EID’s Dan debunks several misleading remarks Athens activist Madeline ffitch wrote for the Athens News regarding Class II injection wells:

"Last week, the Athens News ran an opinion piece penned by local activist Madelline ffitch regarding Class II injection wells. The column was heavy in rhetoric and anecdotal information, but light on facts.

Though we’ve covered the ins-and-outs of injection wells here on numerous occasions, there remains quite a bit of misinformation continuing to be circulated in our public conversation. Many of these misstatements are repeated in this column, so it seems worth revisiting.

Let’s take a look at some of the more egregious statements, and then separate the facts from the inflammatory.

ffitch: “Outrage about the out-of-state radioactive waste that is being dumped into substandard waste wells in our community…”

Two things off the mark here:

• “Substandard waste wells”

As we’ve covered before, Ohio has the most stringent UIC rules in the country. In fact Ohio’s updates to its regulation of injection wells prompted Tom Tomastik, a national expert on injection wells, to state in an email that Ohio “now has the most stringent Class II saltwater injection well regulations in the United States,”.

Ohio’s regulation of injection wells exceeds the standards set for by the EPA, which granted the state primacy in UIC oversight in 1983. In that time, nearly twenty years now, Ohio has “not had any subsurface [water] contamination,” according to Tomastik.

•  “Radioactive waste”

Those who oppose the development of fossil fuels frequently throw around the phrase “radioactive waste” loosely, and it’s a very misleading term. The radioactive material referenced, in veiled phrasing, is naturally occurring radioactive material – or NORM – and it is surprisingly pervasive in every day life. It even occurs in our bodies in the form of radioactive potassium. It is present in things we use frequently, including public drinking water, Brazil nuts, peanut butter or granite countertops. On average, Americans receive a radiation dose of about 620 millirem each year.  None of these levels are dangerous to human health, and the same can be said of NORM returning via flowback from a oil or natural gas well.

This fact has been confirmed by numerous and recent studies on the subject, including a radiological survey report by the Co-Physics Corporation in New York that concluded that “rock cuttings from the gas drilling operations, as sampled during this project, have radionuclide levels that do not pose any environmental health problems.”

This reinforces finding from last year by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement On The Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Regulatory Program that states, that based upon currently available information, it is anticipated that flowback water do not contain levels of NORM of significance."

READ THE REST: http://www.eidohio.org/athens-activist-misses-the-mark-on-injection...