SRBC Proposing New Permitting Rules

The Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) today announced it is conducting public hearings on October 21 and 22 on proposed regulatory revisions that will further protect the basin’s water resources and streamline the review of consumptive water uses by the natural gas industry. SRBC’s proposed revisions are open for public comment through October 31.

Included among the proposed revisions affecting the natural gas industry, SRBC would:

- Require all requests for consumptive water use approval to go through SRBC’s approval by rule process – an administrative procedure – rather than SRBC’s standard consumptive water use application process.

- Expand the approval by rule process to allow project sponsors to utilize a broader range of water sources as part of their consumptive use approval, including public water supplies, discharges from wastewater treatment facilities and other lesser quality water sources, and withdrawals from other sources approved separately by SRBC. (The current approval by rule process applies only to water from public water suppliers, thus making project sponsors undergo the standard consumptive use application process for all other water sources.)

- Regulate projects on a drilling pad basis, versus the current process that addresses consumptive use requests on a company-lease area basis.

- Require projects to demonstrate compliance with state and/or federal law for the treatment and disposal of flowback or produced fluids, including brines.

- Incorporate the August 14, 2008 determination by the SRBC Executive Director that all quantities of water withdrawn or used for natural gas well development be reviewed effective October 15, 2008.

- Limit SRBC approval to five years.


Press Release at http://www.srbc.net/pubinfo/press/docs/ProjectReviewNaturalGasRulemaking_Sept2008_3_.pdf