The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection is investigating a large wastewater spill near a gas drilling site in Marshall County.

The incident happened Friday night in Dallas. NEWS9 first learned about the spill through an incident report from the National Response Center.

Officials said the spill happened at Noble Energy's centralized water storage pit. The site is actually located on Consol Energy's property in Dallas, and the pit contains a mixture of freshwater and used or "produced" water.

A valve feeding that pit with the freshwater had been left open, causing it to overflow, sending over 95,000 gallons into a local tributary of Big Wheeling Creek.

Noble Energy and the DEP stated that they are testing water and soil samples for potential impacts and said containment areas set up after the overflow minimized the effects.

Kathy Cosco, spokeswoman for the state DEP, said, "Fortunately we have found no evidence of any fish kill or of any aquatic life being affected by this spill."

Wheeling Jesuit University professor of biology Ben Stout said explained what the chemical is in that produced water.

"Hydrochloric acid, gluteraldahide. They use the hydrochloric acid to fry the rock, to keep the calcium magnesium from building up like you would on your hot water heater. The gluteraldahide is a biocide to kill bacteria," Stout said.

Stout said, diluted or not, fish kill or not, the chemicals are not something we drain into one of the Valley's largest water sources: the Ohio River.

"I'm glad that Wheeling water intake is upstream from Wheeling Creek," Stout said.

The U.S. District Attorney's Office in Wheeling recently created a task force to monitor activity on and around drilling sites. NEWS9 called to see if this is a case that office is looking into, but workers there would not confirm or deny that.

Stay with NEWS9 and WTOV9.com for continuing coverage.