Radioactive Oil & Gas Production Brine disposals to the Ohio surface Environment
Ohio is one of several states that have been spreading brines from conventional oil and gas well production waste on public roads for decades for ice and dust control. ODNR Testing that began in 2017 now shows conventional oil and gas brines to contain radionuclides with hundreds of times more potency than believed in the past. From 2013 until 2022, Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) dispersed radioactive oil & gas brines on public roads in many Ohio counties. A toxicologist from the Center for Health and Environmental Justice stated just how far above EPA regulatory limits that cancer-causing radium amounts exist in these brines. Once dispersed on roads, then runoff into the environment and water tables, it will take 1600 years for the radioactive potency of radium-226 (water-soluble and bone-seeking) to reduce to half of its level.
2018 was the first year when the Ohio legislature attempted to enact a bill to re-classify oil and gas waste “brine” as a commodity, which would be a large step into full deregulation of the substance in Ohio.
Local hydrogeologist/consultant, Dr. Julie Weatherington Rice, submitted a comment letter to state legislators. This letter stated a case where two people died of rare cancers. Physicians from the James Cancer Hospital and scientists from The Ohio State University deduced that inhalations of dust were major contributors to the deaths. The dust was surmised to contain heavy metals from residues resulting from years of spreading oil and gas waste “brines” on the unpaved road they lived adjacent to in Licking County. Since Ohio does not track illnesses from Oil and gas industry contaminations, this is one of very few cases that show the danger of exposing the public to the radium and heavy metals in oil and gas brines.
Ohio environmental attorney and advocate, Terry Lodge, submitted a testimony to state legislators. He highlighted how the bill would take control of the substances out of the hands of regulators, and violate the federal Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act as well as other critical laws that were created to protect our water resources. Mr. Lodge was the 2018 recipient of the Johnsrud Unsung Heroes Award presented by the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability.
In 2019, split sample testing sanctioned by Ohio Department of Natural Resources demonstrated that AquaSalina, the conventional oil and gas waste brine product that was sold in stores and that Ohio DOT uses for ice control on state roads in 28 Ohio counties, contains as much as 7415 pico-curies/liter of radium-226/228 (combined). This exceeds the EPA environmental discharge limit of 120 pico-curies/liter by more than a factor of 61!! It exceeds the EPA drinking water limit of 5 pico-curies/liter by a factor of 1483!
In April 2020, the Ohio legislature introduced HB 545, another attempt to “commodify” conventional radioactive frack brines. This would have made these dangerous substances immune from the control of Ohio environmental regulators, and would have allowed them to be completely available to sell to the general public for private use. Hardware stores, such as limited markets of Lowe’s stores in Ohio, have sold products in bottles off of their shelves. It is unconscionable to those of us who have been working to keep this legislation from being enacted, that Ohio legislators were attempting this again. Legislators cannot use any excuses that they didn’t know how radioactive these substances are, because we have ensured that they all have received the data on latest testing. This bill would have removed the authority of regulators to control these substances. One way it would do this would be to limit testing for a product to a maximum of four batches annually. Brines vary enormously in radioactive content from well to well, making this approach a path to completely ignore radium and radon content these wastes contain. Spreading millions of barrels of forever-radioactive industrial wastes on the surfaces of Ohio are not an appropriate solution for keeping our roadways safe!
At the same time that the Ohio legislature was attempting to pass these bills to deregulate the substance, ODOT decided that beginning in 2022, they would not purchase any more oil & gas brine products for spreading on state roads.
The City of Columbus, and all Central Ohio communities, MUST BE PROACTIVE IN BANNING THESE SUBSTANCES from being used on our surface environments.
Click HERE to read about the 2021 version of the brine bill, which so far was the last version of this bill that we have been trying to ensure will never become enacted!!O