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Oil & Gas Industry Produces Radioactive Waste. Lots of It
By: Justin Nobel, The Rolling StoneJuly 21, 2021 Massive amounts of radioactive waste brought to the surface by oil and gas wells have overwhelmed the industry and the state and federal agencies that regulate it, according to a report released today by the prominent environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council. The waste poses “significant health threats,” including the increased risk of cancer to oil and gas workers and their families and also nearby communities. “We know that the waste has radioactive elements, we know that it can have very…
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EPA recommends that Army Corps of Engineers not grant Mountain Valley Pipeline stream crossing permit
By: Sarah Vogelsong, Virginia Mercury and Lisa Sorg, NC Policy Watch July 9, 2021 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recommended that the Army Corps of Engineers not grant Mountain Valley Pipeline a critical permit to cross several hundred streams in Virginia and West Virginia. “EPA has identified a number of substantial concerns with the project as currently proposed, including whether all feasible avoidance and minimization measures have been undertaken, deficient characterization of the aquatic resources to be impacted, insufficient assessment of secondary and cumulative impacts and potential for significant degradation, and the proposed mitigation,” EPA Wetlands Branch Chief Jeffrey Lapp wrote…
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DEQ denies MVP Southgate water quality permit — again
By: Lisa Sorg, April 29 NC Policy Watch The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality has again denied a key water quality permit for the proposed MVP Southgate natural gas pipeline, dealing another setback to the controversial project that would run through Rockingham and Alamance counties. DEQ originally denied the water quality permit application last August. At the time Division of Water Resources Director Danny Smith wrote that because of “uncertainty surrounding the completion of the MVP Mainline project … work on the Southgate extension could lead to unnecessary water quality impacts and disturbance of the environment in North Carolina.” MVP appealed the DEQ’s denial…
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Fractured: Distrustful of frackers, abandoned by regulators
By: Kristina Marusic, Environmental Health News March 1, 2021 WASHINGTON COUNTY, Pa.—For nearly a decade, Bryan Latkanich has been telling anyone who’d listen that allowing two fracking wells to be drilled on his farm is the worst mistake he’s ever made. He’s a single father on disability who leased his land in 2010 at the height of the fracking boom, thrilled to have two wells 400 feet from his home in exchange for what he thought would be millions of dollars in royalties, only to run into problem after problem. The drilling disturbed more land than had been agreed to or permitted, which…
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Environmental advocates cheer Delaware River Basin Commission’s ban on fracking
By: Lisa Scheid, The Reading Eagle March 1, 2021 A decision last week by the Delaware River Basin Commission would ban fracking through the Delaware River watershed, including Berks County. There had been a temporary moratorium instituted in 2010, but that was recently challenged in court. The ban is also likely to face legal challenges. Also last week, the commission voted unanimously to develop regulations for the management of drilling wastewater coming into the watershed and for water being taken out of the watershed for use in drilling operations. The proposed wastewater regulations are to be available by Sept. 30. Hydraulic fracturing, called fracking,…
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The North Carolina hog industry’s answer to pollution: a $500m pipeline project
By: Michael Sainato, The Guardian December 11, 2020 Elsie Herring of Duplin county, North Carolina, lives in the house her late mother grew up in, but for the past several decades her home has been subjected to pollution from nearby industrial hog farms. “We have to deal with whether it’s safe to go outside. It’s a terrible thing to open the door and face that waste. It makes you want to throw up. It takes your breath away, it makes your eyes…
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Equitrans reports increased cost estimate, delayed in-service date for Mountain Valley Pipeline
By Debra Flax, Pennsylvania Business Report November 5, 2020 Equitrans Midstream Corporation (ETRN) said this week that the cost estimate of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) is now between $5.8 billion and $6 billion and the project’s full in-service date is anticipated during the second half of 2021. MVP is a proposed underground, interstate natural gas pipeline system, expected to span roughly 303 miles from northwestern West Virginia to Southern Virginia and designed to transport clean-burning natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale regions. MVP is a joint venture of ETRN, NextEra Capital Holdings, Inc., ConEdison Transmission, Inc., WGL Midstream, Inc., and…
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Fracking Fiasco: The Banks That Fueled the U.S. Shale Bust
Published by Oil Change International and Rainforest Action Network. September 2020 DOWNLOAD THE REPORT A new report by Oil Change International and Rainforest Action Network (RAN) shows how major banks have continued pouring money into fracking companies in recent years, despite numerous warnings that the sector has been financially unsustainable, in addition to the well-documented environmental, health, and climate impacts of the shale industry. This analysis compiles data from 51 U.S. fracking-focused companies, receiving USD 224 billion in financing since the adoption of the Paris Agreement. (January 2016 — August 2020). Nearly 40% of that financing came from JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo alone,…
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Along now-defunct Atlantic Coast Pipeline route, landowners are left in the lurch
By: Lisa Sorg, NC Policy Watch July 30, 2020 Environmental destruction, property entanglements will take years to address In November 2018, freelance photographer and videographer Charlie Sarratt shot drone footage of the ACP construction in Cumberland County. You can view it here, courtesy of Donovan McLaurin. Behind a black wooden farm gate, near Wade in Cumberland County, used to lie a meadow. Serene, tree-lined, it was a spot of utopia where Donovan McLaurin had planned to build a small house for himself. Instead, the land has been defaced. Hills of dirt two stories tall are splayed to reveal a rugged gash in the earth. This is…
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Duke, Dominion Cancel Plans for Unjust Atlantic Coast Pipeline
The cancelling the Atlantic Coast Pipeline is a victory for justice of many kinds! Environmental Justice, because the African American and Indigenous communities along the pipeline route can breathe easier that this massive project that will not victimize them yet again by disproportionately harming their health, safety, economics and access to their lands. Climate justice, as the routine emissions of methane from the ACP and the fracked gas it supplied were estimated in our 2019 study to increase climate impacts by as much as 13% over EPA’s estimate of current national methane releases. Economic Justice, as ratepayers of the mega-utilities Duke and…
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