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Patriot Water fights ruling
By Karl Henkel
WARREN
Patriot Water Treatment, LLC in Warren has fired back at Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine.
The 10-month-old company, which treats some brine wastewater from fracking sites, and the city of Warren filed a response with the Environmental Review Appeals Commission in Columbus and the Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.
It is seeking declaratory judgement on which agency — the Ohio Department of Natural Resources or the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency — should regulate Patriot.
“Based on the attorney general’s and Ohio EPA’s decision to ask an administrative tribunal to revoke our permits, we had no choice but to ask our lawyers to protect our businesses and the jobs of our employees,” said Andy Blocksom, president of Patriot, in a statement.
Patriot, which is represented by Columbus-based law firm Bott Law Group, treats the wastewater and then sends it to the city’s wastewater plant.
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a process in which water, chemicals and sand are blasted through pipes into rocks thousands of feet below the ground to unlock natural gas and oil.
Patriot is also seeking a judgment on the Ohio Revised Code’s definition of brine, which includes all saline geological- formation water resulting from, obtained from, or produced in connection with exploration, drilling, well stimulation, production of oil or gas or plugging of a well.
Concentrations of salts in brines from oil and gas drilling can reach up to 300,000 milligrams per liter. Patriot argues it is not permitted to discharge brine to Warren if the salinity level exceeds 50,000 milligrams per liter, slightly higher than the salinity in sea water, which is 35,000 milligrams per liter.
Tom Angelo, Warren’s wastewater director, fired back at state environmental regulators in a statement.
“The state is saying that a business should work with several agencies for several years, obtain all permits required, spend millions of dollars to open a new facility, bring jobs to the Mahoning Valley and then have the rug pulled out from under the business 10 months after the business opens based on a new interpretation of an existing law,” he said.