An oil and gas company lost over a million gallons of drilling fluid into an abandoned coal mine in Washington County over a period of months, state records show.
Contractors for the pipeline company MarkWest Liberty Midstream & Resources LLC lost control of drilling fluid on at least 19 occasions over the fall and winter, according to Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection records. The records show that the company had similar experiences on two other pipelines it built in the area.
The fluid went into “a mine void” at the site of the abandoned Primrose Mine in Mount Pleasant Township during drilling for a new pipeline, the Chiarelli to Imperial Pipeline Project, between October and January. The mine was active in the early 1900s, according to state records.
The fluid is used to make drilling easier during horizontal directional drilling, a common technique used to bore holes underground for pipelines. The fluid, classified as industrial waste under state law, contained a mix of water, soda ash and bentonite clay, according to DEP records. The company said in an email that the mixture is nontoxic and approved by the DEP, and that it’s monitoring for surface water contamination, but hasn’t found any.
The losses of fluid were first reported by PA Environment Digest, a website run by former DEP secretary David Hess.
Cat Lodge, who lives in nearby Robinson Township, doesn’t think the DEP should have allowed the company to keep drilling through the area of the abandoned mine. She’s worried about where the fluid ended up.
“Where did it go? And what do you do now if it winds up in somebody’s well water?” Lodge said. “I wouldn’t want this in my drinking water. I wouldn’t it in my animals’ drinking water. If it hits the waters of the Commonwealth, this could be hazardous to fish.”
The company told the DEP it did not contact local residents or test nearby groundwater.
Lodge, who works for the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project, which is not involved in the case, thinks residents should know more about incidents like these.
“We need to know if something is in our water; if we’re exposed to something, we should know to protect ourselves,” Lodge said.
At press time, the DEP did not respond to a request for comment.
The DEP’s publicly available records show the agency issued a notice of violation for the project for failing to report past losses, and could issue more, pending further investigation.
