Open pits offer cheap disposal for fracking sludge, but health worries mount
NORDHEIM, Texas — School Superintendent Kevin Wilson tugged at his oversized belt buckle and gestured toward a field less than a mile from Nordheim School, where 180 children attend kindergarten through 12th grade.
A commercial waste facility that will receive millions of barrels of toxic sludge from oil and gas production for disposal in enormous open-air pits is taking shape there, and Wilson worries that the ever-present Texas wind will carry traces of dangerous chemicals, including benzene, to the school.
“Many of these students live outside of where they could be exposed,” said Wilson, a contemplative man with a soft Texas accent. “But we are busing them to the school, putting them in the direct path of something that could be harmful to them. It makes you think: Are we doing what’s best for the students?”
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Along with Nordheim’s mayor and other angry residents, Wilson is trying to stop the 204-acre facility, but he faces an uphill battle. In Texas, as in most states, air emissions from oil and gas waste are among the least regulated, least monitored and least understood components in the extraction and production cycle. Although the wastewater and sludge can contain the same chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing and other processes — chemicals known to affect human health —little has been done to measure waste emissions or determine their possible impact on nearby residents.
This gap can be traced to decisions Congress and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency made decades ago, when oil and gas producers lobbied hard to get most of their waste exempted from federal hazardous waste regulations.
In 1988 they succeeded, even though a 1987 EPA study concluded that 23 percent of the waste samples the agency had collected contained one or more toxic compounds at levels 100 times higher than is considered safe for humans. The EPA estimated that without the exemption, 10 to 70 percent of oil and gas waste could be considered hazardous.
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Still, the report recommended granting the exemption. The expense of disposing of so much hazardous waste would slow U.S. oil and gas production, the authors said. And there weren’t enough hazardous waste facilities to handle that much waste.
For the industry, and for people who live and work near commercial waste facilities, the distinction between hazardous and non-hazardous waste is critical when it comes to air quality.
Pits at hazardous waste sites must be covered — open-air pits are not allowed. Even the transfer of the waste is done through pipes, so emissions don’t escape into the air. The EPA requires some type of air monitoring, too.
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Pits at non-hazardous facilities, in contrast, allow chemicals in the waste to evaporate directly into the atmosphere. States decide how and where facilities are built and what, if any, monitoring systems they must have. A recent EPA review of oil and gas waste regulations in 27 states, including Texas, Pennsylvania and Colorado, found that none had rules requiring regular air monitoring at commercial solid waste facilities.
There’s more to this story. Click here to read the rest at the Center for Public Integrity.
This story is part of Big Oil, Bad Air. Fracking the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas. Click here to read more stories in this investigation.
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Copyright 2014 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
