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It was meant to go unnoticed. A small announcement out of a commissioners’ meeting signaled plans to transport fracking wastewater by barge down the Ohio River. But it caught the eye of locals and offers a further reminder of why handling and disposal of the wastewater is truly one of the shale drilling industry’s most important and overlooked concerns.
 
Construction is already completed at one barging facility in the Marcellus region. A Texas-based company, GreenHunter Water, has built a shipping terminal and 70,000-barrel wastewater storage facility on the Ohio River in New Matamoras, Ohio. GreenHunter officials have said they are currently accepting about 3,000 barrels of fracking wastewater per day.

The U.S. Coast Guard is now reviewing plans to barge fracking wastewater in the region’s rivers, which serve as the drinking water supplies for over half a million people.  
 
These plans have raised alarm for many reasons. In the event of a barge accident, the drinking water for major cities like Pittsburgh could be immediately contaminated; the barges themselves could become radioactive because Marcellus shale wastewater carries unusually high levels of radium; spills or illegal dumping could be harder to detect in water than on land.