Pennsylvania Gets Tough on Trucks Hauling Waste Water from Drilling Operations
This post was written by Nicolle Snyder Bagnell and Ariel Nieland.
According to a press release this week by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, the "Pennsylvania State Police placed 250 commercial vehicles out of service" earlier this month as part of an effort to enforce various environmental and traffic safety laws in areas that have seen an increase in heavy truck traffic as a result of Marcellus Shale drilling operations. Of the 1,137 trucks inspected, waste water trucks received the highest proportion of citations and written warnings. Commissioner Frank E. Pawlowski explained in a June 23 announcement that because hydro-fracking requires substantial volumes of water to be delivered to and from well sites, the number of waste water trucks, in particular, on Pennsylvania roads has increased significantly.
