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Biased Hit Piece in Columbus Dispatch Attacks M-U Waste Facility

A “reporter” at the Columbus Dispatch has just published a hatchet job on a shale waste handling and processing facility located in Belmont County, OH. The facility is located (gasp!) a half-mile away from a high school and a hospital. It’s also located near the Ohio River and it handles (gasp!) “radioactive waste.” That’s how the article begins. It goes downhill from there, making wild claims of “overflowing barrels” of radioactive waste at the facility.
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DEP Issues Permit to Expand Scranton Landfill, More Drill Cuttings

For the past seven years a privately-owned dump near Scranton, the Keystone Sanitary Landfill, has sought to expand in order to accept more garbage. The dump is also authorized to accept Marcellus Shale drill cuttings–rock and soil leftover after drilling. Yesterday the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced after seven years of study, hearings, meetings, and whatever else the DEP does to fiddle away the time, they have finally approved Keystone’s request to expand.
Read More “DEP Issues Permit to Expand Scranton Landfill, More Drill Cuttings”

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PA AG Continues to Target Marcellus re Keystone Landfill in NEPA

MDN has been writing about a privately-owned dump near Scranton, the Keystone Sanitary Landfill, for the past decade (see our stories here). Although the dump accepts all sorts of toxic substances, one of the more benign waste streams it accepts is drill cuttings from Marcellus Shale drillers. Anti-fossil fuelers would have you believe those cuttings are radioactive and will make you glow in the dark. It’s bogus. But now the state’s anti-fossil fuel Attorney General, Josh Shapiro, is investigating Keystone looking for evidence of radioactivity.
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New York Landfill Accepting Pa. Drill Cuttings Plans Expansion

Last summer MDN brought you the news that the Sierra Club lost a lawsuit aimed at blocking a landfill in New York State from accepting oil and gas drill cuttings from Pennsylvania (see Sierra Club Loses Court Case to Block Drill Cuttings in NY Landfill). The C&D Hakes Landfill in Painted Post, NY (near Elmira, located in Steuben County) continues to accept PA drill cuttings, although we’re not sure if those cuttings come from Marcellus drillers. At any rate, Hakes has filed a request to expand the landfill by another 43 acres (to 122 acres), to continue accepting PA drill cuttings for an extra 8-10 years.
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PA DEP Fines Landfill (with Drill Cuttings) 2nd Time – $59K

The Westmoreland Sanitary Landfill in Westmoreland County, PA (southwestern corner of the state, near Pittsburgh) was fined $24,000 earlier this year (see PA DEP Fines Drill Cuttings Landfill for Contaminated Runoff). The PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) claimed effluent from the landfill, because the landfill accepts shale drill cuttings, had damaged a water treatment system in a nearby municipality. The DEP is back to shake down the landfill again, this time assessing a $59,000 fine.
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Sierra Club Loses Court Case to Block Drill Cuttings in NY Landfill

In February MDN told you about an effort by the radicalized Sierra Club to block a New York landfill from accepting drill cuttings from the Pennsylvania Marcellus (see Antis Fabricate Data in Attempt to Block NY Landfill Expansion). The Clubbers fabricated (made up, lied about) data, trying to use this new made-up data in a court case aimed at stopping the C&D Hakes Landfill in Painted Post, NY (near Elmira, located in Steuben County) from accepting PA drill cuttings. The judge has just ruled in the case–against the Clubbers.
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Fed Grand Jury Indicts Owner of Co. Dumping M-U Frack Waste in KY

In March 2016, MDN reported that 47 dumpsters full of concentrated frack waste from OH, PA and WV was illegally dumped in a Kentucky landfill in Estill County, KY (see Marcellus/Utica Frack Waste Illegally Dumped in Kentucky Landfill). The cuttings were buried between July and November in 2015, near as anyone can tell. Earlier this week a federal grand jury in Kentucky indicted the former owner of the company doing the dumping on five counts of mail fraud and 22 counts of violating the Hazardous Materials Transportation Act.
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NY Officially Closed for Business – New Law Bans PA Drill Cuttings

Each day New York State becomes more like a third world, tinhorn dictatorship. High and Supreme Lord Andrew Cuomo (governor and dictator of NY) has issued edicts to *permanently* ban all fracking in the state. The suckup legislature dutifully obliged (see Cuomo PERMANENTLY Bans NY Fracking in Now-Adopted Budget). Lord Cuomo has also banned all new “fossil fuel” pipeline construction in the state. There has been one very minor way NY still participated in the shale revolution…
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WV Marcellus/Utica Waste Processor SECUR Files for Bankruptcy

SECUR O&G, LLC is headquartered in Sewickley, PA, but its main operation, a Marcellus/Utica waste processing center, is located in the Bens Run Industrial Park in Friendly (Tyler County), WV. SECUR processes both liquid and solid drilling waste and handles TENORM (technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive material) at its Bens Run facility. Last Friday SECUR filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of WV.
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Biased Post-Gazette Attacks SWPA Shale Cuttings Landfill…Again

Last year a sewage treatment facility in Belle Vernon (Fayette County, PA) claimed the effluent (runoff) it was receiving from a nearby landfill in Westmoreland County contained high levels of salt and radioactivity and was causing damage to their treatment system (see Another Post-Gazette Smear Job: Drill Cuttings Pollute Rivers). The landfill accepts drill cuttings–leftover rock and dirt from drilling holes (not wastewater). The sewage treatment plant with help from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette made accusations against the landfill and the shale industry. The same biased Post-Gazette “reporter” is back with another round of accusations against the landfill, aimed at scaring nearby residents.
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PA DEP Fines Drill Cuttings Landfill for Contaminated Runoff

Last year a sewage treatment facility in Belle Vernon (Fayette County, PA) claimed the effluent (runoff) it was receiving from a nearby landfill in Westmoreland County contained high levels of salt and radioactivity and was causing damage to their treatment system (see Another Post-Gazette Smear Job: Drill Cuttings Pollute Rivers). The landfill accepts drill cuttings–leftover rock and dirt from drilling holes (not wastewater)–yet the sewage treatment plant with help from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette made accusations against the landfill and the shale industry. The state Dept. of Environmental Protection has stepped in and brokered an agreement with the landfill (called a consent order) for the landfill to make certain corrective actions and (of course) pay a $24,000 fine.
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Antis Fabricate Data in Attempt to Block NY Landfill Expansion

Is anyone shocked at the audacity of anti-fossil fuel groups like the Sierra Club to simply manufacture (make up, out of nothing) new “data” with wild claims of radioactivity in order to block a New York landfill from expanding to accept more PA drill cuttings from shale sites? We aren’t.
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NY DEC Approves Landfill Expansion to Accept More PA Drill Cuttings

Location of C&D Hakes Landfill (click for larger version)

This no longer qualifies as a minor miracle, it’s a MAJOR miracle. The Cuomo-corrupted New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has just approved the only remaining way NY benefits from the Marcellus–by allowing a landfill in Steuben County to expand so it can accept more drill cuttings from PA Marcellus drillers.
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PA DEP Seeks Comment on Draft Radiation Monitoring Regs for Shale

The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has drafted up new “technical guidance” on “radioactivity monitoring at solid waste processing and disposal facilities” specifically targeted at the shale industry. Translation: new regulations for how dumps (and drillers) monitor and report on radioactivity levels from incoming loads of drill cuttings. The DEP has posted their proposed new guidance document for public comment, after which they will adopt the new regs.
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PA’s Out-of-Control AG to Investigate Landfill Effluent as “Crime”

The smear job Pittsburgh Post-Gazette propagandists Don Hopey and David Templeton began last week continues this week–an attempt to connect drill cuttings (leftover rock and dirt from drilling a hole in the ground) to “toxic” chemicals coming from a landfill in Westmoreland County where the drill cuttings are less than half of the dumped waste. The effluent–runoff from the landfill–is piped to a nearby sewage treatment facility in Belle Vernon for processing and discharge into the Mon River.
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Radical Green Groups Try to Block NY Marcellus Landfill Expansion

drill cuttings

New York benefits from the PA Marcellus in a very minor way–we sell a few hotel rooms, and a few restaurant meals to workers passing through. About the only way we tangibly benefit from PA shale is by accepting drilling cuttings in a few of our landfills. Yet antis want to take that away too.
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