Tell PA DEP to Stop Radioactive Fracking Discharge to PA Streams

From PennEnvironment (http://www.pennenvironment.org):

No one wants radioactive waste in their drinking water source. But an investigative news story last week showed that gas companies are sending millions of gallons of radioactive fracking wastewater into our rivers.¹ This is outrageous and has to stop.

Fracking wastewater is a toxic cocktail of acids, salt, and heavy metals. What a lot of Pennsylvanians don’t realize is that fracking wastewater is often contaminated with radioactive elements that get mixed in as the fracking water is injected deep underground in the drilling process. And yet, gas drilling operations are allowed to wash their hands of this toxic byproduct by sending it to sewage treatment plants in unsuspecting communities.

And all this is happening on the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s watch. Tell DEP to rein in this pollution today at https://pennenvironment.webaction.org/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=33874!

Our local sewage treatment plants were designed to handle what we wash down our sinks and flush down our toilets, not radioactive materials and other contaminants from fracking. This means that this radioactive fracking waste and other toxic pollutants escape treatment in the sewage plant’s processes, only to be released into our rivers and streams at the other end.

Tell the DEP to halt all fracking wastewater from being shipped to local municipal sewage plants today.

It’s estimated that over 800,000 tons of this fracking wastewater is sent to Pennsylvania sewage treatment plants each year, and it’s so toxic it can actually destroy the microbes whose job it is to treat it.² This means radioactive materials are being discharged into Pennsylvania’s rivers and streams where we fish, swim and draw our drinking water.³

Tell DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell: Stop letting radioactive fracking water from ending up in Pennsylvania’s waterways.

With the hundreds of chemicals and all the contaminants in fracking water, it’s clearly a toxic byproduct. We need to send it to plants meant to treat toxic waste, not our neighborhood sewage treatment plants.

Let’s keep it out of our rivers and streams. Join us in telling the DEP to close this loophole and end this dangerous practice.

1. Joshua B. Pribanic and Talia Wiener. “Pennsylvania is Discharging Radioactive Fracking Waste Into Rivers As Landfill Leachate, Impacting The Chesapeake Bay & Ohio River Watersheds,” Public Herald. Aug 7, 2019.
2. Joshua B. Pribanic and Talia Wiener. “Pennsylvania is Discharging Radioactive Fracking Waste Into Rivers As Landfill Leachate, Impacting The Chesapeake Bay & Ohio River Watersheds,” Public Herald. Aug 7, 2019.
3. Joshua B. Pribanic and Talia Wiener. “Pennsylvania is Discharging Radioactive Fracking Waste Into Rivers As Landfill Leachate, Impacting The Chesapeake Bay & Ohio River Watersheds,” Public Herald. Aug 7, 2019.