EQT agrees to $294K penalty for Mon River discharges
MONONGAHELA – A Marcellus shale natural gas driller has paid $294,000 in a civil penalty for releasing millions of gallons of acid mine water into the Monongahela River during a water pipeline drilling project last year.
EQT Production Co. of Pittsburgh has also corrected all of the violations associated with the release of four million gallons of acid mine drainage stemming from the Jan. 29 breach of the abandoned Gallatin Mine in Forward Township, the state Department of Environmental Protection announced Tuesday.
The company created a large strip of orange water along the Allegheny County side of the river when it accidentally bored into the mine while performing horizontal drilling under Route 136 for a pipeline to draw water from the river for its drilling operations. The waterline was designed to take freshwater to develop the Rostosky well pad.
The illegal discharges also entered unnamed tributaries to the river and “associated wetlands,” the DEP noted in a news release.
EQT did not investigate further after it relied on maps that “generally described mine pools as not flooded or unknown” upon determining that several abandoned mines were within the area where it planned to drill, the DEP stated.
The company stopped the discharge Jan. 31. The corrections at the site were completed by Aug. 17. The company further agreed to create a $100,000 fund at the Clean Stream Foundation charitable trust for the maintenance, operation and replacement of the mine drainage system at the site.
The violations involved the unlawful discharge of industrial waste water and failure to prevent the release of the acid mine water and take measures to prevent the problem.
“When the incident occurred, EQT took immediate action to work with the PA DEP and specialized on-site service providers to identify and implement the necessary control activities and stop the flow of mine drainage and, since the incident, has implemented an internal multi-department process to prevent future mine water releases,” EQT spokeswoman Linda Robertson said in a news release.
“Safety is a core value for everyone at EQT and we strive to respect and protect the land, as well as the members of the communities in which we operate.”