Fracking Waste: A Radioactive Legacy for New York?

        New York Landfills Import Hazardous Fracking Waste -- TAKE ACTION to Protect Our  Environment and Health

By David Kowalski .

Marcellus Shale contains radioactive materials, including uranium and its decay products, radium and radon. Normally, the radioactive material is safely buried deep underground. However, shale gas drilling and fracking bring radioactivity in solids and liquid wastewater to the surface, posing a risk to the environment and public health if not properly managed.

Radium and radon can cause cancer if ingested or inhaled. Radium causes leukemia and bone cancer. Radon, a gaseous decay product of radium, is the leading cause of lung cancer in non-smokers.

In 2009, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) found radium levels in Marcellus Shale wastewater that are thousands of times greater than that allowed in drinking water by the Environmental Protection Agency, and up to 267 times the limit for safe discharge into the environment.

Exemption from a key federal regulation allows gas industry solid and liquid waste to pass as “non-hazardous.” However, it is becoming more widely appreciated that the waste can contain radioactive materials, in which case it should be regulated as "hazardous" waste and be managed accordingly.

Drilling and fracking waste in the form of sludge from Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale has triggered radiation alarms at municipal landfills. The sludge contains flowback fluids, frack sand and other fluids. Sludge must contain at least 20% solids according to the DEC, implying that it could contain as much as 80% flowback fluid and other fluids containing soluble radioactive material.

Liquid leachate from landfills is sent to wastewater treatment plants unequipped to monitor or remove radioactive materials, threatening drinking water sources.

Waste from drilling and fracking in Pennsylvania has been imported by 6 New York landfills  (see Map at bottom of page), including one in Niagara Falls that is not permitted to receive radioactive waste.

In West Virginia, tons of waste from Marcellus natural gas wells are going to municipal landfills, and radioactivity is leaching into surface water.

In the first four months of 2014, nine loads of Pennsylvania shale gas drilling waste were rejected by local landfills because of higher-than-normal radioactivity. Some of this radioactive drilling waste was shipped from Pennsylvania to West Virginia landfills that are not required to monitor radioactivity.

The gas industry has not identified methods to safely dispose the hazardous, radioactive waste and is shipping it to municipal landfills. It would be costly for industry to properly dispose the waste at a facility licensed to handle radioactive waste, but this is exactly what must be done to protect the environment and public health.

The industry is also failing to cleanup the hazardous, radioactive material in fracking wastewater. A peer-reviewed scientific paper reported radium levels of 200 times background in Pennsylvania’s Blacklick Creek sediments downstream of a specialized fracking wastewater treatment plant. A large portion of the radioactivity in the fracking wastewater appeared to have been removed before discharge into the waterway, but it is not clear where that radioactive material was disposed.

Avner Vengosh, the Duke University researcher who led the scientific study, said that "once you have a release of fracking fluid into the environment, you end up with a radioactive legacy." Contamination by radium, which has a half-life of 1602 years, will persist in the environment for many thousands of years.

Radioactive materials are present in a variety of gas-bearing formations, not just the Marcellus. Radioactivity can be present in the wastewater not only after high-volume fracking, but also following low-volume fracking, which is currently permitted in New York.

The DEC permits spreading fracking waste called 'brine' (salty wastewater) obtained from low-volume fracking wells and gas storage facilities on roads for de-icing, dust control and road stabilization as well as on land for dust control. Spreading applications of fracking brine have been approved for use in portions of at least 23 municipalities in 7 western New York counties: Erie, Niagara, Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, Genessee, Wyoming, and Seneca. Also, the New York State Department of Transportation Region 6 received approval to spread brine from natural gas storage on State roads in portions of Steuben, Allegany, Chemung, Schuyler, and Yates Counties.

Spreading of any fracking wastewater on roads or land should not be permitted without first testing for radioactive materials. If radium and radon are present, aerosols and dust containing radium could be inhaled along with radon gas. Radium in liquid runoff that makes its way into drinking water and fish could be ingested.

Radium and radon in waste from shale gas drilling and fracking pose a serious threat to the environment and public health. Cancers induced by ingestion or inhalation of these radioactive materials can take years to develop.

Regulation of radioactive waste in gas drilling is just as lax now as it was shown to be in investigative reports of 2011. The public should demand that the New York State Legislature pass laws to protect our water, land, air and health from the dire consequences of long-lived radioactive contamination.

NY State Senator Tkaczyk sponsored a common-sense bill to ban transportation of fracking waste from Pennsylvania and elsewhere into New York and ban disposal. However, the bill was defeated in the Senate Environmental Conservation Committee in a straight party-line vote (7 Nays by Republicans to 6 Ayes by Democrats).

A key bill sponsored by Senator Avella (S674), and the 'same as' bill sponsored by Assemblyman Sweeney (A1046), would close the loophole that allows fracking waste to be designated as "non-hazardous," despite the fact that it can be hazardous in ways described above. Fracking waste needs to be monitored. If it contains radioactive or toxic materials, it should be regulated as "hazardous" waste and be stored, transported, and disposed in ways that protect the environment and health. As stated in the bill, "If not treated properly, hazardous waste can, among other concerns, lead to contaminated air, drinking water, soil, and food."

TAKE ACTION: Contact your NY State Senator (Click Here) and Assembly Member (Click Here) and ask them to co-sponsor the bills (S674 and A1046) to protect our environment and health.

Public input is more important than ever given heavy campaign contributions to state legislators from the natural gas industry.

In the absence of New York State laws, the public has little choice but to call for municipal bans on fracking waste in order to protect our environment and health.

An abbreviated version of this article was published in The Buffalo News on May 29, 2014.

Sources of Pennsylvania drilling/fracking waste disposed at 6 New York landfills
Credits: Karen Edelstein, NYS Coordinator for FracTracker Alliance

Fracking Waste: Dangerous Spills and Road Spreading

Exxon to Face Criminal Charges for 50,000+ Gallon Fracking Wastewater Spill

Exxon Mobil Corp. subsidiary XTO Energy will have to face criminal charges for allegedly dumping tens of thousands of gallons of fracking waste at a Marcellus Shale drilling site in 2010, according to a Pennsylvania judge’s ruling on Thursday.

Following a preliminary hearing, Magisterial District Judge James G. Carn decided that all eight charges against Exxon — including violations of both the state Clean Streams Law and the Solid Waste Management Act — will be “held for court,” meaning there is enough evidence to take the fossil fuel giant to trial over felony offenses.

Pennsylvania’s Attorney General filed criminal charges back in September, claiming Exxon had removed a plug from a wastewater tank, leading to 57,000 gallons of contaminated water spilling into the soil. 

Thanks to laws pushed by corporate front groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), sponsored by ExxonMobil, states have allowed minimum disclosure of the chemicals used in the fluid. Though Pennsylvania does now require disclosure to regulators, it has a “gag rule” banning doctors from talking about the health risks.

The most recent study of health risks related to fracking was released in mid-December by the journal Endocrinology, which found the presence of hormone-disrupting chemicals in surface water and groundwater samples in Garfield County, Colorado — one county at the center of the U.S. fracking boom. The chemicals have been linked to infertility, birth defects, and cancer.
Read more at ThinkProgress.

New York’s Fracking Waste Problem | UPDATE

Even though the de facto moratorium on high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing in New York State continues, the disposal of waste from hydraulic fracturing (fracking) operations is occurring in New York now and deserves our attention. The extraction of natural gas using fracking produces large amounts of liquid and solid waste that can contain a number of harmful pollutants, including salts (sometimes expressed as total dissolved solids or TDS); chemical additives, which may include ethylene glycol, naphthalene, and sulfuric acid; metals; organic compounds; and other contaminants. Fracking waste from extraction activities in the Marcellus Shale can also contain naturally-occurring radioactive materials (NORMs) such as radium-226 and radium-228.

In July 2013, [Hudson] Riverkeeper wrote to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) and requested information about one method of handling fracking waste that New York is currently allowing: the use of production brine from conventional, low-volume fracking on New York roads for de-icing, dust control, and road stabilization. Specifically, we asked the agency to provide information regarding its approvals – known as Beneficial Use Determinations or BUDs – of the use of natural gas production brine for road spreading from June 2011 to July 2013.

UPDATE: Further review shows that road spreading of natural gas production brine has been approved for use in portions of at least 23 municipalities in 7 western New York counties: Wyoming, Erie, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Genessee, Niagara, and Seneca. Road spreading of natural gas brine from natural gas storage has been approved in at least 10 municipalities in 2 western New York Counties: Allegany and Steuben. In addition, the New York State Department of Transportation Region 6 received approval to spread what appears to be brine from natural gas storage on state roads in portions of Steuben, Allegany, Chemung, Schuyler, and Yates Counties.

Read more at Hudson Riverkeeper.

For additional details, see The Facts about New York and Fracking Waste at Hudson Riverkeeper.

Public Statement on Fracking Waste -- By Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper

High standards of excellence are needed to protect Buffalo Niagara's local waterways. Careful consideration must be employed in how we use and apply various chemicals in our community.

In January 2012, Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper prepared a 9 page technical document regarding High Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (HVHF), which concluded that "HVHF activities cannot be conducted in a manner that is protective of both human health and the environment until issues related to water quality and water quantity impacts are resolved."

In response to our recent technical review of the Beneficial Use Determination (BUD) by NYSDEC, Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper supports a ban on the road application of shallow well or storage brine as a de-icing agent.  (The permit does not allow application in wet weather, or when rain is imminent, or within 50 feet of any stream, creek, lake or other body of water. The BUD permit as written does not allow use of "flow back" brine, nor the use of byproduct from Marcellus Shale HVHF.)

Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper has additional concern about lack of control and monitoring associated with current use of shallow-well brine for road application as dust suppression. The testing conducted to submit a BUD application is a snapshot in time that does not adequately monitor the inherent fluctuation of levels of chemical constituents that vary over the production life of each well or brine source.  More robust testing, monitoring and regulation is needed.

Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper supports a ban on any WNY wastewater facility to accept HVHF wastewater.  Riverkeeper's technical comments in 2012 stated, "In New York State, there are no municipal or industrial wastewater facilities in existence that currently have the ability to accept, adequately process or treat high volume hydrofracking wastewater."

To view Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper's technical documents regarding high volume hydrofracking, Click Here.

~ Fracking Wastewater Pit ~

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.

Fracking News

Treatment Plants Accused of Illegally Disposing Radioactive Fracking Wastewater
A Pennsylvania industrial wastewater treatment plant has been illegally accepting oil and gas wastewater and polluting the Allegheny river with radioactive waste and other pollutants, according Clean Water Action, which announced today that it is suing the plant.
“Waste Treatment Corporation has been illegally discharging oil and gas wastewater since at least 2003, and continues to discharge such wastewater without authorization under the Clean Water Act and the Clean Streams Law,” the notice of intent to sue delivered by Clean Water Action reads.
State officials also discovered that the sediments immediately downstream from the plant were tainted with high levels of radium-226, radium-228 and uranium. Those particular radioactive elements are known to be found at especially high levels in wastewater from Marcellus shale gas drilling and fracking, and state regulators have warned that the radioactive materials would tend to accumulate in river sediment downstream from plants accepting Marcellus waste. Read more at EcoWatch.


Fracking Debris Ten Times Too Radioactive for Hazardous Waste Landfill
A truck carrying cuttings from a Pennsylvania fracking site was quarantined at a hazardous-waste landfill and sent back after its contents triggered a radiation alarm showing the load was emitting 96 microrem of radiation per hour; the landfill rejects waste with levels above 10 microrems. The radioactive material from a site in the Marcellus Shale formation was radium 226, a common contaminant from the decay of uranium-238 that tends to accumulate in bone and can get into water. Officials said “everything was by the book in this case" because the alarm went off as designed; the fracking operators can now either re-apply at that landfill or take their deadly waste to an out-of-state facility that accepts it - and yes, they exist. The scariest thing here: Pennsylvania, which is currently studying radiation contamination associated with fracking wells, claims to be the only state that even requires landfills to monitor radiation levels.
Read more at Common Dreams. 

Radioactive waste rejected by Pa. hauled to Idaho
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection says containers of radioactive drilling waste rejected by a southwestern Pennsylvania landfill have been hauled to a U.S. Ecology site in Idaho for safe disposal.
Read more Here.

Fate of 200,000 public fracking comments unclear 
ALBANY — New York's proposed rules for hydraulic fracturing drew an unprecedented response in January, when more than 200,000 comments were submitted by the public to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Seven months later, the fate of those comments is unknown, with the DEC refusing to say whether it will respond to the concerns raised in the submissions or allow them to sit unanswered.
Read more at Press Connects. 

Oil and Gas Spills: Many mishaps among drillers, but few fines 
If Kristi Mogen causes a crash on the road, she knows she'll probably get a ticket and have to pay a fine. 
So she's frustrated that Wyoming officials didn't fine Chesapeake Energy Corp. for an April 2012 well blowout near her home outside Douglas, Wyo. The ruptured gas well spewed gas and chemicals for three days, forcing her and her neighbors to evacuate their homes.
Read more at EnergyWire News.


FRAC Act Re-introduced to Senate
Amid widespread fears that the boom in fracking for natural gas poses a growing array of environmental threats, some members of Congress are making a new effort to reverse a 2005 law that exempted the industry from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Read more at Environmental Working Group.

Ohio lawmakers who oppose fracking tax have gotten lots of money from frackers 
Oil and gas companies have been on a fracking spree in Ohio for a couple of years now, but they’re not bringing many jobs to the state, so Republican Gov. John Kasich has been trying to get them to give back in another way: via a fracking tax. Read more at Grist.

Methane leaks may burst natural-gas bubble
President Obama’s climate-change plan calls for a closer look at the scope of leaks from gas wells, pipelines and compressor plants. Depending on what is found, new regulations could be imposed.
Duke University researcher Rob Jackson trolled through Washington, D.C., searching for evidence that natural gas is not quite the climate champion President Obama claimed last month.
He was replicating a study he did in Boston, measuring leaks from creaky natural-gas pipes. In addition to being a possible safety risk, methane, the key component of natural gas, is 25 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide. And leaks may undercut much of the climate benefits of gas.
Read more at The Seattle Times.

Former Mobil VP Warns of Fracking and Climate Change 
Few people can explain gas and oil drilling with as much authority as Louis W. Allstadt. As an executive vice president of Mobil Oil who ran the company's exploration and production operations in the western hemisphere before he retired in 2000.
Allstadt has become an indispensable guide for one of the country's most powerful environmental movements, New York's grass-roots anti-fracking resistance. Recently he was elected a Cooperstown Trustee.
"The fracking that's going on right now is the real wake-up call on just what extreme lengths are required to pull oil or gas out of the ground now that most of the conventional reservoirs have been exploited - at least those that are easy to access," Allstadt said. Read more at TruthOut.


Gas drillers cancel lease with NE Pa. landowners
Two energy companies are pulling out of northeastern Pennsylvania, where a three-year moratorium on gas drilling has infuriated landowners who say it’s now cost them a windfall of more than $187 million. 
Hess Corp. and Newfield Exploration Co. sent a letter to landowners that notified them their leases are no longer in effect, according to the Northern Wayne Property Owners Alliance, which negotiated a master lease on behalf of more than 1,300 families and businesses. Read more at Ithaca Journal

Art installation brings you face to face with fracking 
Fracking hell or fracking bliss? Fracking Futures, an art installation at Liverpool's FACT gallery, gives visitors a chance to decide what they think of this controversial gas extraction technique. Its miniaturised fracking "rig" simulates the sounds, tremors and flames that a real one might produce, and appears to drill right through the gallery floor.
Read more at New Scientist.

Videos: Exclusive interviews of Josh Fox on The Daily Show
Part 1, "Gasland Part II" director Josh Fox disputes the idea that natural gas is a boon for the environment.  (06:39)
Part 2, Josh Fox argues that government regulatory agencies are in the natural gas industry's pocket.  (04:25)
Part 3, Fox warns against the natural gas industry's tendency to address engineering problems with PR solutions.  (04:30)