Private Sector Crafts Solution to Fracking Wastewater

An entire new industry has grown up in response to the need to find an environmentally safe way to dispose of hydraulic fracturing waste water. Although the technology has been in existence sine at least 2002, the explosion in fracking operations around the country has propelled the industry into new prominence.

According to industry sources, it takes approximately 120,000 barrels of water to frac a well. The main expense is not the cost of the water, but the expense in transporting to the drill site, and transporting the contaminated water back to another site for treatment.

The newest method to reduce this expense calls for the reengineering of the units so that they can be fit on truck-transported lowboy trailers directly to the job site, in convoys of three trailers. the typical unit produces about 2,000 barrels a day of distilled water.

These systems have been approved for a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit under the federal Clean Water Act. In Arkansas, the plan will be for the water to be reused to irrigate crops, retaining the water in the hydrological cycle.