Council and Partners Secure Greater Protections Against Mariner East 2 Drilling Fluid Spills

 

After a slew of legal filings, briefs, and hearings before two different courts, the Environmental Hearing Board, on Monday, April 16th, ordered stronger protocols for responding to and preventing drilling fluid spills on the Mariner East pipelines.   Clean Air Council, Delaware Riverkeeper Network, and Mountain Watershed Association took Sunoco and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to court for violating a previously agreed-upon version of the protocols, and then quietly modifying those protocols without the input of the Council, other organizations, or the court.  

The history of these protocols, called the Horizontal Drilling Inadvertent Return Assessment, Preparedness, Prevention and Contingency Plan (or HDD Plan for short) is somewhat complicated.  The HDD Plan was originally part of the water permits DEP issued to Sunoco for the Mariner East 2 pipelines in February 2017. In August 2017, after a torrent of drilling fluid spills and drinking water contamination incidents made clear that the February 2017 HDD Plan was failing to protect the public and the environment, Clean Air Council and its partners filed an emergency motion with the court.  This resulted in the court shutting down Sunoco’s drilling Mariner East 2 drilling operations until the parties agreed to improvements to the HDD Plan in August 2017. Fast forward six months, and DEP and Sunoco walked back some of those protections in a side agreement. Clean Air Council and its partners filed another emergency filing and have ultimately secured the most protective HDD Plan yet. And this time the stakes are higher if there are further violations.

The new HDD Plan accomplishes several important things.  First, it now applies to all drilling methods that could result in drilling fluid spills.  Second, professional geologists must be involved in determining whether it is safe to proceed with drilling after a spill.  The new HDD Plan lays out specific requirements for what the professional geologist must investigate and present to the DEP.  DEP then must find that any plans for continued drilling at the spill site adequately protect the public and the environment before it allows drilling to restart.  Groundwater protections have been spelled out in detail so there can be no ambiguity in how they are applied; they are key because of the damage Sunoco’s operations has already caused to drinking water supplies and the continuing nature of that threat.  Requirements for notifying DEP and the public about drilling incidents have also been improved.

There will also be increased transparency so landowners and other concerned members of the public will be better able to track any future spills that may arise:  Reports prepared by Sunoco’s geologists will be shared with Clean Air Council and its partners. DEP’s documentation of spills on its website will be expanded, made uniform, and include more detail about spill locations–a key piece of information that had previously been missing.

The new HDD Plan is comprehensive, strongly protective, and scientifically rigorous.  Perhaps just as important, the Environmental Hearing Board has made it crystal clear that it will not tolerate Sunoco and DEP trying to change it behind the backs of the public again. Even with these improvements, Clean Air Council is under no illusion that the new HDD Plan will be a silver bullet against all future problems and we believe it is still important to keep a watchful eye on construction operations.

You can view the new, April 2018 version of the HDD Plan here

Photo by Faith Zerbe/Delaware Riverkeeper Network