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Recently, the Department of Environmental Protection told the PA House Environmental Committee all contaminated water — brine — from conventional oil, gas and mineral brine wells contains the same pollutants– hydrocarbons, salts, heavy metals and other chemicals.
These pollutants, DEP said, are potentially harmful to the environment and can threaten drinking water.
DEP said studies have shown spreading this contaminated water on roads to reduce dust– its primary use– is no more effective than plain water, but with environmental risks.
It also chemically destabilizes dirt and gravel roads causing more dust.
DEP's statements aren't guesswork, they are backed by Penn State science.
For decades, we have failed to come up with a cost-effective way for the conventional oil and gas industry to safely dispose of their contaminated water.
And this isn't a small problem.
The conventional oil and gas industry reports producing 42.6 million gallons of contaminated water a year.
That number is probably much higher because owners of 81,000 of the 105,000 conventional wells failed to report any information on how much waste they produce.
Because of the lack of disposal options, there has been a problem with conventional oil and gas well owners illegally dumping their contaminated water on dirt, gravel and paved public roads just to get rid of it.
While DEP's Oil and Gas Program requires conventional oil and gas well owners to manage their contaminated water as a waste with restrictions on how it can be disposed of, there are owners of four conventional wells that do not.
Since about 2007, DEP has allowed three conventional "mineral brine" wells drilled into oil and gas geologic formations in Erie County to use their contaminated water however they like, including spreading it on roads.
DEP said 2.4 million gallons of contaminated water from these three conventional oil and gas "mineral brine" wells was spread on roads in "dozens of municipalities" with no restrictions during 2025.
The conventional oil and gas industry is looking to expand this "mineral brine" loophole to more wells, even converting existing wells to "mineral brine" to allow unrestricted disposal of contaminated water.
This, in the face of the conventional industry's own testing in 2021 that confirmed "mineral brine" has the same chemical pollutants in it as conventional oil and gas well waste.
We've tried different ways to regulate safe disposal of this contaminated water, but they all failed.
I believe we need to look at a solution that isn't more regulations, but takes advantage of capabilities Pennsylvania's shale gas industry already has to deal with this issue.
We already have a sophisticated network for reclaiming and reusing contaminated water from conventional and shale gas wells in Pennsylvania.
The shale gas industry reclaims and reuses up to 93% of the 3 billion gallons of water it uses every year.
I propose a Good Neighbor Conventional Oil & Gas Contaminated Water Recycling Program that requires all contaminated water produced by the conventional industry to be reclaimed by the shale gas industry at no cost to conventional well owners.
Even if conventional well owners produce 100 million gallons of contaminated water a year, it's a drop in the bucket (3.3%) of the 3 billion gallons managed now by the shale gas industry.
This is an unprecedented opportunity for the shale gas industry to show real leadership and be a Good Samaritan in a way that will benefit the environment, public health and worker safety in a unique way.
We need safe disposal solutions, not more ways to dump contaminated water on our roads.
David E. Hess served as Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection under Govs. Tom Ridge and Mark Schweiker. He can be contacted at: paenvirodigest@gmail.com.