Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
8/29/2014
While the fracking boom has haunted the nuclear industry for the last 10 years with cheap natural gas, it appears to have also brought a new, high volume waste stream for those involved in the radioactive waste disposal business. The increased activity in oil and gas exploration, especially in the Marcellus Shale and Bakkan Shale formations, has increased volumes of Naturally-Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM) in states where that type of waste did not regularly occur. “Activity has been increasing,” said Joe Weismann, US Ecology’s vice president of radiological programs and field services. “There has been quite a lot of activity form the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and Ohio. The Bakken has been exploding in terms of the number of wells they’re drilling there, and the volumes has been increasing across the boards, not just for facilities like ours, but also for just about anyone who is interested in pursuing low-activity NORM waste. There has never been more opportunities for waste processors and disposal facilities.”
Radioactive contaminants like uranium, thorium, and radium naturally occur within the earth, and the fracking process exposes that material to drill tailings and water, among other things, and brings it to the surface. The fracking process differs from typical oil drilling in that the usual vertical hole is drilled thousands of feet into the earth. But when the drill reaches the shale formation, a horizontal hole is drilled into the shale. The process then shoots a water concoction, whose chemical ingredients are protected under trade secrets, into the well, shaking the rock to release the natural gas. The water retreats to the surface, bringing with it the NORM materials, where it is stored before it goes through a water treatment process that essentially turns the contamination into a radioactive sludge.
Regulations Muddled
The problem with the increased fracking, though, is that the drilling and subsequent waste volumes are coming in states that are not used to dealing with this amount of waste. NORM regulations exist in a sphere in between federal and state regulatory bodies. The Environmental Protection Agency has some regulations concerning NORM waste, but in most cases, the Agency leaves the bulk of the responsibility to the states. But due to the newness of the practice, many states are lagging behind the oil companies. “What separates the NORM from other waste streams is that the regulatory state is a muddled picture,” said Andrew Lombardo, senior vice president at Perma Fix Environmental Services and consultant to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Bureau of Radiation Protection on an upcoming TENORM Study. “The federal government generally does not regulate NORM, so the [Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Department of Energy] are completely out of the game. The EPA does have some regulations specific to NORM, but they are not specific to waste. It’s all on individual states, and all of the 50 states basically all have their own regulations. Some of them, 15 or 16 of them, actually have specific TENORM regulations, and they are states that deal with the oil and gas industry on a routine basis so out of necessity they have developed TENORM specific regulations.”
Pennsylvania, located in the Marcellus Shale, offers an interesting example of the effect fracking has had on the state’s regulations. Prior to the fracking boom, Pennsylvania landfills, under a blanket exemption, could take certain volumes and concentrations of NORM material on an annual basis. The regulations worked for pre-fracking disposal, but with the increased waste, the landfills are filled almost immediately. The gas companies then have to ship the material out-of-state for disposal, and with high transportation costs for the low-level facilities at Waste Control Specialists and EnergySolutions in the West, many companies are looking to Ohio and Michigan’s RCRA landfills for their disposal needs.
This influx of waste from other states has not gone unnoticed by the public, though. Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder this week ordered the state’s Department of Environmental Quality to create a panel of experts to review the state’s low-level radioactive waste disposal policy. Snyder wants to make sure Michigan’s regulations of the TENORM disposal are sufficiently protective. “We remain deeply committed to protecting public health and Michigan’s precious water resources,” Snyder said in a statement. “We believe the standard in Michigan remains protective of our people and our natural resources, but this advisory group of diverse experts, similar to the assembly that developed our standards, can provide an important, science-based and driven review to make sure that’s still the case.”
Illegal Dumping
The unclear regulatory picture has resulted in some problem areas for some states, as well. “A problem has been the regulatory environment keeping up with the explosion,” Weismann said. “North Dakota has been struggling with having enough regulatory staff to make sure that things are being done appropriately.” North Dakota, located in the Bakken Shale, has suffered some high-profile illegal dumpings of NORM waste in landfills not equipped to dispose of it. North Dakota’s current regulations call for a limit of five picocuries per gram on waste that can be disposed of in landfills, an amount that limits most of the highly active fracking waste. Those regulations are similar to other fracking states.
Without a local disposal option and high disposal and transportation costs to discard the material, some smaller companies have illegally dumped their materials elsewhere. “There is a wide range of oil and gas companies,” Lombardo said. “There are your traditional very large oil and gas companies like Chevron and Shell, and they are very risk averse so whatever it is, they are going to comply. On the other end of the spectrum, you have smaller companies that don’t have the resources financially and the engineering resources that Chevron has. I think that’s where you are getting some of this illegal dumping.”
Landfill Arms Race?
Ultimately, more landfills with the capability to handle the waste, such as RCRA or NORM-only landfills, will take the most advantage of the increased volumes, Lombardo said. “The bottom-line is that it’s not going to go in the landfills,” Lombardo said. “Almost every state is going to protect above a nominal concentration in municipal landfills. RCRA landfills for industrial waste are an option. I think Colorado has two landfills that are just for TENORM, and I think states are going to have to look permitting for TENORM landfills with more engineered controls. We’re just at the beginning, and I’m just speculating, though.”
It appears that this fracking waste was, in part, in line with US Ecology’s rationale behind its $465 million acquisition of The Environmental Company, which operates a RCRA landfill in Michigan. In the acquisition announcement, the company heralded the move as improving its geographic reach. “If our permit fits waste that generators have in regional areas, we certainly want to take advantage of those regional opportunities as long as everything is within our permit capabilities,” Weissman said. “The oil and gas exploration in the U.S. is relatively young. It’s provided opportunities in the waste business, as a by-product of this oil and gas activity, so it’s an exciting time. There are lots of opportunities, and we hope from a policy perspective we have opportunities to serve these markets.”
