SHALE-WATER INTERACTION FORENSIC TOOLS (SWIFT): CAPTURING WATER QUALITY IN SOUTHERN NEW YORK STATE BEFORE HYDRAULIC FRACTURING

The Marcellus and Utica shales of the Appalachian basin of New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia contain one of the world’s largest natural gas reservoirs. Recovery of this resource requires the “unconventional” technique of hydraulic fracturing (“hydrofracking”), which has generated controversy with respect to potential impacts on regional water quality. New York State (NYS) has placed a moratorium on shale gas development and there is currently intense debate throughout New York regarding the future of hydrofracking regulations in the State. Public concern is largely focused on maintaining the integrity of the region’s water quality and supply. Unfortunately, public debate has not been well informed by data, and energy companies have only now begun to disclose pre-drilling environmental water quality studies to the public. Earlier this year, NYS Governor Cuomo proposed permitting hydrofracking in the five Southern Tier counties of Broome, Chenango, Chemung, Steuben and Tioga.

Project SWIFT (Shale-Water Interaction Forensic Tools) at Syracuse University aims to create a pre-hydraulic fracturing snapshot of background water quality in the Southern Tier counties of NYS, where drilling will likely be approved. In this project, we will sample stream water and groundwater from domestic water supply wells drilled into bedrock within a regularly spaced grid. We plan to improve public access to water quality data by making our data available through a web-hosted GIS interface. Data from our study will be compared with those of the 1970s National Uranium Resource Evaluation (NURE) sampling to determine the extent to which area groundwater quality has changed over time. We also hope to develop sensitive new tracers aimed at unequivocally identifying whether contamination related to hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus occurs or not. In the summer of 2012 we collected samples from streams and private water wells drilled into bedrock throughout four of the five counties identified for future Marcellus Shale drilling. We also obtained four samples of Pennsylvania flowback water from industry and academic collaborators to evaluate their distinct chemical properties. Samples were analyzed for a suite of cations, anions and trace metals and work has begun to explore new geochemical forensic tools. swift.syr.edu.