The director of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency on Monday blasted the pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners for a “pattern” of 18 spills of drilling materials and said that the size of the biggest spill could reach 5 million gallons, more than double original estimates.
Craig Butler, the Ohio EPA director, said that his agency has imposed about $400,000 in fines on Energy Transfer Partners, the same company that was recently embroiled in controversy over its Dakota Access crude oil pipeline.
While drilling mud used to cool and lubricate drilling equipment is not toxic, the biggest spill has poured fluid the consistency of a milk shake several feet deep in a previously pristine wetland and would “kill just about everything in that wetland,” Butler said.
The Rover project is the first of two pipelines Energy Transfer Partners planned to build across Ohio.
A spokesman for the company Daryl Owen said that Butler had “mischaracterized” what had been taking place and that the state regulators “have no jurisdiction to fine us.” He said that the leaks, which he said were “inadvertent releases that come up through natural fissures in the soil and rock,” were “anticipated in the permit” from FERC.
Butler’s comments raised the confrontation between the state EPA and Energy Transfer Partners that began in April when the company notified the agency that it had twice spilled drilling fluids in pristine Ohio wetlands and that the larger of the two spills covered an area the size of 8½ football fields.
Energy Transfer Partners said at the time that the larger spill just south of the town of Navarre, Ohio, could be as much as 2 million gallons.
The last of the 16 spills was reported Monday; the company spilled about 200 gallons of drilling slurry into the Conotton Creek, affecting about half a mile of the waterway about 50 miles south of Akron.
The Ohio EPA director also said the agency had given Energy Transfer Partners permission to hire contractors to do limited burning of brush and trees to clear a right of way for the Rover pipeline.
“We agree that the drilling mud is not toxic,” Butler said, “but if you take millions of gallons of bentonite clay and put it in the middle of a category 3, superior quality wetland like they did.