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Enviro, Oil Companies Battle Ohio Over Dumping of Fracking Wastewater

"Advocates for both sides say public drinking water may be tainted by underground leaks of “produced water.”"

"Ten years ago, Tim Kettler asked local officials to stop spreading liquid waste from fracking on the road near his home in Warsaw, Ohio, because he was worried that the fluid would contaminate a pond where he gets his drinking water.

They complied with his request, but the practice continues in many other places across the state, and threatens to taint its groundwater with radioactivity and a cocktail of other contaminants in the residue from natural gas drilling.

Water from the pond, downhill from the road where the salty waste was once spread, remains clean and drinkable, but that hasn’t stopped Kettler and other activists in Ohio from campaigning against a practice that has been used for years to de-ice roads in the winter and keep dust down in the summer.

They say that high levels of two kinds of radium in the waste, known as produced water, as well as its extreme salinity, is already damaging the environment where the brine is spread and will eventually find its way into underground sources where people get their drinking water."

Jon Hurdle reports for Inside Climate News May 14, 2023.

 

Source: Inside Climate News, 05/16/2023