Following a bad experience at the Fernow Experimental Forest in Tucker County, U.S. Forest Service employees have found that the current permit conditions for land applications of gas industry drilling wastewater are inadequate.

"Concentration does not predict the effects as well as a dose would," said Mary Beth Adams, a research soil scientist.

The observation, to appear shortly in two published manuscripts, comes as the Office of Oil and Gas at the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection begins revising the General Water Pollution Control Permit GP-WV-1-88 that governs land application of wastewater generated during gas well drilling, reworking, treatment and plugging operations.

The Fernow Experimental Forest is a research forest of the USFS that lies within the Monongahela National Forest.

Research projects are ongoing throughout the Fernow -- but this was not one of them.

Clarksburg-based oil and gas producer Berry Energy simply leased and exercised the mineral rights.

Berry Energy drilled into the Oriskany Sandstone in the late winter and early spring of 2008, Adams said.

"It's standard practice included within their permit ... the right to land apply the fracking fluid," Adams said. "We were told there would be no impact and we identified an area where we thought any possible impacts might be relatively undetectable."

They turned out to be very detectable.

"Basically, there was too much of the fracking fluid," she said. "About 80,000 gallons were put on an area that's about a half acre. Trees started dying instantly, greenbrier died, everything died within this perimeter."

That's not typical, according to James Martin, chief of the DEP Office of Oil and Gas.

"It's rare that the vegetation is impacted," Martin said.

USFS employees found high concentrations of chlorides and other salts in the soil, and Adams said they inferred that those salts killed the vegetation.

A discharge monitoring report that Berry Energy filed with the DEP listed chlorides in the drilling waste pit at 7,500 milligrams per liter, which is well within the general permit's 12,500 allowance.

But, Adams pointed out, it's not only the concentration but also the load -- the combination of concentration times volume -- that matters.

"The idea was that if they put it on a smaller area, the area impacted would be minimized. But what it ended up doing was getting more concentrated," she said.

"One of our recommendations coming out in these research papers is that for land application, it needs to be a dose rather than a concentration-based standard," she said. "So it's not just about the concentration that you put on, it's about the total amount."

Such a standard has been recommended in at least one comment letter on a Berry Energy permit.

George Monk and Molly Schaffnit recommended a formula for pounds of chlorides per acre.

They pointed out that some jurisdictions place load limits on chlorides in land application of liquid wastes.

Wisconsin's state code, for example, limits chlorides to 170 pounds per acre per year.

The current West Virginia general permit GP-WV-1-88 was issued in 2005 and expires July 31.

Martin said the DEP would be revising the permit, although he did not say which aspects are under consideration for revision.

He did note that the Office of Oil and Gas has begun distinguishing in its rules between conventional drilling and completion operations that use water up to 5,000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons, and Marcellus operations that can use millions of gallons.

He said he expects to release the draft permit for public comment in time to incorporate changes into a new final permit before the current one expires.

Spokeswoman Kathy Cosco said the release of the draft permit would be widely publicized to encourage public comment.