McKeesportlike Pittsburghsits on a golden triangle of economic possibility.

The city was built where the Youghiogheny River meets the Monongahela, which flows roughly 15 miles to Pittsburghs Point. However, the quality of these waterways has been less than golden through the years of industrial use and abuse by steel manufacturing, longwall coal mining, and most recently, by Marcellus Shale drilling and hydraulic fracking. McKeesports municipal authority is one of several water treatment facilities in the Mon Valley that has accepted frack water from Marcellus drilling companies in order to bolster its economy via a new revenue stream. The waste stream, however, was blocked because the municipality lacked the proper permits from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. In April 2012, McKeesport settled a legal dispute with Clean Water Action (CWA) and Three Rivers Waterkeeper, two environmental non-profit groups, by agreeing to stop accepting frack water into its waste processing plant until it obtained the proper DEP permits. This suit was the first filed in a federal court to stop the discharge of Marcellus drilling wastewater in Pennsylvania. The environmental groups claimed that the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) had essentially bypassed the Clean Water Act when it allowed McKeesport to discharge 100,000 gallons per day of frack water into the Monongahela River. The court found that government at the federal, state, and local level had all failed to properly protect their citizens from drinking potentially contaminated drinking water. The McKeesport case begs questions about the relationships among the various levels of government involved in protecting our waterways and what effect Marcellus drilling is having on rivers and streams. How is our drinking water monitored? How are the laws and regulations created to protect the water supply actually enforced? The system appears to have some cracks.

Regulation According to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers document from the October 2012 West Virginia Water Research Conference, the following regulations exist on the federal level to ensure water quality: 56 federal laws 10 executive orders 38 regulations 8 interagency memorandums of agreement Other miscellaneous directives and guidance documents that regulate water quality. The most far-reaching pieces of federal legislation are the Clean Water Act of 1972 and the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, which created most of the framework for ensuring that the nations water is treated in a way that assures good environmental and human health. These acts have been amended several times but continue to serve as the primary legal guardians of our water. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enforces these laws at the national level. On the state level, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett signed Act 13 into law in, 2012. Act 13 is an environmental legal provision that, according to the DEP website, increased setback requirements for unconventional gas development; enhanced protection of water supplies; and [created] strong, uniform, consistent statewide environmental standards. It is one of the most recent additions to the DEPs list of regulatory duties that also address Marcellus and Utica Shale drilling with previously unseen level of political clout. Throughout the country, various River Basin Commissions also create their own interstate policies and regulations to protect the health and quality of the rivers, as well as the health and general well-being of the citizens who reside within the basin. For example, the Susquehanna River Basin

Commission (SRBC) creates policies that effect Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland. Some of SRBCs policies are regulate natural gas development, low flow period procedures, and the use and reuse of low-quality water. One of the disadvantages Southwestern Pennsylvania has is that they dont have a River Basin Commission like the Delaware or the Susquehanna does, said Steve Hvodzovich, Marcellus Shale Policy Associate, lobbyist and community organizer for Clean Water Action The SRBC brings together multiple state players around that watershed, and together they wield greater political clout. Without such a commission, Southwestern Pennsylvania has a harder time exerting political pressure on clean water issues, Hvodzovich said. A river basin commission or a similar interstate group could have prevented McKeesport and other municipalities from harming the quality of the Monongahela. Enforcement Evan Stoddard, former director of economic development for the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh and now associate dean at Duquesne Universitys McAnulty College of Liberal Arts, believes that regulators on the federal, state and local levels are struggling to keep up with the rapid development of shale drilling. Regulations address known problems he said. As the issues resulting from shale gas extraction surface, regulators are trying to figure out how to address them. It's a process of trial and error to some degree. Historically, he said, environmental enforcement has followed a trickle-down approach. In general, state laws have conformed with federal laws, and the EPA has looked to the states to implement federal laws and standards., he said. But the oversight of shale drilling has scrambled this relationship, he explained. With shale drilling, environmental regulations overlap with land use ordinances, and the latter have remained in the domain of states and local municipalities. I suspect that local officials don't know much about regulation of the industry, Stoddard said.

The sheer size and complexity of the shale industry has also challenged enforcement. Between 2008 and 2011, the number of Marcellus shale wells in Pennsylvania grew form 326 to 1,976, an 500 percent increase.

The EPA has stepped up its inspection of energy extractions in an effort to keep pace. In an effort to address what it says is an urgent need to assure that we develop energy sources in an environmentally protective manner, EPA inspections shot up 133 percent between 2011 and 2012. But enforcement, showing only a 23 percent increase during the same period, has not kept pace.

State and local agencies are unlikely to be of much help. In March 2013, $154 million was cut from appropriations to state environmental programs because of federal Sequestration. Pennsylvania saw over $5 million in cuts to clear water and air programs and over $1 million more to fish and wildlife preservation programs. As the failure of governmental oversight of McKeesports water processing shows, the problems with water quality are too numerous for federal or state agencies to monitor. Since the discovery that McKeesport was attempting to process frack water, Hvodzovich of CWA said, the DEP has asked all the natural gas drilling operators in Pennsylvania to voluntarily stop taking their wastewater to municipal treatment facilities and to develop alternative ways of disposing of it through recycling or injection wells. That has certainly helped in addressing this issue, he said.

But the request is voluntary. In 2011, when the EPA sent orders to 13 waste water treatment facilities in Pennsylvania requiring them to certify that they were no longer accepting frack water, several plants refused. Fragmentation of governmental responsibility hampers enforcement. Non-profits like CWA and TRW have struggled to plug up holes that left by sweeping federal mandates that state agencies have failed to enforce. Problems are further hampered by the fact that environmental problems are not contained by governmental jurisdictions. State lines, state laws and even municipal boundaries can be a challenge because one state or one municipality doing the right thing doesnt mean the next one is, Hvodzovich said. Youve got to take it piece by piece so to speak because thats the only way youre going to be able to deal with people and make them realize that this is a bigger issue than just one area. Monitoring but not enforcing? One agency with oversight over all U.S. waterways that provide drinking water is U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). The Pittsburgh District USACE is responsible for 328 miles of navigable waterways and over 1,000 miles of 21 major rivers and streams and impacted by the Corps operation of 16 reservoirs. Its jurisdiction extends to West Virginia, Ohio, Maryland and New York. Congressional mandate, executive orders and federal laws charge the Corps with managing water reservoirs to maintain water quality. However, the reservoirs are also used for flood control, lowflow scenarios, water supply, fish and wildlife protection, and recreation. The Corps is not a regulatory agency and does not have to the authority to regulate water quality, just monitor it. The only regulatory functions the Corps is responsible for are Section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 and Section 404 of the Clean Water Act.

Under Section 10, a permit is required for work or structures in, over, or under navigable waters of the United States. A permit is required for the discharge of dredged or fill material into waters of the United States. However, neither of these acts has any provisions for enforcing water quality standards. A representative of the Corps Pittsburgh District gave the following statement: To assure optimum operation of projects for authorized purposes, the District has been monitoring water quality (time-series and grab samples), since the mid 1970s. After four decades of improving water quality, in 2008 our data began to show negative trends for water quality parameters related to shale gas extraction activities (total dissolved solids, chlorides, sodium, strontium, etc.). These data also show that the assimilative capacity for total dissolved solids (TDS) during low flow periods has already been reached in the lower Monongahela, Casselman, Youghiogheny, and West Fork Rivers. These measureable changes in the water resources of the Monongahela River Watershed, which coincided with the development of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale formation in those basins, are affecting the Corps water quality and natural resource management missions. Our ability to realize authorized water quality benefits could be further impacted by excessive withdrawals from reservoir inflows or their downstream regulated reaches, or with permitted or unpermitted discharge of high TDS wastewater into surface waters. In addition, Corps reservoirs have little or no capacity to release enough water to dilute the Monongahela River TDS load during low flow periods. The District therefore supports implementation of a sustainable watershed-based approach for water withdrawals and management of the growing TDS load in the entire upper Ohio River watershed.

But the Corps has no regulatory authority over water quality, does not conduct identify pollution sources, and cannot investigate any causality between sources of pollution and water quality. However, the Corps own research does indicate that sodium and chloride levels in the Monongahela are on a linear increase, and these elements are considered TDS. Other TDS include sulfates, magnesium, arsenic and calcium and while not technically a TDS, certain radioactive isotopes such as radium and uranium have been found in water quality samples pulled by the Corps and others as well. In an April 3,, 2013 release, the DEP stated that based on current data regulations and industry practices, there is no indication that the public or workers in the oil and gas industry face health risks from exposure to radiation from these materials [flowback waters, drilling equipment, etc]. The Corps seems to be a good candidate to monitor, regulate, and enforce on behalf of the environment and the population, but that is not its role. Given its unique position and various operational missions related to water, its easy to compare the Corps with a power-hitter being asked to bunt. McKeesport plus one year and The Future One year after the April 2012 federal lawsuit stopped McKeesports municipal authority from illegally discharging frack water into the Monongahela River, where do things stand? A 2010 list of permitted use facilities within the Monongahela River drainage, compiled by Conrad Volz of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the University of Pittsburgh, included the following sites: Site and 1,000 Gallons/Day

Site McKeesport* Clairton Municipal Authority* Mon Valley Brine Authority of Borough of Charleroi Municipal Authority of Belle Vernon Borough of California

1,000 Gallons/Day 115 60 200 30 10 10

Brownsville Municipal Authority Franklin Township Sewer Waynesburg Borough Shallenberger-Ronco Shallenberger-Rankin Run Shallenberger Connellsville

9 50 8 500 125 1,000

*Clairtons municipal authority was offered $700,000 for its 2010 frack water contract. If given the same deal, McKeesport stood to make over $1.3 million that year. A statement from the DEP said none of the sites listed above discharges frack water anymore. The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit program, a creation of the EPA, controls water pollution by regulating point sources that discharge pollutants into waters. Industrial, municipal, and other facilities must obtain permits if their discharges go directly to surface waters. In most cases, the NPDES permit program is administered by authorized states. In the case of Pennsylvania, permits are issued by the DEP. Mon Valley Brine permit applications were withdrawn along with the Shallenbeger-Rankin Run and Shallenberger Connellsville. The Shallenberger-Ronco site has an NPDES permit but all of the water treated is recycled and reused. Two sites currently have NPDES permits that are not on the 2010 list: Reserved Environmental Services in Hempfield Township is authorized to discharge into Sewickley Creek and Belson Run, but the water treated there is also recycled; Somerset Regional Water Resources in Somerset Township also has a permit, but the facility is not in operation. Two sites are also in the process of applying for NPDES permits; Green Earth has proposed a facility in Perry Township that would discharge into Dunkard Creek and Penn Woods Enterprises has a proposed facility in Summit Township that would discharge into the Casselman River. The Future Nearly 100 percent of the Monongahela Basin is underlain by the Marcellus Shale formation. Extraction of this resource means the opportunities and risks exist for every municipality in the region. An estimated 489 trillion cubic feet of potentially recoverable natural gas lies in the Marcellus Shale.

Consequently, some of these former steel towns could see glimmers of their former glory made manifest by natural gas drilling. McKeesport alone stood to make millions of dollars for accepting frack wastewater. But the holes in the governmental safety nets were too large, just a year ago to catch the danger of McKeesports frack water dumping with the help of non-profit organizations. While none of the permitted use facilities from 2010 presently discharge into the Monongahela River, two proposed sites will. The Casselman River has already reached TDS assimilative capacity and Dunkard Creek has a history of environmental alteration as a result of Marcellus Shale drilling. In 2009, an algae bloom caused by high TDS levels resulted in a historic kill of fish in Dunkard Creek. As Evan Stoddard said, regulating pollution resulting from natural gas extraction is a process of trial and error to some degree.