![]() The agency argues that it is not authorized to regulate NORM unless it has been “processed and concentrated,” a phrase it interprets narrowly.ĭEC officials took that stance in a 2010 legal challenge to Casella’s plan to expand the Casella-operated Chemung Landfill in order to make room for more drill cuttings from Pennsylvania. Officially, the DEC allows Pennsylvania drilling waste at Hyland in Angelica, the Hakes Landfill in Painted Post, the Chemung Landfill near Elmira, Seneca Meadows Landfill in Waterloo and the Allied/BFI Waste Systems landfill in Niagara Falls. Other New York landfills might be waste importers as well, Abraham said, given Casella’s history of accepting waste streams that exceed its permitted authority and then obtaining retroactive approval from the DEC. ![]() The DEC is known to allow Hyland and four other upstate New York landfills to accept out-of-state drilling wastes, even though none has a license to handle radioactive materials-either high-level or low-level. But their activities show the DEC’s policy on radioactivity is drawing statewide attention. Both are Democrats in a Republican-controlled body that has blocked virtually every piece of legislation opposed by gas drillers. Terry Gipson, who like Tkaczyk represents a district that abuts the Hudson River, has a similar bill. State Action On Radiation Causes Attention She has introduced legislation to ban fracking waste imports from other states. “If we don’t allow fracking in New York due to its environmental downsides, why do we accept fracking waste products from other states?” said Tkaczyk. Cecilia Tkaczyk says New York’s approach to importing fracking waste is illogical, given that the state doesn’t even allow horizontal fracking in its Marcellus shale due to health and environmental concerns. New York has not conducted or planned a similar study. Earlier this year, state regulators in Pennsylvania launched a study of radioactivity in Marcellus drilling waste, giving drillers in that state further incentive to find dumping options across the New York border. The brine, rock cuttings and drilling mud from Marcellus wells are likely to contain heightened levels of radium isotopes, including radium-226, which is especially dangerous because it is soluble in water. Although contamination levels vary widely from well to well, the Marcellus formation is suspected to be the most radioactive of all the nation’s shales. Most shale formations contain naturally occurring radioactive material, or NORM. That legal stance has opened the door for imports of waste from horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania. The permit application is the last chapter in a long-simmering controversy over the DEC’s narrow interpretation of its responsibility to monitor radioactive waste. “It doesn’t allay our concerns that these guys have been dealing with a crooked lab,” said Gary Abraham, an attorney for Concerned Citizens of Allegany County, a group opposing Hyland’s latest permit bid. But documents obtained by DCBureau confirm that the guilty company, Upstate Laboratories Inc., analyzed material from Hyland as recently as this past February. Meanwhile, water testing data related to Hyland and a wastewater treatment plant that accepts its leachate have been linked to a Syracuse laboratory that pled guilty in July to one felony count of mail fraud in a case said to involve 3,300 falsified water tests.įederal prosecutors and the DEC have so far declined to provide details of the faked tests. ![]() “We are currently reviewing the comments received on the Casella solid waste application, and no decisions have been made,” said Lisa King, a DEC public information officer. So far, the state Department of Environmental Conservation has not responded to those requests. Neighbors of the landfill and the Sierra Club are asking the state to conduct a full environmental review of the case or at least to hold a public hearing on it. The issue arose last month in Casella Waste Systems’ bid to speed up by 49 percent deliveries to its Hyland Landfill in Angelica, about 80 miles south of Rochester. ANGELICA, N.Y.-Questions about the integrity of official water tests are stirring the latest controversy over New York State’s embattled policy of allowing imports of radioactive waste from natural gas drilling operations in Pennsylvania.
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