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newsCOUP: ”Overthrow The Status Quo” w/ investigative journalists Joshua Pribanic & Melissa Troutman. An investigative news program brought to you by Public Herald.
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“I Turned Blue”: Workers Share Horrifying Experiences Treating Fracking Wastewater
Project: TENORM Published: December 2023
by Joshua Boaz Pribanic for Public Herald
"I'm pretty sure I was at death's door. If I wouldn't have gone to the hospital and got oxygen and got help, I would've been in bad, bad shape."
Over the past six months, Public Herald has been contacted by four additional Eureka workers who are for the first time sharing their stories about the dangers of treating fracking wastewater.
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Yellowstone Series: Government Uses Poison Linked to Parkinson’s in Montana Waterways Since 1948
Project: Yellowstone Series Published: November 2022
by Emma Lichtwardt & Joshua Boaz Pribanic for Public Herald
Public Herald has found that since 1948, in the name of conservation, the Montana government has been using a poison linked to Parkinson’s disease in lakes, ponds, and rivers across the state. And that EPA and state agencies have not fully disclosed its risk to human health. FWP records obtained by Public Herald show Montana agencies have applied rotenone 253 times at more than 200 different water bodies, to an estimated length of 533 miles of surface water.
The Yellowstone series from Public Herald is investigating the pollution and treatment of waterways in Montana, and throughout the United States. If you have a story to share about water, contact our team. For more stories in this series subscribe to newsCOUP.
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“They’re a Bunch of Liars” – Records Expose Lies About Injection Well Safety
Project: newsCOUP Published: October 2022
“Everybody right now that’s in the DEP’s oil and gas management are liars,” Barr told Public Herald. “They’re really, really bad. They’re covering up, and they just cover up, cover up.” Just north of Pittsburgh, close to the city’s water supply, an injection well in nearby Plum Borough suffered mechanical issues in 2021 the same time that residents next door reported water problems. DEP concluded that the injection well wasn’t causing their water pollution.
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Senator Says Pennsylvania Bypassed Feds & Issued “Illegal” Permit That Threatens Dimock Waterways With Radioactivity From Fracking
NPDES Permits – Part One, Dimock Pa.
“The EPA never saw this application until I brought it to their attention…meaning, DEP gave [Eureka] a fake permit,” Senator Muth told Public Herald. On public record, on at least three occasions, DEP claims it secured a waiver from EPA, which skipped federal approval. But, Senator Muth said, EPA officials told her they’d never seen the permit let alone issued a waiver.
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We Found The Names of Radioactive Waste Locations That Government Kept Secret
Radioactive Oil & Gas Test Sites Uncovered & Mapped by Public Herald
For about six years, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has obscured the radioactive hazards of oil and gas operations. Now, for the first time, all 144 names and locations are being released by the team at Public Herald.
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“A Permanent Reactor” Fracking’s Radioactive Health Threat to Ohio Will Last 1,600 Years Without Action
Don't miss this final episode in the Ohio three-part series about the "permanent nuclear reactor" — created from mountains of fracking waste piling up in communities across America.
“This is a permanent reactor near your house, and it will always be a reactor because the waste got pooled together. And it will make as much radon and radium today as it will tomorrow and the next day and the next day and 30 years from now and 100 years from now and 500 years from now because the half life of this stuff is like, forever … So while it’s a naturally occurring material, when you concentrate it, you create a reactor.”
If you missed Part 1 & 2 you can listen to those reports or read the story at https://publicherald.org/tenorm.
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Investigation Uncovers Ohio Is “Illegally” Building Radioactive Mountains, Affecting 26 Waterways
“It is an extremely, overwhelmingly strong bet that the waste and disposal practices in Ohio are seeing a great deal of material that exceeds the limits,” said Ohio attorney Terry Lodge. “The state is acting illegally.”
READ PART 2 »
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newsCOUP Ep. 13: Under Chief's Orders Ohio Operates a Radioactive Industry Off The Record
“They just feel that our lives are worth nothing, that we’re expendable,” said Anderson. “People's lives matter. You can't sacrifice them for corporate profit.”
Eight years later, Chief’s Orders facilities, who would handle radioactive waste from fracking, are operating with no updated rules or oversight. Today, that leaves the potential for unregulated radioactive waste to enter rivers and watersheds across Ohio.
Read the full report » https://publicherald.org/under-chiefs-orders-ohio-operates-a-radioactive-industry-off-the-record/
Pennsylvania’s Largest Fracking Waste Landfill is Under Criminal Investigation for Dumping Radioactive Leachate
A community group’s letter about a landfill accepting fracking’s radioactive waste caught the attention of the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Environmental Crimes Unit.
In the heart of President Joe Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, the Friends of Lackawanna are fighting the massive expansion of Keystone Sanitary Landfill, a waste dump that accepts radioactive material created by fracking for oil and natural gas.
“This is the future of our community at stake,” said Michele Dempsey from Friends of Lackawanna. “Our community lives or dies on this [expansion] decision, and so we gave it our hearts and souls.” Dempsey’s community is just one of many across America where, since fracking began, state and federal regulators have sent radioactive material to residual waste sites. As this waste piles up in public and private landfills, the size and risk of these “TENORM Mountains” looms large.
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newsCOUP: Stopping Radioactive Water: Officials Want to Ban Oil & Gas Injection Wells at Pennsylvania Headwaters to Block EPA Permit
“Unanimously, we are against a toxic waste injection well in Clara Township. And the main reason is because of the water.”
“When you have all of the officials in town unanimously wanting to fight this...with their support, that's powerful,” Barr told Public Herald. And “it's so important to protect the watershed. And that's the main priority to me, is protecting the watershed.”
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“They’re Going to Die” – Experts & Whistleblowers Reveal Life of Trafficking Radioactive Waste
"That first initial burst of water was just some really dirty stuff, sometimes it was as black as the screen of your phone when you shut it off, just black. I spent a lot of time underneath that rig literally getting rained on when they were pulling the pipe by that water. You would be out there just literally vacuuming up this water that was laying down on their containment around the rigs."
***Read the full report, subscribe to newsCOUP: https://publicherald.org/if-only-i-wouldve-known-oil-gas-whistleblowers-speak-out-about-exposure-to-radioactivity-on-fracking-jobs/
DOH Does Not Take Concerns From Physicians and Community Seriously
On June 21st, two local health advocacy organizations, Philadelphia Physicians for Social Responsibility (Philly PSR) and Environmental Health Project, were able to meet virtually with Dr. Rachel Levine, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH), to advocate on behalf of families regarding a cancer health study in the southwestern part of the state.
In the meeting, Dr. Levine revealed that the academic partner to conduct the infamous oil and gas health study will be the University of Pittsburgh.
Immediately upon hearing this news advocates for affected families requested a “process oversight panel” — but DOH denied the request.
The DOH study, prompted by rare childhood cancers in the county, will take an estimated three years to complete, at which time the DOH will consider whether it will respond and take action. This timeline allows the DOH to fallback on the unfinished study until 2023, as families wait to find out if oil and gas fracking is connected to the increase in childhood cancers.
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Pennsylvania Regulators Won't Say Where 66% of Landfill Leachate w/ Radioactive Material From Fracking is Going..."It's Private"
DEP is not tracking how much TENORM is leaving a landfill via leachate to the WWTP. The DEP says that the transaction is private between the two entities: the landfill and the treatment plant.
When we told Dr. Julie Weatherington-Rice, a semi-retired earth scientist with a PHD in soil science and adjunct professor for Ohio State University, about DEP’s landfill tracking system for TENORM, she said, “[DEP] has no way of knowing what’s going in” to a landfill in a given year using gate post radiation systems for trucks to pass through and handheld geiger counters.
Dr. Weatherington-Rice continued, “Those gate posts [at landfills] were never designed for that kind of [low level radiation] scanning. They were designed for hospital waste, for something that decays rapidly. Pennsylvania is counting on smoke and mirrors for protection because they’re not using the right test and they’re not using the right equipment. They don’t know what they put in that landfill. They think they do, but they don’t.”
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We kind of actually said to ourselves, we think covid was here beforehand, and people that maybe tested negative for the flu maybe had it, and will we ever know? Probably not. That is why everyone is really scared, because if you have the symptoms you could be spreading it. We don't have the equipment. We might have cots, we might have rooms, available schools, gymnasiums, to put people, but what do you do with the people once they're there? Who's going to take care of them? Where's the proper medical equipment to take care of them? I don't know. Or the personnel? I don't know that either. We don't have the right equipment, we don't have enough of the equipment, we really are unprepared.
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newsCOUP: A Dangerous Secret That Could End Fracking
Investigative Journalists Justin Nobel and Joshua Pribanic come together in this explosive podcast* to discuss one of the hottest topics to come out of fossil fuels.
The idea of “safe” fracking transformed oil and gas in America for the 21st century and helped create a worldwide resurgence for an otherwise dying industry. But as we hear in this episode of newsCOUP a dangerous secret protected by regulators threatens the identity of fracking. That secret takes us down a rabbit hole from the beginning of time to the present-day legacy of untold radioactive risks in communities wherever black shale is fracked.
For more on this and other Public Herald stories see: https://publicherald.org/a-dangerous-secret-that-could-end-fracking/
Pittsburgh’s Freshman State Representative Sara Innamorato is drafting a bill to regulate TENORM (Technically Enhanced Radioactive Material) from fracking waste in response to Public Herald’s leachate investigation.
Public Herald’s August 2019 report described how a regulatory loophole allows radioactive fracking waste dumped at landfills to be sent as leachate to sewage treatment plants and discharged to public waters. Fracking waste contains high levels of radionuclides known as TENORM which are water soluble and end up in the landfill leachate, but are unregulated and cannot be treated or removed by sewage plants.
READ THE FULL PUBLIC HERALD REPORT »
A Public Herald investigation has uncovered that DEP is allowing 14 Sewage Waste Treatment Plants to discharge radioactive fracking waste as landfill leachate into 13 Pennsylvania Waterways. The process DEP created to “treat” and discharge the leachate through sewage plants appears to date as far back as the fracking boom (2009 or longer).
Read Full Investigation w/ Interactive Map »
Today on the show we’re talking about direct action. What’s the right approach? Should you go to court? Should you contact your elected officials? Should you take action on the state, break the laws and perform acts of civil disobedience? And, do you do this alone? Or, do you get your community involved…do you get masses of people involved?
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“We need a smoking gun.” — Investigators at Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s office told Public Herald during a meeting in 2017.
A criminal investigation of the oil and gas fracking industry is underway in Pennsylvania, the nation’s second largest producer of natural gas. Pennsylvania’s Office of the Attorney General (OAG) has “assumed jurisdiction over several criminal investigations involving environmental crimes” in Washington County where oil and gas companies have been indicted.
The AG’s office is neither confirming or denying that an investigation is actually happening.
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Investigation: Clorox Selling Pool Salt Made From Fracking Wastewater
by Joshua B. Pribanic for Public Herald | Edited by Melissa A. Troutman
February 11, 2019 | Updated February 12, 2019 | Project: Smoking Gun, newsCOUP
You might be shocked to learn that a Clorox product used to treat swimming pools came from fracking wastewater.
Public Herald has discovered that Eureka Resources, a company based in Pennsylvania, has been treating wastewater from shale gas development — a.k.a. “fracking” — and packaging the crystal byproduct as “Clorox Pool Salt” for distribution since 2017.
Jerel Bogdan, Vice President of Engineering at Eureka Resources, in an interview with Public Herald, stated Eureka’s patented system is “the only one in Pennsylvania that has proven and demonstrated to the DEP that our technology can generate dewasted water. To our knowledge there is no one else in North America who’s able to do that with oil and gas brines.”
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