Columbus Freepress - November 7th 2013 Nov 7 2013 | Page 12

How our state legislators
are fracking us now

Who benefits from the “beneficial use” of radioactive waste?
By Bob Fitrakis

As if they

“NOW MORE THAN EVER”

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.

Abnormal is the new
NORMal

Free Press could find no other states
that have declassified such radioactive
material.
Ohio Senate Bill 59 deals with this
How is this done?
in the following way – it simply reSB 59 contains a so-called “beneficial
classifies this radioactive fracking waste
use” clause that allows fracking drill
to the status of normally-occurring
cuttings to be deposited in licensed
radioactive material (NORM) from
landfills as a clay liner.
its previous status of “technicallyIf the drill cuttings are used as a liner,
enhanced NORM,” called TENORM.
they are required to be remediated by
By redesignating it to be NORM, the
removing all hydrocarbon residue,
fracking waste no longer has to be
including diesel fuel. The law does not
monitored or handled in any special
require that any radioactive content be
manner. If the waste had correctly
removed, since it is, well, NORMal.
remained TENORM, it would be

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 ?????????????)???????
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