Three months ago, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a ban on
high-volume hydraulic fracturing in the state of New York. So – at least for
now - contamination from active drilling is off the table. But there are other
ways that hydrofracking puts New York’s water resources at risk.
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| Water monitoring in Tioga Co. NY |
Steve Penningroth, director of the Community Science
Institute recently spoke about how shale gas waste disposal and infrastructure
development threaten the state’s water resources despite the federal Clean
Water Act and the state-wide frack ban. State regulations that address wastewater
treatment plants, factories, landfills, and even concentrated animal feeding
operations (CAFOs) allow a certain amount of pollution. That’s because the SPDES
permits (State Pollution Discharge Elimination System) specify the source and
quantities of pollutants that operations can “legally discharge” into streams,
rivers, and lakes.
But some chemicals, such as endocrine disruptors and
pharmaceuticals, are allowed to enter the public waste streams unregulated. And
even though some wastes may be hazardous, the Clean Water Act exempts them –
including radioactive drill cuttings from fracked gas wells.
It’s not just landfills that have to deal with radioactive
waste in drill cuttings from Pennsylvania and other states, says Penningroth.
Wastewater treatment plants that take landfill leachate have to deal with
whatever pollutants end up in the water percolating through the landfills. Add
to that the risks associated with train and truck transport of oil and
liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for spills, fires, and explosions and the
potential for storage fields - including salt caverns – to leak or explode.
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| Chemung County Landfill and nearby River (google earth) |
Environmental attorney Rachel Treichler has been studying
some of the issues that affect the Southern Tier of NY. “At this time Pennsylvania gas drilling wastes
are coming into New York landfills,” she said. Citing a report from theEnvironmental Advocates of NY, she noted that already 460,000 tons of solid
fracking waste and 23,000 barrels of liquid waste from Pennsylvania gas wells –
possibly more – have been dumped in a several New York landfills. Three of
those, the Chemung County Landfill in Lowman, the Hakes Landfill in Painted
Post (Steuben County), and the Hyland Landfill in Angelica (Allegany County)
are in the Southern Tier.
The Chemung County landfill has taken close to 200,000 tons
of drill cuttings. Drill cuttings bring in money for the landfills, said
Treichler. But they also bring in radioactive isotopes. Treichler is concerned
that some of the waste contains radioactive flowback from the gas wells. “I’ve
watched loads being dumped, and they’re so liquefied that they splash,” she
said. That liquid could contain radon and radium, naturally occurring
radioactive elements found in Marcellus shale wells. And while the landfill has
a radioactivity detector at the entrance, it only detects gamma radiation, not
the more common alpha and beta radiation.
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| Radiation Monitors, Chemung landfill (Matt Richmond) |
“The landfills take drill cuttings because they’re not
prohibited,” says Treichler, “not because they’re safe.” If drilling waste were
treated the same way as low-level radioactive waste, such as that produced by
hospitals, it would have to be tracked, she says. There is no tracking of
drilling waste.
The problem with radioactive elements in waste is that they
don’t stay put. Water percolating through the landfill leaches heavy metals and
radioactive isotopes. If there are no leaks in the landfill lining, that
leachate is collected and transported to wastewater treatment plants. Or it
might migrate through the soil to end up in a local waterway.
Even if the leachate ends up at the waste treatment plants,
those facilities are ill-equipped to treat hazardous and radioactive waste,
says Treichler. So that radiation is eventually discharged, along with the
treated water, into local rivers.
Leachate collected from the Chemung County landfill is sent
to the Chemung County waste water treatment plant in Elmira to be treated, after which it is discharged into the Chemung River which flows into the Susquehanna
and provides drinking water to communities on its way to Chesapeake Bay.
In 2010, Chemung County residents concerned about
radioactive drilling waste challenged the landfill’s permit that would allow
them to accept drill cuttings. The result: two years of required testing of the
leachate. Gary Abraham, an attorney working with the residents, compiled the
data from four rounds of sampling. In an email to Tompkins Weekly, he explained
that the data show that the leachate is becoming more radioactive, but the
levels are well under the discharge limits. Still, Abraham is concerned about
the radioactive contaminants, particularly radium-226. It is persistent in the
environment and bio-accumulates up the food chain.
Water discharge from treatment plants isn’t the only
concern, Rachel Treichler says. The solid waste left once water has been
treated – sludge - is collected and spread on land. “If there were
radioactivity in the sludge, land-spreading would be the final way for it to
get into our water.”
