I keep wondering about all the residents in fracking areas and why there hasn't been an Erin Brockovic to emerge on this issue - it's potentially a bigger water/soil contamination crisis than any other, ever.
Emily - fantastic episode. Ever since Josh Fox came out with his “Gasland” films, I’ve been waiting for accountability to find these drillers and “regulators.” When I was workshopping my novel, FLUX, set in the Marcellus shale region of NE PA, readers couldn’t believe it was that bad. Everything in that story is from research, so, yes, it is that bad — and worse. PA does (did?) allow the practice of “landspreading,” to keep dust down. So, not cutting spoils, but used fracking water sprayed from trucks on farm roads. What could go wrong? 🤷♀️
Everyone concerned by this story should read the book "Radium Girls" by Kate Moore. In 1917, as WWI was escalating, women in the U.S. went to work outside the home. One group worked painting the dials of clocks and such started having problems with teeth and bones, they sued the company that employed them. The danger of close contact with radium has been known since then.
I'm sometimes a bit dubious about stories with anecdotes like this one, but the kind of land application seems like a very bad idea. Like most sewage sludge.
But folks need to be reminded of the vast amount of material in (miles of steel pipe, thousands of tons of frac sand) and "waste" out, from fossil fuels. A lot of that stuff disappears as opposed to wind and solar which are out in the open for all to see.
Recently the "issue" of wind turbine blade waste raised its head again because some scammers in Texas collected blades, promising to recycle them, and skedaddled leaving 30 acres of them. At a certain point, just crush them and grind them up and the volume will go down by 95% (they're air inside) and haul them to the landfill and whatever plastic bits are in them are sequestered, and this is far, far less stuff, and not remotely toxic the way this "mud" seems to be.
I'm not sure how drilling mud/cuttings is disposed of around here; pretty sure we have lined landfills. At least where I live in Colorado one aspect of gas extraction, transportation and distribution has improved. Gas leakage and venting are down due to some state policies and programs, maybe BLM and EPA too while they cared. We have an air toxics monitoring station in the heart of our gas patch and the annual average concentrations of stuff like hexanes and benzenes and toluene are down by 70% in 15 years, and some amount of the remainder is from the giant highway in the same valley. (Production is down by 30%, but all the pipes and compressor stations and stripper wells are still there, so it is real improvement.)
It's equal parts amazing and horrifying how many destructive "externalities" fossil fuels have that society and the environment are paying for. Thank you for covering them!
Can’t help noticing that these are the exact arguments being used against solar panels everywhere. Where I’m at in Michigan a bunch of solar installations are being proposed in rural townships and residents are freaking out and the arguments are:
They’ll make the ground toxic.
What about my property values?
What will happen with the waste at the end of life?
It cannot be a coincidence that people‘s perhaps justified, deep seated fears about everything that, not just fossil fuels, but industrial agriculture has done to them for decades is now are being directed at the main competition the fossil fuel industry has.
There is a lot of powerful psychological stuff happening in this time change.
I keep wondering about all the residents in fracking areas and why there hasn't been an Erin Brockovic to emerge on this issue - it's potentially a bigger water/soil contamination crisis than any other, ever.
Emily - fantastic episode. Ever since Josh Fox came out with his “Gasland” films, I’ve been waiting for accountability to find these drillers and “regulators.” When I was workshopping my novel, FLUX, set in the Marcellus shale region of NE PA, readers couldn’t believe it was that bad. Everything in that story is from research, so, yes, it is that bad — and worse. PA does (did?) allow the practice of “landspreading,” to keep dust down. So, not cutting spoils, but used fracking water sprayed from trucks on farm roads. What could go wrong? 🤷♀️
It's so akin to repeating the history of the Industrial Revolution and the pollution that still plagues us, on an even worse human level.
This superfund research from Jeremy Ney is worth a look: https://americaninequality.substack.com/p/toxic-waste-and-community-contamination?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Everyone concerned by this story should read the book "Radium Girls" by Kate Moore. In 1917, as WWI was escalating, women in the U.S. went to work outside the home. One group worked painting the dials of clocks and such started having problems with teeth and bones, they sued the company that employed them. The danger of close contact with radium has been known since then.
I'm sometimes a bit dubious about stories with anecdotes like this one, but the kind of land application seems like a very bad idea. Like most sewage sludge.
But folks need to be reminded of the vast amount of material in (miles of steel pipe, thousands of tons of frac sand) and "waste" out, from fossil fuels. A lot of that stuff disappears as opposed to wind and solar which are out in the open for all to see.
Recently the "issue" of wind turbine blade waste raised its head again because some scammers in Texas collected blades, promising to recycle them, and skedaddled leaving 30 acres of them. At a certain point, just crush them and grind them up and the volume will go down by 95% (they're air inside) and haul them to the landfill and whatever plastic bits are in them are sequestered, and this is far, far less stuff, and not remotely toxic the way this "mud" seems to be.
I'm not sure how drilling mud/cuttings is disposed of around here; pretty sure we have lined landfills. At least where I live in Colorado one aspect of gas extraction, transportation and distribution has improved. Gas leakage and venting are down due to some state policies and programs, maybe BLM and EPA too while they cared. We have an air toxics monitoring station in the heart of our gas patch and the annual average concentrations of stuff like hexanes and benzenes and toluene are down by 70% in 15 years, and some amount of the remainder is from the giant highway in the same valley. (Production is down by 30%, but all the pipes and compressor stations and stripper wells are still there, so it is real improvement.)
Great coverage, Emily. I just read a very good article in Sierra magazine from March 2025 that covers this same issue; I highly recommend it. https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2025-1-spring/feature/radioactive-oil-gas-shadow-workers
It's equal parts amazing and horrifying how many destructive "externalities" fossil fuels have that society and the environment are paying for. Thank you for covering them!
First off great job on the story.
Can’t help noticing that these are the exact arguments being used against solar panels everywhere. Where I’m at in Michigan a bunch of solar installations are being proposed in rural townships and residents are freaking out and the arguments are:
They’ll make the ground toxic.
What about my property values?
What will happen with the waste at the end of life?
It cannot be a coincidence that people‘s perhaps justified, deep seated fears about everything that, not just fossil fuels, but industrial agriculture has done to them for decades is now are being directed at the main competition the fossil fuel industry has.
There is a lot of powerful psychological stuff happening in this time change.
Please read Justin Nobel’s Petroleum-238 about the decades long crime of dumping oil and gas waste leading to nationwide contamination.
Will watch the Youtube video. Thanks.