Cleaning and Reusing Water Used in Fracking
On May 22, 2018, John Wasilewski spoke to the members of the York-East Rotary Club about the problems associated with water usage in the fracking industry. Fracking has become a major source of natural gas in Pennsylvania. Left: John Wasilewski, right President-elect Ben Marchant
The Marcellus Shale formation, which extends from northeastern Pennsylvania southwesterly into West Virginia, contains huge amounts of extractable gas. The process of extraction requires extraordinary volumes of water, sometimes exceeding 100s of millions of gallons, for each gas producing well. The water that is produced by each of these wells must then be treated before being reused or put back into fresh water streams. Mr. Wasilewski’s company, C2G, provides the treatment services for water used in gas extraction in the Montrose area of Pennsylvania. He focused on the improvements in water reuse technology and the benefit of treating water close to the well heads by reducing heavy truck traffic in the region. The industry is heavily regulated by the Department of Environmental Protection to avoid problems of contamination of drinking water due to the fracking process and to prevent toxic materials from being introduced into landfills as a part of the unrecoverable waste.