Regulation Lax as Gas Wells’ Tainted Water Hits Rivers

[phantom power]

With hydrofracking, a well can produce over 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. Other carcinogenic materials can be added to the wastewater by the chemicals used in the hydrofracking itself.

While the existence of the toxic wastes 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.

The documents reveal that the wastewater, which is 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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/us/27gas.html

[DCKit]

1. Even if the waste treatment plants could "handle" these toxins...

Some level will remain in the treated water, with the majority left behind in the sludge - which is toxic waste and needs to be disposed of in a special landfill.

Either the rate-payers end up drinking polluted water or subsidizing the disposal (how much benzene do you put down the drain each day?). Win-win for the corporations.