Our pal Rachel Treichler is an environmental lawyer and a pretty cool hand on a hot topic: radioactive frackwaste. Since the Marcellus Shale is particularly rich in radioactive material, getting rid of it has become a quite a challenge - in some cases, amounting to a black market in contraband frackwaste. Or shipping it all the way across the continental United States to Idafrackingho. When the frackers are unable to dump it illegally in a local wastewater treatment plant.
Out West, they just dump the stuff into a disposal well - and cause earthquakes. And just hope that it won’t bubble up somewhere in our lifetime. (New York actually has 8 such disposal wells, with more queued up to be permitted. So keep your seat belts fastened and your crockery on a low shelf).
Not so easy to make billions of gallons of hot frack filth go bye bye in Pennsylvania and New York.
At some point, the good folks in Ohio may finally say they’ve had their fracking fill of the stuff.
And Idaho is so much farther away than that trout stream down the road . . . .
If a wastewater treatment plant or landfill near you starts mumbling about babysitting radioactive frackwaste for the next thousand years or so, might give The Rachel a jingle. You’ll be glad you did.
http://treichlerlawoffice.com/radiation/
Millions of tons/gallons of waste that is solid and liquid and what to do with it? This is such a nightmare that grows daily. It will definitely come back to haunt us more so in the years ahead.