PITTSBURGH -- Drinking water in the Upper Ohio River basin is safe to drink, but it remains vital that the monitoring of runoff into the region’s rivers and creeks be continued.
That’s the conclusion of water quality experts from Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia who spoke Monday at the Convergence at the Confluence, a daylong conference hosted by the Three Rivers QUEST water-quality monitoring program. The event, funded by Colcom Foundation of Pittsburgh, was held at Duquesne University.
QUEST, the acronym for Quality Useful Environmental Study Teams, is a reporting system that monitors water quality. Over two years, it conducted bi-weekly water quality tests led by the West Virginia Water Research Institute at West Virginia University. The goal of the program was to determine the amount of total dissolved solids (TDS) and various chemicals in the region’s rivers.
TDS, which occur naturally and from urban runoff, is a measure of the combined content of all inorganic and organic items in a liquid. They are not considered harmful, but can make water taste funny and damage clothing washed in water. Spawning fish and young fish, however, tend to be susceptible when water has high concentrations of TDS. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a limit of 500 milligrams of TDS per liter of water, said Beth Dakin of Duquesne University’s Center for Environmental Research and Education at Duquesne, who spoke at the event.
Scientists and volunteers collected water samples every two weeks since January 2013 at 54 sites within an area of 25,000 square miles through which the rivers run.
Experts offered chemical interpretations and breakdowns of data they found at the collection points. Their conclusion of the program, on which $700,000 was spent, is that water is safe is drink and there is no obvious manmade impact on the environment.
Bruce Dickson, an ecologist with the Clarion-based Iron Furnace Chapter of Trout Unlimited, a trout and salmon conservation organization, said he has been monitoring the runoff at Allegheny National Forest – the only national forest within Pennsylvania – since January, where Marcellus Shale drilling has taken place.
He said his data show that deep shale drilling has not had an effect on the water table. The only two incidents he found that involved spillage were on site at the gas well pads.
“There has also not been any mine drainage,” said Dickson at the conference.
Stan Kabala, associate director of Duquesne’s Center for Environmental Research, said collecting the water samples has been vital in establishing a reliable picture of what is going on in three rivers, especially with the number of coal mines and the increased number of gas wells drilled in the three states. Coal and natural gas provide 80% of the energy consumed in the United States.
The samples collected from the upper Ohio River basin were analyzed by a certified laboratory and then sent to Three Rivers, part of the West Virginia Water Research Institute, to provide more data and insight on the health of the water basin.
“What is important about this is that a solid baseline of river quality is being put in place that can distinguish among legacy pollution issues such as abandoned mine drainage, other pollutants from nonpoint sources, and more significantly, pollution from shale gas exploitation,” Kabala said.
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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