Moving fracking water by barge stirs debate




The disagreements go to the core of the fight over shale drilling for natural gas. Environmentalists say the chemicals in fracking waste are a tragedy in the making, but the industry says far greater amounts of toxic chemicals already are being moved by barge, including waste from oil drilling.

In 2010, U.S. barges carried 2,000 tons of radioactive waste, almost 1.6 million tons of sulfuric acid and 315 million tons of petroleum products, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said.

“We expect that shale-gas wastewater can be transported just as safely,” said Jennifer Carpenter, of American Waterways Operators, a trade group based in Washington.

Environment America, a federation of 29 state-based groups, strongly disagrees. The group said in a statement that it gathered 29,000 comments opposed to the proposal from people across the country. Courtney Abrams, the clean-water program director for the group, urged the Coast Guard to “ reject this outrageous proposal.”


The Marcellus Shale formation, underlying large parts of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and some neighboring states, is the nation’s most-productive natural-gas field. Thousands of new wells have been drilled there since 2008, and hundreds of millions of gallons of wastewater needs to be disposed of each year.

Some states, such as Texas and Ohio, have many underground waste-disposal wells. Pennsylvania has only a few, meaning the leftovers have to be shipped elsewhere.

