Pennsylvania quietly established a new regulatory pathway in May allowing conventional oil and gas operators to reclassify extraction sites as “mineral brine” wells, opening a fresh loophole for the commercial sale and roadspreading of radioactive wastewater. Inside Climate News reported that the Department of Environmental Protection issued the permit during ongoing disputes over how the state handles millions of gallons of toxic fluid generated alongside natural gas production.
The Regulatory Pivot in McKean County
The policy shift surfaced through permitting actions tied to BCD Properties in McKean County. The company initially sought to sell wastewater from its Danylko 4 well under a coproduct designation, which state regulators later invalidated after finding that the waste failed basic safety thresholds. Two weeks before a private settlement resolved that dispute, the DEP issued a new permit for the Danylko 6 well located roughly 500 feet away.
Because the new well draws from the same geologic formation, it extracts both brine and hydrocarbons. However, establishing it as a mineral brine well allows the operator to sell the saline fluid as its primary product while marketing the extracted oil and gas as waste. This administrative distinction creates a legal avenue for substances that critics argue are identical to the prohibited wastewater.
“So now this permit comes along, and it creates this artificial distinction between a waste brine … [and] this new category called mineral brine, when it’s the same stuff, coming from the same formation,” said Charlie Palladino, a policy advocate at Earthworks.
Neither BCD Properties nor the Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association responded to requests for comment from Inside Climate News.
Decades of Roadspreading and Environmental Debate
For decades, municipal and industrial actors used roadspreading to slather oil and gas wastewater across unpaved roads for dust suppression and winter de-icing. The practice distributed heavy metals and radioactive elements such as radium throughout the state. A Penn State study found that roadspreading releases roughly four times more radium into the surrounding environment than wastewater treatment facilities and 200 times more than isolated spills.
State regulators suspended roadspreading approvals statewide in 2018 after Siri Lawson, a resident of Farmington Township in Warren County, filed an appeal with the state’s Environmental Hearing Board. Lawson blames exposure to oil and gas waste for ongoing respiratory problems. While the DEP banned roadspreading wastewater from fracked wells, conventional operators maintained loopholes by designating their waste as a commercial coproduct.
At a 2024 state Senate hearing, Karen Feridun, co-founder of the Better Path Coalition, testified that DEP records show over 3.5 million gallons of wastewater had been dumped on Pennsylvania roads between 2018 and 2024. An August report from the FracTracker Alliance indicated that roughly 70 percent of Pennsylvania’s conventional oil and gas wells reported oil and gas waste production but no corresponding waste disposal.
Budget Shortages and Staff Cuts Weaken Agency Oversight
A December 2025 report from the Environmental Integrity Project found that the DEP’s budget and staffing levels have failed to keep pace with the natural gas boom over the past 20 years. Enforcement actions dropped 57 percent from 2016 to 2024. David Hess, a former DEP secretary who maintains the PA Environment Digest blog, noted that the conventional well industry has a documented history of non-compliance, leaving the agency stretched thin as it attempts to regulate new categories of wells.
During an October legislative hearing, DEP officials told lawmakers that a company called Seneca Minerals Co. operates as a regulated brine well and continues roadspreading. Seneca had converted a spent oil well into a brine well in 2007 and produced 2.4 million gallons of brine spread across dozens of municipalities in 2025. The DEP stated that the Danylko 6 well was permitted to prevent drilling with zero regulatory oversight, though agency officials are currently drafting new brine spreading regulations to clarify the process.
Lawmakers expressed sharp divisions over the practice during the hearings. Rep. Greg Vitali questioned whether the mineral brine permit undermines existing prohibitions by legalizing an identical substance, while Rep. Dallas Kephart argued that well operators face prohibitive costs when trucking waste to distant disposal sites given current fuel prices. Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Grade Crude Development Advisory Council formally requested that the DEP permit these mineral brine wells during an April meeting.
BCD Properties has filed an appeal against the permit, and officials continue to examine the oversight framework governing the state’s extraction waste.
