FRACKING: What's in Your Water?

Drilling wastes from the Marcellus Shale contain radioactive materials, including Radium and Radon. The NY Dept. of Environmental Conservation permits 5 upstate NY landfills to accept out-of-state Marcellus drilling wastes, even though none of the landfills has a license to handle Radioactive materials. 

One landfill is in Angelica, NY and another is in the city of Niagara Falls. Landfill water leachate is sent to water treatment plants that are not equipped to remove Radioactive materials, posing a threat to public health.

Ingestion of Radium in water can cause leukemia and bone cancer. Inhalation of Radon gas is the primary cause of lung cancer in non-smokers.

Handling, monitoring, transportation and disposal of radioactive waste is much more costly to the gas drilling industry than dealing with waste that is not identified as radioactive.

Efforts by NY Senate Democrats to prohibit imports of hazardous Marcellus drilling wastes into New York have been blocked by Senate Republicans. 

Transportation and disposal in New York of radioactive drilling waste from Pennsylvania and other states should be prohibited to protect public health.

Read about the above and additional threats to our water in the excellent report by Peter Mantius entitled New York Imports Pennsylvania’s Radioactive Fracking Waste Despite Falsified Water Tests.