Sep 20, 2014 3 min read

The median household income in the United States is about $50,000 per year, which means it would take a household earning that amount 83 years to pay off the $4.15 million in fines that were levied against energy company Range Resources last week by the state Department of Environmental Protection for assorted violations at six wastewater impoundments in Washington County.

Before you whip out the violins and handkerchiefs for Range Resources executives and shareholders, however, keep the following fact in mind – in just the first quarter of this year, the company’s revenue was $457 million, so they will not soon be scanning the dollar menu at a fast-food restaurant for their supper.

But the enforcement action against Range Resources, the largest such penalty exacted against a gas driller in the decade-long Marcellus Shale gold rush within Pennsylvania, is an overdue demonstration of muscle from the DEP, which has been heavily criticized for its see-no-evil, hear-no-evil approach to the Marcellus Shale industry, particularly since Tom Corbett became governor in 2011. Is it an 11th-hour bid, just a handful of weeks before the election, to show that the state government is not an adjunct of the gas industry? Perhaps.

Still, any action is better than none, even if its damage to Range Resources’ bottom line will amount to little more than a barely perceptible dent. The DEP declared it “an environmental win for Pennsylvania.”

Meanwhile, Matt Pitzarella, a spokesman for Range Resources, did his best to suggest that this lump of coal in the stocking of the Southpointe-based company was actually a precious gem by declaring that Range was “deeply disappointed” over the violations, but nevertheless “excited to implement newly established best practices and technologies that have been jointly developed with the DEP over the last several months and years.”

Because of the consent order, Range must immediately shut down impoundments in Hopewell, Amwell and Cecil townships, and close another impoundment in Amwell by 2015.

Two others must be upgraded. According to the DEP, the impoundments have been bedeviled by releases of flowback water, though they said local water supplies were not harmed as a result – a point disputed by some opponents of Range Resources and the natural gas industry. In fact, when staffers from the Observer-Reporter reviewed files at the DEP’s Pittsburgh office in August, they found problems at all nine of the impoundments Range has been operating in Washington County.

The impoundments contain the water used in hydraulic fracturing until it can be used again at another site.

This approach seems crude and primitive and prone to problems. Clearly, there must be a better way.

And, it turns out, there is. This newspaper’s September Energy Report, which was published Friday, reported on how Canonsburg-based Comtech Industries is developing a mobile, 1 million-gallon water tank that would collect frack water that is currently being dumped and left to linger in impoundments, and deliver it to another location. The energy giant Chevron has requested 60, which are due to be delivered to Texas somewhere around the beginning of 2015.

More energy companies need to adopt this, and soon.

Rather than piling up fines and keeping on with business as usual, doing away with impoundments entirely would represent an authentic “environmental win for Pennsylvania.”