EQT and regulators appeal $1 million fine

Harrisburg Bureau

Both EQT Corp. and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection are appealing a $1.1 million water pollution fine imposed in May by a state hearing board on the Downtown oil and gas company.

The civil penalty assessed by the Environmental Hearing Board was a quarter of the $4.5 million fine DEP initially suggested for a 2012 wastewater pond leak that created a broad and persistent water contamination plume around a Marcellus Shale well site in Tioga County, but EQT attorneys argue the fine is still larger than the law allows.

EQT’s appeal to the Commonwealth Court cites more than a dozen reasons the hearing board committed legal error in its assessment of the fine, including by failing to apply a higher court’s ruling that penalty calculations should be constrained to days when contamination actively leaks into waterways.

DEP attorneys wrote that they are primarily appealing the penalty ruling to preserve their arguments in that important related case, now before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which could revise a long-held understanding of what counts as a continuing violation of the state’s Clean Streams Law when pollution lingers or spreads in waterways after an initial spill.

EQT said the board erred by assessing penalties for months after June 15, 2012, the date when holes in the leaking pit’s synthetic liner were patched but before most of the contaminated rock and soil beneath the pit was excavated. If the board had stopped adding up daily fines after June 15, the penalty amount would have been less than $600,000.

DEP said the board erred in the other direction and should have counted more days and multiple types of violations in adding up the penalty. It also said the board should have imposed “additional penalties as a deterrent to EQT, based upon the fact that EQT is a multi-billion-dollar company.”

EQT is expected to become the nation’s largest natural gas producer when it completes its acquisition of Canonsburgbased Rice Energy Inc. in a deal announced in June.