Over 2200 tons of Pennsylvania frack waste dumped in Michigan

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Waste disposal company A-1 Northern in Kalkaska received over 400 tons of frack wastes from Pennsylvania. Photo by Ban Michigan Fracking.

We’ve known this for a while now, but it’s time  to get it out there: Michigan is fast becoming a frack waste state.

Part of the story is that Michigan facilities are taking in wastes from other states.

The other part is that the frack industry generated huge amounts of wastes from Michigan frack wells.

The startling news about out of state frack waste is that  over 2,200 tons of frack waste from Pennsylvania have come to Michigan in three counties: Wayne, Monroe and Kalkaska.

We learned of this by searching the State of Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection’s “oil and gas reporting” website. That the State of Michigan Dept of Environmental Quality Office of Oil Gas and Minerals neither tracks the disposal of frack wastes–generated in Michigan or elsewhere–nor provides the information to the public as Pennsylvania does, is troubling.

The Michigan facilities are headquartered in the communities of Van Buren Township,  Kalkaska, Detroit and Erie, but exact disposal facilities are not known for the Kalkaska wastes.

Van Buren Township: The Belleville-area twin processing and landfill facilities now owned by US Ecology, called Michigan Disposal and Wayne Disposal, accepted 20.42 tons of drill cuttings (which is TENORM: Technologically Enhanced Naturally Occuring Radioactive Materials) from a Greene County, Pennsylvania horizontal well in 2010 (PA reported it in 2014). And another 315.75 tons of “flowback fracturing sand” from several horizontal wells in Greene County were brought to Wayne Disposal at various times from 2010 through 2013 (but not reported by PA until 2014). See our four stories earlier this year on this website about Michigan Disposal/Wayne Disposal. We do not yet know the final disposition of the radioactive sludge approved for shipment to Wayne Disposal. Story 1, Story 2, Story 3, Story 4.

Kalkaska: Over 400 tons of “flowback fracturing sand” landed in Kalkaska County, according to the State of Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection website. The materials came from Marcellus shale unconventional wells in Greene and Washington Counties in southwest PA outside of Pittsburgh. Chevron Appalachia LLC is the operator.  The wastes went to A-1 Northern (pictured above), an oil/gas waste disposal company, although the exact facility location is not specified. The disposal method is described as “storage pending disposal or reuse.”

Detroit: Detroit got the worst of it. Over 1,466 tons of “flowback fracturing sand” went to the US Ecology facility at 6520 Georgia Street, near Hamtramck which is the former Dynecol facility. The Marcellus shale frack wastes came from horizontal frack wells in a host of Pennsylvania counties–Butler, Clarion, Clearfield, Fayette, Greene, Indiana and Westmoreland–all in 2011 and 2012, but not reported until 2014. The former Dynecol site, which was a hazardous liquid waste processing facility in operation since 1974 “for the Midwest US and Canadian industrial markets,” is now owned by US Ecology, which  bought it in 2012, around the same time the frack wastes were brought to Detroit. The company now carries out a number of hazardous operations with radioactive waste, including, according to the DEQ, processing of radioactive frack wastes which are solidified and then shipped to a facility in Idaho. What parts from that “processing” remain in Detroit? We wish we knew.

Erie: And then there’s the Vienna Junction Landfill on the Erie, MI/Toledo, OH border which also has accepted frack waste from Pennsylvania. According to the PA Department of Environmental Protection website again, Vienna Junction took in 6,085.21 tons of frack wastes from horizontal wells located in Tioga County in the reporting period July – December 2012. We’re not including this tonnage in our headline, since we don’t know how much of it landed in Michigan versus Ohio. But it’s close enough to affect Monroe County residents.

These Pennsylvania statistics are just for the first half of 2014. We’ll update this article when the data for the rest of the year becomes available.

That’s just the wastes from one state. Undoubtedly there is more coming here, with regional facilities in Detroit and Belleville that are designed to be regional “hubs” for the industry.

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Westerman well in Kalkaska County, Michigan. Photo by Ban Michigan Fracking.

The frack industry in Michigan is also producing its own wastes from operations here

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. We visited the Waters Landfill in Crawford County this year (pictured below), where solid frack wastes such as drill cuttings (which are classified as radioactive TENORM) are brought. Again, no records are kept by Michigan DEQ on their website. The landfills are not public in many cases. And putting together the picture of where all this frack waste is going is next to impossible.

Waters Landfill

The landfill in Waters, Crawford County, Michigan. Photo by Ban Michigan Fracking.

According to an article by Environment 360 at Yale University, an organization called Downstream Strategies attempted to trace fracking waste from Washington County PA and sites across the US and where it ends up and found they “just couldn’t do it.”

Frack wastes are also brought to Michigan class II injection wells (a total of 1,460, of which 654 the EPA says are for disposal, while the DEQ says disposal wells number 888. Any of Michigan’s old oil or gas wells can also be used for disposal of frack wastes and turned into injection wells). We will report on injection wells in Michigan in an upcoming article.

NY Bans fracking with CBFM logoThe Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan’s ballot initiative would BAN frack wastes from other states from being processed, disposed or stored in Michigan. To make a contribution to the Committee, go to www.letsbanfracking.org.

 

PDF’s of the downloaded reports from the Pennsylvania DEP website:

Kalkaska: Kalkaska–WasteByWasteFacilityExport_Y_N_198306_2014-1 WasteByWasteFacilityExport_Y_N_

DetroitDetroit–WasteByWasteFacilityExport_Y_N_198307_2014-1-5

Van Buren Township: Wayne Disposal–WasteByWasteFacilityExport_Y_N_198309_2014-1 Wayne Disposal–WasteByWasteFac

Erie: Vienna Junction WasteByWasteFacilityExport_Y_N_198194_2012-2-2 Vienna Junction WasteByWasteFac

 

Michigan frackers apply for 6 more wells, while NY bans fracking

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by LuAnne Kozma

The news last week, New York’s announcement to turn its moratorium into a statewide ban on high-volume, horizontal fracking, has groups around the country, like ours, celebrating. New York’s governor Cuomo relied on his departmental chiefs of environmental conservation and public health to recommend the decision based on the long awaited report, A Public Health Review of High Volume Hydraulic Fracturing for Shale Gas Development by the NY state health department. In the end, the NY governor relied on something acting state health commissioner Dr. Howard A. Zucker said: that when it came down to it, in personal terms, Zucker would not want  his family to live in a community that allowed fracking.  New York is  the first U.S

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. state in a shale-producing area to ban fracking statewide. Grassroots groups in New York are ecstatic, after so many years of working for a ban.

Six new frack wells planned for Michigan

Today in Michigan, however, the frack industry applied to the Michigan DEQ for six new horizontal frack wells for the northern Lower Peninsula: one in Kalkaska County where there are already several wells, and for the first time, three in Grand Traverse County and two in Manistee County. Three are owned or co-owned by the State of Michigan. The others are on private land.

fracking poster

Unlike in other states, the frack industry targets the Michigan A-1 carbonate formation in addition to the shale formation called the Utica-Collingwood shale. The shallower Antrim shale wells have used fracking, but not always horizontal drilling.

That the DEQ will issue these permits is a certainty, as all Michigan “applications” for oil and gas wells get a rubber stamp treatment. Indeed, it is state law that the Michigan DEQ “foster the development of the industry along the most favorable conditions and with a view to the ultimate recovery of the maximum production of these natural products.” (MCL 324.61502). Michigan also receives 5% of gross cash market value of the production of natural gas and 6.6% of oil. (MCL 205.303).

This is huge news. It’s not every week that six new wells in the Utica/Collingwood and A-1 Carbonate formations are applied for. All of the wells are not too distant from a proposed new natural gas plant near Elmira, in Otsego County near Gaylord.

The six new applications are as follows:

A140187 is the State Garfield C4-12 HD1 well in Garfield Township in Kalkaska County,  proposed to go down to 16,490 feet into the Utica-Collingwood formation. Tiger Development LLC out of Suttons Bay is the fracker.

The three wells for Grand Traverse County-the first time this county has seen a  horizontal high-volume well–planned by a company called WyoTex Drilling Ventures LLC–are:

A140189 is Cozart 1-25 HD1 in Green Lake Township, near Interlochen, proposed to target the A-1 Carbonate formation down about 7,741 feet in this area.

A140192 is McManus 1-1 HD1 in Blair Township, which will go down 7,153 to the A-1 Carbonate formation.

A140196 is Harrigan 3-12 HD1, also in Blair Township, which will target the A-1 Carbonate about 7,438 feet down.

In Manistee County, some more “firsts.”

A140194 is State Manistee & Anderson 1-3 H, in Manistee Township, which will reach the A-1 Carbonate about 5,702 feet down.

A140198 is State Springdale 1-26 HD1, in  Springdale Township, also targeting the A-1 Carbonate at a depth of 6,675 feet.

The above linked DEQ list of permit applications for December 15-19, the five WyoTex permit applications for horizontal wells targeting the A-1 Carbonate formation in Grand Traverse and Manistee Counties do not contain the DEQ’s customary “well may be completed using high volume hydraulic fracturing” note. While it is still uncertain if these wells will be completed by fracking as opposed to some other method, we do know that most Michigan A-1 Carbonate wells, especially at these depths, have been fracked in the past. We don’t always agree with the governor-approved pro-frack “Technology” technical report of UM’s Graham Sustainability Institute of September 3, 2013, but it does say this about fracking Michigan’s A-1 Carbonate formation:

http://graham.umich.edu/media/files/HF-02-Technology.pdf :

“In general, Michigan oil companies have not been technology leaders in oil and gas exploration and production. They have followed much the same conservative (but safe and usually environmentally sound) pathway of many other mid-range producing states such as Ohio and Indiana. This may change with the recent discovery of probable gas and perhaps oil in formations such as the A-1 and A-2 Carbonates and perhaps even the deeper Collingwood and Utica shales (including the Utica in Ohio), but little appears to be known about these on a micro-geological scale and they will be costly to explore and develop based on the few results obtained so far. Directional drilling and fracking will be required, based on what is known of the limited permeability of these formations and the laterals will probably have to be of unusual length to ensure reasonable gas production.”  [emphasis in original]

So Michigan continues its fracking program. Meanwhile, Michigan’s big environmental groups say they will focus on regulations for fracking, not a ban.

Democracy in action: Michigan’s Ballot Initiative for 2016

Michigan voters have been working feverently on instituting a ban on fracking and frack wastes using the ballot initiative process. The Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan (a separate entity), the ballot initiative we started in 2012, responded to the NY ban in a press release, calling for more volunteers and donations. The Committee also urged Michigan health professionals to document how fracking is impacting Michigan’s fracked communities and to speak out about fracking.

To join in these efforts, Ban Michigan Fracking asks everyone in Michigan who would like to see our state become frack-free– and free of frack wastes– to contact the Committee, volunteer, donate, and endorse!

www.letsbanfracking.org

NY Bans fracking with CBFM logo