A Quest to Make Marcellus Roads Environmentally Friendly

Transcript

Marcellus shale drilling across Pennsylvania has expanded tremendously in the last couple of years. To extract the natural gas, companies drill straight down about 5,000 feet then shoot a high-pressured water mixed with chemicals and sand vertically through the shale to release the gas. It's called hydrofracturing, or "fracking." The whole process requires heavy equipment and millions of gallons of water to be trucked in over roads built to carry passenger cars. WPSU's Emily Reddy went to Luzerne County to find out an unexpected environmental impact of ruined roads and the unlikely group that's trying to do something about it.

REDDY: Tim Ziegler likes to fish. A lot. But he doesn't get to do it as much as he'd like to anymore. He's got a wife, two kids, a house and a mortgage to take care of, after all. He still gets out on the water a couple times a month, but his fishing habit is nothing like it used to be.

"I used to spend four or five days a week...And the balance of the time was spent hunting. (Laugh) <> Oh, yeah, back in what you call "my prime," or whatever, I used to spend four or five daysÖnot the whole day. I mean, you have to make money, you have to make a living."

Ziegler hit the road early this morning. But it's not to go fishing. He's picked me up in a company SUV, and we're off to check out a project he's been working on. Four years ago he took a job working to preserve streams and protect the hobby he loves.

"Say, okay, if I'm going to really enjoy this, I'm wanna give back. I'd like to see my kids to be able to enjoy casting a line on a trout stream and catching fish and enjoying those same things I enjoyed for as long as we can."

Ziegler doesn't work for the Sierra Club or The Nature Conservancy. Ziegler works for, imagine this, a group with an even less sexy name, the Center for Dirt and Gravel Road Studies at Penn State. The center was dreamed up by a group of trout fishermen at an organization called Trout Unlimited. The group's goal is to preserve fishing streams. But Ziegler's direct focus is not on streams, but on another kind of water...the rainwater that runs down dirt roads and washes sediment into the streams. All that sediment changes the stream's ecosystem. Which means it'll eventually mess up the food chain and choke off the life in the stream. So Ziegler's mission is to teach towns and companies how to make stream-friendly roads ñ where the water is dispersed along the side of the road, rather than dumped downhill.

"The three most important words in road maintenance are drainage, drainage, and drainage."

Ziegler points out big ditches flanked by mounds of earth as we drive down I-80. To Ziegler, the ditches are bad news. They don't just catch the water and hold it, they funnel the water downhill Ö where it will probably end up in a stream. This is the old-school way of building roads.
The lack of drainage causes other problems too. Like "Freeze Thaw." That's when water gets trapped in the road and freezes, then thaws still in the road.

"Essentially you've got a water sandwich. It's like trying to drive a truck or something over a waterbed."

The freeze thaw this past winter was unusually bad. Ziegler says some roads in northern Pennsylvania fell apart overnight. Which meant a whole lot more debris washing into streams.

"So for your typical car, you know, if you've got a Chevy Malibu or something going down the road it has very little impact. But you start to put an 80,000 pound water truck on that road and not just one, but 3, 4, 5 hundred of these in a few days, especially in that freeze-thaw period, you'll know what the road can handle."

If you're thinking, "when are 500 huge trucks going to go down one dirt road in a few days?" Well, it's happening now across Pennsylvania. The road we're headed to in Luzerne County ñ that's the project Ziegler is taking me to see ñ is about to be one of those roads getting pounded constantly by big heavy trucks: It's an access road for a brand new Marcellus gas drilling operation.

The Center for Dirt and Gravel Road Studies has been working with municipalities for years on how to make better roads. But now, the gas companies are becoming the de-facto road maintenance companies. Legally, they have to replace any road they destroy. So now Ziegler and his colleagues have to convince the gas companies there's a better way to fix the roads. And they're going to have to spend a chunk of money up front to do it. Ziegler's logic is they'll break even or save money in the end. After a couple of hours of driving, we're getting close.

"We're going to see a public township road. Just like we're all used to. This is the road that our tax dollars go to maintain. That we use to go to work in the morning. That we use to get home at night. That maybe runs right in front of our driveway."

We've passed a couple of drilling rigs, latticed like cell phone towers, and standing tall on big, square concrete well "pads." There are big trucks on the road that say things on the side like, "residual waste."

"It's likely that truck is..see there's another just like it in front of us...not water trucks...dry cargo...silicate or sand for hydrofracturing. There is a lot of development of wells around here."

The roads get smaller and smaller and Ziegler pulls over twice to check maps or call for directions.

Finally, we turn onto a stretch of dirt road barely big enough for two cars to pass each other. There are woods on one side and fields full of crops on the other. This is the stretch of road we've been looking for.

"Right here, where they have this sign, we're on top of the demo site now...and it only goes up to about here. So that's the little place that they redid."

That's it...a 120-foot-long section of dirt road that looks pretty much the same as the rest of the road. But this bit of road is special. It's gotten the deluxe treatment in a collaborative effort by the Center for Dirt and Gravel Road Studies, the Luzerne County Conservation District, the drilling company ñ named Encana, and the HandK construction company. This road may not look much different, but it has great drainage. While the rest of the road is about 6 inches thick, this new section has specialized layers of big rocks and little rocks and sheets of road fabric that go down 30 inches. You can see where that money up front comes in. The gamble is, this section of road will hold up while the rest falls apart.

Ziegler drives the SUV farther up the road and swings left onto the access road for the drilling pad. We climb out onto the rock road and join the group gathering by their pickup trucks. Ziegler starts to give the drilling company rep the soft pitch.

"You're the guys we have to get buy-in from. So every site you do you say hey, back there they did.."(laugh) SHAWN ñ "Youíll probably..."

Shawn Rybka, from the conservation district, chimes in.

"Once they wreck a couple roads and see how much it costs them...to fix them and maintain them throughout the winter months and the spring and the fall. Then they'll see the costs going up and they'll have to take a step back and look."

JERET - "It's a long process..we'll have to see. It's a start, though. We'll see."

That guy who said, "we'll see"...that's Jeret Toms. He works for Encana, the drilling company.

JERET - "In Louisiana we had a lot of issues with roads. Lot of rain too, though." ZIEGLER ñ "The climactic conditions are different, but the rain, the water, whether it's coming down on top of the road under the road." JERET ñ "Same concept." ZIEGLER ñ "Water and traffic, man."

Toms says the company is "curious" about the project. He says they'll "keep in mind" the results of the project. He's not committing to anything.

The group walks down to look at the new road. A red plastic reflector at either end is all that marks off the section. Ziegler talks about the improvements - the layers of different materials and all the drainage, drainage, drainage work that's been done. He says they wouldn't have to stop drilling to fix up this road. The people who live on the road wouldn't get angry because the road wouldn't fall apart. He says fixing roads before they're destroyed is good for the environment, public relations, and the bottom line. He calls it a "win, win, win."

A truck roars by. It's carrying half of the first drilling rig.

We wander back toward the pad where the drilling will soon begin, passing a field of corn on the way. The group gets back to the cluster of pickups and chats a bit more. A Luzerne township truck drives by slowly.

(Township truck goes by filling potholes)

It's patching potholes in the road. Ziegler takes one look at the fresh fill and declares it will be gone in no time. But he's not gleeful about it. For at least the third time today he says he hopes the roads don't fall apart. Sure, if they did, and his section held up, it would prove him right...Probably make it easier to talk other companies into fixing up their roads. On the other hand, if the roads do fall apart, all that dirt and rock will end up in the streams. The fishing will be ruined.

Ziegler doesn't have any leverage here ñ and he knows it. He knows he's up against big companies with even bigger plans. He's basically a fisherman spreading the gospel of good drainage to some incredibly rich businessmen, hoping they'll "do the right thing." It's the only argument he's got.

I'm Emily Reddy, WPSU.