Drill Cuttings Trucked to Public Landfill

Potentially dangerous drilling byproducts are being dumped in landfills throughout the Marcellus Shale with few controls

From an Article by Jie Jenny Zou, Center for Public Integrity, June 19, 2016

<<< Drill cuttings from fracking are radioactive wastes like the truckload shown here in West Virginia. — Photo Courtesy of Bill Hughes >>>

The Marcellus Shale has transformed the Appalachian Basin into an energy juggernaut. Even amid a recent drilling slowdown, regional daily production averages enough natural gas to power more than 200,000 U.S. homes for a year.

But the rise of hydraulic fracturing over the past decade has created another boom: tons of radioactive materials experts call an “orphan” waste stream. No federal agency fully regulates oil and gas drilling byproducts — which include brine, sludge, rock and soiled equipment — leaving tracking and handling to states that may be reluctant to alienate energy interests.

“Nobody can say how much of any type of waste is being produced, what it is, and where it’s ending up,” said Nadia Steinzor of the environmental group Earthworks, who co-wrote a report on shale waste. (Earthworks has received funding from The Heinz Endowments, as has the Center for Public Integrity).

The group is among several suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate drilling waste under a federal system that tracks hazardous materials from creation to final disposal, or “cradle to grave.” The EPA declined to comment on the lawsuit but is scheduled to file a response in court by early July.

Geologists have long known soil and rock contain naturally occurring radioactive materials that can become concentrated through activities like fracking, in which sand and chemicals are pumped thousands of feet underground to release oil and gas from tight rock. But concerns about fracking largely have focused on injection wells and seismic activity, with less attention paid to “hot” waste that arrives at landfills and sets off radiation alarms.

An analysis by the Center for Public Integrity shows that states are struggling to keep pace with this waste stream, relying largely on industry to self-report and self-regulate. States have also been slow to assess and curb risks from exposure to the waste, which can remain radioactive for millennia. Excessive radiation exposure can increase cancer risks; radon gas, for example, has been tied to lung cancer.

The four states in the Marcellus are taking different approaches to the problem; none has it under control. Pennsylvania has increasingly restricted disposal of drilling waste, while West Virginia allows some landfills to take unlimited amounts. Ohio has yet to formalize waste rules, despite starting the process in 2013. New York, which banned fracking, accepts drilling waste with little oversight.

Inconsistencies have raised concerns among regulators and activists that waste is being “shopped around” by companies seeking the path of least resistance, or unsafely reused. In March, Kentucky’s attorney general opened an investigation into two landfills he alleged illegally accepted radioactive drilling waste from West Virginia. A separate investigation is ongoing at the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, where officials exchanged emails about whether landfill workers and schoolchildren might have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation.

Bill Kennedy, a radiation expert at the consulting firm Dade Moeller, called radioactive drilling waste “virtually unregulated” and said consistent standards are needed to “protect workers, protect the general public, protect the environment.” Kennedy co-chairs a committee working with regulators and industry to develop guidelines and recommendations for states. “You can’t rely on industry to go it alone and self-regulate,” he said.

While radiation emitted from fracking waste may pale in comparison to that from nuclear power plant waste, Steinzor said regulators don’t know the cumulative impacts of landfilling the loads over time. “There’s been such a push to expand the industry and to drill as much as possible,” she said. “No one has had the desire or political will to slow the industry down long enough to figure out what the risks truly are.

Race to the bottom

Trucks rolling into West Virginia landfills grind to a near halt as they pass fixed poles — monitors — that detect radiation above a set threshold. If the monitors go off, drivers reverse and pass through them again. After a second alarm, landfill staff members check drivers and trucks with hand-held detectors.

An emergency state law required landfills to install the monitors in 2015 and submit reports detailing any alarms to West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Health and Human Resources within 24 hours.

More than 70 alarms have been reported since, but what happened to the waste after they were set off is unclear. The reports routinely lack basic information, such as whether the waste was accepted or rejected, where it came from and how much of it there was.

One report, for example, shows the landfill in Wetzel County, West Virginia, took in 14 tons of industrial bag filters from an unknown source in April 2015. The filters weren’t labeled as drilling waste but contained radium 226, an isotope associated with fracking.

Landfills must reject waste that exceeds state radium limits, yet the amount of radium in the filters was left blank on that form and every other alarm report generated in 2015. Radium 226 remains radioactive for thousands of years, breaking down into gases such as radon.

After the Center contacted the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection about inconsistent or missing information in the reports, officials reviewed the records and acknowledged “discrepancies.” They said they plan to work with state health officials to overhaul the reporting process, including revising the single-page form so it captures more useful information. Such efforts seem warranted: The health department, as a matter of practice, said it has been throwing away the reports it receives. A spokesman declined to comment further.

Scott Mandirola, waste director at the Department of Environmental Protection, said West Virginia regulators are doing their best to keep up with the fracking industry by collaborating with their counterparts in Ohio and Pennsylvania. “Everybody’s dealing with it differently,” he said, pointing out widely held concerns that one state will become the preferred dumping ground. “It was obvious there was waste being shopped around.”

Bill Hughes, who sits on the Wetzel County Solid Waste Authority, doubts the state will enact or enforce rules that burden industry. “West Virginia is not going to do anything that Pennsylvania and Ohio are not required to do,” he said.

Last year, the Department of Environmental Protection conducted its first environmental analysis of potential impacts from landfilling drill cuttings. The report, which was mandated by the state Legislature, looked at the threat of groundwater pollution from the leaching of radioactive materials through soil and found “little concern.”

Hughes said it was the first time state legislators had openly acknowledged that drilling waste was more than just dirt and rock and could pose a radiation hazard. The report noted that before the waste was hauled to landfills, oil and gas companies simply buried it in pits on well-pad sites.

Twisting in the wind

On windy days, grit gathers on Toni Bazala’s home in South Huntingdon Township, 40 miles south of Pittsburgh, staining her white shutters black. A chain-link fence separates her property from the Yukon landfill 200 feet away.

“We look like we’re in a desert,” said Bazala, 74. The black dust from the landfill, she said, is like “an acid that goes down your throat.”

Max Environmental Technologies, Inc., which runs Yukon and another nearby site, has footed the bills for annual cleanings of her house’s exterior and paid for a new air conditioner, she said.

The company recently surprised Bazala and her husband with a legal waiver restricting them from speaking publicly about the cleanings in court, or to state and federal regulators. “What it amounted to was, ‘If you don’t sign this paper, you don’t get your house pressure-washed.’”

The retired couple refused to sign and has no plans to leave. “I wouldn’t even dream of selling my house,” Bazala said. “We don’t have much, but what we have is ours.”

Former township supervisor Mel Cornell said relocation isn’t an option many can afford. He spent years inspecting Yukon, often raising concerns about radiation measured on site, but quit and retired early to Florida last year. “They can’t clean people’s bodies when they breathe that in,” Cornell said of the dust. On at least one occasion, he said, he vomited while inspecting the landfill because the stench was so overpowering.

The township has repeatedly sued Max Environmental for producing a strong odor Cornell called “burnt cement,” which began in 2013 when Yukon started accepting drilling waste. The company has tried masking the odor with a bubblegum-scented deodorizer and paid a $10,000 fine to the township in monthly $25 installments.

Township residents say penalties have failed to spur lasting improvements or quash Yukon’s expansion plans. Yukon has been inspected more than 200 times for solid waste issues since March 2013, racking up more than $200,000 in fines. The company admitted to odor and other violations in an August consent decree with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

Max Environmental’s Carl Spadaro, who previously worked for the department, declined to be interviewed but wrote in an email to the Center that the company has “shown time and time again that we strive to operate in compliance.” Homes have been pressure-cleaned “for many years to remove pollen, mildew and staining,” he wrote. When asked about the waiver Bazala refused to sign, Spadaro added, “We suggested to a neighbor that to continue this service, an acknowledgement of the reason for the service would be appropriate.”

Pennsylvania regulators have increasingly restricted disposal of radioactive waste, instituting monthly intake limits on landfills. But the rules keep changing. Sludge, which is left over from drilling waste processed by treatment plants, is considered highly concentrated and radioactive. But the state has gone back and forth on exactly how much of it landfills can take from one year to the next.

In a panel discussion last year, Spadaro called Pennsylvania’s protocols “rather stringent,” saying they force landfills like Yukon to scale back the waste it takes. Landfills in the state maxed out monthly radioactive waste caps at least 87 times last year, often forcing haulers to try elsewhere.

But some haulers can be persistent. In January, a driver was caught trying to dispose of the same load from a northeastern Pennsylvania well pad three times at the same landfill in one day.

Gregg Macey, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, reviewed hundreds of Department of Environmental Protection emails and other documents obtained in an open-records request by Earthjustice, an environmental law group. His report highlighted the agency’s growing confusion over increasing numbers of radiation alarms at landfills and mislabeled waste.

Emails from 2010 to 2013 show regulators reviewed records and found waste taken by landfills that should have gone to out-of-state facilities equipped to handle low-level radioactive debris. Officials also expressed concern that landfill operators didn’t fully grasp how to handle the new waste stream.

“We need a statewide guidance on the handling, sampling and protocol and we need it yesterday not a year from now,” a state employee wrote in the fall of 2012, signing his email, “frustrated in the field.” In 2013, an employee commenting on a backlog of waste awaiting state review, wrote, “We need to find a solution for this and it sure isn’t allowing the boxes to pile up.”

None of these concerns was mentioned in a highly anticipated report by the Department of Environmental Protection last year that found “little potential for harm to workers or the public from radiation exposure due to oil and gas development.” The study was quickly championed by energy interests.

Some, however, have questioned the study’s methodology and the impartiality of its author, Perma-Fix Environmental Services, a nuclear waste contractor. The state works closely with Perma-Fix to assess landfill radiation risks 1,000 years in the future.

“We have evolved since 2013,” said state waste and radiation director Ken Reisinger, insisting there is “plenty of space” in Pennsylvania for drilling waste. “We have continued to refine our science and we continued to question ourselves on the protocols.”

Steinzor, with Earthworks, said that without a federal tracking system, states have no reliable way of ensuring waste isn’t being illegally dumped. Pennsylvania regulators were able to pinpoint final burial locations for a third of nearly 300 loads rejected in 2015, but two-thirds remain unaccounted for.

Critic under fire

Bill Hughes has sat on the Wetzel County Solid Waste Authority in West Virginia for 15 years — five as chairman — but he has a feeling this year will be his last. A staunch fracking critic, Hughes has spoken out against the dumping of radioactive drilling waste alongside household trash in municipal landfills.

Located at the base of West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle, Wetzel County has become a prime destination for out-of-state drilling waste. Hughes, 71, concedes that he’s “made a lot of noise” about the dumping of such waste in the county’s 238-acre landfill; since 2012 it’s outpaced the intake of all other garbage combined.

In February Hughes, a retired electrician who belongs to the Heinz-funded FracTracker Alliance, was sued by the landfill’s operator, Lackawanna Transport Company. Lackawanna is seeking damages that “could be in excess of $1 million,” claiming Hughes illegally invoked his chairmanship of the waste authority to temporarily block the company from building a separate, lined surface pit for drilling waste in 2013.

Nearly 100 public commenters raised concerns about the pit — known as a cell — which would allow Wetzel to accept an unlimited amount of drilling waste. West Virginia does not count such waste as part of Wetzel’s monthly cap of 9,999 tons, which is meant to conserve space and limit the life of the landfill. Wetzel has already taken 650,000 tons of drilling waste since 2013.

Further south, in Harrison County, Meadowfill Landfill sought approval for a similar cell in 2013 and won easy approval. That landfill has gone on to become the state’s top disposer of drilling waste, taking in nearly 900,000 tons since 2013, including loads deemed too radioactive for Pennsylvania.

News of the million-dollar lawsuit against Hughes rattled the Wetzel authority’s volunteer members, who had bickered with him about mounting legal costs associated with fighting the proposed cell. In March, they told the authority’s lawyers to withdraw official opposition to it, and a state commission approved it a short time later.

Authority members are unpaid, but the authority itself and its popular county recycling program are funded largely by landfill fees, creating potential conflicts of interest, Hughes said. His term on the authority expires in July.

In 2015, Ohio officials shut down an illegal waste facility operated by Anchor Drilling Fluids USA, Inc. More than 20 tanks were found on site, which stored mud and other wastes from fracking.

‘Wild West’ in Ohio

Rachelle Quigg and her son had a rude awakening one summer night in 2014 when a neighbor’s property in Hammondsville, Ohio, was invaded by large yellow tanks and humming trucks.

“It was like the most bizarre thing ever,” Quigg said, describing trucks noisily pulling in and out at all hours of the night. She said the Ohio Department of Natural Resources sent an inspector in February 2015 only after she and others complained to a television news crew. “It seemed like they had too much to deal with; they couldn’t bother.”

A month later, officials ordered the company responsible, Anchor Drilling Fluids USA Inc., to shut down and clean up the property, which it did in July 2015. The company was not penalized outside of being ordered to close the site.

In lieu of issuing permits, the state has allowed more than 40 facilities to handle and treat drilling waste under a temporary authorization process since 2014. Some applications were approved the same day they were submitted — unlike permits, which require public comment and various stages of review.

Department of Natural Resources spokesman Eric Heis said companies consult with state engineers prior to filing applications, which shortens review times. Temporary authorizations are granted without public comment.

Under Gov. John Kasich, the department has drawn criticism for being deferential to industry. A 2012 memo detailed joint plans by the department and Kasich’s office to rally support for fracking by undercutting “environmental-activist opponents, who are skilled propagandists.” The memo singled out opponents, including the Sierra Club and Democratic legislators, and potential allies such as Halliburton and other energy and business interests. The plans were never carried out.

Melanie Houston of the Ohio Environmental Council said rulemaking efforts have moved at a snail’s pace, creating a “Wild West” milieu. Proposed guidelines would require landfill operators to install radiation monitors and report alarms to health officials and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, which shares authority with the Department of Natural Resources.

The Ohio EPA began the rulemaking process in 2013, but has yet to approve any rules. Statewide, six landfills reported accepting 583,000 tons of drilling waste in 2013. In 2014, eight landfills reported taking in nearly double that amount.

Emails obtained by the Center through an open-records request show state officials struggled to coordinate response to an alarm last July triggered by drilling “filter socks” in East Sparta that were emitting roughly 200 times the state’s radiation limit. The socks, which separate liquid and solid drilling waste, were picked up unknowingly by a residential garbage truck. The waste was shipped to a Utah nuclear waste site in October, since it was too radioactive for a much closer facility in Michigan.

Filter socks, which are used to separate liquid and solid materials during fracking, have set off radiation alarms at municipal landfills. Some are ultimately shipped to special facilities out-of-state that handle low-level radioactive waste from nuclear

Dumping in New York

Like Ohio, New York is mulling new rules. In February, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced proposed regulations requiring landfills to install radiation monitors and lower the radioactivity of disposed waste. The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation is accepting public comments through the summer.

The proposals come a year after an Environmental Advocates of New York report claimed thousands of tons of fracking waste were being landfilled upstate. “There were a lot of residents pretty outraged,” said report author Elizabeth Moran.

When the state’s fracking ban took effect in 2014, Cuomo cited health officials who called potential risks, such as water contamination from radioactive waste, “too great” to bear.

But data show seven New York landfills have accepted at least 460,000 tons of solid fracking waste since 2010, according to Moran. The numbers, based on self-reported estimates from oil and gas companies operating in Pennsylvania, are incomplete.

They don’t reflect, for example, Pennsylvania fracking waste that was processed by a New Jersey landfill and later sent to Staten Island in New York City. Records obtained by Delaware Riverkeeper in 2014 showed the treated drilling waste was used in 2011 to cover the Brookfield Avenue Landfill, an illegal dumping ground that was shuttered in the 1980s and is undergoing a $240 million cleanup.

Lacking confidence in the state, several New York counties have banned fracking waste disposal, while a bill outlawing the dumping, use or sale of all fracking byproducts is being considered by the New York City Council.

Moran suspects many New Yorkers don’t know that radioactive waste is being scattered in the state. “We banned fracking,” she said, “so people don’t think we’re part of this dirty process.”

This story was produced in collaboration with the Ohio Valley ReSource, a public media partnership covering Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia.

See also the various stories on the hot mess being created by hydraulic fracturing.

Black Marcellus shale drill cuttings

Drill Cuttings Report Presented to Legislators

From an Article by David Beard, Morgantown Dominion Post, October 19, 2015

Charleston, WV — State legislators got their first glimpse on Sunday of a WV Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) report on natural gas drilling waste deposited in landfills.

While finding no concerns about chemicals leaching from the waste — also called cuttings — through landfill liners into groundwater, the study suggested that certain cuttings would be better left at the drilling site than hauled to landfills.

The report was ordered in 2015, and completed and delivered to the Legislature in July, but the Joint Legislative Oversight Commission on Water Resources just cracked it open on Sunday. DEP Ombudsman Terry Polen presented the overview.

Only four landfills in the state accept drill cuttings, Polen said: In New Martinsville, Wheeling, Bridgeport and Parkersburg.

As reported by the Associated Press in July, the study said it’s unlikely that significant amounts of untreated natural gas drilling waste in landfills will affect groundwater or surface water. In the event that the waste’s runoff did hit nearby water untreated, the material would likely exceed chemical limits for drinking water and be toxic to plants and invertebrate life, the study concludes.

The report said most groundwater near the studied landfills isn’t used for public water supplies, but is likely used for some private water supplies.

Polen reviewed some other conclusions and recommendations on Sunday:

>> Drillers use two different processes for different segments of the drilling, Polen said. The upper portions of the vertical bores are drilled with air and have significantly lower levels of chloride and radioactive materials. Depositing these cuttings on the drilling site could save time, expenses and landfill space without posing significant hazards. <<

>> The study also recommended exploring other beneficial uses for the cuttings, but ruled out using them to build roads because the solid chunks break up when wet. The study suggested that the state consider using drill cuttings of any type for mine grouting and flowable fill, since that would absorb large amounts of cuttings. The possibility of leachate entering the subsurface would need to be monitored, because of high chloride levels. <<

The New Martinsville landfill is the only one that treats leachate on site. The study recommended monitoring the effluent from the leachate for compounds not now included in its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit. Periodic groundwater monitoring at all the landfills should be considered.

In looking at the economic feasibility of requiring industry to provide its own landfills, Polen noted that drill cuttings are now transported an average of 22.3 miles. If the state required industry landfills, at least two would be needed to avoid increasing transport distance. They would take five years to site and build, and cost $40 million apiece.

They would cost another $12 million a year to operate and $40 million more to close when full, with 30 years of post-closure monitoring. The study observed, “The difficulties inherent when siting a new landfill have not been evaluated as part of this study, but factors including community resistance or receptiveness to the siting of a new facility are not known.”

Delegate Larry Rowe, D-Kanawha, observed that landfill liners can break, and pollution can enter groundwater. “Doesn’t it make sense to have separate fills,” he asked, with double or triple liners? ….. “That is certainly an angle to look at,” Polen answered.

Delegate Mark Zatezalo, R-Hancock, disagreed, noting that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t consider cuttings as hazardous.

Asked after the meeting what’s next, committee co-chair Sen. Greg Boso, R-Nicholas, said members need time to review and digest the report. The summary is 195 pages, the full report tops 2,000.

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Radioactive Drill Cuttings and WV Landfills

Article from Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, Quarterly Newsletter, Fall 2015

At the end of June, WV DEP released a report prepared for the agency by researchers at Marshall and Glenville State universities titled: Examination of Leachate, Drill Cuttings and Related Environmental, Economic and Technical Aspects Associated with Solid Waste Facilities in West Virginia

The report is 195 pages long, with more than 2300 pages of supporting data and graphs. Fortunately, Bill Hughes, chairman of the Wetzel County Solid Waste Authority has provided some analysis of certain aspects of the report, which you can read below. Hughes notes that it would be useful to have independent analyses from scientists, such as those with specialties in biology and chemistry.

In his commentary of the report, Hughes writes, “Wetzel County has had active Marcellus black shale exploration and drilling for at least eight years now. And finally we now have a public report that clearly, unambiguously states that Marcellus shale is radioactive. Of course, geologists have known that for many decades. But, also for decades, there has been great reluctance by the natural gas exploration and production companies to acknowledge that fact in public.”

>>> Read Hughes’ full commentary:

Download (WJH-Comments-Rev-E-WJH-on-Marshall-landfill-report.pdf, 160KB)

Marcellus wastes @ Wetzel Co. Landfill

W.Va. Continues to Wrestle with Radioactive Drilling Waste

From an Article by Glynis Board, WV Public Broadcasting, September 17, 2015

In the growing wake of the natural gas boom, West Virginia has been trying to figure out what exactly to do with waste generated by the oil and gas industry. The waste presents unique challenges because there’s so much of it, and because it’s often laced with some pretty toxic stuff. The answer by and large is to bury the solid waste in municipal landfills – the same landfills that accept our household trash. A recent study conducted by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection says the practice is safe, for the most part. But many people are skeptical and worried about what’s going to happen in the long term.

A few weeks ago I drove up along Cider Run road to the entrance of the Wetzel County landfill and pulled over.

You can’t drive in unless you’re just dropping a load off, and the company that operates this facility didn’t respond to my requests to enter and have a look around. Save for the sign and the weigh station, it really just looks like any other back holler in West Virginia. The single lane road to the landfill follows a creek along a valley between forested hills that curve steeply up and away.

Wetzel County Solid Waste Authority member, Bill Hughes, was with me. He also hasn’t been allowed into the facility, but he’s spent time at the entrance monitoring traffic.

Hughes is a grandfather-of-nine who’s lived in the area for over 40 years. He’s been lobbying lawmakers and writing opinion pieces questioning the safety of how natural gas companies go about drilling and what they do with waste.

“The yellow goal posts that you’re seeing,” Hughes said pointing to the weigh station at the entrance of the landfill, “those are referred to as Ludlum detectors and they are looking for radiation.”

Radioactive Waste

Landfills that accept drill cuttings are required to have radioactivity detectors because waste rock and mud pulled from rock formations deep in the ground is often laced with radioactive materials.

But Hughes and other people are worried that radioactive waste is getting into their landfill in spite of the detectors, and possibly leaching out. In response to concerns about the drilling waste, the legislature asked the DEP to commission a study. That study was released earlier this year.

“The research ‘found little concern’” DEP said, “regarding leachate associated with ‘drill cuttings that were placed in approved landfills.”

But it also found that the leachate is toxic, and that it does contain radioactive material. “It’s clear that the discharge concentrations of several of the parameters are exceeding what the state water quality limits are,” said the director of the West Virginia Water Research Institute, Paul Ziemkievicz, who took a closer look at the DEP study. “But remember these leachates are not going directly into the waters of the United States.”

Dilution Solution

The radioactive material doesn’t go directly into groundwater or rivers, because there are multiple liners around the landfill. The liquid collects in those liners and is pumped out. It’s usually taken to a wastewater treatment facility. But the treatment facilities are not designed to accept industrial wastes. They’re owned by local governments and are the same places that treat sewage and other municipal wastewaters … waters which are then discharged into rivers. The DEP’s study demonstrates that these facilities are currently diluting the leachate to safe drinking water quality standards.

But some people are still worried.  “I want to refrain from being alarmist, but I will say that much of the data are alarming,” said Marc Glass, a remediation specialists who works for the Morgantown-based environmental consulting firm, Downstream Strategies.

“The amount of environmental contaminant that we’re generating,” Glass said, “we’re taking from a place that’s safely sequestered in the earth and mixing them in our environment on a large scale.”

Concentrating NORM

There are several different constituents in the waste that you might not want to tango with, among them is what’s called Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material or NORM.

According to the World Nuclear Association, NORM is basically everywhere at low levels. It’s not like gamma radiation which can penetrate steel walls. NORMs are mostly particles that are unlikely to penetrate most any hard surface – even skin can be an effective barrier. This type of radioactive material is really only a harmful, cancer-causing agent if ingested – as in breathed in or swallowed.

Water experts like Ziemkievicz are not overly concerned about current levels of radioactive waste being discharged into the environment, but they ARE worried about the long-term implications of current practices. “With radioactivity you’re always concerned about accumulation,” Ziemkievicz said, “not the immediate concentration you might be getting out of an effluent.”

Other experts are also concerned about accumulation, especially given the amount of waste we could conceivably generate over the next 30 years or more. Glass, over at Downstream Strategies, believes the DEP leachate study miscalculated how much waste will be produced in the future. About 16 hundred wells exist today, but about 4000 have been permitted. DEP anticipates another 5,000 to 15,000 wells are yet to be drilled.

“Even if we made conservative assumptions,” Glass said, “my best guess based on the sources [the DEP] cite, we should be looking at maybe even 70,000 or 100,000 Marcellus shale well equivalents of what we will be disposing of in the next 20 to 50 years.”

Conclusions

Glass says the DEP’s study indicates that West Virginia needs to reevaluate how we’re treating the leachate from landfill because it’s not effective, and he says we should expect that problem to get much worse as the scale of drilling increases.

The DEP is recommending improved monitoring of leachate, groundwater and even water wells around landfills, but some groups don’t think the state can be trusted to handle the problem. The National Resources Defense Council and the West Virginia Surface Owners Association, among others, are threatening to sue the federal Environmental Protection Agency to force it to step in.

See also: www.WVsoro.org

Lineup of Marcellus Waste Trucks

“Landfill Drill Waste Unlikely to Get in Water”

From Shale Play, Wheeling Intelligencer, July 2, 2015

Charleston, WV (AP) – A study by state regulators says it’s unlikely that significant amounts of untreated natural gas drilling waste in landfills will impact groundwater or surface water.

In the event that the waste’s runoff did hit nearby water untreated, however, the material would likely exceed chemical limits for drinking water and be toxic to plants and invertebrate life, the study concludes.

In a report released Wednesday, the Department of Environmental Protection looked into the runoff from drill cuttings dumped into landfills. The report studied four of the six West Virginia landfills that accept drilling waste, and compared them to two others that don’t.

The report says most groundwater near the studied landfills isn’t used for public water supplies, but is likely used for some private water supplies.

Radioactive levels in landfills that accept the drilling waste sometimes exceeded state limits for radioactivity in waterways. Treatment facilities that took in the drilling material had radioactive discharges similar to ones that didn’t handle its treatment.

The study says a new landfill for the material could take five or more years to build and cost the oil and gas industry $80 million. At least two new landfills would be needed to ensure drill operators didn’t have to drive further to dump their material than they currently do, the report says.

The study outlined some risks of the material ending up in waterways untreated: heavy precipitation events, overflow of piping systems connecting landfills to treatment facilities, cracks in piping systems handling the fluids, treatment system failures and landfill liner failures.

“It cannot be determined if or when landfill leachate might impact groundwater in the long-term,” the report says. The report found that the drill cuttings were not suitable for road building, or capping of brownfield sites.

But it also says parts of the material could potentially be used in a mix to fill abandoned underground mines and keep them from collapsing, or to fill other unused structures, including underground storage tanks, sewers or abandoned basements.

Environmental officials collaborated on the report with the state Division of Highways, branches of Marshall University and Glenville State University, and Research Environmental & Industrial Consultants.

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Editorial RE:  WV-DEP — Facts flow down hill

From an Editorial, Morgantown Dominion Post, Sunday, July 5, 2015

Landfill leachate from natural gas drilling waste may poison your water, but words never seem to hurt regulators. However, after reading the summary of a 200-page study released this past week on drill cuttings dumped into landfills, we have some words for the Department of Environmental Protection (WV-DEP).

Rarely do we engage in name calling, but this report leads us to believe WV-DEP actually stands for the Department of Environmental Prevarication. No, not in the sense the DEP is lying to us in this study, but it appears to deviate from the truth.

That doesn’t shock us. The idea of avoiding telling the truth by not directly answering a question is not some foreign concept to agencies. But this study does deflate some of our growing confidence in the safe operation of shale-gas drilling.

Only a month ago, an exhaustive, five-year, more than $30 million report by the US Environmental Protection Agency determined shale-gas drilling had caused no widespread harm to drinking water. Then, just about a week ago, drilling got under way on a “science well” and two other (Marcellus gas wells) along the Monongahela River that are under a bevy of researchers’ microscopes, so to speak.

But now it appears after taking two steps forward, we’re about to take one back. To its credit, this report doesn’t give inferences or suppositions any credence. Rather, it hinges on probabilities and deductive reasoning. Yet, it fails to estimate these probabilities and the end-result of the reasoning holds out little comfort.

For instance, it asserts it’s unlikely these cuttings in landfills will affect groundwater or surface water. Also, most groundwater near the landfills it studied isn’t used for public water supplies. But then it reports if this runoff hit nearby water untreated, it would likely exceed chemical limits for drinking water and would be toxic to invertebrate life. That toxicity might not apply to humans, too, but it sounds risky, at best.

The report also noted groundwater near these landfills is likely used for private water supplies. The study also noted how the material could end up in waterways untreated: Heavy precipitation events. Downpours? Cracks in piping systems linking landfills to treatment facilities ranked high. Treatment system and landfill liner failures were also outlined.

Then in a brilliant stroke the report concludes, “It cannot be determined if or when landfill leachate might impact groundwater in the long-term.”

Through the years, we suspect, the WV-DEP has often ignored its own findings or warnings, probably at the behest of industry or politics. However, it’s apparent many of this report’s words spell out a world of potential harm.

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NOTE:  See the report here:  ”Final Report on the Examination of Drill Cuttings and Related Environmental, Economic, and Technical Aspects Associated with Solid Waste Facilities in West Virginia,”  W. V. Department of Environmental Protection, July 1, 2015.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

West Virginia Marcellus Shale Drilling Wastes (Bill Hughes Photo)

‘Marcellus shale waste is the elephant in the room that gas operators and regulators alike ignore,’ says environmentalist

From an Article by Deirdre Fulton, Common Dreams Blog, April 3, 2015

A slew of studies released this week, each examining different aspects of the fossil fuel extraction method known as ‘fracking,’ provide new evidence of problems with the practice.

The first, an investigation by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the FracTracker Alliance into oil and gas company violations, found that information about such transgressions is only publicly accessible in three states.

“Although 36 states have active oil and gas development, most state and federal oil and gas regulatory agencies publish little or no information regarding oil and gas companies’ compliance records,” reads the report, Fracking’s Most Wanted: Lifting the Veil on Oil and Gas Company Spills and Violations (pdf).

“Yet in states where data are available, we found significant violations both in number and severity,” it continues. “These violations include a wide range of dangerous infractions like improper well casing, illegal air pollution, failure to conduct safety tests, improper construction or maintenance of waste pits, various spills, contamination of drinking water sources or other water bodies, and non-functional blow-out preventers.”

Based on its findings, the report recommends the creation of a centralized and publicly accessible data hub on “all oil and gas enforcement activities, including citizen complaints, inspections, violation notices, and penalties issued, and incidents, including spills, leaks, blowouts, and worker injuries.”

The NRDC also makes policy recommendations related to holding violators accountable and keeping “repeat offenders” out of local communities.

Hazardous Waste

In Wasting Away: Four states’ failure to manage oil and gas waste in the Marcellus and Utica Shale (pdf), the environmental non-profit Earthworks examines how Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and New York neither regulate oil and gas development wastes as hazardous, nor can they assure the public that they are protected from exposure to fracking byproducts.

“Thirty years ago the Environmental Protection Agency exempted oil and gas waste from federal classification as hazardous, not because the waste isn’t hazardous, but because EPA determined state oversight was adequate,” said report lead author and Earthworks’ eastern program coordinator Nadia Steinzor.

However, she continued, “our analysis shows that states aren’t keeping track of this waste or disposing of it properly. States must take realistic, concrete steps to better protect the public.”

Activists in the affected areas expressed concern with the report’s findings and called for stronger regulations.

“Whether it is wastewater or solids such as drill cuttings, we know that Marcellus shale waste is the elephant in the room that gas operators and regulators alike ignore,” said Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network. “If the cost of treatment of this toxic material to standards protective of clean water was fully borne by the operators that are producing it, fracking for shale gas just wouldn’t be economical. The only responsible course is for government to require that frack waste not pollute or degrade the environment, and apply our environmental laws to the fullest, no matter how it impacts companies’ profits.”

“Bad” Ozone

Also, a study published Tuesday by researchers at the University of Wyoming found that emissions from wastewater treatment facilities at oil and gas drilling sites likely contributed to a string of “high-ozone events” in the winter of 2011 in Wyoming’s Upper Green River Basin.

According to reporting by Environment & Energy Publishing, the team began studying the region’s wintertime ozone levels and the mix of non-methane hydrocarbons in 2009.

They measured several high-ozone events in the winter of 2011, with ozone topping 85 parts per billion numerous times. The national standard for ozone is currently 75 ppb.

According to the EPA: Ground level or “bad” ozone is not emitted directly into the air, but is created by chemical reactions between oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOC) in the presence of sunlight. Emissions from industrial facilities and electric utilities, motor vehicle exhaust, gasoline vapors, and chemical solvents are some of the major sources of NOx and VOC. Breathing ozone can trigger a variety of health problems, particularly for children, the elderly, and people of all ages who have lung diseases such as asthma. Ground level ozone can also have harmful effects on sensitive vegetation and ecosystems.

“What we’ve done is hopefully just highlight that it’s an important source that should be considered,” said Robert Field, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Wyoming and lead author of the report.