In June, 2008, a few months before the water problems on Carter Road came tolinght, the Pennsylvania DEP ordered municipal sewage treatment plants to stop accepting drlling wastewater without knowing its composition and how to treat it. The suite of tests required to comprehensively screen the material was expensive and, for many treatment plants, prohibitive. The problem was complicated by the fact that drilling companies did not have to report what they used and their characterization of the waste tended to be too broad to establish parameters for testing.

One of the treatment destinations that began refusing flowback was in Sayre, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles northwest of Dimock. Dave Allis, manager of the plant, told me thay stopped taking drilling fluids after the DEP warning. Lacking the wherewithal to test for metals and other contamination in a timely and cost-efficent way, they decided "it was more headache than it's worth."

When I asked regulators where the flowback was being treated, they told me it was a question for the companies. When I asked company representatives, they told me, "it's all regulated."

In 2008, I learned of two plants in Pennsylvania: one about 50 miles north of Pittsburgh and another about 40 miles east of Pittsburgh. Collectively, they handled about 360,000 gallons per day. A single Marcellus well could produce several million gallons of waste and the DEP had permitted more than 2,500 of them in 2008 and 2009. In addition, the industry had to do something with the waste from tens of thousands of conventional wells, which also produced brine and other constituents.

Ken was by then formulating a view of the industry from his own observations and from questions he put to Scott about what he saw on the job; and he was convinced that the wells in Dimock were producing waste faster than the company could legally get rid of it. He was now mostly worried about his pond, the watershed, and the collections of 20,000-gallon frack tanks taking up more and more space on his land, where a second and third well had been drilled, with plans for more

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Antoine M. Thompson, chair of the New York State Senate Environmental Conservation Committee, also heard how operators routinely spread flowback on the road in the name of dust control, even during wet spells.