Fracking Wastewater Treatment Facility Proposed in Pennsylvania

 — by Nicole Mul­vaney, Decem­ber 10, 2014, Times of Trenton

An Israeli water recy­cling com­pa­ny is propos­ing a haz­ardous waste treat­ment facil­i­ty about 6 miles south­west of Tren­ton across the Delaware Riv­er in the Key­stone Indus­tri­al Port Complex.

Elcon Recy­cling Cen­ter, which has an office in West Wind­sor, went before rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Pennsylvania’s Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Wednes­day night detail­ing plans to con­struct the facil­i­ty on 22 acres at 100 Dean Siev­ers Place.

Ren­gara­jan Ramesh of Elcon said the facil­i­ty will use envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able tech­nol­o­gy to trans­form indus­tri­al liq­uid waste into clean water, cut­ting down more on sol­id waste and low­er­ing air emis­sions com­pared to oth­er indus­try practices.

“It will be a com­plete­ly sealed sys­tem to the point there are no odors com­ing out,” Ramesh said.

Elcon’s pro­pos­al is unre­lat­ed to the haz­ardous waste incin­er­a­tor pro­posed ear­li­er this year in Bris­tol, Pa. and lat­er put on hold.

About 90 to 95 per­cent of waste Elcon treats is water that has not been used in the frack­ing process and can be reused, Ramesh said. The exist­ing site is con­sid­ered a brown­field and Elcon plans to improve con­di­tions there, he said.

But mem­bers of the Delaware River­keep­er Net­work and Penn­syl­va­nia League of Women Vot­ers said Elcon would annu­al­ly treat 210,000 tons of raw haz­ardous waste, includ­ing mer­cury, lead and cadmium.

Red papers read­ing “haz­ardous waste” with a cir­cle and line through the mid­dle were hand­ed out by group mem­bers present at the meeting.

Incin­er­a­tion would pro­duce 39 tons of air emis­sions con­tain­ing pol­lu­tants such as hydrochlo­ric acid and nitrous oxide that could make their way to areas of Mer­cer Coun­ty and Bor­den­town, envi­ron­men­tal­ists said.

“This is not incin­er­a­tion. There is no flar­ing in this tech­nol­o­gy at all,” Ramesh said. “We do not — I repeat — We do not have any flare in our operations.”

Elcon plans to have 17 trucks vis­it­ing the site dai­ly, but that traf­fic could be reduced with a pro­posed rail­road, he said. Trucks would use major high­ways and not pass through res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hoods, Ramesh said.

Envi­ron­men­tal­ists con­tend the rail­road pro­posed to deliv­er some of the waste would cut through wetlands.

DEP offi­cials are accept­ing com­ments on the suit­abil­i­ty of the project through Dec. 26. Atten­dees said the less than one-hour pre­sen­ta­tion did not pro­vide enough infor­ma­tion to make a deci­sion and decep­tive­ly did not explain plans for an incinerator.

Com­ments can be sent to:

PA DEP Haz­ardous Waste Per­mit Review Team

Sub­ject: Elcon Recy­cling Services

2 E. Main St.

Nor­ris­town, Pa. 19401

Offi­cials can also be reached by phone at 484–250-5960, by fax at 484–250-5961 or by email at RA-HazWaste@pa.gov.