Category Archives: Environment

Small Modular Reactors Are Not A Safe Way To Reduce Emissions

Canadian Nuclear Laboratories

The Canadian government, which has been lackadaisical about taking steps towards fighting climate change, is increasingly looking at Small Modular Reactors (SMR) as a way to quickly reduce emissions. A new climate plan is encouraging a rapid transition to help keep Canada aligned with the climate goals set for the Paris Agreement.

In the rush to adopt new unproven technology, methods that already work towards achieving our goals, such as solar panels and windmills, they are not getting the same attention. To help sell the promise, they toss around catchphrases of how safe it will be, how quickly it will work and how beneficial it will be to remote communities who power their generators by diesel. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Art MacKay, a biologist, developer, artist, speaker and writer from New Brunswick, said: “With more nuclear expansion being planned, everyone should be aware of the huge number of accidents that have taken place yearly. Just so everyone is aware! From 1942 to 2015 he lists several accidents.

1962 – 2015 – RTG’s; 9 Deadly Pyrophoric Plutonium Reactor Containing Satellites Exploded, Melted And/Or Burned Up On Reentry.

1942 – Leipzig, Germany, L-IV Atomic Pile Melts Down

1940-1943 – Chicago Pile I – First US Nuclear Plant Meltdown? – Nuclear Reactor Buried In Woods, Argonne Labs, Cook County Illinois, Red Gate Woods, Radioactive Waste Secretly Dumped Into 2 Mile Creek And Well

1952 – Chalk River, Ontario, Canada, NRX Reactor Melted Down

1952 – Chalk River, Ontario Canada – NRU Chalk River Nuclear Reactor Meltdown

1954 – US Borax 1 – 5 Reactors Melted Down And Blown Up, 100% On Purpose

1955 – US EBR – Experimental Breeder Reactor Melts Down

1957 – UK Sellafield, Cumbria – Windscale Sellafield: Biggest Covered Up UK Nuclear Disaster

1957 – Ozyorsk, Russia – Mayak Nuclear Waste Reprocessing Center Disaster And Coverup

1958 – US National Reactor Testing Station, HRTE Nuclear Reactor Assembly Melted Down

1950’s – Santa Susana Sodium Reactor Near Los Angeles California, In Simi Valley; 3-4 Nuclear Plant Reactor Meltdowns Completely Covered Up, 400 Times Worse Than Three Mile Island, Radioactive Poison Plutonium, Cesium, Strontium Released Over LA

1960 – US Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania – Westinghouse Waltz Mill Test Reactor Melts Down

1961 – SMR – Small Modular Nuclear Reactor Meltdown And Explosion SL-1 – Idaho, United States, Another SMR Melts Down In Lucens Switzerland; MOX Or Thorium Fueled Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Too Dangerous And Emit Toxic Radiation

1962 – 2015 – RTG’s; 9 Deadly Radioactive Plutonium Reactor Containing Satellites Exploded, Melted And/Or Burned Up On Reentry – Radioactive Heavy Metal Poison Dust Breathed In By Everyone On The Planet, 1 Microgram Is Enough To Kill A Person – 79 Nuclear Reactors Orbiting Earth

1964 – SMR – Small Modular Nuclear Reactor Meltdown And Explosion SL-1 – Idaho, United States, Another SMR Melts Down In Lucens Switzerland; MOX Or Thorium Fueled Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Too Dangerous And Emit Toxic Radiation

1965 – USA, Los Alamos; NERVA, Nuclear Reactor Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application Melted Down And Out Onto Desert Floor

Nuclear Powered Rocket Programs; Pluto, Peewee, Phoebus, Kiwi, Nerva, Prometheus, Thermal Rockets, Nuclear Propulsion, Many Nuclear Reactors Blown Up In Open Air

1964 to 1966 – US, 3 Or More SNAP Nuclear Reactors Melted Down

1966 – US, Enrico Fermi Liquid Sodium Cooled Breeder Reactor Melts Down

1966 – Soviet Nuclear Reactor Powered Icebreaker Lenin Suffers Nuclear Reactor Meltdown

1967 – Scotland, Chapelcross Nuclear Power Plant And Reprocessing Facility Melted Down

1969 – Lucens, Switzerland Reactor + 2 Plutonium Fast Breeder Reactors Melted Down In Switzerland

1969 – France, Saint-Laurent Nuclear Power Plant Melted Down

1971 – Soviet Union Kurchatov Institute – Nuclear Reactor Fuel Rod Assembly Melted Down

1977 – Jaslovské Bohunice, Czechoslovakia – A1 Nuclear Power Plant Melted Down

1970s – Armenia Metsamor Nuclear Reactor Meltdown Happened In The 1970’s But Was Completely Covered Up; Unconfirmed Report, Whistleblower Not Stepping Forward Due To Fear Of Consequences

1979 – US Harrisburg, Pennsylvania -TMI – Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant Meltdown And Radiation Release Coverup Exposed – 1 Billion Curies Released Near Harrisburg Pennsylvania, Map Of TMI Nuke Accident Cancer Epidemic, Top Secret Nuclear Industry Playbook Used After Every Disaster Revealed

1980 – 2010? New Mexico – Sandia Labs Melted Down Dozens Of Nuclear Reactors On Purpose, Then Dumped Them In Open Unlined Ditch

1980? – McMurdo Station – PM-3A NNPU Small Modular US Navy Nuclear Power Reactor – Nukey Poo, A Failed Atomic Power Plant

1980 – France, Saint-Laurent Nuclear Power Plant Melt Down Accident

1983 – Buenos Aires, Argentina, Centro Atomico Constituyentes Nuclear Reactor Melt Down

1983 – Buenos Aires Argentina – RA – 2 MTR Reactor Assembly Melted Down

1985 – US – LOFT Nuclear Reactor Melted Down On Purpose

1986 – Pripiat, Ukraine, Russia – Chernobyl Coverup Of Multiple Explosions, Denial Of 1.5 Million Heavy Metal Radioactive Poison Casualties; Russian Academy Of Sciences, UN, PSR, IPPNW Plus Forced Suicide Fuel Rod Cleanup, Nuclear Controversies Movie

1964 – 1999 Soviet Russia Experienced 13 Nuclear Reactor Meltdowns (Not Just Chernobyl)

1986 – Hamm-Uentrop, Germany – THTR 300 Experimental Reactor Meltdown, Radiation Released

1988 – Ontario, Canada – Pickering I Nuclear Reactor Melted Down

1989 – Lubmin, Germany, Greifswald Unit 5 (KGR-5) Nuclear Power Plant Melted Down

2011 – Fukushima, Japan 3+ Reactors Melted Down/Out, Japan Suffered 3 Mega Disasters, Now Suffering From 4th Mega Nuclear Disaster, USA Will Be Next

2011 – Fukushima Spent Fuel Equipment Pool #4 Contained A Full Load of MOX Plutonium Fuel; It Melted Down, Exploded, Burned and Melted Out

2011 – Fukushima; Reactors And/Or Spent Fuel Pools, Equipment Pools (SFP’s) In Buildings #5 And #6 Melted Down – Total of 7 Melt Down’s, Melt Outs, Criticality Steam Explosions; TEPCO Admits It Lied, Covered Up

Many more nuclear reactor melt downs listed here

Lists of 100+ Worst Nuclear Disasters And Radioactivity Release Incidents

Thanks again to Art MacKay for sharing this list.

The Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station in New Brunswick has leaked chemicals into the bay a few times, but authorities claim there hasn’t been any damage done. Still, we know some radioactive chemicals don’t decay as quickly as others like the Radium-226 in fracking wastewater that has a shelf life of 1,600 years. We understand this radioactive element can bioacummulate in fish and also in the bones in our bodies when we eat them. Eighty percent of it will be extracted through our bodies, but the other 20% binds with the bones in our bodies, and makes us more susceptible to cancer and other diseases.

The radiation poisoning can be detected by tests by your doctor. Interesting to note that some radiation can be measured with a geiger counter too. A lot of the Dulse we eat in Canada has been harvested from the Grand Manan Island in New Brunswick, although there are a lot of local people who like to pick their own, here in Nova Scotia. The season for harvesting Dulse is from about June 1st to November 1st. It can then be held and sold throughout the winter and spring.

In an article online titled Gov’t: Radioactive iodine detected in 6 seaweed samples by South Korea — Concerns over Fukushima contamination after Tepco admits plant is leaking into ocean we can scroll down past the article a view the comments. A couple of these gentleman tested their Dulse for radioactivity using a gieger counter and were alarmed at the results. One of them has this to say:

“How crazy is the timing of this headline. I’ve been waiting since yesterday to share something which I discovered only yesterday! I have some dulse powder from an online store and also a PRM-9000. I didn’t buy this Geiger to test food samples, but my curiosity had me scanning everything in my house, from handpainted ceramic nicknacks to toilets and sinks, and floor tiles. I figured why not test something that comes from the marine environment. I went over to my glass jar of Canadian dulse which was purchased earlier this year, and I got no click activity. I opened the glass lid and wow! With a background reading of 21 CPM, a sample of this dulse on a non-radioactive plate read as high as 260 CPM, something I haven’t seen this Geiger demonstrate yet. To my surprise, the 0.5mR/hr alarm I had set went off as the sample went over 200 CPM. I wanted to see if these were alpha particles, so I put the sample in a 2-mil ziplock bag and tested again. I was still getting up to around 238 CPM. One sheet of 20lb. copy paper between the bagged sample and the Geiger-Mueller tube still showed up to 222 CPM. After ten sheets of paper I was getting around 146 CPM. It took 36 total sheets to fully block the readings and get back down to the background level. If I test a bagged sample and put my hand between it and the tube, I get no activity, so these aren’t gamma particles; they are some alpha and mostly beta.

I’d like to know if this seems to be too “hot”?”

Since Fukushima contamination is known to be washing onto the west coast, one could assume that this isn’t likely the case on the east coast. The probability of contamination could likely be a result of the power plant leaks, which can make one speculate as to the possible contamination washing in with the tidal currents to our section of the bay in Nova Scotia.

Knowing the that the shelf-life of radioactive properties can be extended into hundreds of years, it isn’t a comforting thought. Especially when you consider Nova Scotia may add to these already existing contaminants with fracking wastewater. Perhaps we’re safe from this existing radioactivity? After all, no one has confirmed any excess radioactivity in the bay… have they?

There hasn’t been any official confirmation to my knowledge but then I ran across a student at Dalhousie University who has published a map, for a project, online — who was also wielding a Geiger counter. Map created in 2015

Some advocates of SMRs are touting thorium reactors to be new and improved and said to be safer. One would still need uranium, or plutonium, in a reactor using thorium. It doesn’t eliminate the problem of long-lived radioactive waste. It’s just as dangerous, contrary to advocates rhetoric of safety. There isn’t any safety if Canada decides to invest in small modular nuclear reactors.

Climate Action: Speeding In The Wrong Direction

2020: Climate Change Impacts

The 2020 WMO Report paints a gloomy picture of the world’s climate; it “describes continued deterioration on all fronts” with climate change continuing its unrelenting and seemingly unstoppable march to a world 3-4 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial times.

12 major impacts: (sourced from the State of the Global Climate 2020 report)

Greenhouse Gases. Concentrations of the major greenhouse gases, CO2, CH4, and N2O, continued to increase in 2019 and 2020.

Global Heating. Global mean temperature in 2020 is on course to be one of the three warmest on record. The past six years, including 2020, are likely to be the six warmest years on record.

Rising Seas. Sea level has increased throughout the altimeter record, but recently sea level has risen at a higher rate due partly to increased melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.

Marine Heatwaves. Over 80% of the ocean area experienced at least one marine heatwave in 2020 to date. More of the ocean experienced marine heat waves classified as ‘strong’ (43%) rather than ‘moderate’ (28%).

Ocean Heating. 2019 saw the highest ocean heat content on record and the rate of warming over the past decade was higher than the long-term average.

Arctic Sea Ice. In the Arctic, the annual minimum sea-ice extent was the second lowest on record.

Greenland Ice. In total, approximately 152 Gt of ice were lost from the ice sheet between September 2019 and August 2020.

Rain and Flooding. Heavy rain and extensive flooding occurred over large parts of Africa and Asia in 2020 — Sahel, Greater Horn of Africa, India, China, Korea and Japan, and parts of southeast Asia at various times of the year.

Atlantic Hurricanes. The north Atlantic hurricane season had 30 named storms—its largest number—as of November 17.

Other Tropical Storms. Tropical storm activity in other basins was near or below the long term mean, although there were severe impacts.

Severe Drought. Severe drought affected interior South America in 2020 — Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. Estimated agricultural losses were near US$3 billion in Brazil with additional losses in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.

Climate-driven Migration. Climate and weather events have triggered significant population movements and have severely impacted the Pacific region and Central America.

Speeding in the wrong direction

After the recent release of the provisional State of the Global Climate 2020 report, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres was quick to warn the world about the need to step up global efforts to reign in greenhouse gas emissions which are driving the heating of the planet. “To put simply, the state of the climate is broken…Humanity is waging war on nature and this is suicidal—nature always strikes back and it is already doing so,’ said Guterres.

In the following video, Greta Thunberg notes that the world is failing to tackle the climate emergency and is in a ‘state of complete denial’ nearly five years after the Paris agreement.

She’s inviting viewers to be part of the solution.

“This is the solution. We are the hope. We the people.”

See Greta’s Video

Guardian News
December 10, 2020
YouTube Licence

Canada: Alberta’s open-pit coal mining plan must be stopped!

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Teck corporation open pit mine in Canada. | People’s Voice

Australian mining corporations are already preparing to open-pit mine in the Bighorn area of the Rocky Mountains. Since 1976 Alberta’s Coal Development Policy has guided land use over many aspects of coal development, including open-pit coal mining and coal exploration in some of Alberta’s most environmentally sensitive areas. This policy was developed with extensive public consultation, to create a fair balance between environmental protection, economic development, and the social needs of all Albertans.

But on June 5, Jason Kenney’s United Conservative government rescinded the Coal Development Policy. Recent documents show that at least seven months before announcing the cancellation, the provincial Minister of Environment and the Minister of Economic Development, Tourism, and Trade held conversations with coal companies that supported development in these sensitive areas. The lack of public consultation in parks and lands use runs counter to the UCP election commitments to increase consultation in parks and land use decisions and to increase tourism in Alberta.

The area involved provides water for downstream communities, which also flows into Saskatchewan and Manitoba. It provides habitat for species at risk including bull and cutthroat trout, grizzly bear, bighorn sheep, and mountain goat. It is a high-value recreation area and supports local communities and economies, including ranching and agriculture. Kate Morrison from Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) gave a description of what this open-pit mining entails, in a webinar organized with the Council of Canadians. Trees will be clear cut and explosives and massive machinery will be used to remove earth so that coal seams can be accessed from the top down. Mining waste, or spoil, will be dumped into valleys. The resulting landscape changes, such as mountain top removal and mining and valley fills, increase the risk of flash flooding, Native species are slow to recolonize the reclaimed land and planted trees may perform poorly in the compromised soil.

One of the major impacts is decreased water quantity and quality. Southern Alberta is already a dry region that has drought years, and it is unclear how water will be allocated. A number of toxic chemicals are involved in the mining process, but perhaps most concerning is the release of selenium which can cause reproductive failure in fish and elk. These effects have already been observed in British Columbia, near Teck corporation’s Elk Valley coal mining operations. Municipal water supplies near the site have already been contaminated.

This leaching of selenium can continue for hundreds of years, and Morrison predicted a 90 percent collapse in the population of cutthroat trout.

There are also significant health effects for humans. Studies from the Appalachia region of the U.S., an area which is practically synonymous with coal mining, show that the dust has high levels of silica. The surrounding area had higher rates of cancer, heart and lung disease, kidney disease, and birth defects. This did not just affect the miners.

Those arguing that the economic advantages may outweigh some of these disadvantages should take a lesson from the experience with oil and gas. Prices can be volatile with natural resources, and the companies can leave huge liabilities in environmental and health costs. Rose Marie Sackela told the CPAWS/CoC webinar that Alberta is on the hook for $260 billion in costs for orphaned and abandoned wells. The companies should be cleaning up this mess, but it may be the taxpayers who end up with the job. Sackela also pointed out that the radium mines in the north, where she has done some research, have a similarly bad record.

The oil and gas experience also undermines the argument that mining will provide royalties. The conservatives collected hardly any royalties, and Municipal Affairs Minister Tracey Allard is presently giving 3-year tax holidays for new wells, new pipelines, and more. The pattern is not good.

Jobs? Sackela said that open-pit mining would create only a few jobs because as in the tar sands, the industry makes extensive use of robotics.

An obvious question is how this move to coal mining will affect targets for reducing carbon emissions. The coal here is for metallurgic, not thermal, use — meaning it will be used in steel production — and is destined for export rather than Canadian consumption. While government and industry can argue that this arrangement means greenhouse gas emissions in Canada will not increase significantly, there will still be a huge impact in the destination countries and, therefore, globally.

The UCP’s whole approach to this issue has sneaky and aggressive. For example, of the 164 provincial parks the government delisted from protective status during the summer, sixty are in areas slated for coal mining. In another example, the government announced $120 million to the David Thompson highway for a twinning project [constructing a parallel road], which Sakela and others believe will actually be a regional support road for mining exploitation.

Another issue is how the Kenney government is streamlining approvals. The Alberta Energy Regulator is completely funded and operated by industry and is able to receive and approve an application in one day. This makes it enormously difficult for opponents to file an objection, especially average people who may not know how to do so.

*Grassy Mountain is part of the range known as Crowsnest Pass in southern Alberta. Riversdale Resources photo*

There are a number of related matters, but one that stands out is that Canada needs a federal water policy. So far, Ottawa has consistently avoided this issue.

There is some urgency to this fight — hearings into the Grassy Mountain Coal Project are underway now, in which a panel including the Alberta Energy Regulator and the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada will gather information to determine the environmental impacts of the project and recommend whether it should be approved and on what conditions. It is important to stop Grassy Mountain because it will start a domino effect.

So, how can we stop Kenney? Morrison and Sackela recommend people “write, write, write and call” their federal MP [Member of Parliament] and provincial MLA [Member of the Legislative Assembly]. Morrison specifically suggested appealing to the federal government to overrule Kenney. Sackela identified the issue of water as another avenue for opposition — since Alberta has an agreement with Saskatchewan and Manitoba to guarantee a certain amount of water reaches them, they might have legal rights. She suggested appealing to those provincial governments as well as to the Prairie Provinces Water Board.

A key area of concern in all of this is the effect on Indigenous communities and their consent to the development. Latasha Calf Robe of the Káínawa Blood Tribe said, “consultation has taken place, however that does not translate to community support or community level consultation. Our leadership has chosen not to include that, so there have been no community level referendums. There has not been an opportunity for the community to address all of our concerns and have them inputted in these agreements and addressed in a meaningful way.” Wacey Little Light, who is also Káínawa, expressed concern that this has been done behind the scenes.

Clearly, there is a possibility of building a strong alliance between environmental groups and Indigenous peoples, to fight the coal mining agenda.

Original article by Corinne Benson. She writes for People’s Voice, Canada’s leading socialist newspaper. (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US)

Southern Alberta’s Water Supply Threatened

See this short video on polluting our waterways with coal

They say, “The metal causes significant damage to animal life; the deformity it causes to birds – missing eyes, twisted feet, and protruding brains – is significantly worse than what has been done to the trout. But it’s dangerous to humans as well; it can cause hair and fingernail loss, and numbness in fingers and toes.”

Much of southern Alberta depends on the Oldman Watershed. It supplies 90 percent of the drinking water for Lethbridge and the surrounding area. If this is poisoned, the the Oldman Watershed Council said they’re out of options.

“Southern Alberta does not have alternative rivers or lakes to draw water from,” the council said in its submission to the hearing. “The Oldman River is the only option for us and so we are particularly vulnerable to upstream contamination.”

Photo by Christianabend CC-BY-SA-2.0 and GFDL Canada Boat House am Maligne Lake, Jasper NP, Alberta

Cam Gardner, councillor for the Municipal District of Ranchland, told the CBC said those who work in the hills learned long ago that you don’t “put your outhouse next to your spring,” and says he hopes Albertans haven’t forgotten that lesson.

“I would just ask Albertans whether in a closed water basin in a drought-prone region, this

is what they want their water to be used for — is to wash coal to send to China,” he said.

One of the biggest selenium contamination issues in the world is taking place in the Elk River’s tributaries to waters downstream that cross into the United States. Tech Resources has a number of metallurgical coal mines operating just inside the border of British Columbia in roughly the same area as the Grassy Mountain mine will be. The issues they face with international lawsuits and million-dollar fines will be echoed by Alberta’s Coal mine. See the environmental hazard assessment of Benga Mining’s proposed Grassy Mountain Coal Project.

If this toxic mixture of selenium and heavy metals can travel into the United States, it’s easy to see how quickly it will reach Lethbridge and Calgary. There is a lot of development and work towards finding a solution to deal with this contamination, but putting hope and optimism aside, nothing has worked.

The Oldman River flows roughly west to east from the Rocky Mountains, through the communities of Fort Macleod, Lethbridge, and on to Grassy Lake, where it joins Bow River to form the South Saskatchewan River, which eventually drains into the Hudson Bay. There are a lot of cities and towns that depend on it.

Several coal mining projects are lining up to use up Alberta’s resources. These include Riversdale/Benga’s Grassy Mountain Project, Montem’s Tent Mountain Mine, Atrum’s Elan, Isolation Mines, and the Cabin Ridge Coal Project Ltd. These mines all need water for coal production. It was determined years ago there is a limited supply. It isn’t endless as some might believe. Still, the government has put two-thousand hectares of land on the eastern slopes up for bidding, and will change rules and regulations to make sure these new mines get the water they need to operate. They will eliminate current categories of water allocations to open up the Old Man, making almost double the amount available.

This might heat up into quite a competition. The Elan hard-coking coal project determine there was more coal there than initial testing. Perhaps enough to extend the mine for another 6 years. It’s doubtful the extra availability of water has been considered. They found a way to reduce costs and increase their returns by 25-28 percent.

Montem Resources has finished their exploratory drilling and hit black gold. All their drilling tests show thick coal seams and it’s close to the surface for easier and less expensive costs. These are all very encouraging signs for the drillers. They’ll make a fortune.

This may result in a lot of water shortages. What little is left, will be poisoned. Gardner’s comment that you “don’t put your outhouse next to your spring,” is exactly what the Alberta government will do. How smart is that?

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In the northern Great Plains, a search for ways to protect drinking water from fossil fuel industry pollution

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Article by Elena Bruess, (CC BY-ND 3.0)

North Dakota’s water supplies are at risk from contaminants from fracking wastewater, but residents are fighting back

December 1, 2020 — Editor’s note: This story is part of a nine-month investigation of drinking water contamination across the U.S. The series is supported by funding from the Park Foundation and Water Foundation. Read the launch story, “Thirsting for Solutions,” here.

Lisa Finley-DeVille started drinking bottled water around the same time her friend’s horses began to get sick and die. A half decade ago on the Fort Berthold Reservation in western North Dakota, Deville drove up to see her friend in the New Town area. The horses looked dehydrated and brittle, just skin and bones. They’re eating, but it’s like they’re not eating, her friend told her.

It was down the hill, at the pond the horses drank from, where the answer lurked. She believes wastewater from nearby oil and gas production leaked there, where the horses drank it up, poisoned. “I’m always worried,” Finley-Deville says. “This is why we don’t drink the water.”

Finley-DeVille is a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, known as the Three Affiliated Tribes in Fort Berthold. Just a half mile (800 meters) from her house, in the town of Mandaree, oil and gas are produced by hydraulic fracturing (fracking), an increasingly popular approach to fossil fuel extraction that involves injecting pressurized water, sand, and chemicals into the Earth to release the gas or oil within.

Legal loopholes that exempt fracking from elements of the Safe Drinking Water Act and EPA hazardous waste laws are endangering surrounding communities, and putting drinking water at risk of contamination. Now, national, state, and local grassroots efforts, some led by Finley-DeVille, are calling for change.

The Problem

The Fort Berthold Reservation, along with the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation to the south, blister with oil underneath. The two areas sit within the prolific Williston Basin, a large rock unit stretched across North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and regions of Canada. From the first discovery of a natural gas well in the state in 1892 to today, western North Dakota has been home to the fossil fuel industry for more than a century. As of 2020, the state is the second largest crude oil producer in the United States (after Texas) and accounts for 2% of the nation’s natural gas reserves.

Thanks largely to fracking technology, oil production in North Dakota increased fourfold since 2010, with the state producing an unprecedented 45 million barrels in 2019. Although a collapse in oil demand in 2020 curbed the boom, fracking has left its mark.

Wastewater — a combination of “flowback,” a portion of the water used to fracture the rock to release fossil fuels that flows back to the surface, and naturally occurring “produced” water that the fracking process forces to the surface — is still ever present.

According to a report published by the nonprofit environmental organization Earthworks, fracking produced 19 billion gallons of wastewater in North Dakota in 2018 alone.

The risk to drinking water comes in two major ways. First, water used in the hydraulic drilling process can leak into aquifers and other groundwater supplies. Second, the wastewater that fracking produces can contaminate supplies when waste leaks from landfills that accept oil remains, when waste spill from trucks or pipelines moving it, when equipment fails, or when it leaks from unlined disposal pits.

Both flowback and produced water may contain heavy metals such as barium and lead, hydrocarbons, naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM), and incredibly high levels of salinity. Flowback and produced wastewater can also include chemical additive formulas, with volatile organic compounds (VOCs) like benzene, ethylene glycol, methanol, and toluene. Between 2005 and 2013, the EPA identified 1,084 different chemicals reported in fracking formulas.

In North Dakota, wastewater is normally disposed of in storage pits or underground disposal wells, taken to treating plants that process the waste, or in some cases spread on roads as a de-icer. But sometimes, whether in transportation or equipment malfunction, the wastewater can spill into the environment, contaminating the land and water around and beneath it.

A pipeline rupture in 2014 spilled a million gallons of wastewater on the Fort Berthold Reservation and contaminated Bear Den Bay in Lake Sakakawea, a quarter mile from where the town of Mandaree draws its drinking water. Bill Suess, the program manager for spill investigation at the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality, says his team checked the intake system and didn’t find any elevated levels of contaminants, likely due to the amount of freshwater in the lake.

Avner Vengosh, a professor of earth and ocean sciences at Duke University, led a study in 2016 that found elevated levels of fracking-related contaminants in North Dakota at sites including Bear Den Bay. The researchers detected high levels of salts, ammonium, selenium, lead, and other toxics as well as radium, a naturally occurring radioactive element found in wastewater as many as four years after original spills. The team checked the Mandaree water intake as well, says Vengosh, but did not find any elevated levels.

Regulatory Issues

“There’s a large amount of the waste from the different parts of the oil and gas cycle,” says Amy Mall, a senior advocate at NRDC and consultant on the Earthworks report. “The waste can be very toxic and it also can leak or spill or otherwise get into the environment. So there are concerns about how the waste is regulated, whether it’s being regulated in a way that is adequately protective to human health.”

One concern is an exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act, known as the Halliburton loophole, that exempts industry from having to disclose the chemicals it uses in fracking and prevented the EPA from regulating fracking fluids. The loophole was established in an energy bill passed by the Bush/Cheney administration in 2005 and has been in effect ever since.

“The purpose of the [Safe Drinking Water Act] is to protect our drinking water, and the industry that is pumping toxic chemicals, carcinogenic chemicals, underground doesn’t even have to tell us what those are,” says Melissa Troutman, research and policy analyst for Earthworks.

The oil and gas industry is also exempt from federal EPA hazardous waste regulations and Superfund regulations, which exclude waste associated with the exploration, development, and production of crude oil and natural gas. Drilling fluids, produced water, and other waste are not disposed of as hazardous and are exempt from the hazardous cleanup process when it comes to spills or leaks. The industry has been exempt from these regulations since the 1970s, when the EPA temporarily proposed that oil and gas waste was not hazardous. This ruling became permanent in 1988 when the EPA determined the cost of treating the waste would slow production.

Several portions of North Dakota’s sandstone aquifers are exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act. The organization FracTracker Alliance calculated hundreds of brine and crude oil spills throughout the region. More recently, a 34,000-gallon wastewater pipeline spilled north of New Town in June this year and two pipeline spills deposited 21,000 gallons of wastewater into a Missouri River tributary in 2019. According to the North Dakota government’s spill database, more than 400 wastewater spills were reported in 2018.

Several portions of North Dakota’s sandstone aquifers are exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act. The EPA has determined the portions do not currently serve as a source of water and will not serve as one in the future, allowing the oil and gas industry to use the aquifer for extraction and disposal of waste. There are three aquifer exceptions in the Fort Berthold Reservation, according to the EPA Underground Injection Control Program, all used for produced water disposal. Once used, that portion of the aquifer can never be used for drinking water in the future if needed.

Citizen Action

For Finley-DeVille, solving fracking and wastewater comes down to these regulations. She is co-founder and treasurer of the Fort Berthold Protectors of Water and Earth Rights, or POWER— an organization formed in 2015 to reduce the impacts of the oil boom in her community. Since its start, she and her husband, Walter DeVille, have worked with the nonprofit environmental organization Dakota Resource Council and Earthworks, among others, to campaign for more regulations and more information on what contaminants are involved in fracking.

“There’s a right way to do this,” Finley-DeVille says. “It’s creating those laws and environmental justice and enforcing it … making sure [industry] is held accountable and responsible.”

Fort Berthold POWER sued the Bureau of Land Management in 2018 after the agency rolled back the methane waste prevention rule, which is meant to reduce venting, flaring, and leaking from oil and gas operations. Members of the Fort Berthold POWER also went to speak in Washington D.C., where they presented infrared images of harmful methane emissions from well pads – a spot where multiple wells are drilled – within their community. This rollback was struck down in 2020.

Currently, the organization is fighting the recent rollbacks of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a 50-year-old law requires federal agencies to evaluate the environmental impacts of their actions, such as permit applications or land and water management. The new rollbacks limit this review and community input. President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to reverse these rollbacks.

This past summer, New York became the first state to close the hazardous-waste loophole, meaning that oil and gas waste will now be treated as other hazards.“NEPA is very important and significant,” Finley-DeVille says. “Everything that’s under NEPA protects us as [Indigenous and Native] peoples, that protects our gravesites, our historical and traditional cultural sites, it protects our water … all that’s in danger now.”

Troutman of Earthworks says the regulatory loopholes must be closed to prevent further spilling, clean up current spills, and address drinking water contamination. This past summer, New York became the first state to close the hazardous-waste loophole, meaning that oil and gas waste will now be treated as other hazards. Pennsylvania and New Mexico are looking to do the same.

While North Dakota has not closed these regulatory gaps, local efforts such as DeVille’s work have picked up steam. Just this month, Williams County, northwest of the Fort Berthold Reservation, extended a yearlong moratorium on a proposed landfill for radioactive oilfield waste by six months, with the county board of commissioners citing a desire to consider options for regulations and restrictions first.

Finley-DeVille, for her part, recently took an bigger step toward change as well, running for state senate in November. Though she didn’t win, she is working with the Native American Caucus now to get specific representation for the reservation at the North Dakota senate and the house. The quest for clean land, air, and water is far from over. “That’s the reason I do what I do,” she says.

Steve MacLellan

Ramble On