Toward strategic management of shale gas development: Regional, collective impacts on water resources

Shale gas resources are relatively plentiful in the United States and in many countries and regions around the world. Development of these resources is moving ahead amidst concerns regarding environmental risks, especially to water resources. The complex nature of this distributed extractive industry, combined with limited impact data, makes establishing possible effects and designing appropriate regulatory responses challenging. Here we move beyond the project level impact assessment approach to use regional collective impact analysis in order to assess a subset of potential water management policy options. Specifically, we examine hypothetical water withdrawals for hydraulic fracturing and the subsequent treatment of wastewater that could be returned or produced from future active shale gas wells in the currently undeveloped Susquehanna River Basin region of New York. Our results indicate that proposed water withdrawal management strategies may not provide greater environmental protection than simpler approaches. We suggest a strategy that maximizes protectiveness while reducing regulatory complexity. For wastewater treatment, we show that the Susquehanna River Basin region of New York State has limited capacity to treat wastewater using extant municipal infrastructure. We suggest that modest private investment in industrial treatment facilities can achieve treatment goals without putting public systems at risk. We conclude that regulation of deterministic water resource impacts of shale gas extraction should be approached on a regional, collective basis, and suggest that water resource management objectives can be met by balancing the need for development with environmental considerations and regulatory constraints.