A well site in Lycoming County, Pa. (file)
Kimberly Paynter / Newsworks
Natural gas driller, cited by DEP for fracking wastewater spill in Lycoming County, now faces criminal charges
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John Beauge/PennLive
Kimberly Paynter / Newsworks
A well site in Lycoming County, Pa. (file)
WILLIAMSPORT – The discharge of approximately 63,000 gallons of treated brine water in 2017 from a natural gas well pad in Lycoming County has been attributed to a worker falling asleep twice in two days.
The allegations are contained in criminal charges filed against Inflection Energy, headquartered in Denver, Colorado, and Double D Construction of Montoursville.
Inflection paid a $170,500 civil penalty levied by the state Department of Environmental Protection after the spill but, according to an agency spokesperson, Double D was not cited.
The criminal charges were filed in November by the state attorney general’s office but they just came to light when Inflection and Double D waived their preliminary hearings. The company faces misdemeanor charges including disturbing waterways or watersheds, and allowing a substance that could harm fish to enter a waterway; and a summary offense of drilling activity that causes a public nuisance.
Asked why criminal charges were filed against Inflection in light of the significant civil penalty, an attorney general’s spokesperson said: “Criminal charges are wholly unrelated to a civil penalty. We seek to hold the defendant companies accountable for negligence that led to pollution in a stream.”
Attempts to obtain a comment from Inflection were unsuccessful, but when the civil penalty was imposed, it attributed the spill to a then-unidentified contractor.
Double D, according to court documents, was responsible for monitoring the transfer of treated brine water from a million-gallon tank to a smaller one so it could be trucked from the well pad in Eldred Township north of Warrensville.
The same worker fell asleep in a truck for about 30 minutes early on Nov. 12, 2017, and for 45 minutes the following morning while a 21,000-gallon tank overflowed, the charges state.
Some of the fluids went into an unnamed tributary of Loyalsock Creek. At the time, a DEP spokesman told StateImpact Pennsylvania that the fluid had not reached the creek itself.
It was the job of the employee, who was working a 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift with no set days off, to turn off the pump when the float was within 2 feet of the top of the tank, an affidavit in support of the charges states.
The pump now has a hard shutoff and Inflection requires monitoring when it is operating, the document states.
The implicated worker was fired that Nov. 13 after providing a written statement to Double D owner Jason DuPont and passing a drug test, the affidavit states.
Inflection is accused of not reporting the first spill that was smaller than the second one, documents state.
As part of a remediation effort, Inflection removed and disposed of more than 3,600 cubic yards of impacted soil, DEP said. It also monitored groundwater and private water sources.
Inflection and Double D are accused of violating the Fish and Boat Code, Solid Waste Management Act, Clean Streams Law and the Oil and Gas Act.
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