EPA Issues a Draft Report on Assessment of the Potential Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing for Oil and Gas on Drinking Water Resources

This assessment provides a review and synthesis of available scientific literature and data to assess the potential for hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas to impact the quality or quantity of drinking water resources, and identifies factors affecting the frequency or severity of any potential impacts. The scope of this assessment is defined by the hydraulic fracturing water cycle which includes five main activities:

  1. Water acquisition – the withdrawal of ground or surface water needed for hydraulic fracturing fluids;
  2. Chemical mixing – the mixing of water, chemicals, and proppant on the well pad to create the hydraulic fracturing fluid;
  3. Well injection – the injection of hydraulic fracturing fluids into the well to fracture the geologic formation;
  4. Flowback and Produced water – the return of injected fluid and water produced from the formation to the surface, and subsequent transport for reuse, treatment, or disposal; and
  5. Wastewater treatment and waste disposal – the reuse, treatment and release, or disposal of wastewater generated at the well pad, including produced water.

This report can be used by federal, tribal, state, and local officials; industry; and the public to better understand and address vulnerabilities of drinking water resources to hydraulic fracturing activities. The report provides a comprehensive analysis of published literature and hints on environmental data management challenges facing hydro fracking industry.  Find out more about our solutions for the oil & gas industry.

For more information and to download report please visit the EPA site: http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncea/hfstudy/recordisplay.cfm?deid=244651

Water Wars

California. California is now heading into its fourth year of record-breaking drought, with no water relief in sight. High temperatures, little precipitation, and historically low snowpack have left the state with dwindling water reserves. The situation is so bad, as NASA scientist Jay Famiglietti wrote in an LA Times op-ed last week, that California has only a year of water left in its reservoirs. Household water rationing is already planned.

Las Vegas. An ongoing drought and the Colorado River’s reduced flow have shrunk Lake Mead to its lowest level in generations. The reservoir, which supplies 90% of Las Vegas’ water, is ebbing as though a plug had been pulled from a bathtub drain. For six years, the Southern Nevada Water Authority has been building an intake pipe below the reservoir’s two existing pipes. Due for completion in fall 2015, critics say it may not provide a long-term solution.

Ireland. Tens of thousands of people marched in Dublin, Ireland on Saturday, 21 March 2015, in the latest protest against the government’s new water charges. The government has begun directly charging households for water use.

Detroit: In bankrupt Detroit back in June the city authorities decided to cut off supply to 200,000 homes who had not or could not afford to pay water bills. Since water charges were introduced a decade ago bills have soared by 120%. The UN condemned the cutting off of the water supply to these people as a “violation of the human right to water and other international human rights”.

Bolivia. The average price of water quadrupled after it was privatized, leading to civil unrest and the eruption of “water wars” in the city of Cochabamba.

Uruguay. The sell-off of water and subsequent rising prices led in 2004 to the government outlawing the privatization of this public utility.

France. The citizens of Paris voted to reject plans to privatize water and took the utility back into public ownership.

Locus Technologies receives EBJ Business Achievement award for Information Technology

Environmental Business Journal (EBJ) recognizes firms for growth and innovation in 2014

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 10 March 2015 — Locus Technologies announced today that Environmental Business Journal (EBJ), a business research publication which provides high value strategic business intelligence to the environmental industry, granted the company the 2014 award for Information Technology in the environmental and sustainability industry for the ninth time.

Locus was recognized for significant strategic strides in 2014 including entering the water quality management (drinking water supplies and waste water) market; introducing its new Locus Platform (a highly configurable, user-friendly interface to fully meet individual organizations’ environmental management needs); and launching Locus Mobile (a field data collection solution that is fully integrated with Locus’s flagship Environmental Information Management [EIM] platform). In addition, Locus continues to maintain its leadership position in the commercial nuclear industry by solidifying business with more than 50 percent of all U.S. commercial reactor facilities that use Locus EIM for radionuclides monitoring management.

“Locus continues to influence the industry with its forward-thinking product set and eye for customer needs,” said Grant Ferrier, president of Environmental Business International Inc. (EBI), publisher of Environmental Business Journal.

“We are very proud to receive the prestigious EBJ Information Technology award in environmental business for the ninth time. It is a statement of our vision and perseverance to accomplish this level of recognition, especially now as we lead the market by providing robust solutions for the emerging space of cloud and mobile-based environmental information management,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus Technologies.

The 2014 EBJ awards, hosted by EBI Inc., will be presented at the annual executive retreat called the Environmental Industry Summit XIII in San Diego, Calif. on March 11-13, 2015.

European Study on Chemical Composition of Fracking Wastewater: Can it be drinkable?

Have you heard of “halogenated hydrocarbons”? It is a group of chemicals containing elements that when consumed by humans, it can damage the nervous system and your liver. Normally, these compounds are not on your daily menu.  But studies suggest these elements are appearing in water as by the reuse of fracking wastewater which ironically has been treated with chlorine-containing antibacterial chemicals.  The process of cleaning the water is a common practice. More studies of treated wastewater are being conducted to more clearly determined if the creation of halogenated hydrocarbons from antibacterial chemicals occurs during treatment of wastewater or during reuse.

Produced water, water that is chemically cleaned, can contain a complex mixture of metals — salts and other chemicals, partly composed of the original fracturing fluid components — plus chemicals released by the rocks in the area. Large volumes of water used for fracking poses some level of side effects of the wastewater on human and environmental health. To investigate further, researchers in Europe, in one of the most comprehensive studies of chemical composition of its kind to date, took samples of produced water from three fracking sites in the US.  A number of different analysis techniques were used to determine the chemical composition of the samples, although not the concentrations of the different organic (carbon-based) constituents.

The researchers found that produced water contained a diverse array of chemicals including toxic metals such as mercury and the carcinogens toluene and ethylbenzene. However, a group of harmful chemicals, ‘polyaromatic hydrocarbons’ commonly found in mining and coal extraction wastewater, were absent.

A wide range of metals were found in all samples, but varied depending on the geology of the area. Among these were chromium, mercury and arsenic, all of which were found at levels exceeding US maximum contamination levels (MCL) for drinking water in at least one well. Over 50 different organic chemicals were identified, the majority of which were part of a group of chemicals called ‘saturated hydrocarbons’. Many of these were common to more than one well. They included carcinogens toluene and ethylbenzene. However, the researchers did not find polyaromatic hydrocarbons, which are usually found in mining and coal extraction wastewater.

The authors believe that detailed chemical analyses of produced waters, such as theirs, highlight problems in wastewater treatment protocols,  In particular, the problem of developing a process that removes a wide range of organic compounds. While the findings of this research are based on fracking sites in the US, they may also be useful for other regions where fracking is being actively pursued, such as the UK, and could help to develop policies and techniques to reduce the risk of environmental contamination.

Fresh water continues to be challenged, not from just drought or salt contamination, but from the process of re-creating quality drinking water.

San Jose Water Company: Water quality and environmental compliance are critical business functions

Our new customer, San Jose Water Company, is deploying our Locus EIM and Locus Mobile solutions to consolidate and manage its water sampling and environmental compliance data. The keyword  for SJWC is “consolidate”. San Jose Water’s challenge was to consolidate its 12+ data silos into one comprehensive solution with the capabilities to provide a tighter, more integrated system.

SJWC determined that Locus EIM and Locus Mobile provided the right solution. Francois Rodigari, the director of Water Quality and Environmental Services at San Jose Water said it best: “Water quality and environmental compliance are critical business functions at San Jose Water Company.  …for the first time, the ability to consolidate and access critical information on data related to water quality and environmental compliance in a single repository based on a cloud platform. This comprehensive view of our water system will help us to comprehensively manage all data related to drinking water and environmental compliance, and as a result, bring higher efficiency to our organization.”

Thank you SJWC!

San Jose Water Company selects Locus Technologies for its water quality and environmental management system software

The Locus EIM SaaS will streamline SJWC’s entire water compliance continuum from watershed to water treatment to water quality at its consumer’s tap

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 24 February 2015 — Locus Technologies, a leader in environmental and compliance enterprise management software, today announced that San Jose Water Company (SJWC), an investor-owned utility providing water service to a population of approximately one million people in the Santa Clara Valley, has selected Locus as its environmental information management system. SJWC is deploying the Locus EIM SaaS-based software to consolidate and manage its field data collection; water compliance and water quality data; and all its environmental compliance and environmental data. SJWC will also use the Locus EIM to manage its environmental permits for all its sites and facilities.

“Water quality and environmental compliance are critical business functions at San Jose Water Company,” said Francois Rodigari, Director of Water Quality and Environmental Services. “Locus and its EIM software are giving us, for the first time, the ability to consolidate and access critical information on data related to water quality and environmental compliance in a single repository based on a cloud platform. This comprehensive view of our water system will help us to comprehensively manage all data related to drinking water and environmental compliance, and as a result, bring higher efficiency to our organization.”

Locus EIM is a comprehensive and configurable software designed to manage mission-critical environmental and sustainability data to help organization organize, manage, report, and visualize sampling, analytical, and subsurface data for compliance and assurance reporting for a variety of vertical markets including water, gas and oil, power generating utilities, and food and beverage.

“Our mission is to help organization, such as San Jose Water Company, to achieve their environmental stewardship goals by providing them the software tools to control the management of all data points of their water quality and compliance management,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus. “Our EIM water quality management cloud-based software for surface water, drinking water, groundwater, and wastewater provides our customers with a highly scalable and a feature rich application that gives water utilities strong analytical power, streamlined field sampling capabilities, mobile collection, and analysis as well as compliance management. We are pleased San Jose Water Company will be utilizing EIM to ensure that their customers are provided with the highest water quality possible.”

 

ABOUT SAN JOSE WATER
San Jose Water Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of SJW Corp. and founded in 1866, is an investor-owned water company headquartered in Silicon Valley and is one of the largest and most technically sophisticated urban water system in the United States. SJWC serves over 1 million people in the San Jose metropolitan area comprising about 138 square miles. The utility ensures its buyers with high quality, life sustaining water, with an emphasis on exceptional customer service.

Quality Water — A new look at the tap

As an environmental software and services company, we work closely with companies that need to follow Federal, State and Local compliance mandates to ensure the status quo of the environment.  One market segment that always amazes me is drinking water. Every single day, public water systems test your tap water.

Everyday single day, water is collected, tested, analyzed and reported to internal public water teams, and less frequently, external agencies.   Today we announced that San Jose Water Company, that serves more than one million people in the Silicon Valley region, has selected Locus for our environmental software and mobile app solution, EIM and Locus Mobile.  The deployed systems consolidates and manages San Jose Water’s field data collection; water compliance and water quality data; and all its environmental compliance and environmental data.  SJWC will also use the Locus EIM to manage its environmental permits for all its sites and facilities.

Want to learn more about water?  Check out these resources:

​View the 6-minute TedTalk “It’s time to put water first” by Heather Himmelberger from the University of New Mexico, Director of the Southwest Environmental Finance Center at the University of New Mexico.

For more information, please visit www.drinktap.org.

 

California to Regulate Groundwater in 2015

California’s drought prompted the Legislature into action in 2014, leading lawmakers to regulate groundwater for the first time. The state will begin the long process of regulating groundwater for the first time in the state’s history under three new laws that require local agencies to create sustainable groundwater management plans to ensure priority basins are sustainable by 2040.

Since the state’s founding, water has been considered a property right; landowners have been able to pump as much water from the ground as they want. But increasing reliance on underground water, particularly during droughts, has led to more pumping from some basins than what is naturally being replaced.

On 16 September 2014, California Governor Jerry Brown signed three companion bills, The three bills: SB 1168, AB 1739 and SB 1319, which compose the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (the Act) create the first comprehensive framework for regulating groundwater in California, placing managerial and monitoring responsibilities in the hands of local agencies while also creating mechanisms under which state agencies may oversee and potentially even intervene in groundwater management. With the Act to go into effect on 1 January 2015, and numerous implementation deadlines, stakeholders throughout the state should prepare for increased regulation, management, and oversight.

The Act requires the establishment of groundwater sustainability agencies (GSA) for groundwater basins in the state. By 31 January 2015, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) will classify each groundwater basin (as identified by DWR Bulletin 118) as high, medium, low or very low priority. GSAs responsible for high- and medium-priority groundwater basins must create and implement a groundwater sustainability plan (GSP) for their basins. Groundwater basins, or portions of groundwater basins, which are subject to a previous groundwater adjudication are exempt from the GSP requirement.

Once formed, GSAs will have broad groundwater management and investigatory powers to prepare and execute the GSP. GSAs may inspect property or facilities to ensure the requirements of the GSP are being met, including use of surface waters. Further, the GSA will have the authority to regulate and limit groundwater extractions, require the submission of annual extraction reports or impose well spacing requirements, among other substantial powers.

The Act requires that GSPs be designed to achieve “sustainable groundwater management” for the basin within 20 years of implementation. “Sustainable groundwater management” is defined as the maintenance of groundwater use in a manner that does not cause “undesirable results.” An undesirable result is the occurrence of at least one of the following:

  • Chronic lowering of groundwater levels, indicating a significant and unreasonable depletion of supply.
  • Significant and unreasonable reduction of groundwater storage.
  • Significant and unreasonable seawater intrusion.
  • Significant and unreasonable degradation in water quality.
  • Significant and unreasonable land subsidence that substantially interferes with surface land uses.
  • Surface water depletions that have significant and unreasonable adverse impacts on beneficial uses of the surface water.

About $10 billion = The 2014 Corporate EHS Non-compliance and Fines Cost

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its annual enforcement and compliance results revealing both the cleanup improvements as well as compliance fines industries have made in 2014. In this report, the agency focused on large, high impact enforcement cases. Environmental Cleanup Improvements:

  • Reductions of an estimated 141 million pounds of air pollutants, including 6.7 million pounds of air toxics.
  • Reductions of approximately 337 million pounds of water pollutants.
  • Clean up of an estimated 856 million cubic yards of contaminated water/aquifers.

Investment and Fines
Enforcement guidelines this year required companies to invest more than $9.7 billion in actions and equipment to control pollution as well as clean up contaminated sites. EPA’s non-compliant cases resulted in $163 million in combined federal administrative, civil judicial penalties, and criminal fines. EPA holds criminal violators accountable that threaten the health and safety of American residents.

“Despite challenges posed by budget cuts and a government shutdown, we secured major settlements in key industry sectors and brought criminal violators to justice. This work resulted in critical investments in advanced technologies and innovative approaches to reduce pollution and improve compliance,” said Cynthia Giles, Assistant Administrator for EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance.
Companies can reduce their non-compliance risks and lower their monitoring and reporting costs by implementing enterprise EHS and Sustainability software to automate information management, compliance, and monitoring for exceedances for a fraction of what potential fines could cost them. Once a non-compliance fine is imposed the cost of brand damage could be even worse and incalculable.

California’s Water Shortage

A new paper published in Nature Climate Change, by NASA water scientist James Famiglietti, presents the chilling reality of California’s ongoing drought crisis. “The Global Groundwater Crisis,” uses satellite data to measure the depletion of the world’s aquifers, and summarizes the effects this has on the environment.

These aquifers contain groundwater that more than 2 billion individuals rely on as their primary source of water. Groundwater is also essential, as it is one of the main sources we rely on to irrigate food crops. In times of drought, the lack of rain and snow results in less surface water (the water that settles in lakes, streams, and rivers). Thus, farmers must rely on available groundwater to irrigate their crops, leading to rapid depletion in areas of high farming concentration.

California’s Central Valley has been one of the most effected regions in the state. The map below depicts groundwater withdrawals in California during the first three years of the state’s ongoing drought.

According to James Famiglietti, “California’s Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins have lost roughly 15 cubic kilometers of total water per year since 2011.”  That means “more water than all 38 million Californians use for domestic and municipal supplies annually—over half of which is due to groundwater pumping in the Central Valley.”

As more water is pumped from the aquifers, things can only get worse. As this trend continues, wells will have to be dug deeper, resulting in increased pumping costs. This, in turn, will lead to a higher salt contents, which inhibits crop yields and can eventually cause soil to lose productivity altogether. Over time, Famiglietti writes, “inequity issues arise because only the relatively wealthy can bear the expense of digging deeper wells, paying greater energy costs to pump groundwater from increased depths and treating the lower-quality water that is often found deeper within aquifers.” This problem is already apparent in California’s Central Valley.  Some low-income residents are forced to let their wells go dry, while many other farmers are forced to irrigate with salty water pumped from deep in the aquifer.

The lesson we can learn from Famiglietti’s research is that “Groundwater is being pumped at far greater rates than it can be naturally replenished, so that many of the largest aquifers on most continents are being mined, their precious contents never to be returned.”  This problem of diminishing groundwater is perpetuated, due the lack of forethought, regulation, or research concerning this water source. Famiglietti contends that if current trends hold, “groundwater supplies in some major aquifers will be depleted in a matter of decades.”

Without any change of practices, we can expect steeper droughts and more demand for water. Famiglietti suggests that if we ever plan on getting the situation under control, we must start carefully measuring groundwater and treat it like the precious resource that it is. However, if the globe continues on this path without any adjustment, it will most likely result in civil uprising and international violent conflict in the water-stressed regions of the world.