I keep hearing that New York State is not ready to treat natural gas development wastewater. I found this document dated December 2008.
Did you know the NYSDEC's DOW has standards in place for wastewater treatment for produced water? Unlike the common misconception that wastewater will be just diluted or dumped into streams?
Find a copy of the guidance here: Division of Water's Guidelines for Disposal of Spent Drilling Fluids to Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTWS) and Pretreatment Requirements for Hydrofracturing Gas Well Facilities
At the end of the guidance is a list of wastewater treatment plants that could potentially receive the wastewater from hydraulically fractured wells.
Cost-effective solutions for flow back water treatment and produced water treatment will play and important role in the economics and environmental sustainability of unconventional oil and gas production. It is estimated that it takes it takes somewhere between 70-140 billion gallons of water per year to support hydrofracking 35,000 gas wells at the current annual rate in the U.S.
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