Tom Pike: Water suppliers must make frackers accountable

With much of Westmoreland County having suddenly entered a “flash drought,” vegetable gardens are drying up in the withering heat.

Although this flash drought is unlikely to deepen into a long-term crisis, let’s take it as a reminder that we are only ever a bad month or two away from something more serious. We should also remember that our choices can also affect whether or not we enter a prolonged drought, or at least how severe one might become.

I don’t mean “our choices” as in low-flow shower heads — though if you want to install one, I think that is helpful and good! But the most impactful choices we can make happen at the policy level.

Fracking corporations waste hundreds of millions of gallons of water more than your household, and when they’re done with it, it is no longer usable for drinking, irrigation or any other purpose. There is no known way to remediate it once it has been used for fracking. In 2023, fracking corporations reportedly used up as much water as the entire town of Vandergrift.

This spring, the Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County (MAWC), which supplies water to over 150,000 customers, took the laudable step of increasing the amount it charges fracking corporations per gallon of water. The reasoning was that, since household water can be reused, but fracking wastewater is essentially single-use trash, fracking corporations should have to pay more.

We applaud this action by MAWC, but there is still more that MAWC should do.

Earlier this year, 244 MAWC customers signed a petition calling for MAWC to charge fracking corporations more, and also to automatically pause water sales to frackers when a drought is declared, create a long-term strategic plan on water conservation, and cap annual water sales to frackers at half the amount used in 2023. So far, we’ve seen short-term fixes from MAWC, and what we need is a long-term plan.

There will always be a next drought, but how soon and how severe it will be is up to us. This is why long-term planning is needed, so we don’t find ourselves later asking where all the water went.

Tom Pike is an environmental policy advocate with Protect PT.