“NOW MORE THAN EVER” 1

As if they
haven’t caused
enough havoc
by destroying
social programs,
pensions, women’s
health and voting
rights – our multitasking
state legislators now want to
line their pockets while they line our
landfills with radioactive waste. Ohio’s
neo-conservative Republican Governor
John Kasich, a founding member of
the American Legislative Exchange
Council (ALEC), has come up with
another way to frack the people of Ohio
with this “beneficial use” scam.
If you wanted to suck up to the
fracking industry and transform Ohio
into a haven of radioactive waste
dumps, the best place to hide it is in
the budget. The Ohio budget bill (SB
59) passed in June gives the Ohio
Department of Natural Resources sole
authority over the radioactive content
of fracking wastes, along with the most
of the toxic sludge that the industry
brings up from deep underground. This
squeezes-out other regulatory agencies
like the Ohio Environmental Protection
Agency and the Ohio Department
of Health. Both are out, no longer
protecting people, the environment and
our health from the sludge.
Horizontal hydraulic fracturing
drilling, or what we know as “fracking,”
routinely produces radioactive waste
as a byproduct. A typical well extracts
1500 tons of clay and stone that is often
radioactive.
Tons of toxic water co-mingled with
each fracking company’s proprietary
chemical cocktail is injected into the
wells to extract gas and oil. This process
of forcing water and chemicals into the
earth dissolves tremendous amounts of
radium 226. Radium has a half-life of
12 more than 1600 years.
“NOW MORE THAN EVER”
How our state legislators
are fracking us now
Who benefits from the “beneficial use” of radioactive waste?
By Bob Fitrakis
Abnormal is the new
NORMal
Ohio Senate Bill 59 deals with this
in the following way – it simply reclassifies
this radioactive fracking waste
to the status of normally-occurring
radioactive material (NORM) from
its previous status of “technicallyenhanced
NORM,” called TENORM.
By redesignating it to be NORM, the
fracking waste no longer has to be
monitored or handled in any special
manner. If the waste had correctly
remained TENORM, it would be
closely regulated as radioactive
material.
Only about 10 percent of the total
radioactively contaminated fracking
waste stream will now be regulated.
The only fracking waste that remains
regulated as TENORM is drilling muds,
spent pipes and sludges from the bottom
of tanks.
The “beneficial use”
of radioactivity
“Drill cuttings” – meaning the soil,
rock fragments and pulverized material
that are removed from a borehole
during the fracking drilling process –
are now de-regulated. This allows the
radioactive material to be disposed
of in landfills throughout Ohio. The
Free Press could find no other states
that have declassified such radioactive
material.
How is this done?
SB 59 contains a so-called “beneficial
use” clause that allows fracking drill
cuttings to be deposited in licensed
landfills as a clay liner.
If the drill cuttings are used as a liner,
they are required to be remediated by
removing all hydrocarbon residue,
including diesel fuel. The law does not
require that any radioactive content be
removed, since it is, well, NORMal.
Getting lit takes on a
whole new meaning
Ohio Soil Recycling (OSR) handles
remediation at the Integrity Drive dump
in Columbus. OSR has developed a
process using microbes that “eat” the
hydrocarbons and thus remediating the
soil. Their process does not remove
radium and radioactive components.
Radioactive elements are highly watersoluble
and are prone to entering the
watershed through leaching over time.
The Ohio Environmental Protection
Agency (OEPA) limits the amount of
low-level radioactive materials to 5
picocuries in our drinking water. An
Ohio Department of Health memo
entitled “Analysis of Environmental
Samples for Gamma Ray Producing
Nucleides” analyzed six samples of
fracking material and found that the
fracking mud contained 896 picocuries
of radioactive material, 3000 times
the allowable EPA drinking water
limit, which would be regulated. But
coming out of the exact same hole the
remaining 90 percent of the material
exposed to the same radioactivity will
now go to the Integrity Drive dump on
Alum Creek under “beneficial use.”
Alum Creek flows next to the site and
merges into the Scioto River just a few
miles downstream. According to Teresa
Mills of the Buckeye Forest Council,
the Integrity Drive dump has twice been
remediated itself in the past through
EPA enforcement for leaching toxins
into Alum Creek. Mills claims that the
clay topping layer is expected to take
fifteen years to complete, while the
heavy metals will leach through in rain
and snow.
Will we get Pennsylvania’s
sloppy seconds?
In 2012, more than 22,000 tons of
drill cuttings and other toxic waste
were dumped in Ohio’s landfill from
Pennsylvania’s fracking industry.
According to a study by Radioactive
Waste Management Associates, “The
state could see more than 4000 fracking
wells over the next ten years.” The
study points out that, “It takes between
2 and up to 8 million gallons of water
to fracture a single Marcellus shale
well one time, and each well may be
fractured multiple times.”
The report notes that: “…in April
2013, a truck carrying a load of solid
fracking waste was sent away from the
MAX landfill in South Huntingdon,
Pennsylvania after the truckload set off
an alarm because its contents were so
radioactive. The drill cutting materials
in the truck had a radiation dose rate
of 96 microrems per hour caused by
the radium 226 contents. The limit for
radioactive material at the landfill is 10