Patriot, Warren and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
The state has said it unlawfully issued permits regarding Patriot’s operations, but the Environmental Review Appeals Commission recently confirmed the legality of the permits.
Legal proceedings, including a hearing in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court, scheduled for Wednesday, are still pending.
But Settles said the entity felt it was time to issue a new permit.
“The appeals of [Patriot’s] original permit are still pending,” he told The Vindicator on Monday. “That could take some time.
“This is an opportunity to take action that provides a road map moving forward.”
Nally, who is out of town until Thursday but was subpoenaed for Wednesday’s court hearing, did not comment.
“It’s about time he answers some questions,” Blocksom said. “The state needs to have a change of EPA director.”
The office of Gov. John Kasich also did not respond to a request to comment.
Ohio last year made $1.5 million from a brine-tax fee for fluid disposed at injection wells, a process that, in the rare case of the D&L Energy Inc. well in Youngstown, has been linked to earthquakes. Patriot’s treatment system refines low-salt water so that it can be treated in municipal plants, bypassing the injection wells.
State Rep. Sean O’Brien of Brookfield, D-65th, who spoke to Nally over the weekend, said the legal system will eventually determine Patriot’s fate, but is still unsure of the situation’s conclusion.
He said Nally told him that treated fracking wastewater could cause cancer because chlorine, used to treat water at all municipal plants, mixed with high levels of bromides, or salts, can create trihalomethanes, a carcinogen that can cause bladder cancer.
Blocksom and Tom Angelo, city water pollution control director, acknowledged the chemistry of the argument, but again iterated that Patriot does not accept high-salt fracking wastewater.
It accepts flowback wastewater from fracking, which contains higher levels of solid material and much lower levels of salt, hence eliminating the carcinogen danger.
“Warren would never have that risk,” Angelo said.
Warren’s permit will, however, allow it to avoid compliance with strict limits to total dissolved solids; substances in liquids are measured by TDS.
OEPA had planned to limit Warren’s TDS level to 622 milligrams per liter, well below the state standard of 1,500. The permit calls for the monitoring of TDS twice a week.
O’Brien said other companies that disperse TDS, such as GM Lordstown, would have needed to make multi-million dollar investments to monitor TDS levels.
He called that aspect of OEPA’s permit a victory over an “economic blockade.”
Patriot, which opened last May, has 25 employees at its Sferra Drive plant.
Blocksom said his business will operate as usual and expects to stay in business pending final court decisions.
Comments
I hope this is finally an end to this scam of the public. The people running the sewer plant in Warren knew that they would treat nothing in the water from Patriot. All the plant removes is human waste. All Patriot water has is salt and other chemicals, none of which are removed at the Warren sewer plant. It was all just a scam. A way to pollute the Mahoning River while making a buck for Patriot. Now Patriot can figure out how to really treat the water so it is clean enough for them to safely dump it into the river themselves.
This fellow Blocksom better be careful about his public accusations, or he will soon feel the full weight of the Ohio AG's office. It won't be pretty for him or his company.
Cheap fossil fuels equal pollution. Natural gas and gasoline along with diesel fuel must bear the real costs. Eight dollars per gallon gasoline and fifteen dollars per thousand cubic feet of natural gas could be a start.
We can and should remove the salt from oilfield wastewater. The use of roadsalt should be eliminated.
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/New...
Simple salt removal to get fresh water
18 March 2011
Scientists in the US have developed a membrane-free, solvent extraction method to remove salt from seawater that works at low temperatures.
The team used decanoic acid as a solvent to mix with the water. 'Upon slight heating, our solvent dissolves the water out, leaving salts and impurities behind. Then, upon cooling, the mixture separates into two layers by gravity, releasing pure water. Unlike reverse osmosis, this method does not use expensive membranes and unlike evaporation processes, does not need heating to high temperatures,' explains Chen. The process was shown to be effective at temperatures as low as 40 degrees Celsius and the recovered water met the salinity standards set by the World Health Organisation and the US Environmental Protection Agency.
If Patriot can't handle the new specifications they need to stop. We have only a limited supply of fresh water.
Think of the millions upon millions of gallons of fresh water that are being used in fracking. The other chemicals that the Clean water Act allows to be hidden aren't mentioned in this process, only salt as if the others don't exist.