CAN VOLUNTEERS PICK UP THE SLACK? EFFORTS TO REMEDY KNOWLEDGE GAPS ABOUT THE WATERSHED IMPACTS OF MARCELLUS SHALE GAS DEVELOPMENT

INTRODUCTION Since 2008, a natural gas boom has been underway in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, as oil and gas companies are pursuing a source of natural gas that was previously considered too difficult to access--the Marcellus Shale. (1) Activities associated with development of the Marcellus Shale, including the handling of large quantities of hazardous waste water, and land use changes leading to soil erosion and runoff, are likely to pose significant environmental risks and cause contamination of streams, ponds, and other surface water if not managed properly. In response to the relative lack of regulatory or professional monitoring of watershed degradation, private citizens are increasingly taking the task of environmental monitoring into their own hands, forming volunteer watershed monitoring groups and using an array of tests to detect water pollution. Public agencies, such as the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, and university scientists, such as researchers at Pennsylvania State University, are encouraging these activities as a supplement to monitoring by regulatory scientists and as a source of data for environmental research. Many water monitoring groups also believe that their scrutiny will encourage the industry to be on its best behavior. In this paper, we offer an assessment of this increasingly prevalent model of environmental governance, which relies primarily upon self-funded volunteers to monitor and report environmental impacts. Civil society research (2) appears to offer a promising way to gather environmental data at a time when government agencies are struggling to keep up with a rapidly expanding industry. It is therefore essential to understand the scope of these volunteer projects and to critically consider their role in the larger effort to gather environmental data. There are good reasons to monitor watersheds for the impacts of Marcellus Shale gas development. The extraction of shale gas is a complex, multi-stage process with environmental impacts that are different from conventional gas drilling. Watershed impacts have been among the top concerns for environmental regulators, local communities, and environmental advocacy organizations. Every stage of the exploration and drilling process, from seismic testing to reclamation, poses its own set of unique watershed and water quality risks. Shale gas extraction operations use a combination of techniques, including horizontal drilling and perforation, and hydraulic fracturing techniques ("hydrofracing" in industry parlance, often called "fracking" by critics). Hydraulic fracturing involves injecting a mixture of water, chemicals, and proppants (such as sand) under very high pressure to cause the shale to fracture and release its gas. (3) Gas-drilling operations in the Marcellus Shale use an average of 3,000,000 gallons of water in the process of drilling and fracturing a well. (4) Before the fresh water used in the hydraulic fracturing process is injected underground, it is mixed with additives such as friction reducers, biocides, and acids. (5) While these chemicals typically compose less than 0.5% of the hydraulic fracturing fluid by volume, a well that consumes 3,000,000 gallons of water also uses approximately 15,000 gallons of additives, which are transported to well sites to be stored and mixed, and ultimately are part of the liquid waste. (6) Of the water used to drill and conduct initial fracing at a single Marcellus horizontal well, roughly 10 to 30% will return to the surface as "flowback." (7) The remainder of the water and chemical mixture remains underground for an indefinite period of time, returning to the surface throughout the life of the gas well as "produced water." (8) The flowback and produced water from hydraulically fractured shale gas wells is a "brine" that contains more salt than sea water plus heavy metals and radioactive materials from the geology through which it has flowed] This hazardous waste is collected in ponds at the well site or in holding tanks. …