Will Ohio Be Fracking's Radioactive Dumping Ground?

[marmar]

Will Ohio Be Fracking's Radioactive Dumping Ground?

Wednesday, 05 June 2013 09:16
By Mike Ludwig, Truthout | Report


As hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," has boomed in Ohio, Pennsylvania and nearby states in recent years, waste wells in Ohio have absorbed millions of barrels of liquid waste from oil-and-gas drilling operations in the region. Environmentalists and other observers are now calling Ohio a "dumping ground" for the fracking industry. Drillers now want to dump potentially radioactive waste mud, drill cuttings and frack sand from fracking operations in municipal landfills in the state, and environmentalists are up in arms.

"I am not against fracking, I am against stupid," said Julie Weatherinton-Rice, a senior scientist at Bennett & Williams Environmental Consultants and an adjunct professor at Ohio State University. "I am seeing a lot a lot stupid and a lot of heads in the sand, and that's what's going to kill us."

Fracking produces both solid and liquid wastes. The liquid wastes, known as "flowback" and "brine" in industry lingo, are laced with chemicals and can be radioactive from materials that occur naturally in the underground shale formations where oil and gas is extracted. In Ohio, brine is typically pumped into underground injection wells.

Fracking also produces solid wastes such as drill cuttings, rocks, mud, dirt and used frack sand. These wastes can also be contaminated with radioactive material, especially if they come from Pennsylvania, where the Marcellus Shale formation at the heart of a fracking boom is known to contain considerable levels of radium-226 and other material. A truck carrying fracking waste was recently turned away from a landfill in Pennsylvania after setting off radiation alarms. .........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/16751-will-ohio-be-frackings-radioactive-dumping-ground

[CincyDem]

1. Fracking Fluid has become a great growth product for a lot of companies.

Close friend who is an independent environmental engineer/chemist.

Historically, chemical plants that had waste water to dump had to adhere to all sorts of regulations about what could be dumped directly, what had to be scrubbed before dumping, and what had to be concentrated and specially stored as hazardous.

Seems that now, all these companies have a new product. They're in the Fracking Fluid business. Because there is no regulation of how a fracking fluid is formulated, there companies are taking whatever wastewater they have, calling it a "formula" designed to help make fracking more efficient and they're selling it.

So instead of paying to clean it up to meet minimum standards of dumping, they just slap an "ACME FRACKING FLUID" sticker on the front and sell it for $49.95 a gallon or whatever. And there's no way EPA can even look at it because this stuff is going out the front door as product sales rather than the back door as waste. Nobody has any regulatory authority over this product.

Insane.

[xchrom]

2. du rec.

[Buzz Clik]

3. The big problems are the lack of openness about what's in the waste and lack of regulation.

This is always the formula for disaster, and it will be here.