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Oil-and-gas wells produce radioactive waste

rollingstone.com

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Re: Oil-and-gas wells produce radioactive waste

#81

Post by rayiner »

cptskippy wrote: post #70
rayiner wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder how many of them would even care. This week the EPA dismantled the Clean Water Rule. This week, the EPA rolled back an Obama-era executive order interpreting the Clean Water Act. Hard to see how rescinding a three year old executive order could “dismantle” a 47-year old statute. The Obama-era interpretation was ridiculous on top of everything else. The Wikipedia article is actually pretty good: > The Clean…

The media spin of and your account, while different, are both very different from what I hear from my partner the environmental engineer. The media would lead you to believe farmers have stock piles of 50 gallon chemical drums they're waiting to pour into our lakes and streams. My partner's take is that a wetland, natural or otherwise is a protected habitat that can't just be destroyed. Farms have such wetlands and l…

Just because wetlands should be protected doesn’t mean that they are protected under the Clean Water Act. (Congress doesn’t have the authority to regulate every body of water in the US. It’s limited to regulating the “channels of interstate commerce.”)

States can, and do, regulate intrastate wetlands. And they can do it more efficiently, because they already handle permitting of local construction projects.

Re: Oil-and-gas wells produce radioactive waste

#82

Post by carapace »

jiofih wrote: post #42

> There are over 1 million active oil-and-gas wells across 33 states This is insane. One well per 300 inhabitants of the USA. How is that even economically viable?

> How is that even economically viable?

Are you kidding? It's like drilling up geysers of money.

The ten most profitable companies in the world are nine oil companies and Apple.

Count the cars and trucks and planes and generators and leaf-blowers and chainsaws and every piece of plastic ever and thousands of chemical byproducts... oil is everywhere.

Re: Oil-and-gas wells produce radioactive waste

#83

Post by foota »

DuskStar wrote: post #71
foota wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it's exactly because Republican law makers by and large don't give a shit (especially the Senate)

> Congress should be updating these laws to address new types of issues, but it’s not. It’s not because Republicans don’t care about these issues, and Democrats aren’t willing to spend the political capital to make these issues a priority. Whatever the reason, however, that doesn’t mean it’s okay for agencies like the EPA to creatively interpret statutes to expand their powers into new areas. I read the GP's post as…

I see, yeah that's the right reading.

Re: Oil-and-gas wells produce radioactive waste

#84

Post by waffle_ss »

clumsysmurf wrote: post #38
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #28

I used to do the soil lab testing for a guy that dealt with this waste in my state. They did permitting and paid farmers to be able to spread it on their fields and tell them it is good for them and will make the soil more fertile. It can be either the salt brine or the more hydrocarbon based stuff that was basically like tar being spread on the farmer’s pasture. He himself wrote the laws that the state government ju…

> they weren’t informed about the real dangers of what was being spread. I wonder how many of them would even care. This week the EPA dismantled the Clean Water Rule. The primary backers for this were farmers and developers.

The "farmers" backing the EPA rule change are the industrial CAFO operations that produce open-air manure lagoons (literal lakes of shit) that cause all kinds of environmental hazards. They can afford to care less because they typically don't live on-site like traditional farmers did. Hell when it comes to hogs they might not even be citizens - the largest hog producer, Smithfield, is owned by the Chinese now.

If you can find an actual farmer - an endangered species as the industry consolidates into corporate CAFOs - I can promise you that they have no interest in drinking poison from their wells.

Re: Oil-and-gas wells produce radioactive waste

#85

Post by mattbk1 »

dylan604 wrote: post #51
keeganjw wrote: post #2

We're drowning in headlines these days that I feel like this story really fell through the cracks. People who live near fracking really need to know this.

It's amazing what that monthly check can make people look over when the wells are placed on private property.

That monthly check might not even be very large. Unfortunately, in many places (like North Dakota), mineral rights are severed from surface rights. So as a surface owner you might get a pittance for allowing a pad on your property, all the royalties are going to someone else who bought up mineral rights decades ago.

Re: Oil-and-gas wells produce radioactive waste

#87

Post by cptskippy »

rayiner wrote: post #81
cptskippy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The media spin of and your account, while different, are both very different from what I hear from my partner the environmental engineer. The media would lead you to believe farmers have stock piles of 50 gallon chemical drums they're waiting to pour into our lakes and streams. My partner's take is that a wetland, natural or otherwise is a protected habitat that can't just be destroyed. Farms have such wetlands and l…

Just because wetlands should be protected doesn’t mean that they are protected under the Clean Water Act. (Congress doesn’t have the authority to regulate every body of water in the US. It’s limited to regulating the “channels of interstate commerce.”) States can, and do, regulate intrastate wetlands. And they can do it more efficiently, because they already handle permitting of local construction projects.

It's actually up to the Army Core of Engineers to determine if a wetland is under the CWA. They aren't blanket included or excluded.

Re: Oil-and-gas wells produce radioactive waste

#89

Post by dchichkov »

waffle_ss wrote: post #84
clumsysmurf wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they weren’t informed about the real dangers of what was being spread. I wonder how many of them would even care. This week the EPA dismantled the Clean Water Rule. The primary backers for this were farmers and developers.

The "farmers" backing the EPA rule change are the industrial CAFO operations that produce open-air manure lagoons (literal lakes of shit) that cause all kinds of environmental hazards. They can afford to care less because they typically don't live on-site like traditional farmers did. Hell when it comes to hogs they might not even be citizens - the largest hog producer, Smithfield, is owned by the Chinese now. If you…

Is seems, this also affects public roads. Here is, for example, methodology of application of these waste products to road surfaces in California:

https://dot.ca.gov/-/media/dot-media/programs/research-innov...

Doesn't seem there is much there on controlling amounts of lead, cadmium and radium in the material. No on the gradual accumulation on the road.

As per the following paper, not much research had been done on the health effects of applying it on the roads and risks of dust particles lifted by vehicles being inhailed. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325460511_Environme...

And from its abstract: "Currently, state-by-state regulations do not require radium analyses prior to treating roads with O&G wastewaters.".

So it looks like there is a loophole that doesn't specifically disallow to accumulate unlimited amounts of radioactive material with 1600 years decay half-life on public roads.

Re: Oil-and-gas wells produce radioactive waste

#90

Post by teclordphrack2 »

rayiner wrote: post #62
hanniabu wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there any room in our politics to acknowledge that agencies sometimes overreach Yes, but what we're seeing under the current Trump administration isn't a "sometimes" thing. It's become an effort to systemically rollback as many regulations as they could in order to allow for greater profits. They have gutted anybody of power within the EPA and replaced then with pro-corporate drones and climate change deniers. >…

Trump has rolled back a lot of things, yes, but a lot of the Obama-era rules were vast overreaches. Ask yourself how agencies like the EPA managed to find new sources of authority, like the authority to regulate ponds on farms, in 47-year old statutes? Congress did not create the EPA as an agency that has plenary authority to regulate environmental issues. Such an agency would not be constitutional, because it would…

"ponds on farms"

Do you even know what you speak of? You seem easily manipulated by propaganda!

What you seem to be references are people in the mid west and rockies that were creating "ponds" that were multi 10s of acres large with depths of multiple feet if not 10s of feet deep. The tributaires to the Rio Grand are regulated by treaties with Mexico. If left to do this, as more and more did, the water sheds to the larger tributaries would dry up.

The federal government has treaty laws that dictate certain water flow to mexico, ranges of water flow that we have not met in decades, RANGES OF WATER FLOW THAT WOULD STOP ILLEGAL MIGRATION across the rio grande.

"Congress did not create the EPA as an agency that has plenary authority to regulate environmental issues"

O K A Y, S L O W, P E R S O N. T A K E, A, P I L L.

Congress regulates the EPA. If the EPA has authority to do anything then the current congress has allowed it!

YOU ARE A LIAR AND AN IDIOT.

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