{"id":11266,"date":"2015-08-20T08:27:01","date_gmt":"2015-08-20T13:27:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11266"},"modified":"2015-08-20T08:27:01","modified_gmt":"2015-08-20T13:27:01","slug":"radioactivity-found-in-pennsylvania-creek-illegal-fracking-waste-dumping-suspected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11266","title":{"rendered":"Radioactivity Found in Pennsylvania Creek, Illegal Fracking Waste Dumping Suspected"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n

Radioactivity Found in Pennsylvania Creek, Illegal Fracking Waste Dumping Suspected<\/a><\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n

Recently released testing results in western Pennsylvania, upstream from Pittsburgh, reveal evidence of radioactive contamination in water flowing from an abandoned mine. Experts say that the radioactive materials may have come from illegal dumping of shale fracking\u00a0wastewater.<\/p>\n

Regulators had previously found radioactivity levels that exceeded\u00a0EPA<\/span>‘s drinking water standards over 60-fold in waters in the same area, which is roughly 3 miles upstream from a drinking water intake, but those test results were only made public after a local environmental group obtained them through open records\u00a0requests.<\/p>\n

At the end of July, the West Virginia Water Research Institute\u00a0released<\/a>\u00a0the results from its tests of water flowing from an abandoned coal\u00a0mine.<\/p>\n

Most of the sampling results showed no detectable radioactivity, but one test result showed roughly 13 picocuries per liter (pci\/l) of gross alpha radioactivity, just below\u00a0EPA<\/span>‘s drinking water limits, confirming the presence of radioactive materials in the mine’s\u00a0discharge.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>There\u2019s something going on there that\u2019s not right,\u201d Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of the West Virginia Water Research Institutetold<\/a>\u00a0the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. \u201cThe radiation, together with higher bromide levels than you would expect to see coming out of a deep mine, point to drilling\u00a0wastewater.\u201d<\/p>\n

In April 2014, under pressure from local environmental groups, the state Department of Environmental Protection had taken samples from same mine, the Clyde Mine in Washington County,\u00a0PA<\/span>, as it discharged into 10 Mile Creek, a popular destination for boaters and\u00a0fishermen.<\/p>\n

Those tests\u00a0showed<\/a>\u00a0one sample with radioactive materials (specifically radium 226 and radium 228) totaling 327 pci\/l at and a second totaling 301 pci\/l \u2014 in other words, up to 65 times the radium levels that the\u00a0EPA<\/span>\u00a0considers safe in drinking\u00a0water.<\/p>\n

Some had speculated that the 2014 test results could simply have been flukes or false positives, a claim that seems less likely now that the subsequent round of testing by independent researchers also showed the presence of\u00a0radioactivity.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Radioactivity Found in Pennsylvania Creek, Illegal Fracking Waste Dumping Suspected Recently released testing results in western Pennsylvania, upstream from Pittsburgh, reveal evidence of radioactive contamination in water flowing from an abandoned mine. Experts say that the radioactive materials may have come from illegal dumping of shale fracking\u00a0wastewater. Regulators had previously found radioactivity levels that exceeded\u00a0EPA‘s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[8294,8295,5317,1470,331,412,619,8292,8293,866],"class_list":["post-11266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-10-mile-creek","tag-clyde-mine","tag-desmog-blog","tag-epa","tag-fracking","tag-hydraulic-fracturing","tag-pennsylvania","tag-radioactivity","tag-radium","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11266"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11267,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11266\/revisions\/11267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}