Radioactive Waste in the Genesee River (Upstate NY)

Here is a very important issue that demands our attention:

 

 

Radiation concerns everyone along the Genesee River downstream of Angelica, NY !

(The Genesee River flows north and empties into Lake Ontario.)

The Hyland Landfill in Angelica is along the Genesee River that flows north through Rochester into Lake Ontario. It is one of five in NY State permitted to accept tailings and other waste from fracking operations. Hyland already accepts drill cuttings from PA frack sites and wants to expand the landfill to accept more radioactive fracking waste. The DEC public comment period on this expansion request has been extended to July 21: http://www.dec.ny.gov/enb/20130508_reg9.html#902320000300002

Learn more here: http://www.weebly.com/uploads/8/0/2/5/8025484/hyland_landfill_comment_period_open.pdf

Talking Points for your DEC letters: http://www.weebly.com/uploads/8/0/2/5/8025484/talking_points_hyland_landfill.pdf

More information is available on Gary Abraham's and Rachel Treichler's websites:

http://www.garyabraham.com/Hyland.html and here: http://treichlerlawoffice.com/radiation/index.html

This is urgent! Please submit a comment, however brief, to:

Mary E Hohmann

NYSDEC Region 9 Allegany Sub-Office
182 East Union - Ste 3, Allegany, NY 14706
(716)372-6242

 

 

Thanks to Anna Sears and Nedra Harvey, co-founders for this information.

R-CAUSE (Rochesterians Concerned About Unsafe Shale-gas Extraction)
http://www.r-cause.net/

 

Arden Landfill, Washington, PA

Click here to see a list of landfills in Pennsylvania that accept Marcellus drilling waste.  We just don't have adequate facilities to deal with the vast amount of fracking waste which will need to be disposed of.  Landfills leak, and they take up enormous amounts of land which could have been used for food production.  These landfills become superfund sites.  And what about air pollution?  Would anyone care to have one of these nextdoor to a home or school? This fracking waste is radioactive. We are dreaming if we think this will work out well.

David Rovics Performs His Song "No Fracking Way"

From Garden-concert at Alværn, Nesoddden by the Oslofjord August 8. 2011.

More about David Rovics here.

I just came home from a concert by David Rovics in Rochester, NY.   If you haven't experienced a Rovics concert,  you must try to catch up with him.  His songs are riveting, intense, and show a thorough knowledge and understanding of world events, both current and in history.  David Rovics is a class act.

Chesapeake Energy Accused of Operating Without a Permit (with Update)

The Arnold pad on Kerrick Road at Sollick Road
Taken in 2009 before it became a residual waste treatment facility
Photo: Carol Manuel

This would be just another bad story about Chesapeake if it were not so close to my family's summer home in French Azilum, Bradford County, PA. In this week's Rocket, there is news that Chesapeake is already hauling residual waste/frack fluid up to the Arnold site  on Kerrick Road.  The pad was there in 2009, but no well was put there. A group of neighbors with property on the border of Terry and Asylum Townships is making a lot of noise. They are claiming that Chesapeake Energy is "operating several wastewater treatment facilities in the area that were either improperly permitted, not permitted at all, or operating on sites that were not adequately prepared for such usage."

David Bohlander and Patrick Blow are angry that Chesapeake is so bold and DEP seems less than adequate in oversight.

They don't understand why this remote rural area was chosen for what they feel is a regional facility.

Chesapeake is claiming that these local people are just making a fuss over nothing.

The Asylum Township supervisors have taken an active role in questioning the operations. They noted that no Land Development Application had been submitted to the municipality as required in the township's 2008 subdivision/land development ordinance. Lee Allyn also expressed concern about the truck traffic on Herrick Rd. [Note:  I know this road very well.  It is very hilly, some steep hills.  Much of it is dirt, not paved.  I frankly cannot think of a less desirable location for a centralized facility.  It is literally out in the boonies!  I kid you not!] 

Bohlander and Blow say they would be "willing to put up with 300-600 trucks daily passing their homes on their way to the Arnold pad" if they could be assured that the watershed would be properly protected. Blow has a personal reason for being worried. He has lost two parakeets and a dog to ontaminated well water.

Both men say this is a matter of public health.

The Arnold facility, just up the hill from the family homestead  for all intents and purposes, is being used to treat waste drilling mud as we speak even though the permit for such an operation is not in place yet. How can this be? Gas drilling activity with no permit? The audacity is impressive. Meanwhile, my family is in jeopardy of contamination, both air and water. The recent hurricane, not to mention the earthquake which was felt in Frenchtown by none other than Cousin Mark, are reminders that weather happens. Rains and wind come, and the earth shakes. Unusual, at least the earthquake is unusual. At least it used to be unusual. Some say that fracking can cause earthquakes. It is a real problem in Arkansas and Texas.

Update:  I called the PA DEP Friday to speak with Lisa Houser, environmental waste manager.  She was not at her desk, but called back and left a message.  She said that indeed  Chesapeake Energy is operating what will be called the Arnold Centralized Fluids Processing Facility, as yet not fully permitted, though an application was filed in March.  Ms. Houser said there are a few minor issues yet to be worked out, for example, they are using a different kind of truck than originally stated in the application.  But she did not seem terribly concerned. (I will talk with her this week to get more information and verify this.  You can't always determine too much in a voice message.)

Click to read the whole Rocket-Courier article.

Important Update:
I had a very good conversation with Lisa Houser of the DEP today.  She called me in response to my phone call to her last Friday before Labor Day.  She told me that the DEP does not regulate the number of trucks that can go back and forth.  It regulates the amount of frack fluid that can be processed per day:  940,000 gallons.  She said there are many kinds and sizes of trucks, so it is impossible to know how many trucks it will take on a given day.  However, the average capacity is about 9,000 gallons per truck load.  So that would add up to about 200 truck trips up and down the mountain daily.  That number would change if the trucks used are smaller, of course.

Even more important:  I was in error (technically at least) to say that the Arnold facility is operating without a permit.  They do have a valid permit (issued last July) to operate a 123 facility.  However, the DEP has several issues still unresolved, involving the size of trucks and the kind of tanks that were listed in the permit. Ms. Houser said that the facility was not constructed in accordance with the permit.  She has spent a lot of time the last two weeks in conversation with Chesapeake in regard to this facility.  She told me that she only has four inspectors to cover 14 counties!  She added that, even if she had 100 inspectors, it wouldn't be nearly enough to do the proper oversight.  I have to sympathize with her frustration.

It is exasperating to think that gas companies can wiggle out of situations.  For one thing, they have scads of money in case fines are levied.  I think they "go ahead and apologize later."  And the chances of being caught in a remote area up on a mountain like the Arnold site are small.  Also, as Ms. Houser explained, these drillers are used to the way things are done in Texas and environs.  They are not used to the regulations in PA.  And they seem to treat the regs in a somewhat cavalier manner in my opinion.  The consequences are not harsh anyway.

I am beginning to see that permit issues can be messy.  It is impossible to police what is going on.  Violations are discovered perhaps by luck, random inspections, or maybe through citizen reports.  As for the latter,  it is almost impossible to observe what is going on because most well pads are off limits.  No Trespassing signs bar people from legally going on pad sites.

Sign at Arnold Site
Arnold Centralized Fluids Processing Facility
238 Sollicks Road at Kerrick Road
[Click to enlarge photo]
Photo: Carol Manuel
Asylum Township

Gas Drilling: More Truck Traffic Accidents, More Spills

Waste water truck line-up

Two people were sent to local hospitals August 7th after a water tanker truck rolled over on State Route 14 near Alba, PA, spilling 1,600 gallons of recycled water from gas drilling operations.  The truck driver was severely injured in the early morning crash.  After the truck came to rest upside down and partly in the road, a car came by and struck the trailer of the truck.  That driver was taken to a hospital as well.

Here is the strange part about this accident.
The PA Department of Environmental Protection were called to the scene and said that there was no "saline" in the truck and the treated water contained "no chemical contaminant."  This water was being transported from Williamsport, PA, after having been "treated" and was being taken to another well pad to be used again for another hydrofracking job.  According to the PA DEP, no clean-up was necessary except for some motor oil and hydraulic fluid from the truck itself.  The Bradford County Public Safety Director Robert Barnes said he did not know where the treatment facility was located- the one where this recycled frack fluid had been treated.

I have read that this recycled frack fluid becomes more and more salty every time it is treated for re-use and that eventually it becomes unusable and must be discarded.  Also I know that this frack fluid contains radioactive material brought up from the ground during fracking.  I do not believe this recycled frack fluid can be called water by any stretch of the imagination.  It could possibly be called recycled frack fluid, but not water.  That gives the false impression, in my opinion, that this fluid is somehow harmless, almost as if you could drink it safely.

I am also puzzled as to how the PA DEP got to the scene so fast and determined that there was no public health or environmental hazard at the crash site.  I know the DEP inspectors do a good job, but this is extraordinary!  Usually after accidents, samples are taken and sent to a lab and it takes a week or so to get the results.

The truck was operated by Principal Enterprises, LLC, of Canton, PA.  The gas drilling company was Talisman Energy USA, formerly known as Fortuna.

Read more.....

Interested in the business of treating frack water?  Go here. The industry makes some pretty amazing claims as to just how pure the treated "water" is.  Do we buy it?

I still maintain that, once fresh water is stolen removed from our rivers and streams and used for hydrofracking, it is no longer water, but rather produced water, or brine.  It will never ever be fit to drink or use in any other way as pure water.  It will never return to the hydrologic cycle as happens, for example, when water is used on golf courses.  This water is only useful to gas drillers and then only for a short while.  Then it becomes  useless even for fracking.  To read the advertisements for this water treatment process, you would think you could give the treated water to a baby.

Some interesting Reader Comments (Towanda Daily Review):

"I talked to one of these local water truck drivers earlier today and he said that he is putting in roughly 100 hours behind the wheel every week. Even working 7 days straight that is over 14 hours behind the wheel every single day. These drivers are being told to make as many trips as possible during their shift. So we have exhausted drivers racing from point A to point B and back - it's amazing we haven't seen more of these trucks involved in accidents."

"Amazing! The DEP was able to do all that testing & obtain the results in less than 24 hours???"

" I ran into one of these tanker rollovers on Sunday afternoon at near 5PM on Route 706 between the Frank and Mary's and the old Red House bakery. It was totally on its back, with wheels in the air, down from the road near a creek. There was lots of emergency services and another tanker (probably to pump the load of whatever out). Why hasn't this rollover been reported on by the Review? It did occur in Bradford County."

"There are too many crashes for the paper to possibly report them all. A couple weeks ago in Monroeton a water tanker ran completely over the front of a car. Squashed it flat. That was never in the paper. We would need a bigger paper."

"Within the past two weeks I have almost been hit head on by two tractor trailers in the Troy area. The first one broke my mirror and the second one would have hit me, but I swerved into the ditch. I encourage all truck drivers to remember that they are supposed to be professional drivers and should obey speed limits and avoid texting or talking on the phone."

"Excuse me for being suspicious, but I simply do not believe that EVERY time there is an accident and a spill by the gas industry, DEP almost immediately says there is no danger, no chemicals, etc. These trucks carry chemicals and highly toxic waste. This is why we need laws that require tracking this "stuff" from start to finish. I, too, wonder how it is they (DEP) can make such quick determinations and tell us it is safe? Each one of these accidents has the high potential to pollute our water. There are far too many of these incidents and too little reporting on them. I have heard these drivers work extremely long hours, often working 7 days in a row. This is insanity. Too much is at risk. I'd be interested in knowing that it was checked and double checked as to just WHERE this frack water was treated!"

And that's just a few of the comments at the end of the article! 

And here is another article related to this subject from the New York Times if you have a moment to check it out.                  

And finally, an interesting interactive graphic about wastewater chemicals.

I guess that's enough reading material for one day!


     

Radioactive Wastewater Sprayed on PA Roads

Water from two gas wells in Tioga County, PA, with radium at nearly 700 times the levels allowed in drinking water went to nine muncipalities to suppress dust in 2009, according to state records. Read more.....

Walter Hang Speaks Up About Gas Drilling Dangers in NY

"I believe this could be the Achilles heel of natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale."
Walter Hang

Read the article in the NY Times.

"While the existence of the toxic wastes has been reported, thousands of internal documents obtained by The New York Times from the Environmental Protection Agency, state regulators and drillers show that the dangers to the environment and health are greater than previously understood.


The documents reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle."

ToxicsTargeting website:  LINK