FRACK SAND SWIRLS IN STOWE
Breathing it can raise risk of lung disease
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
On an early morning bicycle ride in May, John Detwiller was pedaling across the McKees Rocks Bridge when he noticed white sand drifted into small piles against the bridge support beams and a haze hanging low over barges on the Ohio River.
On a subsequent bike ride, along Island Avenue in Stowe after a July rainstorm, he said he again rode through sand — almost as fine as flour — and made the kind of tire tracks more commonly found on a wet beach.
But Stowe is no beach community, and the sandy deposits on bridges, streets and sidewalks are more than just a gritty inconvenience for those wearing sandals.
The fine-grained sand is the kind used for hydraulic fracturing of shale gas wells, and contains high levels of silica, which is valued by the shale gas industry because of its rounded shape, uniform size and hardness, but poses a potential public health hazard.
Breathing it can increase the risk of lung cancer or cause silicosis, a disabling, non-reversible and sometimes fatal lung disease.
“The sand seems to come and go from roads and sidewalks, and depending on the day, it can be all over the bridge and road,” Mr. Detwiller said. “I don’t know how many tons it is, but it either washes away with the rain or blows away in the wind, thengets replenished again.”
The “frack sand” scattered around the community is coming from McKees Rocks Industrial Enterprise Inc., a 100-acre materials handling and transfer facility with 30 employees that began operating in 1969 along the Ohio River in Presston, a mixed industrial-residential section of Stowe.
Since about 2007, the company has moved silica sand from barges and train hopper cars to tri-axle trucks for transport to shale gas drilling sites, where it will be used for “fracking” the wells.
As the sand handling operation has grown with the shale gas industry over the years, the fine sand deposits have grown too.
It’s not uncommon to find them on bridges, streets, sidewalks and vehicles, and in railroad yards, neighborhoods, even a playground, said Thaddeus Popovich, co-founder of Allegheny County Clean Air Now, a grass-roots environmental organization.
Mr. Popovich said the dust from the sand handling facility and the trucks that transport the sand to the well fracking sites are creating a significant health risk.
“We have seen that the unloading of the barges with a clamshell scoop crane is creating a cloud of swirling silica dust, and the trucks transporting the sand are not well sealed,” Mr. Popovich said. “It really ticks me off that this has been going on for several years, because we think the fugitive emissions from the barge offloading practice are impacting communities beyond the fence line.”
He questioned what he said was a lack of governmental oversight for a company that was able to expand its barge unloading operations and upgrade its materials warehouse with the help of two state grants totaling more than $1.5 million.
He said he and members of ACCAN are scheduled to meet with