MAX Environmental Technologies Inc.
When A.L. Spencer founded Pittsburgh-based Mill Service in 1957, the company’s focus was to provide environmental services to the Pittsburgh steel industry from its original headquarters in Bulger, Pa. In 1963, it opened a second facility in Yukon, Pa., and continued to expand its service capabilities to handle hazardous and non-hazardous industrial waste in the safest way possible.
Mill Service later formed a sister company, Allegheny Liquid Systems, in Pittsburgh to treat liquid waste – including oil and gas well brines – and discharge it into the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority’s system, which handles all of the city’s wastewater treatment responsibilities. Since its inception, the company has accepted and treated more than 50 million tons of hazardous waste and 1 billion gallons of liquid waste, President and CEO Bill Spencer says.
In 1995, L. William Spencer acquired the business from his father, A.L. Spencer, and changed its name to MAX Environmental Technologies. As the Pittsburgh steel market began to slow down, Spencer knew the company needed to diversify its service scope and expand its customer base to continue growing. “We wanted to expand our focus to include government-based hazardous cleanup projects, and we also wanted expand geographically,” he recalls.
Since that time, MAX has become the Northeast’s leader in the treatment and disposal of lead, chromium, cadmium, arsenic, barium and selenium hazardous wastes and soil for the U.S. military, the EPA and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP), as well as Fortune 1,000 corporations, contractors, land developers and environmental consultants. The company widened its geographical reach to include the entire Northeast from Maryland to Massachusetts.
A New Direction
“Fast forward to today, and everything has changed because of the shale formations that we’re sitting on top of,” Spencer says. In the early 2000s, when horizontal drilling techniques made it economically feasible to obtain oil and gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale formations, the entire state of Pennsylvania was buzzing over what this could mean for the state’s economy as well as what this would do to the local ecosystem.
“You couldn’t pick up a newspaper without seeing opposition or concern from environmental groups,” he remarks. “When there is enough upheaval from community municipalities, the regulators get involved and start imposing regulations to make sure the environment is kept clean. Regulations drive our market when you’re in the waste management business. They set the bar for what energy companies need to do to be able to operate and what we as an environmental services firm can do to help them.”
PADEP and other state regulatory agencies imposed a zero-wastewater discharge rule on energy companies operating in the Marcellus and Utica shales. MAX’s decades of experience in hazardous and non-hazardous liquid and solid waste disposal – not to mention its knowledge of policies enforced by local and federal environmental agencies – make it an ideal partner to drilling companies who need to safely and effectively dispose of their drill cuttings and other waste material, says Carl Spadaro, environment general manager for MAX.
“You can stand at our facilities and look in any direction and see a drill rig,” Spadaro remarks. “MAX has been taking drilling cuttings from various drilling operations in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia and disposing of them in our operating landfills at Yukon and Bulger. As mid-stream companies are installing [infrastructure], they generate wastewater and pipeline installation waste. We can bring the wastewater in and treat it sufficiently to where they can reuse it in their hydraulic fracturing process, or we can take those materials, solidify them and dispose of them utilizing our existing structures.” Spadaro notes that MAX has serviced smaller independent energy and drilling companies as well as large corporations such as Consol/CNX and Range Resources.
‘Perfect Position’
MAX’s multimillion-dollar containment and processing building at its Yukon site was purposefully built to treat hazardous wastes and store solidified chemicals in bulk volumes. The Yukon site features an accredited laboratory that can analyze any waste coming from the Marcellus and Utica drilling sites. The company is converting portions of its high-security Yukon and Bulger properties for equipment and material storage on behalf of its oil and gas clients. MAX also is looking into mining rock at its sites and selling the limestone and sandstone aggregate for well pads and roadways, Spadaro says.
MAX has used its years of knowledge in treating and solidifying industrial and hazardous waste to develop recipes for solidifying drilling wastes at its Yukon and Bulger facilities and for drilling site operations. MAX has developed a unique full-circle solids control business: shipping tested and verified solidification reagent blends to the drilling sites and receiving the solidified drilling wastes in return.
“There are thousands of trucks on the roads of Pennsylvania that are filled with solid and liquid material and need to be cleaned out,” Spencer adds. “We are finding what the needs of the oil and gas industry are and fulfilling [them].
“We have spent the last three years learning everything we can about this market and making sure all of our people are trained to the level that is expected of the E&P market,” he continues. “We see ourselves as an integral part of the energy production process. This is an opportunity for our company, but we also see it as an opportunity that will create more jobs regionally and improve the economy.”