Will Ohio Be Fracking’s Radioactive Dumping Ground?
Wednesday, 05 June 2013 Mike Ludwig, Truthout
Language in Ohio Senate version of Kasich budget bill will create legal (illegal?) loophole for radioactive waste in state’s landfills…
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 Weatherington-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 undergroundinjection wells.
Fracking also produces solid wastes such as drill cuttings, rocks, mud, dirt and usedfrack 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.
But the waste must to be disposed of somewhere, and Ohio’s 39 landfills may be the place.
Weatherington-Rice told Truthout that she is already aware of solid fracking waste dumps at landfills in Ohio, and several reports indicate that some landfills are already accepting waste. But a proposal in the state legislature would codify regulations for solid waste dumping and open the fracking waste floodgates, according to environmental groups.
“If passed, this proposed law would put a big, trashed-out ‘Statue of Radioactive Liberty’ on Ohio’s eastern border,” said Jack Shaner, deputy director of the Ohio Environmental Council (OEC). “It would proclaim to the oil and gas industry: ‘Bring us your spent, cast-off, radioactive waste. It’s welcome in Ohio.’ ”