CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

A natural gas drilling company is proposing a facility on the west side of Keuka Lake that would dispose of wastewater by injecting it deep underground.

Chesapeake Energy plans to build the facility in the town of Pulteney, near the intersection of Armstrong Road and County Route 78, about a mile west of Keuka Lake, according to Pulteney Town Supervisor Bill Weber.

It would be located at the site of a former Chesapeake gas well on land owned by the Bergstresser family. The well, which tapped the Trenton-Black River formation, was drilled in 1997 and capped off in 1999 after it stopped producing natural gas.

Chesapeake plans to build an access road, six tanker truck unloading bays, temporary storage tanks and equipment to inject wastewater from Marcellus Shale operations in Pennsylvania and New York into the well, according to application documents submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this fall.

The Bergstresser well is about 6,000-feet deep, well below drinking water sources and Keuka Lake, Weber said.

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