Can Municipal Treatment Plants Handle Fracking Wastewater?

A discussion about drilling wastewater has stalled in Auburn, N.Y. after an engineering firm determined the city’s wastewater treatment plant cannot handle the waste without further studies. GHD Inc., in Cazenovia, N.Y. conducted a headworks analysis for the City of Auburn and reported that high chloride levels in the gas drilling wastewater could damage the plant, which already accepts industrial wastewater from several factories.According to Vicky Murphy, Auburn’s director of municipal utilities, the city’s wastewater treatment plant mainly accepted produced wastewater, although it did take some flowback water from vertically mined wells.“Chloride is already high in our waste stream,” says