The Coundersport Area Municipal Authority has ended its relationship with a Lawrenceville company that wants to build a shale gas drilling wastewater treatment facility near the headwaters of the Allegheny River in Potter County.
That likely was the death knell for the controversial $1 million project proposed by Epiphany Water Solutions. The five-member authority board voted unanimously Monday to withdraw state water discharge permit applications and terminate a non-binding lease agreement with the company.
The authority acted just three days after JKLM Energy, a shale gas drilling company and the project’s financial backer and primary customer, announced that it would not use the facility, and two weeks after Coudersport Borough Council voted to oppose the project.
Edward Easton III, a board member and owner of Potter County Outfitters, a hunting, fishing and trapping store, said the board weighed all of its options and made an “educated decision.”
“After JKLM pulled out, there wasn’t another customer, so we rescinded the permit and that’s the end of it,” Mr. Easton said Tuesday. “We’ve cleared the deck.”
Opponents of the treatment plant, including the Seneca Nation of Indians, which was concerned about the river degradation risk posed by the operation of an “experimental” wastewater facility, hailed the vote.
“Last night, the CAMA board showed great courage and leadership in placing the greater good of the people and the environment above all else,” Seneca Nation president Todd Gates said Tuesday. “For the past several weeks, the Seneca Nation has been working to communicate a simple message: not here, not on our river. Don’t mortgage our future on some sort of test project.”
Mike Broeker, Epiphany’s president, said in an email response to questions that the company had no comment.
Laurie Barr, a leader of Save the Allegheny, a loose confederation of regional advocates and activists opposed to the project, said she was shocked but happy the CAMA board pulled the plug.
“After JKLM pulled out, there really was no customer for the facility or financial backing,” Ms. Barr said. “I think the CAMA board realized they were facing a lot of liability, a lot of legal challenges to the project and a community that didn’t want to pay those legal bills.”
The Allegheny River, which flows no bigger than a small creek in Coudersport, 325 river miles from Pittsburgh’s Point, is the source of drinking water for millions of people in dozens of municipalities downstream, including Pittsburgh.
Epiphany had proposed building a wastewater treatment plant that would accept truckloads of wastewater from shale gas drillers, and, after distillation, discharge up to 42,000 gallons a day into the municipal sewage treatment plant and then into the Allegheny River.
Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1983, or on Twitter @donhopey
First Published: April 10, 2018, 11:02 p.m.