Yahoo. The good people of Idaho - which is populated largely by conspiracy theorist wingnuts too weird to “fit in” in Utah - have adopted the load of toxic radioactive frackwaste that had been abandoned in New York and Pennsylvania.
Idaho was the closest place to get rid of this fracking garbage. Idafrackingho. Have you ever been to Idaho ? I have. Fished there. It’s way the frack out there. In more ways than one . . . So now Idaho can babysit radioactive frackwaste for the next 1,000 years or so.Thanks Idahoans. What other fracking garbage do you want ? Slightly used Frack Rubbers of uncertain provenance ? Bring ’em on. No questions asked.
Which begs the question - are the radioactive frack waste dumps in Ohio already full up ? Really ? Allegheny River not available ? No trout streams nearby ?
The orphaned radioactive frackwaste has found a home - at long last. And a new euphemism “TENORM“. An acronym for technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive material. It occurs when the levels of radioactivity that are present naturally are increased by human activities. Like fracking. . . Instead of good ole’ NORM. You know, the barfly in “Cheers”
http://www.observer-reporter.
Rejected frack waste taken to Idaho
By Tara Kinsell
Staff Writer
[email protected]
published jul 11, 2013 at 10:46 pm (updated jul 11, 2013 at 10:46 pm)
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has confirmed that containers holding radioactive drill cuttings that were rejected in April by the Max Environmental Technologies disposal site in South Huntingdon Township have been transported to Idaho for disposal.
“Rice Energy has informed us that they have removed the roll-off boxes containing the TENORM material,” said John Poister, spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. “They have provided us documentation that the material was sent to a U.S. Ecology site in Idaho for proper disposal.” TENORM is an acronym for technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive material. It occurs when the levels of radioactivity that are present naturally are increased by human activities.
The Rice Energy truck carrying the drill cuttings from a Center Township well site set off the radiation warning system on April 19 while entering Max Environmental. The truck was immediately quarantined and tested to determine what type of radiation it contained, according to Poister. It was determined that the drill cuttings contained Radium 226 at a level of 96 microrem (mrem). Microrem is the measure of the biological effect of absorbed radiation.
“The standard in Pennsylvania is 10 above background,” said Poister. “Nintety-six is not a tremendously high reading but it is high enough that it is in that middle area. It is definitely not something we could accept in the Pennsylvania landfills in this area. Max followed the procedure perfectly. They drove to the quarantine area and scanned for the source.”
Background radiation refers to the typical amount of naturally occurring radiation one encounters in everyday life. In the natural environment, radium occurs at very low levels in virtually all rock, soil, water, plants, and animals, according to the Pa. DEP.
When Max Environmental rejected the load it was returned to the well pad in Greene County until Rice could locate a facility that accepts this level of radioactive material.”
This is how far you have to ship radioactive frackwaste to get rid of it. Literally all the way across America. Why not just shoot it to the moon ? It’s closer.
Ban this radioactive garbage in New York
Tens of thousands of tons of radioactive drilling waste pour over the border every year from Pennsylvanian fracking sites into NY landfills, threatening public health and water quality.
The Hyland landfill is one of five landfills in New York currently accepting various types of shale gas drilling wastes from Pennsylvania according to data released by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP). Some have estimated that as much as 30% of Pennsylvania’s shale gas drilling waste is coming to New York. In the past two years alone more than 300,000 tons of drilling fluid waste and cuttings have entered NY waste facilities.<
Incredibly, NYS DEC is allowing solid waste and C&D landfills in New York to accept this waste despite the fact that the black shales that underlie New York and Pennsylvania are known to contain uranium, radium, radon and other radioactive elements. None of New York’s landfills are properly equipped to safely handle or dispose of this waste.
Comments on the Hyland landfill application are due by July 21 and we urge all of our members and friends to take action! Please request a public hearing be scheduled to address the radiation issues as well as other environmental and health concerns.
Lee Lee says
I hope people living in Idaho see this!
toxic transport - are they trucking it on highways where we all travel? Or by train? After last week’s disaster in Quebec we know there’s no safe way to ship toxic stuff.
Radioactive potatoes ?
Thanks Chip for this article, I am just now writing to Propublica’s Abraham Lustgarten latest article about how leasers of the land are getting cheated- well it only proves the industry cannot be trusted. I suggest that we need an investigative reporter like him to summarize the scandal of dumping TENORM into a regular household landfills in NY, Pa and elsewhere when there is a law in NY that TENORM must go to a special low level radioactive waste LLRW landfill- however, there are none of these on the East Coast other than Barnwell South Carolina has been trying to close up after 40 plus years of accepting LLRW there and that is why they are driving to Idaho. Also driving there because the South Huntingtons township in Pa were the landfill that set off the alarm was located had a well attended public hearing a year earlier because Max Environmental wanted to increase the radioactive waste by a factor of ten times allowed radioactivity in February 2012 - so that community have time to do its homework and might have complained if that waste was going to similar neighborhood landfills.
Trying to dump in NY and then declaring that now that so much has been dumped, lets make it an official low level radioactive location and make even more money on it. The frackers are eager to find a place close to the fracking to use and as you Chip and others have noted, the geology is not suitable for injection wells in Pa or NY. Casella Waste Company is looking at solidifying the massive amount of liquid flow back ( 20% flow back from one 5 million gallons frack is 1 million gallon and that is a trainful of liquid for a single flowback of a single well given that a milktruck carries 6,000 gallons of fluid and you can do the math how that trainful of flow back is calculated ) . Casella already got permission from DEC at the Hyland landfill in April 2012 to do this experimental method at Hyland and DEC has so far ruled in April 2012 that this (unknown) process does not impact the environment. CEO of Casella Larry Schilling described at the Lions Club in Alfred in the Spring of 2013 that they are planing to move liquid waste by rail to Hyland. Those rails are old tracks and I called Senator Schumer’s office today and requested that he include this transport of liquid frack waste along with crude oil coming from North Dakota thru Buffalo via rail which he is opposing now since the rail track accident in Canada near the Vermont border last month by the same rail company reported by Reuter.
The problem is the bottleneck of liquid waste management of fracking is unclear. It is easier to store a suitcase full of solid nuclear waste under a desk as President Reagan assured in his days then to figure out what to do with a trainful of liquid waste from each drilled horizontal fracked well- and they want to do that more than once to each of the 60,000 wells in Pa . What gets me that the industry keeps emphasizing the instant of the frack itelf — looking at one part of the whole problem.
Amen. TENORMs clearly deserve a harder look.