🚀 go-pugleaf

On May 16, 3:31 pm, ~SQL~ <in.d...@ta.per> wrote:
> On 5/13/2012 5:59 AM, chatnoir wrote:
>
> > So, if you have spare time, feel free to greet
> > these people as they come in, or bid them farewell as they leave,
> > letting them know exactly what you think about their intentions to
> > ‘develop’ “unconventional oil” in Colorado. They might tell you that
> > it’s in the best interest of Coloradans, that it’s good for the
> > economy, that it creates jobs, and so on.
>
> > What would you like to tell them?
>
> Thank you very much for helping our economy to get better and creating
> new jobs and lease income in Colorado.
>
> We really are glad you're here!

https://www.propublica.org/article/whiff-of-phenol-spells-trouble

headline:

Whiff of Phenol Spells Trouble
by Abrahm Lustgarten
The stench of phenol was overpowering, wafting from mud taken from a
layer of rock thousands of feet beneath southern Ohio.

It was 1989 and workers for the Aristech Chemical Corp. had begun
drilling a disposal well for dangerous, chemical-laden waste from the
company's acetone manufacturing plant in Haverhill.


 The well site was next to two older Aristech disposal wells, in a
spot where federal and state regulators believed hazardous materials
would remain safely tucked away forever almost 6,000 feet under the
earth’s surface.

But the phenol – a deadly chemical used in Aristech’s processes that
is known to cause internal burns, muscle spasms and organ failure –
indicated that something might have gone wrong.

Environmental regulators suspected that the chemical had somehow
drifted upward from the first two wells, travelling as much as 1,400
feet through the very rock expected to contain it.

If confirmed, their suspicions had broader implications: The type of
disposal wells Aristech was using were among the most stringently
regulated and monitored in the country.

To get permission for the new well — the first of its kind drilled
after new national environmental rules went into effect — Aristech
needed to prove to the Environmental Protection Agency that its waste
would remain trapped for at least 10,000 years. The company had made
that case for the two existing wells, using some of the most advanced
computer modeling and the best geological science available at the
time.

A leak would mean that even injection wells subject to the strictest
regulations might not be as safe as scientists thought.

At first, Aristech’s managers denied that any leak had occurred. In
letters written to Ohio’s Environmental Protection Agency, they said
the pollution – still 4,000 feet below ground – could have been caused
by other injection wells in the area, or by spills on the surface.
They accused the state EPA of botching its investigation. The company
even appealed to the agency’s director to intercede, without success.

“Your close personal attention to this proceeding has become
essential,” Paul Kaplow, Aristech’s environment and safety manager,
wrote to Ohio’s chief environmental official, Richard Shank, in July
1989. Kaplow said that Ohio’s “lower-level” environmental regulators
were acting in a way that was “wholly inappropriate.”

Federal and state investigators turned the half-drilled well into a
monitoring station to collect underground data, and took samples of
rock from nearby to examine it for fractures that could have allowed
waste to leak.

By the mid-1990s, investigators confirmed that waste had indeed
migrated upwards from Aristech’s older wells, probably through a
network of small fractures in the rock. Scientists thought the
pressure used to force waste deep into the wells had helped crack the
rock and push the contaminants back up.

Their inquiry turned to the future: It had taken 23 years for the
waste – leaking at a rate of 2.5 gallons a minute -- to move 1,400
feet. Would the chemicals travel thousands of feet further and wind up
in drinking water supplies? How long would that take? More than 1.4
billion gallons of chemicals were dissipating beneath the site.

For another decade, the EPA and the state of Ohio studied the site for
signs that the waste was still on the move. During that time, the
concentration of the contaminants increased in the deep monitoring
well, according to Ohio records obtained by ProPublica. Pressure
readings taken in that well continued to increase, another sign that
the force of injection could still be pushing the waste upward, even
after injections into the two original wells ceased in 1996.

Contaminants also began to appear in a shallow drinking water
monitoring well drilled to 80 feet below the surface: chloride,
barium, iron. Ohio officials wondered whether these compounds, which
occur naturally but far beneath the surface, also resulted from the
changes deep underground. ... (cont)