Inside Climate News puts out
some interesting stories. This one I would call OK, although it does fall short
in a few areas. The use of the phrase “fracking industry” should be discarded
for “oil & gas industry,” which is more accurate and less biased. The
authors make a good case that tracking and quantifying landfilled oil & gas
waste in Pennsylvania is needed. The companies sending the waste, the companies
delivering it, and the facilities receiving it, all produce records. Referring
to the waste as radioactive waste, though somewhat correct, is misleading, in
that the radioactivity levels are not generally considered to be a major
environmental health concern. The waste includes both solid and liquid waste.
The solids are basically drill cuttings, and the liquids include frac flowback
water and formation water. Both can be radioactive. The main drilling target in
the state, the Marcellus Shale, has high radioactivity for a shale, while the
Utica/Point Pleasant Formation, the main target in Ohio and also a drilling
target in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, has significantly lower
radioactivity. Thus, the landfilled drill cuttings and formation waters will
vary in radioactivity depending on the source.
Oil & gas waste is not
legally defined as hazardous, a result of industry lobbying, note the authors.
I would add that this is also the result of a pragmatic approach to a lower-impact waste generated in significant quantities.
The article goes on to quote
former Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) chiefs about
regulating oil & gas. Both said the same thing: that the department was too
underfunded and understaffed to focus adequately on regulating the industry.
Waste disposal is regulated by states, and the rules of different states
vary.
Well operators in the state
are required to report monthly oil & gas waste produced and where it goes.
Only some landfills are required to disclose the amount of oil & gas waste
they receive. Most are not required to disclose how much oil and gas waste they
accept. Thus, quantification remains based on well operators’ reporting
submissions. Since some waste goes to treatment facilities, those volumes
should be accounted for as well.
The article also expressed
concerns about landfill leachate from these landfills. Landfills are required
to report volumes of leachate generated and periodic chemical testing of it. I
once heard Paul Ziemkiewicz, former Director of the West Virginia Water
Research Institute (WVWRI), give a talk about laboratory studies they did with
leachate from landfilled oil & gas drill cuttings. The conclusions were
that the leachate is fairly benign with low toxicity and manageable.
Although this is an
informative story, I don’t think it is convincing that a big oversight overhaul
is needed in the state, but rather, some tweaks to make quantifying the waste
easier. One issue they mention is a discrepancy between waste reported by the
well operators and waste received by facilities, with the facilities reporting
more waste received than the companies delivered. 98% of the discrepancy was
with three landfills near the Ohio and West Virginia borders, which suggests
the discrepancy is due to waste coming in from those states. That too needs to
be tracked better. It is always better to have such data collected, managed,
and analyzed.
References:
Tracking
Oil and Gas Waste in Pennsylvania Is Still a ‘Logistical Mess’. More than a
decade after regulators promised to improve reporting standards for this waste,
an Inside Climate News investigation found huge discrepancies in state records.
Kiley Bense and Peter Aldhous, Inside Climate News. December 19, 2025. Tracking
Oil and Gas Waste in Pennsylvania Is Still a ‘Logistical Mess’ - Inside Climate
News
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