Crossridge Landfill near Steubenville Ohio has issues

From an Article & Broadcast by Tyler Madden, WTOV News 9, Steubenville, OH, 5/19/22

JEFFERSON COUNTY, Ohio — Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said it was important to visit the Crossridge Landfill in Jefferson County on Thursday as his office is still involved in litigation pertaining to the site. “I’m very troubled by what I saw,” Yost said.

Signs up and down the road leading to the landfill site underscore the longstanding tension over the site in the community. Yost was joined by officials from the Jefferson County Health Department on a tour of the site. “I’m amazed this has been pending for so long and hasn’t been cleaned up,” Yost said. “There’s a part where you can see the leachate and it looks like some kind of horror movie.”

NEWS9 cameras were not permitted to go on the tour as it is private property. But there were a number of different areas on the site highlighted on the tour, including those problem areas that have caused so many concerns from residents.

“Whether it’s dumping leachate into the water, that’s vitally important environmental issue that needs to be addressed and he’s seen them himself now firsthand,” Jefferson County Health Commissioner Andrew Henry said.

“It’s red and oily and it’s coming off of there and it looks like it’s headed down the creek into the river,” Yost said. The AG’s office is still involved in litigation involving the site and how it moves forward.

“We keep kicking the can down the road and our can is getting kicked,” Yost said. “We’ve got a hearing on (June 21). I wanted to see this for myself, and I’ve instructed my staff to do everything in their power to move this thing forward.

“I want the local folks that have been working so hard on this to know that they have a partner in the state and we’re looking to get this done and cleaned up.”

High temperature cracking consumes fuel creating GHG & pollutants

From the Spring 2022 Newsletter of Concerned Ohio River Residents, WV – OH – PA

The Thai company, PTT Global Chemical America returned $20 million to the state of Ohio since they did not meet the deadline set forth in the agreement they made with the state years ago. They have not started construction and their air permit with Ohio EPA expired in Feb. 2022 as well. The state gave the company around $70 million total to prep the site in Dilles Bottom, OH to build the massive ethane cracker/plastics plant, and now that they had to return a good portion of it, many are questioning even more if the plant will ever get built.

“PTTGCA’s decision to let the air permit expire is the latest indicator that the project is extremely unlikely to move forward, and certainly will not be moving forward any time soon,” said Megan Hunter, senior attorney at the Chicago-based EarthJustice advocacy organization. “We are thankful that at least for now, the community is safe from the air pollution that would come from the facility.”

“Currently in the global economy, there is a massive overcapacity for the production of ethylene and polyethylene,” said Sean O’Leary, senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute. “There’s been massive build-out along the Gulf Coast, and there’s also been major build-out in Asia, particularly in China. The competitive atmosphere is a pretty daunting one.”

What does this latest news mean for the Ohio Valley? No one is for certain, but we will keep you updated as we learn more about the situation. We should continue to push our elected officials to move on to some type of development that is sustainable and healthy, rather than extractive and dirty. Let’s come together in a positive way and create the future we want to have in the Ohio Valley.

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Lyondell Basell to shutter Houston oil refinery in exit from refining

From an Article by Erwin Seba, Reuters News Service, April 21, 2022

HOUSTON, April 21 (Reuters) – Chemical maker Lyondell Basell Industries will permanently close its Houston crude oil refinery by the end of 2023. The decision comes after two failed attempts to sell the plant and the closing of five U.S. refineries in the last two years. Refining until recently has been beset by high costs and low margins.

“After thoroughly analyzing our options, we have determined that exiting the refining business by the end of next year is the best strategic and financial path forward,” said Ken Lane, interim chief executive. The refinery, which makes gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, will remain in operation and the company will continue to seek potential transactions and/or alternatives for the roughly 700-acre site on the Houston Ship Channel.

The company earlier took a $264 million impairment charge as part of its decision to exit refining. In the past 10 years, Lyondell has twice mounted efforts to sell the 263,776 barrel-per-day refinery but failed to conclude a deal.

John Auers, executive vice president of Turner, Mason & Co, a Dallas-based energy consultancy, said Thursday’s announcement means “there will definitely be people knocking on the door” to look at the refinery. “The refinery could sell for a significant amount,” Auers said. “I certainly don’t expect it to close given this statement.”

Lyondell said the refinery, once the anchor of its supply chain as a regional chemical company, no longer fit with its global petrochemical production. “While this was a difficult decision, our exit of the refining business advances the company’s decarbonization goals, and the site’s prime location gives us more options for advancing our future strategic objectives, including circularity,” Lane said. Circularity refers to efforts by plastics manufacturers to increase spare finished plastics from landfills and return them to the supply chain for chemical plants.

Plastic waste on beach in Panama, Central America

>>> From an Article by Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch.com, January 18, 2022

PHOTO ~ Plastic pollution in Panama, an example of the conditions around the Earth.

Humanity is currently releasing more chemical and plastic pollution into the environment than Earth can support.

That’s the conclusion of a first-of-its-kind study published in Environmental Science and Technology on Tuesday, January 18, which argues that the planetary boundary for novel entities has been exceeded by human activity. The researchers defined “novel entities” as manufactured chemicals that do not appear naturally in large quantities and have the potential to disrupt Earth’s systems.

“There has been a 50-fold increase in the production of chemicals since 1950. This is projected to triple again by 2050,” study co-author Patricia Villarubia-Gómez from the Stockholm Resilience Centre(SRC) at Stockholm University said in a press release emailed to EcoWatch. “The pace that societies are producing and releasing new chemicals and other novel entities into the environment is not consistent with staying within a safe operating space for humanity.”

In 2009, a team of researchers identified nine planetary boundaries that have led to a stable Earth for the last 10,000 years. These include greenhouse gas emissions, the ozone layer, forests, freshwater and biodiversity. The new research builds on this foundation by quantifying the planetary boundary for novel entities.

The researchers concluded that the boundary had been breached because production and release of plastics and other chemicals now surpasses the ability of governments to assess and monitor these pollutants.

“For a long time, people have known that chemical pollution is a bad thing,” study co-author Dr. Sarah Cornell of the SRC told The Guardian. “But they haven’t been thinking about it at the global level. This work brings chemical pollution, especially plastics, into the story of how people are changing the planet.”

Scientists have previously concluded that humanity has exceeded the planetary boundaries for global heating, biodiversity loss, habitat loss and nitrogen and phosphorous pollution. The researchers noted that there are around 350,000 different types of manufactured chemicals on the global market, with almost 70,000 introduced in the last decade. Among them are plastics, pesticides, industrial chemicals and pharmaceutical products.

Plastics are especially concerning, the study authors said. They now weigh more than double the mass of living animals and around 80 percent of all the plastics ever produced persist in the environment instead of being properly recycled. Further, plastics are made up of more than 10,000 other chemicals that can enter the environment in new combinations when they degrade.

In order to address the risk posed by plastics and other chemical pollutants, the study authors argued that it is important to curb their production and release into the environment.

“We need to be working towards implementing a fixed cap on chemical production and release,” study co-author Bethanie Carney Almroth from the University of Gothenburg said in the press release.

They also supported calls for a circular economy. “That means changing materials and products so they can be reused not wasted, designing chemicals and products for recycling, and much better screening of chemicals for their safety and sustainability along their whole impact pathway in the Earth system,” Villarubia Gómez said in the press release.

Blue Ridge Landfill In Estill County KENTUCKY

From an Article by Bill Estep, Lexington Herald – Leader, July 18, 2020

A Kentucky man has been charged with illegally shipping tons of radioactive waste to a landfill in Estill County KY that was not equipped to handle it.

A federal grand jury indicted Cory David Hoskins Thursday on five charges of mail fraud, based on checks he received through the mail as part of the alleged crime, and 22 charges of “willfully and recklessly” violating safety regulations on shipping hazardous materials in 2015.

Hoskins operated companies called Advanced TENORM and BES LLC, both based in West Liberty, in Morgan County. TENORM stands for “technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive material.” The material is a byproduct of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to recover oil and natural gas, and is classified as hazardous because of low-level radioactivity.

Hoskins allegedly told a West Virginia company called Fairmont Brine Processing, LLC, that Advanced TENORM could safely transport, treat and dispose of sludge from its operations.

Hoskins told the West Virginia company that his company included engineers, nuclear physicists with doctorates and other experts. That was a lie, the indictment said.

Hoskins also lied and said he would haul the sludge in trucks that complied with U.S. Department of Transportation rules on transporting hazardous materials, according to the indictment.

Hoskins “did not keep the promises” he made to the West Virginia company because it would have been more expensive and time-consuming to haul the waste in compliance with federal safety rules, the indictment said.

Hoskins allegedly hired trucking companies and drivers from the Ashland area and elsewhere that didn’t have the proper certification to haul hazardous waste, and didn’t tell the drivers and carriers what they were hauling was radioactive.

He also didn’t put required notices on the trucks and shipping containers to describe the hazardous sludge. One purpose of those labels is to let police, firefighters and emergency workers know what’s in a truck in case of an accident.

Hoskins drew up shipping manifests that said the material he was having hauled was not hazardous, and misled the landfill about the waste, the indictment charged.

The Herald-Leader reported in 2017 that Hoskins arranged for the shipment of more than 1,000 tons of low-level radioactive waste from West Virginia and Ohio to be dumped in landfills in Estill and Greenup counties. However, the indictment against Hoskins only mentions 22 shipments to the Estill County landfill between July 22, 2015 and Aug. 27, 2015.

The illegal diposal of the waste caused concern in Estill County — the landfill is near schools — but state officials said in 2016 that there was not an imminent health threat from the material.

The state proposed a settlement in 2018 under which the radioactive material would be left in the Blue Ridge Landfill in Estill County with a cap over it. A challenge to the plan by a citizens group is pending.

The indictment includes a request for a judgment of $127,110 against Hoskins if he is convicted, representing the amount he grossed from alleged illegal activity.

The maximum sentence on the mail-fraud charges against Hoskins would be 20 years. The charges on violating hazardous-materials safety rules are punishable by up to five years.

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See also: “Disequilibrium of Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM) in Drill Cuttings from a Horizontal Drilling Operation,” Environmental Science & Technology Letters, American Chemical Society, December 21, 2016

Report finds additional radioactive materials in gas-well drill cuttings

Antero "Clearwater" Construction

Residents wary of Antero’s answer to fracking wastewater problem

From an Article by Ken Ward, Jr., Charleston Gazette-Mail, September 17, 2016

<< Antero Resources is still seeking some of the permits it needs for a massive fracking wastewater treatment operation, but construction of the facility is well underway along the Doddridge-Ritchie County line >>

Greenwood, WV — Large cranes loom over the rolling hills just off Sunnyside Road. The tip of a large industrial tank and the steel skeleton of a building peek over the tree line along U.S. 50 near the Doddridge-Ritchie County line. Construction crews crowd the narrow road that winds up the hill from the four-lane, as workers push forward on a $275 million, two-year effort to complete what Antero Resources has dubbed “Clearwater.”

Antero officials say their new major complex — including a water treatment plant and adjacent landfill — will help solve a nagging problem faced by its natural gas operations across Appalachia: Getting enough water for gas drilling and then disposing of that water once it is contaminated with salts from underground mineral deposits and chemicals used to help release the gas from the region’s Marcellus Shale formation.

“This significantly improves the safety and reduces the environmental impact of shale development by removing hundreds of thousands of water truckloads from the roads every year, and recycles and reuses the water rather than dispose of it,” Antero CEO Paul Rady said when the project was announced a little more than a year ago.

But in the months since that announcement, residents near the project site and in the surrounding communities have become increasingly wary. Some residents have simple questions, like whether a new stoplight eventually will be installed at the intersection where the plant is being built. Others aren’t convinced that the water treatment facility will really remove some of the most potentially dangerous contamination — metals and radioactive materials — from the water from Antero’s natural gas production activities.

Still other critics of Antero’s plan worry that installing such a huge piece of industrial infrastructure simply furthers the state’s ties to another polluting fossil fuel industry, hindering any effort to make West Virginia a state that thrives on renewable energy production.

“There’s been strong community interest about this significant project coming to Doddridge and Ritchie counties,” said Angie Rosser, executive director of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, which has been working with the local Friends of the Hughes River Watershed Association to help educate the public about the project and open dialogue between Antero and the community.

Last week, the two citizen groups hosted a community meeting on the project. About 50 people gathered in Harrisville, at the Women’s Club Center on Main Street, a few miles west of the construction site. Representatives from Antero attended. So did someone from the Department of Environmental Protection’s Office of Environmental Advocate, which works to help citizens be better heard and understood during DEP’s review of permit applications for projects like Antero has proposed.

Conrad Baston, Antero’s project manager, explained why he and his company believe that the water treatment plant and the landfill are such good ideas. “It’s a centralized way of dealing with this waste, trying to compress this issue into as small a package as you can,” Baston said.

The whole process presents obvious problems: Where will all that water come from, especially during dry months when streams are low? What will companies do with all that contaminated water that comes back up?

Those underground injection wells have drawn increasing scrutiny, sometimes because they might be leaking, and others because scientists have found underground injection causes earthquakes.

Antero’s project would change all that, Baston said. Wastewater produced at the company’s wells would be trucked to the treatment plant, where it would be cleaned of salts and other contaminants. The water could then be reused at other gas wells. Salts would be disposed of at an adjacent landfill. Material with other contaminants would be hauled by train to some other dump somewhere else, probably in Utah or Idaho. No more on-site waste pits. No more underground injection wells. Less truck traffic.

“As an engineer, I just see this problem that I’m trying to compress into a smaller and smaller footprint,” Baston told residents.  That description, though, didn’t sit well with Lissa Lucas, who lives a few miles west of the project. “I wonder if you recognize that what you regard as a problem or an obstacle to making profits is different than what someone who lives nearby regards as a problem,” Lucas said. For example, Lucas said, “You may be saying there’s only 10 houses affected, but if you live in one of those houses, that’s a big deal.”

‘Right on top of us’

The scale of the Antero project alone has many residents worried. Located on a nearly 500-acre site, the landfill would accept 2,000 tons of salt per day, according to a Rivers Coalition fact sheet. Environmental groups also note that the landfill project alone would bury more than 5 miles of streams.

Antero officials like to point out that, overall, the facility — especially with an adjacent landfill that eliminates having to ship the salt for off-site disposal — actually helps to greatly reduce truck traffic related to the company’s operations. But residents worry that the treatment plan, by processing 60,000 barrels per day of wastewater, creates one giant, congested industrial site.

“You’re consolidating,” said one resident, who didn’t give his name. “What you’re consolidating is the problem — right on top of us.”

For some residents in places like Doddridge and Ritchie counties, West Virginia’s natural gas boom has brought with it not only concerns about water quality, but what one local sheriff has called an “invasion” of truck traffic, along with constant noise and light and localized air pollution concerns.

Lyn Scott Bordo, a sixth generation Ritchie County resident, said that the noise from a natural gas compressor station that started up near her home ended her ability to even have a conversation while sitting on her porch in the evenings.

Residents especially are resentful toward Antero. They note repeated water pollution problems and workplace incidents that left workers hurt or dead. And Antero is the main company targeted by hundreds of residents who have filed lawsuits over truck traffic, mountains of dust, constant heavy equipment noise and bright lights that shine into their homes day and night.

Kevin Ellis, an Antero vice president, reminded residents who brought up such issues during last week’s meeting that a lot of their neighbors work for Antero and its many contracting companies, and that those neighbors do their best every day to operate safely and to minimize any negative effects from the company’s operations. “We take seriously our obligation to do right,” Ellis said.

Still, residents and environmental groups have a variety of questions about the finer details of Antero’s plan.

For example, the company proposes to permit its landfill as a non-commercial facility — one that would take only Antero’s own waste — a move that avoids dealing with siting review by the local solid waste authority, which is required for commercial operations under the state’s decades-old law aimed at reducing out-of-state garbage. But Antero officials also talk about the possibility that they might accept and treat wastewater from other natural gas producers at the Clearwater facility, and then dispose of the salt from that treatment at the landfill, under the theory that the salt becomes internal to Antero when it comes out of the treatment facility.

Also, residents worry that they don’t yet have enough information about exactly how the treatment plant would ensure that only the salts, and not other contaminants like metals or radioactive materials, would be kept out of the landfill. In written comments submitted to the state Department of Environmental Protection, a coalition of environmental groups noted that the project is located so that spills or leaks or other discharges could affect the drinking water supply for the Hughes River Water Board, which provides water to Pennsboro, Harrisville and Cairo.

The groups complained that the company’s permit applications have not described these potential impacts or any steps that would be taken to avoid them. Antero says its landfill has many layers of protections to avoid any water contamination, but residents and others are concerned that there’s no way to absolutely guarantee any such system is foolproof.

“Landfills leak,” said Kendra Hatcher, an environmental scientist who has been examining the project for the Morgantown-based environmental consulting firm Downstream Strategies. “It might not be a big, catastrophic event, but landfills leak, so there is a legitimate concern for the groundwater.”

‘Good for the environment’

Compounding the concerns for local residents is the fact that while the DEP is still reviewing permit applications from Antero — and asking members of the public for their comments on those applications — construction has not only started, but appears from what residents can see to be fairly well along.

Jane Hearne, of Ritchie County, wondered aloud at last week’s meeting if approval by DEP of the project’s permits isn’t a “done deal … when you see the [construction] process is already underway.”

Residents who worry about the politics underlying such projects and their review by state agencies were greeted at last week’s meeting with promotional material from Antero that included a quote from Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin in which the governor praised the company and its project as “good for the environment and good for West Virginia’s economy.” That quote appeared in Antero’s press release announcing the project, with approval from the governor’s office, Tomblin communications director Jessica Tice said last week.

Antero already has a construction and operation permit for the treatment facility and a construction stormwater permit, issued by separate divisions of DEP. The company still needs several other DEP approvals, including an air quality permit for the landfill, a draft of which was issued for public comment on the day of last week’s public meeting in Harrisville.

The process, with separate permits under separate laws, rules and programs — and divisions of DEP — has been confusing for residents, even setting aside the issue of whether, with a facility already being built, a review of other permit applications is no more than an academic exercise for agency officials and citizens.

For example, as late as December 2015, when the DEP Division of Air Quality issued the treatment plant’s air permit, residents who asked questions about the company’s landfill plans were told by the agency that Antero hadn’t submitted a landfill permit application and that the company had told DEP only that “they are exploring this option, but no decision has been made yet.” The application was submitted a month later.

Some residents complained during the air permit comment period that their community is “already besieged by the gas industry — well pads, diesel truck traffic, compressor stations, pipelines, and major processing facilities … [that] already emit toxic substances into our air. We who choose the fresh air, clean water, and quiet of country life find these destroyed.”

WV-DEP officials responded that they are “aware of the increased activity in the oil and gas industry as it pertains to horizontal drilling in the Marcellus Shale.” “The increase in drilling activity has created new challenges with maintaining healthy air, water and land usage,” the DEP Division of Air Quality said. “Air quality issues associated with the oil and gas sector are an expanding aspect of the DAQ’s regulatory responsibilities.”

John King, of the DEP Office of Environmental Advocate, told residents last week that the agency doesn’t allow housing developers to segment their projects into small pieces to avoid having to get stormwater construction permits, and that some sort of “common plan of permitting” is something DEP could consider and residents could encourage the agency to employ when they submit public comments on the Antero project.

‘They created the problem’

DEP Secretary Randy Huffman said last week that he doesn’t recall a situation with a major project where his agency has ever “lumped all of the permits together and required all of the permits before you can do anything.” Such an approach, Huffman said, probably would only be relevant to citizens who view the permit process as a “thumbs up or thumbs down” on a project, as opposed to an opportunity for the public to point out things DEP permit reviewers may have missed or ways the agency could improve a project’s air or water permits.

Huffman said his agency’s job is not to decide whether a particular activity — such as natural gas drilling using hydraulic fracturing — is allowed. Lawmakers and governors set such policies, and DEP enforces them, Huffman said.

“We’re not there to make policy decisions about whether some activity should occur or should not occur,” Huffman said. “The presumption with any permitting action is, if all of the requirements are met, then you will be issued the permit.”

When lawmakers passed and Tomblin signed a 2011 law aimed at better regulating oil and gas drilling, they weakened some provisions of it that would have provided more protections for residents near gas production operations. State officials said they would study those issues and could come back to them later.

The studies were done, and recommended more protections, but the law hasn’t been updated based on the findings. Instead, environmental and citizen groups have had to spend their time beating back legislative proposals aimed at lessening controls on drilling and blocking citizen lawsuits against companies like Antero.

It all creates a tough situation for residents confronted with permit applications for operations like the one Antero has planned for Doddridge and Ritchie counties, or already living with the realities of large-scale natural gas production in West Virginia’s Marcellus Shale region. They feel like a big part of the discussion is left out of the public hearings and comment periods DEP encourages them to take part in, and permit decisions are made without looking at the whole picture of a project or industry.

Rosser, the Rivers Coalition director, said that the Antero project should be “part of a broader discussion of where we are going with energy production. This infrastucture we see, with projects like this and pipelines, the more we are setting ourselves up for that future with more and more waste and not moving toward renewables.”

And as for Antero’s specific plan, Rosser recalled what one resident at last week’s meeting said as the event was breaking up: That it was good that Antero officials were trying to come up with a solution for the wastewater problem, but that, “what underlies that is that they created the problem in the first place.”

WV Marcellus drilling & fracking operation

Bill Would Make It Easier to Build Drilling Waste Landfills, Hurt Local Solid Waste Authorities

Legislative Alert from Julie Archer, WV-SORO, March 6, 2016

A bill that would make it easier to site and build landfills for drilling waste will be voted on by the House of Delegates later this week. SB 601 has been changed dramatically more than once since it was introduced. It started as a bill that would have made it easier to issue permits for solid waste facilities that accept only drilling waste. This would have been done by taking away the local control county and regional solid waste authorities currently have to approve siting of such facilities and eliminating the requirement that these facilities obtain a certificate of need from the WV Public Service Commission (PSC). The WV Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) would have been the sole regulatory agency for such facilities, but their role would have been limited.

Last Sunday, SB 601 was hastily rewritten in the Senate Judiciary Committee and turned into a purported recycling bill. The amended version of the bill contained no reference to or mention of oil and gas solid waste. Instead the bill removed two types of “recycling” facilities, “materials recovery facilities” and “mixed waste processing facilities,” from the PSC’s jurisdiction. Under the amended version of the bill, these “recycling” facilities would still have to get siting approval from local or regional solid waste authorities, but would not be required to get a certificate of need.

Unfortunately, despite SB 601′s transformation into a “recycling” bill, there were concerns that solid waste authorities had that we did not know about until the bill had already passed the Senate. To make matters worse, after the bill was reported to the House it appeared almost immediately on the House Judiciary Committee agenda, where the oil and gas solid waste provisions were amended back in.

It is not as bad as the original introduced version. Oil and gas waste, materials waste recovery facilities and mixed waste processing facilities would still have to get siting plan approval from the local solid waste authority, but would not be required to get a certificate of need from the PSC and would be completely removed from PSC jurisdiction.

So what’s wrong with SB 601?

1) It removes an important step in the permitting process for oil and gas solid waste facilities. More specifically it would be easier to site and build such facilities because they would no longer be required to get a certificate of need from the WV Public Service Commission and would be completely removed from the PSC’s jurisdiction. The WV Department of Environmental Protection would still be involved in the environmental aspects of the permitting process, but the DEP has no authority to limit the number of facilities that could be built or where they could be sited relative to other facilities accepting the same type of waste.

2) Local and regional solid waste authorities have concerns that SB 601 will put them at a competitive disadvantage with the “materials recovery facilities” and “mixed waste processing facilities” that are being deregulated by the bill, jeopardizing the public funding solid waste authorities have invested in their facilities.

There will most likely be an amendment on the floor to take out the oil and gas provisions, but we have to make phones ring and get emails in to delegates opposing this. So please call or email your delegates and tell them that SB 601 is bad because the Public Service Commission’s oversight is important, and prevents unneeded waste dumps from being built. However, the oil and gas provisions are not the only concern. SB 601 also puts our local and regional solid waste authorities at a competitive disadvantage with the so-called “recycling” facilities that are being deregulated, jeopardizing the public investment in these facilities.

Your senators need to hear a similar message. They may not be aware that the bill has changed, and some were likely unaware of the problems with the version they passed.
–
Julie Archer, Project Manager, WV Surface Owners’ Rights Organization
1500 Dixie Street,Charleston, WV 25311
(304) 346-5891, www.wvsoro.org

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Wetzel County Landfill Operator Sues Waste Authority Head

From an Article by Glynis Board, WV Public Broadcasting, March 4, 2016

The operating company of a landfill in Wetzel County is suing a member of the county’s solid waste authority for slowing its ability to accept horizontal drilling waste.

Bill Hughes, chairman of the Wetzel County Solid Waste Authority, is being sued by the company that operates the Wetzel County landfill because of a petition filed with the Public Service Commission. The petition is interrupting the landfill’s application to dedicate portions of the landfill to Marcellus Shale drilling waste.

The complaint says Hughes acted on behalf of the authority without the express permission of the authority. It accuses Hughes of acting on his own to advance his own political agenda, as Hughes is an outspoken opponent of gas drilling practices. Hughes’ attourney said in a public meeting last night that they intend to file a motion to dismiss the case.

Lackawanna Transport Company is the legal owner of the Wetzel County Landfill, which is near New Martinsville. The company offers no comment on the pending federal suit. The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia on February 22nd.

>>> See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Fracking Waste Disposal Still A Question

Article by Glynis Board and Ashton Marra, WV Public Broadcasting, March 10, 2014

The House and Senate have spent weeks working on House Bill 4411 dealing with the disposal of hydraulic fracturing drill cuttings in land fills. Earlier in the session, the House of Delegates held a public hearing on the issue. But members could not agree on the terms of the bill and late Saturday evening it ended up in a conference committee.

The conference agreement came down to this: landfills who want to accept drill cuttings from fracking sites must apply for permits from the Department of Environmental Protection and the Public Service Commission. So far, seven are in the process of doing so.

Those seven would be the only landfills allowed to apply for the permits for two years. They must put radon detectors at their front gates to test trucks, cannot mix the drill cuttings with municipal waste and must charge a $1 fee per ton they accept. The first $750 thousand collected will go toward a study on the waste due to the Joint Committee on Government and Finance next year.

That agreement, however, did not make it to the clerks’ desks in time to be put to a vote and the bill died, leaving no legislative restrictions on these cuttings and their disposal.

See also the very informative Video Clip in this Article.

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W.Va. bill to regulate gas drilling waste on hold

From an Article of the Associated Press (Charleston Gazette), March 10, 2014

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A bill to regulate the disposal of waste produced by gas-well drilling will likely be introduced by West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin in a special session. Lawmakers who negotiated a version both sides could agree on were unable to get the measure passed before midnight Saturday, the deadline for the regular session.

The bill would allow only seven landfills in West Virginia that have already applied to do so to create a separate area on their properties where they could store the waste. Those landfills are located in the Northern Panhandle and Northwest portion of the state.

Sen. Herb Snyder, D-Jefferson, said the bill is a huge environmental protection for the state. As it stands, the measure calls for drillings to be separated from other waste and monitored for radioactivity. “By September of this year, the waste cannot be mixed with other trash and must be put in a separate cell, and radioactivity monitors add a tremendous amount of protection over what is being done today,” said Snyder. “We have learned a lot by looking at what was done in Pennsylvania and looking at the problems they were having.’ Snyder said the studies will examine what types of metals are in the waste in addition to their level of radioactivity.

Currently, in depth studies on drilling waste have not been conducted in West Virginia. Snyder said some Department of Environmental Protection studies were conducted after the Natural Gas Horizontal Well Act; however, the Legislature determined these studies were incomplete and not sufficient, he said.

Solid Waste Truck Lineup

Landfill Tonnage Caps Needed for Shale Drilling Wastes

NOTE: — Comment Period Ends November 13th —

The WV Public Service Commission, which regulates this state’s solid waste landfills, is currently considering a request in Wetzel County that would allow unlimited amounts of shale gas drilling waste (drill cuttings and drilling mud) to be dumped in local landfills.

The Lackawanna Transport Company which operates the Wetzel County Landfill has filed an application with the PSC for a “certificate of need” to construct and operate a dedicated disposal “cell” for the disposal of solid drilling wastes.

Under memos recently issued by DEP to landfill operators (but not provided to county Solid Waste Authorities) there is ABSOLUTELY NO LIMIT on the total tonnage of drilling waste going into our landfills. And there is no requirement to monitor these wastes for radioactivity known to be associated with it.

The landfill tonnage caps contained in WV’s landmark Solid Waste Management Act were designed to insure that our landfills could operate well into the future. For more than a year now the PSC and the DEP have allowed the Wetzel landfill (and others) to exceed their legal tonnage limits to accept this drilling waste.

This is your chance to tell the Public Service Commission that this is not acceptable and that you want our landfills to be available for everyone’s grandchildren to use decades from now.

To file a “protest/opposition” comment on this case simply go to this website:

http://www.psc.state.wv.us/Scripts/OnlineComments/formalComments.cfm?CaseID=57932&CaseNumber=13%2D0832%2DSWF%2DCN

Once there, fill in all the name, address, phone information, etc. Under comment type — choose  “PROTEST”. The comment box will then display “Comment in Protest of Case 13-0832-SWF-CN”.

Here is a list of concerns you can use for your comments:

Make sure to ask for a public hearing on this case in New Martinsville. The huge increase in tonnage at the landfill is using up space and shortening its useful life. The existing landfill tonnage caps must be restored.

There has been a large increase in traffic near the landfill. The roads near the landfill are being damaged by the increase in heavy truck traffic.

Some Marcellus shale drilling wastes are known to be radioactive.

The existing leachate treating system may not be able to handle the toxic mix of drill waste products. The liquid discharges from these landfills may pollute streams or groundwater nearby.

It is urgent that you do this now, because the comment period ends on Wednesday, November 13, 2013. Thanks for your attention.

Don Garvin, WVEC Legislative Coordinator, DSGJr@aol.com
West Virginia Environmental Council (WVEC)
Charleston, WV

Wetzel County Landfill Location

Wetzel County Receiving Excess of (Radioactive) Drill Cuttings

From the Article by Lauren Matthews, Wetzel Chronicle, October 9, 2013

Bill Hughes, Mark Cochran, and Terri Tyler of Wetzel County’s Solid Waste Authority approached Wetzel County Commissioners on September 24^th  regarding the amount of Marcelllus drill waste that is being allowed at the Wetzel County Landfill. Furthermore, Hughes and Cochran expressed concerns over the quality of the waste, being that it might have high levels of radioactive materials.

The Wetzel County Landfill is classified as a “Class B” landfill. Hughes stated that for over 20 years the total amount of waste that the landfill could accept for disposal was legally limited to 9,999 tons per month.

Hughes stated that the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has released some memos which have now allowed any landfill to accept an unlimited amount of Marcellus drill waste. He stated that in July of this year, the county’s landfill took in over 25,000 tons of drill waste. Combined with the routine waste the landfill accepts, the total disposal amount brought to the landfill was over 30,000 tons that month.

On December 14, 2011, the West Virginia Legislature passed House Bill 401, the Natural Gas Horizontal Well Control Act. This act requires the disposal of drilling waste to be disposed of “in an approved solid waste facility.”

In a memo dated July 26, 2013, the WV-DEP offered two options a landfill can pursue to address “tonnage issues created by the new legislative mandate: “Class B facilities can apply to expand to a Class A facility in order to increase its monthly tonnage limit from 9,999 to 30,000 tons, or a Class A or Class B facility can construct a cell separate from the municipal solid waste cells to be dedicated solely to the disposal of drilling waste. This cell would not count toward a facility’s monthly tonnage limits. The memo from the DEP states that either of these options would allow the facilities to be eligible to exceed their monthly tonnage limits until June 1, 2014.

Cochran reported to the commission that the special cell would still be in the same hollow that the landfill is going in. “If this continues, the landfill is going to be used up at a much greater rate than we all anticipated,” he noted.

“The cell is a work in progress,” Hughes added. “This is a result of Charleston attempting to figure out, six years after drilling started, what to do with all this waste.” He added, “We have three different memos (from DEP) . . . We don’t even know if there’s more than that.”

“These memos were sent to the landfills,” Cochran added. “This doesn’t affect just us. There’s the Wheeling landfill, ours here, Clarksburg, Parkersburg, and a few others in the state that are taking drill cuttings. The first one had a tonnage limit; the second one had no limit. The third one had no limit but pushed the date further into the future. Terri (Tyler, coordinator of WCSWA) happened to be at the DEP and was given another one. We don’t know what all is out there, because the state decided not to consult with other solid waste authorities and not tell them about these ongoings, evolving arrangements to allow more tonnage. We are not sure where this is going from here.”

Hughes further explained his second concern, that the Marcellus material is radioactive. “When you are drilling down, your gamma log, gamma radiation detector, starts spiking,” said Hughes. “That’s how they know they are in the Marcellus. They want to stay in the real rich, black stuff. That’s where the money is, the gas is. When you bring this up to the surface, the radiation doesn’t stay down there. All the fluids . . . all the solids . . . bring it up.” Hughes said that West Virginia doesn’t require any radioactivity monitors at landfills. “They are required at every landfill in Pennsylvania, but not in West Virginia.”

“My concern is the landfill workers,” Hughes added. “They are there daily at the site, working at the landfill, unloading these trucks . . . I don’t know in what proximity they are to the drill mud. These are all unknowns. My point is we don’t even know.”

“There’s a whole stew of problems,” Hughes noted. “We want to ask your advice on how we can best get some answers and get some of this back into balance. It’s silly to say we should’ve done this four years ago. We are stuck with it right now, but if it is radioactive, we are going to be stuck with it a long, long time.”

Hughes stated that the Association of West Virginia Solid Waste Authorities really did not have a position on the matter because it’s not a statewide problem, “given active Marcellus drilling started in Tyler, Doddridge, and Marshall . . . You don’t see it down-state, and then it’d only affect those counties that have landfills, so not all solid waste authorities have a landfill located within their counties.” He further noted that Wetzel County would perhaps receive drill waste from surrounding counties in cases where travel expenses are less.

Mason noted that the county commission appointed Cochran and Hughes to be on the Wetzel County Solid Waste Authority. “You guys are kind of watchdogs, to protect the citizens of Wetzel County and surrounding areas,” said Mason. “If you seek legislation that is beneficial and necessary, you have my full support on whatever we can do to put a control on this.”

“Sometimes we do things because it’s the right thing to do; others of us do the right thing because of a financial incentive,” Hughes stated. “In this specific case, there’s a lot of money involved in the Marcellus gas exploration development, and in this specific case, there’s no financial incentive to do this right.” Hughes noted that if the waste was acknowledged as being radioactive, it would then have to be shipped to Idaho and Utah. “If you overlook this, the expense cost to the drillers goes down.”

“Our regulatory agencies have got to do their job, our state has to do the job, our legislatures have to get to the DEP and say ‘What’s going on here, how can we rewind?’ We have to get back to balance on this and at least get radioactive monitors at every landfill that are highly sensitive and set at a threshold that protects everyone’s health.”

Hughes stated: “If you bury it under the soil, it becomes essentially harmless, where that soil will stop gamma radiation, but the handling, the transport of it, is an issue for the fellows that work on the well pad, for the truck drivers, the landfill workers . . . and the landfill workers are really probably the least paid and hardest working bunch of the group and probably aren’t aware that they should have radium badges. It’s cumulative, and after x number of years, it might be a problem.”

“All we can do is what we’ve done so far,” Hughes noted. “We can get this letter put together, get some documents, and send it to Sen. Jeff Kessler and copy it in to Del. Dave Pethtel and Sen. Larry Edgell.” He added: “I’m frustrated, because our state agencies, sometimes, and companies don’t have communities and my grandkids’ best interests foremost in their mind.”

“It’s good you’ve raised the issue,” Commissioner Larry Lemon noted. “You admit you aren’t aware of all the technical ramifications and this effort might bring about more information. I think it’s great you’ve raised the issue.”

Commissioners later decided to contact the DEP about sending all the memos to the WCSWA, as well as “go through the legislators and let them talk to Governor Earl Ray Tomblin” about the situation.