For more than a half-century, there has been a widespread and largely unmonitored practice of spreading wastewater from oil and conventional gas drilling, by the millions of gallons, onto dirt and gravel roads in rural Pennsylvania.
The practice has found itself awash in controversy in recent years as a number of scientific studies have found that the wastewater brine contains unhealthy levels of radiation from naturally occurring radium as well as toxic chemicals such as benzene, iron, manganese, strontium, barium, aluminum, zinc, lithium, copper and lead.
In addition to being a hazard to human health, runoff of the wastewater can harm nearby streams, killing aquatic life and over time making streams too salty for trout, the studies found.
A recent study by Penn State found the brine is no more effective than plain water for dust control and in some cases can damage roads.
The oil and gas industry has fought back, saying the brine is a free and effective tool for municipalities and does not cause any harm to people or the environment when spread in the right places and the right times.
anyone remember this past election when both sides supported fracking and oil like it was going out of style and still do?
this is only going to get repeated and be a huge horse shit show that if cleaned up will only be done by a small group with a small amount of funding to do so with such as in Oklahoma where the Native Americans had to clean up after things like that mining town that collapsed in on itself
Hey hey now - Harris was extremely underwhelming on climate change but let’s not act like there was no difference in their stances.