Category: News Archive

Each well drilled using hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for oil and gas production creates tens of millions of gallons of wastewater, called produced water or brine. In Ohio, much of that wastewater is disposed of in underground injection wells, including waste from Pennsylvania and West Virginia. As the number of injection wells grows in Ohio, local communities want some control over where these wells are located.
In Belmont County, Ohio, Judy Burger’s husband is getting ready to retire. After 25 years, their peaceful home near the highway is quickly changing, “I’m a nervous wreck, I’m on blood pressure medicine,” she said.  “I have my Venetian blinds closed in my house so I don’t have to look across the street to see the mayhem and the destruction and the coming reality.”
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Photo Credit: Julie Grant/The Allegheny Front

President Joseph Biden Jr. has promised to up the ante for environmental justice (EJ) communities by “rooting out the systemic racism in our laws, policies, institutions, and hearts.” Although a complete rollout of Biden’s plan has not yet been revealed, his campaign plans and initial actions allow for some educated analysis as to what industry can expect for future regulations and enforcement actions.
To reach an understanding of likely industry impacts, it’s important to look at the evolution of EJ regulations to date.
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Photo Credit: Lightspring/Shutterstock.com

In the report, Superfund Underfunded: How taxpayers have been left with a toxic financial burden, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group analyzed data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to generate a report on the state of cleanup since the initial funding mechanism, the Polluter Pays Tax on culpable corporations, expired in 1995.
“Millions of Americans live near these sites, which have chemicals either proven to cause — or suspected of causing — major health problems,” report author Jillian Gordner, who works on the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund’s campaigns against toxic substances, said in a statement. “Congress’s failure to reinstate a Polluter Pays Tax that would speed the cleanup of these sites is a choice to prioritize industry’s bottom line over the lives of Americans.”
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Photo Credit: Matthew Brown/AP

In 1980, Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), informally called Superfund. The Superfund program was given the authority and funds to hold polluters responsible for cleaning up contaminated waste sites or clean up the sites themselves if no responsible party can be found or afford the cleanup. These toxic waste sites house some of the most “hazardous chemicals known to humankind.” The Superfund toxic waste program protects people from these contaminants and the serious health problems associated with them.
The program was originally funded by a tax on the chemical and petroleum industries, but that tax expired in 1995, and now the money for the Superfund program has come primarily through appropriations from the general revenue.
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Photo Credit: Kimberly Chandler/AP Photo

WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Joe Biden has yanked back the health assessment of a notable “forever chemical,” alleging the document was compromised by “political interference” in the final days of the Trump administration.

The EPA announced Feb. 9 that it was removing from its website the toxicity assessment for PFBS, or perfluorobutanesulfonic acid, a PFAS compound that’s one of seven similar chemicals regulated by state law in Michigan public drinking water under rules passed last year.

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Photo Credit: Garret Ellison/MLive

When three 775-foot-tall smoke stacks at the Navajo Generating Station came tumbling down in December, sending plumes of dust into the sky and thundering reverberations off the mesas of the Arizona high desert, it marked the end of an era.
The federal government was instrumental in engineering the rise of the 2,250-megawatt coal plant 45 years ago, one of the country’s largest prior to its closure in 2019.
Now, President Biden faces questions about how to replace it, marking an early test of his promises to weave environmental and social justice into his climate agenda.
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Photo Credit: Jamie & Judy Wild/DanitaDelimont.com  “Danita Delimont Photography”/Newscom

When a massive fire broke out at the Intercontinental Terminals Company in 2019, a thick plume of smoke blanketed parts of east Harris County for several days. Hospital admissions for asthma increased by about 65% compared to the same time in 2018, according to county data.
A Deer Park 911 dispatcher named Brandy fielded calls as residents’ phones began to buzz and beep with shelter-in-place notifications on the first morning of the fire.
“All we can tell you is that the city manager’s office and the emergency management office have requested a shelter in place,” she told one caller. “Yeah, stay home. They request you not to be out and about. Make sure your doors and windows are shut, and turn your air conditioners off.”

The fire burned for days and affected neighboring cities.
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Photo Credit: Florian Martin/Houston Public Media

President Joe Biden has promised 40 percent of the benefits from the $2 trillion he’s aiming to spend on climate change will go to disadvantaged communities that have suffered the most from pollution. But figuring out how to spend that potential mountain of cash may vex the places vying for it and the lawmakers tasked with doling it out.

People at the highest levels of Biden’s administration are huddling to try to meet the 120-day deadline Biden set out in his sprawling executive order on climate change to issue recommendations for spending that money. And figuring out the details while avoiding the blunders that could undermine confidence in the program will be crucial for generating political momentum for his climate agenda — something Biden’s former boss President Barack Obama struggled to do with his 2009 stimulus package.
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Photo Credit: Anna Moneymaker-Pool/Getty Images

NOBLE COUNTY, OH — The Allegheny Front is reporting that a Noble County, Ohio fracked gas well has been spilling toxic radioactive oil and gas waste for over a week, with the fluid entering waterways and killing fish. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) was notified on Sunday, January 24 of the spill, but was not able to contain the spewing fluid until Wednesday, January 27. Per federal law, a spill should have to be reported to the national response center, but as of today no such report appears to have been made. It is not yet clear if state authorities ever notified the public.
In response, Shelly Corbin, Campaign Representative in Ohio for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign, released the following statement:
“For too long, Ohioans have shouldered the risks of the fracked gas industry while polluting corporations reaped all the rewards. Enough is enough; Gov. DeWine should immediately issue a moratorium on fracked gas projects and the disposal of oil and gas waste in Ohio while strengthening commonsense protections for the health of our air, water, climate, and communities. If Gov. DeWine can’t protect the people of his own state from dirty, dangerous fracked gas projects, then the U.S. EPA should step in and use every power at its disposal to do so.”
In response, Teresa Mills, Executive Director of Buckeye Environmental Network released the following statement:
“Ohio is like swiss cheese, there are an estimated 150,000 or more abandoned wells in Ohio that ODNR doesn’t even know the location of. As evidenced by the recent blowout, this is a ticking time bomb waiting to happen. We have been exposing Ohio as a radioactive dumping ground that accepts oil and gas waste from all over the region for more than ten years. The state follows the whims of the oil and gas industry over the residents and the environment. This must stop. Moreover, this well should have been plugged once it was determined to be non producing, according to ODNR’s own regulations.
Photo Credit: Amber Deem via Facebook

Ohio regulators are working at a gas well that started spewing what’s believed to be brine water from fracking into the environment more than a week ago.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which regulates the oil and gas industry, said in an email that it was notified on Sunday, January 24 that fluid, what the agency called “produced brine,” was spraying out of an oil and gas well in the Crooked Tree area near Dexter City in Noble County.
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Photo Credit: Amber Deem via Facebook