Regulations that would restrict wastewater discharges from drilling operations in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale area to a more stringent 500 milligrams per liter (mg/l) standard, while other new and expanded facilities in general use would be allowed discharges up to a threshold of 2,000 mg/l, may be on a fast track to approval.

The rules, which would require drinking water standards for drilling wastewater emissions at the pipe, were approved last week by Pennsylvania’s Independent Regulator Review Commission (IRRC) (see NGI, June 21). The regulations were previously approved by the state’s Environmental Quality Board (see NGI, May 24).

The Pennsylvania Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, which has until Thursday (July 1) — 14 days from the IRRC vote — to reject the regulations, had not scheduled a vote on the issue last week, according to Patrick Henderson, spokesman for committee chairperson Mary Jo White (R-21st).

“I do not anticipate any hearings,” Henderson told NGI. “Sen. White will be determining the next course of action, if any, regarding the regulations, including consulting with members of the committee. If the regulations do proceed, there are other alternatives to address some identified shortcomings in the regulation — via legislation.”

Assuming the committee does not vote down the regulations, they would proceed to Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett’s office for review.

“We don’t have any constitutional authority to voice an opinion on the policy,” Corbett spokesman Nils Frederiksen told NGI. “Those types of matters, along with other state contracts and things like that, come to our office for form and legality review, and constitutionally our review is limited to just that, not a review in terms of an opinion by this office or an endorsement by this office.”

If the wastewater regulations go to the attorney general’s office, the case would be assigned to an attorney in the office’s review and advice section, Frederiksen said. “Typically, there’s a 30-day timetable to turn those things around. If there are issues, we’ll flag those. If there are no issues, we’ll return it to the agency that submitted it to us.”

At that point the rules would be eligible to be published in the PA Bulletin — and regulations are finalized once they are published, Henderson said.

Natural gas drilling is facing pushback in Pennsylvania, Michigan and New York from some whose fears of energy development have been stoked by the BP plc well blowout and spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico — and worries about hydraulic fracturing well stimulation techniques aren’t going away either as a new anti-drilling film on the topic is now playing on big and small screens (see related story).

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