You know what causing them, right (and I'm not talking about soap)?
"Regulation lax as waste from gas wells hits water supplies" by Ian Urbina, New York Times / February 27, 2011
NEW YORK — This century’s gold rush — natural gas.
So energy companies are clamoring to drill. And they are getting rare support from their usual sparring partners. Environmentalists say using natural gas will help slow climate change because it burns more cleanly than coal and oil. Lawmakers hail the gas as a source of jobs. They also see it as a way to wean the United States from its dependency on other countries for oil.
But the relatively new drilling method — known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking — carries significant environmental risks. It involves injecting huge amounts of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, at high pressures to break up rock and release the gas.
Related(?): Obama Drilling For Martial Law Excuse
A well can produce more than a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene, and radioactive elements like radium, all of which can occur naturally thousands of feet underground.
While the existence of the waste has been reported, thousands of internal documents obtained by The New York Times from the Environmental Protection Agency, state regulators, and drillers show that the dangers to the environment and health are greater than previously understood.
Isn't it BAD ENOUGH there are PRESCRIPTION DRUGS in the WATER?
The documents reveal that the wastewater, sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle.
Paging Erin Brockovich!
Other documents and interviews show that many EPA scientists are alarmed, warning that the drilling waste is a threat to drinking water in Pennsylvania. Their concern is based partly on a 2009 study, never made public, written by an EPA consultant who concluded that some sewage treatment plants were incapable of removing certain drilling waste contaminants and were probably violating the law.
But the EPA has not intervened. In fact, federal and state regulators are allowing most sewage treatment plants that accept drilling waste not to test for radioactivity.
This is the same EPA screaming about greenhouse gases, etc?
Related: EPA eases pollution rules for industrial boilers
Yeah, they are really looking out for your health, Americans.
And most drinking-water intake plants downstream from those sewage treatment plants in Pennsylvania, with the blessing of regulators, have not tested for radioactivity since before 2006, even though the drilling boom began in 2008....
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Also see: De Plane! De Plane!
The Waters of West Virginia
EPA Running Off at the Mouth
Slow Saturday Special: FDA's Gulf Coast Feast
Super Sunday Spread
Anyone sensing a pattern from this government?
And just over the hills:
"GE donations to river group stir controversy; Critics see attempt to sway Housatonic River cleanup" by Beth Daley, Globe Staff / February 27, 2011
The Facebook page popped onto the Web last month, pushing a controversial position on the PCB-poisoned Housatonic River in Western Massachusetts: cleaning it too thoroughly may actually harm the environment more.
Missing from the webpage of the Smart Clean-up Coalition was any explanation of the group’s origins or members. So a skeptical river advocate asked whether the group took money from General Electric, the company responsible for both the contamination and the cleanup — and another champion of a less aggressive approach.
“No,’’ the Smart Clean-up Coalition responded on the page. “We have no association with GE.’’
But they do. The coalition is an initiative of 1Berkshire, an economic development alliance that has received $300,000 from General Electric Co. in recent months, the group has since acknowledged.
Over the past two weeks, the alliance has given an evolving explanation for not disclosing its relationship with GE upfront. Both the group and GE insist the money had nothing to do with the creation of the Facebook page or the group’s position that an aggressive cleanup — which would include dredging, riverbank excavation, and truck traffic — could have the unintended effect of harming ecologically sensitive areas and tourism....
But in the rolling Berkshire Hills, where the mighty Housatonic once powered much of the region’s economy, the controversy playing out on blogs and in local papers is highlighting GE’s still deep ties to the community, decades after its 254-acre transformer plant stopped leaking PCBs, a probable carcinogen, into the winding river. It is still considered one of the nation’s filthiest waterways.
I am reading the wrong material, readers.
Maybe it is time for all those unread Boston Globes cluttering up the table to get tossed.
The company, which once employed 14,000 people at its Pittsfield plant, retains a considerable constituency in the region, including many retirees who have investment holdings and receive benefits from the company. And GE continues to donate to nonprofits in the county.
Drink up, a**holes.
The reach has bred suspicion of undue influence, especially now as the Environmental Protection Agency prepares to issue a proposal this fall on how to clean the next 10 miles of the river, with a final decision expected soon after....
Yes, the EPA will ignore radioactive elements in the water but they will be all up your creek after stealing your paddle and shoving it up your ass.
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My concerns are more upriver:
Related: Around New England: No Veracity in Vermont
The Boston Globe Can Not Say a Lie
Around New England: Vermont Votes Yankee Down
I believe it is still leaking cancer into the soil and water.
