newsCOUP

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.  

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

“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.” 

“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.

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.

“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.”