So often people believe that the solution to their problem lies in science and technical information. How often have you heard some company spokesperson speak to the need for sound science. At CHEJ, we have have learned many lessons about science and how it is used. Science and technical information is important and has a role in helping to achieve your community goals. Identifying this role and learning how to use scientific and technical information is critical to the success of your group.
The most important lesson is that science and technical information alone will not solve your problem(s). It’s reasonable to think that if you hire the best scientists and engineers and make solid technical arguments, the government will do the right thing. Those of you who have been there know it doesn’t work that way.
When the government discovers a problem, it’s reluctant to determine the full extent of the problem. This is because if the government documents contamination that threatens people’s health, it then has to do something about it—like evacuate people or clean up the contamination. This costs money that government doesn’t have or want to spend. Such action might also set a precedent by establishing cleanup standards or unsafe exposures levels that would mean spending more money at other sites
Deciding what action to take is complicated by the fact that there are few answers to the many scientific questions raised by exposures to toxic chemicals. Scientists actually know little about the adverse health effects that result from exposure to combinations of chemicals at low levels. As a result, when politicians and bureaucrats look for answers, the scientists don’t have them. They have their opinions but no clear answers.
Most scientists however, are reluctant to admit they don’t know the answer to a question. Instead they introduce the concept of “risk” and begin a debate over what’s “acceptable.” This process hides the fact that scientists don’t know what happens to people who are exposed to low levels of a mixture of toxic chemicals. This uncertainty gets lost in the search for what’s “acceptable.”
Because of the lack of scientific clarity, bureaucrats and politicians use science cloaked in uncertainty, not facts, to justify their decisions which at best are based scientific opinion, but more likely driven by the political and economic pressures they face. Whether this is right or not is not a scientific question but an ethical and moral question. It is foolish to think that in this setting, science can be anything but a tool used by politicians and corporations to get what they want.
While science and scientific information have failed to provide clear answers and solutions to the hard questions about the health and environmental impact of the chemicals we use, we cannot abandon science. Science and scientific information can be a powerful tool for community groups, but only if you recognize what it can tell you and what it can’t, and only if you learn how to use the information and not just collect it. The right information used in the right way at the right time can be very powerful. Learning how to use scientific and technical information strategically is an organizing skill. Contact CHEJ to continue this conversation.
Category: Backyard Talk
CHEJ Blog
Did you hear that the Flint water crisis is over? Nothing could be further from the truth. President Obama’s attempt to prove the water’s safety by drinking it on national television left many Flint residents confused and angry. Right now, pregnant women and children under age six are still being warned not to drink the water. How safe is it? Many Flint residents are relying on bottled water to bathe, cook, and brush teeth. Flint’s old leaded pipes are a long way from being replaced. The chemicals being used to seal pipes are showing problems. Flint’s residents are rightly anxious about the safety of the water.
The early signs which concerned moms and dads noticed included hair loss, sudden skin rashes, abdominal pain. They knew something was wrong, but for many parents, learning that the child was lead poisoned was much worse than anything else they had imagined. The heartbreak continued as they found that their kids were now at high risk for ADHD, low IQ, among other long-term health effects. Here is one mother’s story:
‘I’m not taking a bath . . . it hurts my skin.’ The evening struggle begins again for a mom whose child refuses to bathe. The contaminated water was causing her young son’s rash. ‘I took him to the doctors. I was told to keep his skin clean and to bathe him every night. The doctor said he had contact dermatitis from something like laundry soap, bar soap, or something else he comes in contact with. I never thought water from my faucet could be hurting my baby.”
Oversight responsibility over city water is the local government’s job. Local government is required to report to the state, which is overseen by the federal EPA water division. One breakdown in oversight is bad, but a break down at every level means somebody or everybody is slacking on the job and does not care.
Sasha Khokha, a journalist from California National Public Radio has a different distressing story. After she heard about the water crisis in Flint, she decided to check her tap water. When she reviewed her water bill from the city of Fresno, she read the “consumer confidence report” for drinking water. Sasha read the footnote in small print: ‘123 Trichloropropane (1,2,3 TCP) has been detected in 29 wells in Fresno…. Some people who use water containing it over many years may have an increased risk of getting cancer, based on studies in laboratory animals.’
Fearing for her two children, she decided to get her water tested for the presence of chemicals. The sample from Sasha’s kitchen tap showed 2.2 parts per trillion, three times the state’s public health goal for 1,2,3-TCP. Twenty-five years after California declared 1,2,3-TCP to be a carcinogen, drinking water regulators are only now planning to set a standard for drinking water.
And it’s not just Fresno. According to the State Water Resources Control Board, the chemical has been found in about a hundred public water systems across California, mostly in the Central Valley, but also in counties like Santa Cruz, Monterey, Sacramento, and Los Angeles.
We have do better as a country, every person deserves safe drinking water – it is a human right.
Currently I am on a week long family vacation in Gulf Shores, Alabama with my lovely mom, brothers, cousins, and aunt. I emphasize the word lovely because I want the readers to understand that my family is full of good, kind-hearted individuals that do not have a malicious bone in their body. They are wonderful human beings, and definitely not the face of the evil collective you envision when you think about those out ruining our environment and littering the world with trash.
And yet, that is exactly what I am accusing them, of us all, of doing.
Earlier this morning my mom and littlest brother went for a sunrise walk across the beach and came back complaining about the rubbish left along the shoreline in enormous amounts – she claims to have seen even battered lounge chairs left out far too long for us to suspect someone is planning on coming back to get them. Did this bother her to an average human extent? Yes. Did she do anything to resolve the problem? Nothing except make someone more proactive, myself, aware of it. Later that day I asked my cousin to accompany me on the same walk along my mother’s morning route with trash bags in our hands and conviction in our hearts as we picked up after the vacation goers’ neglected remains.
I am an optimistic person. I would like to believe that the endless water bottle caps, candy wrappers, and beer cans were only forgotten. That does not make this litter excusable; it merely means that the culprit could have been someone who would never dare suspect themselves to be a part of the problem – it could be someone just like you, or someone just like me. So what do I propose we do about it?
We need to start taking on the responsibility for the destruction of the environment around us. Instead of playing the blame game with the smaller problems like litter, become apart of the simple solution and pick it up! And more broadly, what I’m saying is that we need to take responsibility for the problems we are causing and more actively participate in coming up with solutions. There are a lot of things wrong with our world, and it is important that we acknowledge those things. It is far more important that we take physical action in implementing a solution. Whether it’s something as small as picking up a few stray flip-flops on the Gulf Shores, or as big as organizing a fundraiser, petition, or protest on behalf of the people of West Lake Landfill, it is about time that we do something, rather than sit back and take part in being the problem.
The two smoldering landfills in Bridgeton, Missouri have forced the community around them to take action. Just Moms STL, a group headed by area moms Karen Nickel and Dawn Chapman, has executed steps from community phone calls to representatives to meeting with EPA administrator Gina McCarthy to discuss relocation. The group and the problem have attracted national attention, and yet the Bridgeton and West Lake Landfills seems to remain a Bridgeton issue in the eyes of many St. Louisans—not a St. Louis issue. This has to change.
It’s easy for the issue to remain localized for several reasons. First, St. Louisans can dismiss the landfills as a problem only for those who live near them. Since most St. Louis residents aren’t currently experiencing the health effects or odor of the landfills, they don’t have the constant reminder of the danger there. Last fall, St. Louis County released emergency evacuation plans, and rumors flew about the possibility of radioactive waste being spread by wind throughout the whole of St. Louis. But after these scares died down, most of St. Louis put West Lake on the back burner.
Bridgeton residents continue to push forward on the issue, and the rest of St. Louis needs to do the same. The question of unity continues to dog the city, as it has for so many things. The Greater St. Louis area is separated into St. Louis City and St. Louis County, a divide that hurts both sides. The county is further divided into municipalities, which have their own semi-independent jurisdiction. The problems in this division and hierarchy were demonstrated, for example, during the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014. Ferguson as a municipality, St. Louis County, and St. Louis City were all at odds for authority, and they, especially in regards to their separate police, failed to coordinate.
In that case, however, St. Louis residents did recognize that Black Lives Matter was not just a Ferguson issue—it was a city-wide, nation-wide issue. The movement was not limited to Ferguson, and actions occurred across the city and county. The same needs to happen for the West Lake and Bridgeton Landfills. Republic dumpsters are in every other alley in St. Louis city. Republic has sites not only in Bridgeton, but in Cahokia, South County, and North City. St. Louis residents have to realize that the landfills are an issue for the whole of St. Louis and rally around leaders like Just Moms STL.
By Jacob Metz
Last week, President Obama became the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima, one of only two sites directly targeted by nuclear warfare. He used the trip to promote his vision of a world without nuclear weapons, encouraging the global community to “have the courage to escape the logic of fear” and to eliminate nuclear stockpiles from military arsenals. We would do well to heed Obama’s call to work towards a world free from the threat of nuclear weapons. But a world free from nuclear weapons must also mean a world free from dangerous nuclear waste situated near our communities.
In 1942, the St. Louis-based Mallinckrodt Chemical Works became one of the main processors of uranium ore for the Manhattan Project, the government-sponsored project tasked with developing nuclear weaponry for use in World War II. The Army Corps of Engineers estimates that Mallinckrodt Chemical Works played a large role in the production of weapons-grade uranium, from the end of World War II to the height of the Cold War in 1957. The heightened focus on the possibility of war combined with a rudimentary scientific understanding of the health effects of radioactivity meant that little attention was devoted to figuring out how to safely dispose of the radioactive waste.
After the 1950s, the radioactive waste changed hands several times around the St. Louis area before falling under the supervision of the Cotter Corporation, which illegally disposed of the waste in the West Lake Landfill. Though dumped nearly fifty years ago, the nuclear waste still remains in the West Lake Landfill today, posing a direct threat to the public health and local environment of nearby Bridgeton, Missouri.
Despite the consistent efforts of local activists like Dawn Chapman and Karen Nichols to call for the complete removal of the waste, the EPA has stalled and not used its full authority to properly and efficiently remediate the site through the Superfund law. The content of the West Lake Landfill is already strongly believed by residents to be linked to cases of cancer in the community, especially since a Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services report claims that the exact same waste in nearby Coldwater Creek was linked to statistically higher rates of cancer in surrounding zip codes.
Local Bridgeton residents want jurisdiction over the clean-up of the site to be transferred to the Army Corps of Engineers, a federal agency which has already successfully remediated other St. Louis sites affected by the same nuclear waste. Congress must pass S. 2306 to transfer authority of the clean-up to the Army Corps of Engineers and to protect the health of Bridgeton residents. As we contemplate the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we must remember that nuclear weapons threaten the lives of civilians both through their use in war as well as through their domestic production.
Categories
We Are Winning With Renewables
The U.S. electric grid added more than 70 times as much renewable energy capacity as natural gas capacity from January to March 2016. According to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) reports no new capacity of coal, oil, or nuclear power were added in the first quarter of the year. I know there are many factors in addition to our efforts at the street that makes this possible but you – our grassroots field fighters – can take some credit for this accomplishment.
Today, renewables make up 18 percent of total U.S. installed generating capacity. This is a low number as FERC doesn’t include solar energy on rooftops across America. They only include large scale solar units.
According to an article in Climate by Joe Romm, “There is increasingly clear that we don’t need to add significant amounts of any new grid capacity that isn’t renewable for the foreseeable future. In part that’s because demand for utility power generation has been flat for almost a decade — and should continue plateauing for quite some time — thanks to rapidly growing energy efficiency measures (and, to a much lesser extent, thanks to recent increases in rooftop solar). We also know that renewable power — both new wind and solar — is now winning bids for new generation around the world without subsidies. Some bids are coming in at under four cents per kilowatt hour!
This is all good news. What isn’t is that the oil and gas industry still wants to drill, frack and export our fossil fuels. In New Bedford, Texas, Maryland, Oregon and other ports along our coasts are export terminals planned to take America’s resources and ship them overseas. What ever happened to our energy security? So that big oil and gas can increase their profits, the American people lose not only energy security but also the destruction of our water, land and the public’s health.
This is an election year and we – the people – have an opportunity to ask all candidates as they knock on our doors or rally in the park where they stand on destroying our environment and harming public health to export our resources and make big oil/gas richer. I personally think it is un-American hurt our families, environment and not keep the fossil fuels in the ground until just in case Americans need them.
Categories
TSCA Reform: Is It Enough?
On Tuesday in a vote of 403-12 the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to update the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 (TSCA). The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, named after a former democratic senator from New Jersey who dedicated much of his life to TSCA reform, is a “compromise bill” designed to appease industry and environmental groups alike. The bill is also a compromise between the House and the Senate who came up with separate TSCA reform bills and were forced to combine them. The Senate’s vote is still pending, and will likely happen in the next few weeks. White House correspondents have said President Obama supports the bill and will sign it into law pending its passing in the Senate.
The original TSCA was meant as a way for EPA to evaluate the toxicity of chemicals and regulate them if they posed a threat to human or environmental health. However, TSCA is full of holes and red tape that have actually made it more difficult for EPA to regulate chemicals. The 1976 TSCA does not require industry to get safety approval before beginning the sale of a product and only allows EPA a certain amount of time to evaluate the product. Additionally, a counterintuitive measure of TSCA required EPA to provide proof of potential harm for a chemical before beginning to evaluate the harmfulness of the chemical. Worst of all, the original TSCA legislation required the EPA to consider the cost of enforcing regulations when evaluating chemicals. These restrictions meant that EPA could not or did not take sufficient regulatory action, and when it did, courts used TSCA to overturn their rules (including the asbestos regulations). Consequently, only about 200 chemicals have been evaluated since TSCA first passed, while the New York Times estimates about 64,000 chemicals are currently left unregulated.
The current TSCA reform bill aims to address the problems in the 1976 law. It requires EPA to test chemicals regularly, working on 20 chemical reviews at one time. It also ensures that EPA focus on chemicals that are more likely to harm vulnerable populations (children, workers, pregnant women, low income communities) and chemicals that could easily pollute drinking water. EPA will evaluate what it perceives as the most dangerous chemicals first, but industry can pay to have their chemicals evaluated out of order (useful if they want to begin selling new products). Industry will also contribute $25 million total each year to help fund the EPA evaluations. The rest of the funding will come from federal allocation of the budget. Finally, the TSCA reform bill also includes a requirement to find ways to reduce animal testing and a requirement to evaluate chemicals linked to cancer clusters (see Trevor’s Law).
However, despite the numerous improvements to TSCA, the reform bill is also somewhat problematic. The section that most concerns environmental activists and other critics explains that EPA regulations will preempt those set by states. While any state regulations enacted on or before April 22 will be upheld, EPA regulations will apply to chemicals evaluated after April 22nd. Proponents of the bill argue that this section addresses the patchwork of enforcement by state and that it will improve interstate commerce. However, this could mean that states with traditionally strict chemical safety measures like California could see their regulations watered down. States are permitted to request waivers from EPA, but EPA takes full responsibility for the nationwide evaluation of chemicals, even blocking states from continuing to evaluate chemicals the EPA is researching. This statute gives EPA an enormous amount of power, even allowing EPA to control our exposure levels. Even now EPA allows for higher exposure levels of some chemicals than do states. Are we sure we’re ready to trust them so completely? Federal safeguards such as those preventing chemical exposure should be a minimum, not a maximum. Or as Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) said when asked about the bill, “[F]ederal chemical regulations should be a floor, not a ceiling.” EPA should set the standards, but states should be free to make them more stringent in order to better protect the health of their residents.
I suspect that many of you watched in amazement as President Barack Obama drank a sip of tap water while visiting Flint, MI earlier this month and told everyone that it’s OK. Sorry, Mr. President, but all’s not well in Flint. This publicity stunt is a slap in the face to so many people. Not only have thousands of people including young children and infants already been exposed to toxic levels of lead and other contaminants that will affect their health for years, but thousands of people in Flint are still drinking and using contaminated water.
Dr. Marc Edwards, a professor of engineering at Virginia Tech who has done an enormous amount of water testing in Flint released the latest testing results in April several weeks before Obama’s visit. These results showed lower levels of lead in the water, but lead levels were still above the action level set by Obama’s EPA. In a press release, Edwards stated that “People have to continue using bottled water and filters until further notice.” Furthermore, no one is testing the water for volatile organic compounds like trihalomethanes (THM), contaminants that result from adding chlorine to kill bacteria. Early in the Flint crisis, THMs and bacteria levels were found to be high, but once elevated lead was found in the water, testing for THMs and bacteria stopped.
Be clear, Obama’s publicity stunt was not about public health. It was not about good science or testing results that show that the water is safe to drink. Instead, it was about reassuring the public that all is well in Flint and that the government has everything under control. It was about avoiding taking responsibility and not holding those at the highest levels of government accountable for the mistakes that led to the disaster in Flint. It was about controlling the media and trying to convince the media to move on to the next hot button issue. If this succeeds, then we can expect to see more Flints in the future, because we will not have learned anything from this public health disaster.
Categories
What the Frack?
Yesterday morning Reuters, a business and financial news source, published an article about a new dimension of the fracking debate: home insurance. With rising concerns about man-made earthquakes, insurers in Oklahoma are none too keen on providing policies to cover earthquake damage. Some insurance companies are increasing earthquake insurance prices by more than 250%, while others increased the deductibles so clients would have to pay for more damage out of pocket. Finally, some companies are beginning not to offer earthquake insurance at all.
According to the Reuters article, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) has tracked earthquakes in Oklahoma and found that earthquake frequency is increasing surprisingly quickly. In 2008 the state had “a handful” of earthquakes, then 103 in 2013, and 890 in 2015. Meanwhile, the value of earthquake insurance more than tripled from 2009-2015. Scientists have connected this increase in earthquakes with the disposal of wastewater from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. By injecting chemical-laden water into deep wastewater wells, energy companies disturb faults and induce earthquakes. As UT Austin Professor Dr. Cliff Frohlich explains, fracking engineers are careful to avoid faults because they don’t want to waste the water they’re using for fracking. Wastewater disposal is not done as carefully because many industries don’t care where the water goes when they are done using it. Dr. Frohlich says, “They’re trying to get rid of it, so they want a very porous material where fluids can flow away across long distances. So they’re more likely to get to a fault.” Even more concerning, some scientists think that as more water is pumped into the waste wells the disturbances will increase, meaning that as wells are used for longer periods of time more frequent and more powerful earthquakes will occur. With this increased risk, is it any wonder insurance companies are backing away from the problem and discussing their willingness to sue oil and gas companies for damages when the insurers do have to pay?
Energy companies claim that as long as wastewater disposal is carefully managed, there should not be any problems. However, industry officials acknowledge the earthquakes and their connection to fracking. For example, emails obtained from open record requests to the Texas Railroad Commission (regulates oil and gas drilling in Texas) demonstrated that industry members have even talked to EPA about their concerns over these earthquakes and the connection to fracking.
But the fossil fuel industry is huge. Fracking in particular has grown from being the source of less than 2% of domestic oil production in the U.S. in 2000 to the source of greater than 50% of domestic oil production in 2016, an increase of over 48% in less than 16 years. The United States is now third globally in oil production behind Russia and Saudi Arabia. We’ve gone from 23,000 fracking wells producing 102,000 barrels of oil per day in 2000 to 300,000 wells producing 4.3 million barrels daily in 2016. It seems daunting to try to stand up to such an enormous industry, regardless of the damages it causes and the problematic policies that lie in its wake.
Yet as much of a problem as the new insurance policies are, low income families are going to suffer the most. Families that can barely afford their current mortgage and insurance plan are not going to be able to afford the price hikes and high deductible. These families will not be able to move away from high earthquake areas and definitely will not be able to easily repair damages after an earthquake. According to Talk Poverty Oklahoma had a 16.6% poverty rate in 2015, higher than the U.S. national poverty rate of 14.8%. Therefore, as we’ve seen with so many other environmental health issues, fracking earthquakes will likely disproportionately affect low income communities. Again we face the question: how do we protect people instead of just profit?
Call for Rules for Handling and Disposal of Oil and Gas Waste to Prevent Earthquakes, Drinking Water Contamination. A coalition of community and environmental organizations filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calling for regulations to stop oil and gas companies from disposing and handling drilling and fracking wastes in ways that threaten public health and the environment.
The organizations are pushing EPA to issue rules that address problems including the disposal of fracking wastewater in underground injection wells, which accept hundreds of millions of gallons of oil and gas wastewater and have been linked to numerous earthquakes in Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Texas.
“Updated rules for oil and gas wastes are almost 30 years overdue, and we need them now more than ever,” said Adam Kron, senior attorney at the Environmental Integrity Project. “Each well now generates millions of gallons of wastewater and hundreds of tons of solid wastes, and yet EPA’s inaction has kept the most basic, inadequate rules in place. The public deserves better than this.”
The groups filing today’s suit include the Environmental Integrity Project, Natural Resources Defense Council, Earthworks, Responsible Drilling Alliance, San Juan Citizens Alliance, West Virginia Surface Owners’ Rights Organization, and the Center for Health, Environment and Justice.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, calls on the court to set strict deadlines for EPA to comply with its long-overdue obligations to update waste disposal rules that should have been revised more than a quarter century ago.
Amy Mall, senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said: “Waste from the oil and gas industry is very often toxic and should be treated that way. Right now, companies can get rid of their toxic mess in any number of dangerous ways—from spraying it on icy roads, to sending it to landfills with our everyday household trash, to injecting it underground where it can endanger drinking water and trigger earthquakes. EPA must step in and protect our communities and drinking water from the carcinogens, radioactive material and other dangerous substances that go hand-in-hand with oil and gas waste.”
The organizations are urging EPA to ban the practice of spreading fracking wastewater onto roads or fields, which allows toxic pollutants to run off and contaminate streams. And EPA should require landfills and ponds that receive drilling and fracking waste to be built with adequate liners and structural integrity to prevent spills and leaks into groundwater and streams.
The groups filed a notice of their intent to sue EPA last August, warning the agency a lawsuit would follow unless it complied with its duty under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) to review and revise the federal regulations and guidelines governing how oil and gas waste must be handled and disposed. RCRA requires that EPA review the regulations and state plan guidelines at least every three years and, if necessary, revise them. The agency determined in 1988 that such revisions of the regulations were necessary to address specific concerns with oil and gas wastes, yet has failed to meet its legal responsibility to act for nearly three decades.
Background
Over the last decade, the oil and gas industry’s fracking-based boom has produced a vast amount of solid and liquid waste. Each well produces millions of gallons of wastewater and hundreds of tons of drill cuttings, which contain contaminants that pose serious risks to human health. These include known carcinogens such as benzene, toxic metals such as mercury, and radioactive materials. However, the current RCRA rules that govern oil and gas wastes are too weak because they are the same rules that apply to all “non-hazardous” wastes, including household trash.
As a result, oil and gas companies are disposing, storing, transporting, and handling these wastes in a number of troublesome ways. These include: spraying fracking waste fluids onto roads and land near where people live and work; disposing of billions of gallons of oil and gas wastewater in underground injection wells; sending the drill cuttings and fracking sands to landfills not designed to handle toxic or radioactive materials; and storing and disposing of wastewater in pits and ponds, which often leak. Across the U.S., there are numerous instances of wastes leaking out of ponds and pits into nearby streams and the groundwater beneath, and operators often “close” the pits by simply burying the wastes on site.
Aaron Mintzes, Policy Advocate for Earthworks, said: “In 1988, EPA promised to require oil and gas companies to handle this waste more carefully. Yet neither EPA nor the states have acted. Today’s suit just says 28 years is too long for communities to wait for protections from this industry’s hazardous waste.”
The following are some examples of problems caused by the improper disposal and handling of fracking and drilling waste:
- Ohio: Underground injection wells in Ohio accepted 1.2 billion gallons of oil and gas wastewater for disposal in 2015, more than double the amount in 2011. Half this wastewater came from out of state. This has resulted in scores of earthquakes in the well-dense Youngstown area, with one well alone linked to 77 earthquakes. The Ohio Oil and Gas Commission has stated that regulations “have not kept pace” with the problem and that (to an extent) both the state and industry are “working with their eyes closed.” Other states that have experienced increased seismic events in the proximity of injection wells include Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.
- Pennsylvania:In May 2012, a six-million-gallon industrial pond holding fracking wastewater in Tioga County leaked pollutants, including arsenic and strontium, through holes in its liner into groundwater and a nearby trout stream.
- West Virginia:Oil and gas wastewater dumped or spilled in rivers in West Virginia and Pennsylvania contains high levels of potentially hazardous ammonium and iodide, according to a study by Duke University scientists.
- North Dakota:In January 2015, three million gallons of drilling wastewater spilled from a leaky pipe outside Williston, polluting a tributary of the Missouri River. In July 2011, a pipeline serving a well in Bottineau County leaked over two million gallons of fracking wastewater, damaging 24 acres of private land.
- Colorado:A contractor for a pipeline services firm gave a detailed account of sand-blasting pulverized waste buildup (called “scale”) from pipeline seals directly into the air outdoors without a filter, even though such dust can be radioactive and cause damage to lungs.
- Across the Marcellus region:Over the past several years, landfills in states around the Marcellus shale formation—even in New York, where fracking is prohibited—have experienced increasing shipments of drill cuttings that contain high levels of radiation. Many of the landfills do not test for radiation and do not have adequate controls to prevent the often toxic and radioactive “leachate” from seeping into groundwater.
Julie Archer, project manager at the West Virginia Surface Owners’ Rights Organization, said: “Although West Virginia has taken some steps to improve regulation, the state’s approach has been to permit horizontal drilling without carefully considering whether current methods of waste disposal are appropriate or adequate. It’s past time for the EPA to provide clear guidance on how these wastes should be handled to protect our communities.”
Teresa Mills, director of the Ohio field office for the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, said: “A major reason for the industry’s use of injection wells to dispose of toxic fracking waste is the low disposal cost. We reject this reasoning because the public’s health and safety must come first.”
EPA’s current regulations do not take into account the dangerous contents of oil and gas wastes or their unique handling and disposal practices. Since 1988, the agency has acknowledged the shortcoming of its basic rules for solid waste management and has indicated that it needs to create enhanced rules tailored to the oil and gas industry. However, the agency has yet to take any action to develop these updated regulations.
Dan Olson, Executive Director of the Colorado-based San Juan Citizens Alliance, said: “As an organization representing hundreds of families living in close proximity to oil and gas operations, we see not only the physical pollution, but also the psychological toll that oil and gas waste exacts on communities. That the EPA is 30 years overdue in creating common sense rules for managing toxic waste from oil and gas operations is a cause of great concern for everyone living near these sources of improperly regulated industrial pollution.”