Texas Leads the Nation in Water Recycling

The drought burns on in Texas. The state's water plan calls for construction of new reservoirs, desalination plants, pipelines and greater conservation and recycling of water to  make the water supply in Texas sustainable, and Texans are doing it. Direct recycling of wastewater is about to begin in Big Spring, Texas. No other state is taking such bold action to secure their future, but without a reliable potable water supply there is no future. 

The earth has a fixed amount of land and water. All the water that ever was or will be on earth is here right now. More than 97% of the Earth’s water is within the in oceans. The remaining 2.8% is the water within the land masses, as groundwater, rivers, streams, lakes, and within the ice caps and glaciers (over 77% of fresh water is currently frozen and according to climate scientists a significant portion of that may melt). Only a tiny fraction of water falls as rain each year to make the rivers flow, recharge lakes and groundwater. Precipitation does not fall uniformly- there are wet locations and arid locations within a country or region and rainfall varies from year to year and over time as climate changes. Water availability is determined by the weather, climate and the variable length of different parts of the water cycle. Texas has suffered a long drought. 

As the demand for water grows in our population centers, we are straining to meet the demand. Even in generally water rich areas there are limits to the availability of water and United States has slowly and quietly begun to address the availability of water by recycling the water indirectly. In the United States municipal wastewater represents a significant potential source of reclaimed water, an estimated 32 billion gallons of water a day (121 million m3/day) is treated in wastewater treatment plants throughout the country. Currently, National Research Council Water Science & Technology Board estimates that only about 7% to 8 % of this municipal waste water is reused, but a third of this water could be reused.(NRC Water Science & Technology Board titled Water Reuse: Potential for Expanding the Nation’s Water Supply Through Reuse of Municipal Wastewater)

Direct water recycling is reusing treated wastewater for beneficial purposes such as agricultural and landscape irrigation, industrial processes, toilet flushing, and replenishing a ground water basin (referred to as ground water recharge) and less commonly returning the water directly to reservoirs. Many of the existing projects that recycle waste water avoid the negative emotional response of drinking water from wastewater treatment plants by either using the water for irrigation and municipal irrigation (golf courses in Arizona) or by treatment and then supplementing river flow, reservoirs or groundwater.

Since 1978, the upper Occoquan Sewage Authority here in Virginia has been discharging recycled water into a stream above Occoquan Reservoir, one of the two potable water supply sources for Fairfax County, Virginia. Recycled water has been part of the Occoquan supply for 34 years supplying Fairfax, parts of Prince William and Loudoun counties with water. Noman M. Cole, Jr developed the Occoquan Watershed Policy in 1971 that specified the type of waste treatment practices that would  be adopted on a basin-wide scale, and provided for an on-going program of water quality monitoring to measure the success (or failure) of the wastewater treatment. This resulted in the construction of the Upper Occoquan Service Authority, UOSA, advanced wastewater treatment plant with tertiary treatment to replace the eleven small secondary treatment plants and the creation of the Occoquan Watershed Laboratory to monitor water quality.  

For 30 years Los Angeles County has recycled the water from wastewater treatments plants. This water from both secondary and tertiary treated wastewater is discharged into spreading basins to recharge groundwater. Groundwater recharge can be done by surface spreading or direct injection wells. California guidelines recommend spreading over injection because of concerns about water quality and potential health hazards. The groundwater is then mixed with other fresh water supplies for delivery to customers. Many of the existing projects that recycle waste water avoid the negative emotional response of drinking water from wastewater treatment plants (the Toilet to Tap Yuck factor) by either using the water for irrigation and municipal irrigation or by treatment and then supplementing river flow, reservoirs or groundwater.

In Texas they are taking it even further. The population of Texas is expected to double in the next 50 years and several cities in Texas have been forced by the population growth, the extended drought and extreme heat of the past several years to address their water supply and sustainability problems head on. Cities in Texas currently use reclaimed water for power plant cooling, argument stream flow, and to irrigate golf courses and landscapes. Now, the city of Big Spring is the first  in the nation to make the direct leap to piping completely treated wastewater to a drinking water treatment plant. 

The Colorado River Municipal Water District in Big Spring, Texas is finishing construction on a $14 million wastewater recycling plant. Previously, Big Spring discharged its wastewater into a creek, which passed it through a wetland area that processed it naturally, making the wastewater potable again. The water recycling plant will short circuit that process, fully treating the wastewater and produce approximately 1.8 million gallons per day of raw water and piping it directly back into the town's water treatment plant where it will be blended with other raw water from the reservoirs for treatment and distribution.

This is a huge and unprecedented step. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and EPA have lagged behind Big Spring, failing to develop guidance regulations on direct water reuse. Texas law strictly prohibits interconnection between reclaimed water and potable water systems, though both Big Spring and Brownwood Texas have received permission to build water reuse plants connected to the water treatment plants. In addition the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has funded a study to develop a resource document that can assist in planning future direct potable reuse projects in the state. No other community has ever bridged the emotional gap of direct water reuse before and Big Spring will shortly be followed by Brownwood. Texas leads the way into the future.

Texas Drought Continues

It’s only January, but already the Lower Colorado River Authority, LCRA, in Texas is preparing to cut off Highland Lakes water to most farmers again this year if drought conditions don’t improve. To help protect municipal and industrial customers during the drought, LCRA’s Board of Directors unanimously decided last week to withhold Highland Lakes water to most downstream farmers again this year if drought conditions don’t improve by March 1. Now, if the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality approves the emergency drought relief measure for the second year in a row and the combined storage of lakes Travis and Buchanan are at or below 850,000 acre-feet on March 1, 2013 downstream farmers will not receive any Highland Lakes water.

Last March for the first time in its 78 year history LCRA did not deliver any irrigation water to most downstream farmers under emergency relief granted by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to the obligations under the existing water contracts. This year could see a repeat of that scenario.  According to Texas state water law, “first in time is first in right.” Downstream rice farmers were given first water rights in the Colorado basin, and these rights are senior to LCRA's water rights for the Highland Lakes. In fact, without the support of the rice farmers, the Highland Lakes and dams might never have been built. Rice farmers were among the strongest supporters of building the Highland Lakes and dams in the 1930s to reduce flooding and make water available during droughts. Nonetheless, it is most of the rice farmers who once more are in danger of not receiving any water under the emergency measures as the two year old drought continues.

http://www.lcra.org/water/drought/index.html

Though 2012 was not as dry as 2011 the last few months have been particularly dry. Rainfall in October through December was the third driest on record for that period. Because the ground has been so dry lately, it would take a series of good soaking rains to produce significant inflows to help the lakes recover. Unfortunately, forecasts call for rainfall across the region to be generally below normal through at least March which would trigger the emergency measures once more. The current drought has also impacted the flow of the Colorado River, the Red River and much of Texas remains in drought. Fearful of the duration of the drought with a booming economy and growing population state politicians are taking action. 

The Texas legislature is considering House Bills 4 and 11 filed by Rep. Allan Ritter, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee which would utilize $2 billion of its “rainy day fund” to create a revolving loan fund for cities and water authorities to build water supply projects. The state's water plan proposes construction of up to 26 new reservoirs, desalination plants and pipelines and greater conservation and recycling of water, to meet the demands of a projected 46 million Texans in 2060. The proposed water infrastructure fund would be a giant step towards funding the state’s water plan and is supported by the Texas House Natural Resources Committee, the Sierra Club, Austin-based Environment Texas and several water authorities. This could make Texas a leader in water planing in the arid west. 

No Water for Texas Rice Farmers

On Friday, March 2, 2012 the Lower Colorado River Authority, LCRA, announced that for the first time in its 78 year history they would not be delivering irrigation water to most downstream farmers this year under emergency relief granted by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to the obligations of the existing water contracts. According to Texas state water law, “first in time is first in right.” Downstream rice farmers were given first water rights in the Colorado basin, and these rights are senior to LCRA's water rights for the Highland Lakes. In fact, without the support of the rice farmers, the Highland Lakes and dams might never have been built. Rice farmers were among the strongest supporters of building the Highland Lakes and dams in the 1930s to reduce flooding and make water available during droughts. Nonetheless, it is most of the rice farmers who will not be receiving their water this year.

Overall, approximately 60% of all the world's freshwater withdrawals go to irrigation. Texas’ use of irrigation water falls right in that range. Without irrigation, rice could never be grown in the dry lands of Texas and the large scale farming operations could not exist. The system of water rights that developed in Texas assured for generations the allocation of water to agriculture. The water rights system as conceived and administered in Texas and the western states was not designed to conserve water. It was developed in a time when population was still sparse, water supplies were believed to be plentiful and development and growth were to be encouraged. The system was designed to protect the water and work necessary to build farms in the west. This management scheme is contractual and has produced agricultural practices that may be unsustainable in the long term as overall water demand increases.

Texas rice farmers count on their water allocations to irrigate the land along the Gulf Coast. Texas usually ranks as the nation's fourth or fifth highest producing rice-growing state, producing about 7% of the nation's rice. The farmers in the Colorado River basin make up almost three-quarters of the state's total rice acreage. Without surface irrigation water, many farmers will be able to plant only a fraction of the rice they usually grow, and some farmers won't plant any. Farmer who plan on planting this year will pump groundwater to irrigate the rice. Last year downstream farmers received about 368,000 acre-feet of Highland Lakes water. LCRA operates the storage and pumping plants that supply water through a 1,100-miles of irrigation canals in Matagorda, Wharton and Colorado counties. The facilities are organized into four service areas, Gulf Coast, Lakeside, Garwood and Pierce Ranch, and are capable of transporting water to 91,500 acres of farm land annually.

Even with the recent rains, lakes Buchanan and Travis, the region’s reservoirs, are at only 42% capacity. The combined storage of the lakes was 847,000 acre-feet on March 1, 2012. This was below the 850,000 acre-feet level required to be in the lakes on March 1st to allow the release of irrigation water to farmers in the Lakeside, Gulf Coast and Pierce Ranch irrigation districts under the September 2011 agreement to void the existing water contract obligations to those farmers. Farmers in the Garwood irrigation operation will still receive some water from the Highland Lakes this year, up to 20,000 acre-feet, because they hold senior water rights that were cut back, not cancelled. Had LCRA released irrigation water to the bulk of the rice farmers it would only have been 25% of the allocation, but the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality granted LCRA's request for emergency relief from contract obligations this past December, otherwise downstream farmers would have been entitled to as much as 178,000 acre-feet of water from the Highland Lakes this year.

LCRA operates lakes Buchanan and Travis under a state-approved Water Management Plan that allocates water amongst users. Last fall a stakeholder group determined that the 850,000 acre-feet level was the minimum level necessary to protect the cities and industries from water shortages. If water levels fall below 600,000 acre-feet and the LCRA Board of Directors are required under the Water Management Plan to declare a drought worse than the “Drought of Record”, the 10-year drought of the 1940s and 50s that is considered the worst drought in state history. When a Drought of Record is declared, the cities and industry are required to reduce water use by 20%. The 850,000 acre-feet level was chosen to ensure that water would not be released for irrigation in 2012 and then cut off mid-crop wasting the water if the combined storage fell to 600,000 acre-feet triggering the Drought of Record condition. Farmers pay considerably less for water than cities and industry and, therefore, their water is considered "interruptible" during a severe drought.

This is a another step in changing the historic rights to and allocations of water in the west as regional droughts and ever increasing demand stress the water supply. Though “on average” the United States uses less than 8% of the water that falls as precipitation within our borders annually, unfortunately, precipitation varies from the average significantly on a regional basis and thus, allocations and supply on a regional basis will remain a problem especially in locations where irrigations is the major water use (mostly the western states). The demand for water is not responsive to supply variations, and the margin for error decreases as demand for water grows. Yet, unbelievable enough Texas grown brown rice was on sale yesterday at Giant. I bought 15 pounds.

Environmental Impacts from Fracking

The oil and gas industries’ ability to pull, push or otherwise draw hydrocarbons from the earth has exceeded our knowledge of geology and groundwater and gotten ahead of our regulations which were created for traditional oil and gas wells. In the lingering Texas drought the oil and gas industry finds itself competing for the millions of gallons of water necessary to hydro fracture a well with other users -towns and ranches. In some areas ranchers are selling water rights while in other areas drillers are being limited in how much water they can draw from the aquifer. The portion of the water used to hydro fracture a well that can be recovered and reused for other fracking jobs is determined by flowback and how the water is treated or disposed of. Flowback from fracking is determined by geology and the amount of water absorbed by the rock formations, before the rest needs to flow out of the well to allow the released gas to flow.

In Texas groundwater is being used to frack wells at an unsustainable rate. In Texas groundwater belongs to the landowner and governed by the rule of capture, which grants landowners the right to capture the water beneath their property. The landowners have a right to pump and capture whatever water is available, regardless of the effects of that pumping on neighboring wells. Any single landowner in a watershed could in effect sell all the groundwater quite legally taking their neighbor’s water. Groundwater should not be used beyond its recharge rate or ultimately it will be depleted leaving communities without adequate water to support them.

The water that is absorbed into rock formations may change the formations in ways we do not understand. Though the water in the hydro frack is exempted from the clean water act (by a 2005 act of congress), the flowback is not and must be disposed under state regulations. The flowback water itself is a problem, it contains “proprietary” chemicals and contaminates from the geological formation. Researchers of the University of Texas at Austin were part of a team of researchers who studied a series of small earthquakes that struck near Dallas, Texas in 2008 and 2009, in an area where natural gas companies had used fracking. The epicenter of the quakes turned out to be about half a mile from a deep injection disposal well under the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport used to dispose of the fracking fluid. The largest earthquake of the series measured 3.3 on the Richter scale, a very small earthquake. In a study that was published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, the researchers also reviewed records from US Geological Survey seismic-recording stations in Oklahoma and Dallas. It was concluded by the researchers that the fracking did not cause the earthquakes, but there seemed to be a relationship to the deep well injection of the fracking fluid to the earthquakes.

For years the US Geological Survey has been studying the factors that impact the response of groundwater wells to earthquakes, including the magnitude and depth of the earthquake, distance from the epicenter, and the type of rock that surrounds the groundwater. The depth of the well, whether the aquifer is confined or unconfined, and well construction also influence the degree of water-level fluctuations in wells in response to seismic waves. It has been suggested that some aquifers may even act as resonators, which may amplify the response. Even a small earthquake is not without consequences to the groundwater in the surrounding area. Fracking may also have impacts on nearby water wells. Water injected into a previously dry formation may act as a resonator or lubricant to allow the formation to slide.

Local geology determines the danger of fracking to the water table. In Wyoming where the water table is deep and the gas shallow the drinking water has been impacted. The Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, announced last Thursday that glycols, alcohols, methane and benzene found in a well the EPA drilled to the drinking water aquifer in Wyoming within the Pavillion field were consistent with gas production and hydraulic fracturing fluids and likely due to fracking. The oil company responsible for these wells claims that the results are inconclusive because methane can naturally seep into groundwater wells that provide drinking water. This is a rare occurrence that is usually confined to deeper water wells in the coal-producing areas, but these were deeper wells in a coal producing area. Benzene also occurs in nature, but I can find no instances where benzene was introduced into drinking water by purely natural action; though it could have been introduced into the water by previous generations of oil and gas development. Benzene, glycols and alcohols were all common substances in fracking fluids. In 2004 when EPA first looked at hydro fracking they coordinated a voluntary agreement with the three largest fracking contractors (Halliburton, BJ Services, and Schlumberger), to stop using diesel fuel in hydro fracking. Until 2004 diesel had been commonly used in hydro fracking coal bed gas and the deeper shale gas. Diesel contains benzene, so it seemed likely to the investigators they were introduced by fracking.

EPA constructed two deep monitoring wells to sample water in the aquifer, and tested private and public drinking water wells in the community. The samples were consistent with chemicals identified in earlier EPA results released in 2010 and are within established health and safety standards for most substances, but not for benzene. Sampling found up to 246 micrograms of benzene per liter of water was found in one well, far above the safe drinking water standard of 5 micrograms per liter. The geology of Pavillion, Wyoming is unusual for shale gas formations. The shale is much shallower than in the Haynesville shale and the Marcellus shale, though there is a shallow area of the Fayetteville shale. The fracturing in Wyoming took place both within the water table and a few hundred feet below the drinking water aquifer close to drinking water wells.

In hydraulic fracking on average 2-5 million gallons of chemicals and water are pumped into the shale formation at 9,000 pounds per square inch and literally cracks the shale or breaks open existing cracks and allows the trapped natural gas to flow. While geologists and engineers believe that in hydraulic fracturing the intervening layers of rock prevent a fissure from extending into the water table, they base this on the “typical” geology where there are thousands of feet between the water table and the fracking location and does not account for any potential impacts on the hydraulic balance in a watershed. The problems seen in drinking water wells near hydro fracking jobs typically occur when fracking fluid seeps into drinking water wells through improperly sealed or abandoned drilling wells (a large number of the problems have occurred in older coal bed areas). However, in Pavillion the groundwater is within a few hundred of the gas reserves the groundwater is more easily directly impacted by fracking. In addition, there had been previous development of the oil and gas resources opening the possibility for improperly abandoned or sealed wells. In Pavillion, Wyoming they used hydro fracking within the water table near the drinking water wells. It is not at all surprising that they contaminated the water supply. What is surprising is that the business and the regulator allowed this to happen. They did it without thinking about the potential consequences because it was legal.

The oil and gas industry has outpaced regulators, knowledge of the consequences and it seems common sense. It is essential to determine the vertical and horizontal separation that is necessary to protect the drinking water aquifers from fracking and what impact new rounds of hydraulic fracturing can have on previous developed areas with old abandoned wells before watersheds are destroyed. Then increase oversight to ensure that this separation is maintained (despite inevitable requests for waivers), improve well-design requirements and ensure their consistent implementation and require the appropriate treatment and recycling of drilling waste water. Use of waste water treatment plants that were designed to address biological solids to treat millions of gallons of water used for hydraulic fracturing or ponding the waste is short sighted and imprudent. The deep well injection commonly used in Texas may have consequences beyond small earthquakes.

Drilling requires large amounts of water to create a circulating mud that cools the bit and carries the rock cuttings out of the borehole. After drilling, the shale formation is then stimulated by hydro fracking, using 2-5 million gallons of water. For gas to flow out of the shale, all of the water not absorbed by the formation during fracking must be recovered and disposed of. Though less than 0.5% by volume, the proprietary chemicals represent 15,000 gallons in the waste water recovered from the typical hydro fracking job. The chemicals serve to increases the viscosity of the water to a gel-like consistency so that it can carry the propping agent (typically sand) into the fractures to hold them open so that the gas can flow. Determining the proper methods for the safe disposal of the large quantities of this fracking fluid that may also contain contaminants from the geological formation including brines, heavy metals, radionuclides and organic contaminants and monitoring the impact from this disposal must also be done. The impact of so much waste water on our water resources must be monitored and addressed.

While most states require drillers to dispose of fracking waste water in deep wells below impermeable rock layers, Pennsylvania that has no deep wells has allowed drillers to discharge their fracking waste water through sewage treatment plants into rivers. Sewage treatment plants are designed to separate solids and use bacteria to treat biological waste. They are not equipped to remove or neutralize the contaminants in used hydro fracking fluid. In 2009 and 2010, public sewage treatment plants in Pennsylvania directly upstream from drinking-water intake facilities accepted wastewater that contained radionuclides at levels hundred even thousands of times the drinking-water standard despite the fact that these plants (and most sewage plants) were exempt from monitoring for radiation. Local regulators and gas producers believed the waste was not a threat because it would be diluted by treatment in the sewage treatment plants or the river itself, without sampling. They guessed at the environmental impact.

Finally, care must be taken to avoid degradation of watersheds and streams from the industry itself as large quantities of heavy equipment and supplies are moved on rural roads and placed on concrete pads. The watersheds must be monitored. And recent incidents and reports of potential contamination of drinking water supplies from fracking, the waste water from the fracking process underscore the dangers.The New York Times brought to light a 1987 E.P.A. report to congress titled “Management of Wastes from the Exploration, Development and Production of Crude Oil, Natural Gas and Geothermal Energy.” Corroborating documentation was obtained from state archives or from the EPA’s library by the New York Times.It appears that though seemingly forgotten, EPA had been aware of at least one well documented case of drinking water well contamination from fracking for 25 years. In addition, there are reports from several states noting contamination of drinking water wells in association with fracking, though no definitive proof because of lack of adequate testing and difficulties in understanding groundwater, the full extent to which hydro fracking fluids have contaminated or might in the future contaminate groundwater is unknown. However, many cases of associated contamination have been confirmed.