Brine exempt from hazardous waste regulations
Since 2012, when fracking for oil and gas started in earnest in the tri-state area, communities, citizens, and oil and gas workers continue to be exposed to brine and fracking sludge that can contain alarming amounts of radioactive isotopes like Radium-226 and Radium-228.
Every day brine trucks, lacking any warning placards or Material Safety Data Sheets, drive along our roads and through our towns transporting oil field wastes from fracking well pads to Class II injection wells. In addition to bromine and chlorine salts, these trucks also can carry toxic chemicals, pit waste, refuse water, sludge and even used frack sand, along with water soluble Radium-226.
Justin Nobel’s book, “Petroleum 238,” is an excellent source of information detailing how the oil and gas industry has been allowed to spew radiation across the United States in the form of billions of gallons of oil field wastes.
Oil and gas exploration and production wastes (brine and drilling muds) were exempted from the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act Subtitle C in 1978. They also are exempted from Ohio’s hazardous waste regulations. This wasn’t because the wastes are safe. In fact, officials admitted the wastes could indeed be harmful to human health and the environment.
The primary reason for the exemption was “if the immense volume of oil and gas wastes were regulated as hazardous, it would economically harm the industry.” When the law was revisited in 1980 under President Reagan, the Environmental Protection Agency kept the exemption, saying regulation would “cause a severe economic impact on the industry and on oil and gas production in the U.S.” Basically, as far as politicians and regulatory agencies are concerned, industry profits supersede any concern for the health of our communities.
A big fear is the radiation from Radium-226, which has a half-life of 1,600 years, will be poisoning the tri-state region long after the fracking boom is over. It can cause cancer, especially cancer of the bone.
“The Ohio Administrative Code has set environmental discharge limits for Radium-226 and 228 at 60 picocuries per liter each,” yet it is not unusual for brine trucks to carry fluids testing above 3,000 pCi/L with some as high as 7,300 pCi/L, according to the Buckeye Environmental Network brine fact sheet on conventional and horizontal well brines.
In 2004 Ohio passed HB 278, “which took away local control on oil and gas regulation and granted Ohio Department of Natural Resources sole authority,” meaning local communities cannot stop an injection well from being constructed. Ohio has over 234 Class II injection wells and accepts wastes from out of state.
Since 1985 Ohio’s General Assembly (HB 501) has approved the use of oil field brine from conventional wells to be used on roadways as a deicer and dust suppressant. Combined Radium-226 and 228 brine levels from the conventional wells have tested as high as 9,602 pCi/L, and the average level was 1,182 pCi/L — nearly 10 times the allowed environmental discharge limit.
We cannot depend on the ODNR or Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to safeguard our communities from oil and gas wastes.
Dr. Randi Pokladnik
Uhrichsville