It is illegal to truck frack waste and dump it as “brine” on roads in Texas. Not as “dust suppressant” Not as “de-icer” Not as chocolate syrup. No SEQR necessary. No “health impact analysis.” Not by simply reclassifying flowback as “brine.” You just can’t do it.
Why is that ? Because even the State of Fracking Texas has enough collective common sense to know that dumping flowback on a road is real real dumb. That trucking it to dump it into a municipal water treatment plant is kinda stupid. New York has Cornell. Texas has A&M. Aggies may be a bunch of paleolithic thugs, but they’re not complete fracking idiots.
Both practices should be banned in New York State. Where they have hills. And rain. Trout. And Long Island Sound. Things we don’t have in Texas. No need to wait hat in hand on a “health study” on this one. If Texans won’t put up with coating the scenery with flowback, neither should New Yorkers.
“Downstate” New York - Greater New York City, Long Island, and the Lower Hudson River Valley - are not being targeted by the frackers, despite a few appallingly irresponsible hoaxes to the contrary. But, under Cuomo’s proposed fracking regulations, Downstate does have an abundant supply of places for frack truck convoys to dump frackwaste - frack flowback, radioactive toxic produced water, and radioactive drill cuttings. And waste haulers, having virtually run out of places to dump the stuff in Ohio and parts of Pennsylvania, are already carting the stuff into New York, as Karen’s map indicates. This plus the hundreds of miles of roads where flowback from out of state is already being dumped. Which would earn the hauler a trip to the pokey in Texas.
In most states, it is illegal to dump such frack waste into municipal water treatment plants. Because municipal wastewater treatment plants were never designed to remove radioactive material and toxic chemicals from frack water. The DEC will not admit that, in the regulations, they equate frack flowback to ‘seawater’.
In most states, it is illegal to spread frack flowback on roads as “de-icer” Under the proposed regulations any paved road in the state is fair game for frackwaste in the winter, and any unpaved road is fair game in the summer for frackwaste as a “dust suppressor.”
Because that’s the way the fracking lobbyists wrote the regulations. And they have no intention of making Downstate off-limits to frack waste. Even when pressed at an Assembly hearing, the industry spokesmen wouldn’t even rule out dumping frackwaste on Long Island. Listen for yourself:
Shown below is map of the municipal treatment plants Downstate that can be used to dump tanker truckloads of frack waste and some of the landfills that can take radioactive drill cuttings under Governor Cuomo’s proposals. Billions of gallons of flowback from New York alone. Plus what’s imported from Pennsylvania. Thousand of tanker trucks. 24/7/365. Non stop. To any landfill or treatment plant that will take the stuff. Karen’s map of New York landfills and municipal treatment plants that could take imported frack waste is here.
Gas field flowback from Pennsylvania is already being spread on roads in New York State. Reports from the PA DEP filed here that document road spreading and treatment of “produced water” brine in NYS from drilling in Pennsylvania.
https://www.
80 Bbls (3360 gals) to Hakes Landfill in Painted Post, NY (Steuben County)Ask you state senator to support a bill to prohibit the dumping of frack waste on roads and in municipal treatment plants.It’s illegal to dump frack waste onto roads and into municipal plants in Texas. Why should be it be legal in New York ?Where’s the science on that ? Where’s the common sense ?
> Even when pressed at an Assembly hearing, the industry spokesmen wouldn’t even rule out dumping frackwaste on Long Island. Listen for yourself:
Chip, here’s the isolated segment (embed code is at the bottom of this page:)
http://splicd.com/9o79JV44aak/1950/2852
nice
added
I keep thinking of filming an enactment of the act of transubstantiation at the well head at the precise moment when flowback water trans-substantiates into produced water or brine with all its beneficial use determinations. Frackelujah!
there is chemistry and then there is frackistry
I was told by Ray Kemble (former truck driver for the industry) about these large “tank farms”, where the truckers bring in flowback labled “residual waste” and pump it into a set of interconnected tanks.
This is then passed through a coarse “sock filter” (only filters highly viscous fluids and larger solid debris in the range of ~500 microns and larger), and pumped across to another set of tanks where it trans-substantiates into “brine”. (This is what the other set of tanks are labeled).
the sock filter is held in place by a sock monkey until he goes into toxic shock
then they just dump the ?!@% on the road
Elizabeth Hinkle says
West Virginia is on the list for the dumping of this frack water on snowy or icy roads. I need to know what to do to help stop this from happening.