newsCOUP Ep. 8: Pennsylvania Regulators Won't Say Where 66% of Landfill Leachate w/ Radioactive Material From Fracking is Going..."It's Private"

Pennsylvania Regulators Won't Say Where 66% of Landfill Leachate w/ Radioactive Material From Fracking is Going..."It's Private"

DEP is not tracking how much TENORM is leaving a landfill via leachate to the WWTP. The DEP says that the transaction is private between the two entities: the landfill and the treatment plant.  

When we told Dr. Julie Weatherington-Rice, a semi-retired earth scientist with a PHD in soil science and adjunct professor for Ohio State University, about DEP’s landfill tracking system for TENORM, she said, “[DEP] has no way of knowing what’s going in” to a landfill in a given year using gate post radiation systems for trucks to pass through and handheld geiger counters.  

Dr. Weatherington-Rice continued, “Those gate posts [at landfills] were never designed for that kind of [low level radiation] scanning. They were designed for hospital waste, for something that decays rapidly. Pennsylvania is counting on smoke and mirrors for protection because they’re not using the right test and they’re not using the right equipment. They don’t know what they put in that landfill. They think they do, but they don’t.” 

 

Read the full report »

Become a newsCOUP Patron!