BELLE VERNON, Pa.—Off a back road in the hilly country south of Pittsburgh, a tributary to the Monongahela River runs through overgrown vegetation and beneath an abandoned railroad trestle, downstream from the Westmoreland Sanitary Landfill. On a cool day in late July, it was swollen with rain. Tire tracks through the dense brush were puddled with muddy water.
Environmental scientist Yvonne Sorovacu and local watershed advocate Hannah Hohman, her glasses spattered with raindrops, stood together under an umbrella, watching the tumble of the stream. Both women visit the landfill site regularly to collect water samples and record signs of contamination. The water here, which flows downhill from the landfill’s discharge point, is often coated with stiff globs of foam, Sorovacu said. The water upstream of the outfall is clear.Over the course of more than a decade, as Pennsylvania’s fracking industry took off, the Westmoreland landfill accepted hundreds of thousands of tons of oil and gas waste and wastewater, toxic and often radioactive byproducts that contain elements and heavy metals from deep inside the earth and synthetic chemicals used in the drilling process. That melange can include radionuclides like radium, uranium and thorium as well as harmful substances like arsenic, lead and benzene.
After years of violations at Westmoreland, scientists and residents are keeping a close watch on the landfill, monitoring for any signs that runoff has made its way into public waterways. But oil and gas waste is going to landfills across the state, often with far less scrutiny. At least twenty-two other landfills currently take Pennsylvania oil and gas waste, and some also accept it from other states.
Oil and gas companies operating in Pennsylvania reported creating nearly 8.8 million tons of solid waste between 2017 and 2024, an Inside Climate News analysis of state records found. In an average year, that tops the waste produced by every resident and commercial enterprise in Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located.
According to Pennsylvania oil and gas operators, about 6.3 million tons of this waste went to landfills in the state. But the true amount of oil and gas waste reaching the state’s landfills is likely much larger, an Inside Climate News investigation found.
And mounting evidence suggests that this ever-increasing volume is harming the streams, creeks and rivers where Pennsylvanians fish, swim, kayak and source drinking water.
In one case, at Max Environmental Technologies Bulger in southwestern Pennsylvania, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified the radioactive element radium, a common contaminant in oil and gas waste, as one of the likely causes of the pollution in nearby creeks. In a 2023 study, scientists from the University of Pittsburgh and Duquesne University found elevated levels of radium in the sediment downstream of the outfall at five of the landfills taking the industry’s waste. Scientists have also discovered radium build-up in freshwater mussels’ bodies and shells downstream of facilities that have treated oil and gas waste.
Four of the landfills taking oil and gas waste are out of compliance with their permits, an Inside Climate News review found. Another seven have been out of compliance with the Clean Water Act for six months or more in the last five years. Thirteen are discharging wastewater or stormwater into waterways the EPA classified as “impaired,” too polluted or otherwise degraded to meet water-quality standards. More of this article (Inside Climate News) - link - more like this (polluted water) - link - more like this (Pennsylvania) - link
No comments:
Post a Comment