The Marcellus Shale gas industry has an opportunity to begin to repair its damaged reputation by demonstrating rapid and full compliance with this week’s request from the Department of Environmental Protection to stop taking hydrofracturing water, or frack water, to certain treatment plants that discharge water into rivers.

The DEP statement requested compliance. It should have been mandatory. The treatment plants in question had been grandfathered in to allow them to accept fracking water, but they not equipped to remove certain contaminants.

Former Gov. Tom Ridge, who now works as an adviser to an industry group called the Marcellus Shale Coalition, understands what’s at stake and how a steady stream of negative stories will hurt the industry. Commenting on the DEP request over fracking water, Ridge said, “If it’s not mandatory, it should be. I would encourage them to comply as soon as possible, and tomorrow’s not a bad time to start.”

Apart from rapid compliance on fracking water treatment, the industry should be hard at work trying to reformulate the mix of chemicals used in fracking water.

If engineers in the natural gas industry are not already experimenting with less-toxic, or even nontoxic mixtures, to release natural gas from layered shale formations, they should start now.

Ongoing news reports of tainted well water and contaminants found in river water downstream of treatment plants near Pittsburgh handling fracking water are having an impact on the public’s perception of the industry. Eventually, that will translate into public policy.

Already, the apparent lax or uncoordinated regulatory stand-ards for gas extraction in Pennsylvania have prompted the federal government to intervene. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it would study a variety of issues surrounding gas extraction and the handling of fracking water following a series of investigative articles published in the New York Times.

The industry rightly boasts of the economic benefits of a booming gas extraction business in Pennsylvania, but repeated stories of environmental damage and frack water-related contaminants found in drinking water, are creating staunch, no-drilling environmentalists out of people who months earlier had been open-minded about the industry.

Continued revelations of gas industry operators accidentally or intentionally causing environmental damage will create tree huggers out of fence sitters. Those who have been inclined to give the industry the benefit of the doubt could soon join those calling for moratoriums on Marcellus Shale drilling until fracking water and other issues are resolved. For the benefit of the environment, the state’s economy and the industry, Marcellus operators need to clean up their act. Quickly.

Some, if not most, gas operators see the need to comply with the DEP request, and show they are responsible corporate citizens. According to the Associated Press, Atlas Energy, a Pittsburgh-based company owned by Chevron, says it will comply with the DEP request and calls it “the next logical action for the industry to take.”

Better yet would be the industry getting out ahead of federal and state regulators by imposing strict standards on its own practices. Also, gas drillers that are repeated violators of regulations should be prohibited from operating within the state. Kicking the worst operators out of Pennsylvania would send a clear mesage to the rest of the industry.

Still, it must be remembereed that Marcellus Shale gas extraction is an industrial activity that, like others, comes with risks. Recent events have shown the risks associated with other forms of energy, from coal mines in West Virginia to a deep-water oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, and, more recently, to an earthqake- and tsunami-crippled nuclear power plant in Japan.

None of today’s major sources of energy is riskless. But like the others, the natural gas industry has to do a better job of minimizing the risks. That also means reducing the negative consequences of a system failure. The most obvious way for the Marcellus Shale industry to do that is to find a mixture of benign materials that can replace the toxic blend of chemicals used in fracking water.

This week’s DEP action is an opportunity for the Marcellus gas industry to start to turn things around. Until that happens, serious damage is being done to the industry here.