The body overseeing water withdrawals from the Susquehanna River offered a rare rejection of a permit filed by a natural gas drilling company in Centre County.
At its meeting on Dec. 15, the Susquehanna River Basin Commission rejected a request by Anadarko Petroleum to withdraw 715,000 gallons per day from a well near Council Run in Snow Shoe Township.
Marcellus Shale drillers like Anadarko use millions of gallons of water in the hydrofracking process, which sends a mixture of water, sand and chemicals into their wells at high pressure to crack the rock and release the trapped stores of gas.
The SRBC has granted hundreds of applications for the withdrawal of tens of millions of gallons of water from the Susquehanna River, its feeder streams and its tributaries, but it rejected Anadarko’s request because it would drain too much water out of Council Run, SRBC spokeswoman Susan Obleski said.
“The conditions we would have put on that project would have caused the withdrawal passby (limit) to trigger so frequently it probably would not have been worth it,” Obleski said.
“We just didn’t see it as a viable option and we advised the applicant of that.”
Outright rejections are rare, since most companies are given advance warning their application will likely fail and have the opportunity to withdraw their requests, Obleski said.
“Applications usually want to avoid denial,” she said.
Anadarko spokesman Brian Cain did not directly address his company’s reasoning as to why it allowed the permit to come to a vote.
“Consistent with our commitment to significantly reduce truck traffic and conserve water, we developed a withdrawal plan that exceeded the SRBC’s requirements,” he said in an email.
“We will continue to ensure that preservation of the environment remains a priority in all of our planning activities, as we consider additional options.”
If Anadarko planned to make any statement before the commission addressing concerns about the permit, it lost its opportunity when the Dec. 15 meeting in Wilkes- Barre was interrupted by protesters, and SRBC commissioners completed their voting in private.
Three other local permits were approved at the meeting: a request by the Walker Township Water Association raising its groundwater withdrawal limit from 523,000 to 753,000 gallons per day to address increased public consumption; a request by Carrizo Oil and Gas to withdraw up to 1.8 million gallons per day out of Mosquito Creek in Karthaus Township, Clearfield County, for its drilling operations; and a request by Bioenergy International — the shuttered ethanol plant in Clearfield — to allow it to sell 800,000 gallons per day of water from its 2.5 million gallon-per-day permit to natural gas companies for drilling.
Cliff White can be reached at 235-3928.
