Power Dominance Will Make Individuals Sick

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Final Up to date on: 2nd March 2025, 01:42 am

Power dominance! What an exquisite picture that phrase conjures up. In our thoughts’s eye, we see Uncle Sam, resplendent in pink, white, and blue garments and with a flowing white beard, smashing different nations over the top with oil and fuel derricks which have indicators proclaiming “USA!” on them. Power dominance means by no means having to say you’re sorry for turning neighborhoods into poisonous waste dumps the place schoolchildren get sick and die from ingesting polluted water. What an exquisite world will probably be; what a wonderful time to be free!

The important thing to power dominance is fracking, the method of injecting water containing a stew of poisonous chemical substances deep underground to drive extra oil and methane to the floor. What’s in that water? No one is aware of, as a result of the fracking business has bribed state and native officers to go legal guidelines that permit them to maintain that data non-public, as a result of it incorporates commerce secrets and techniques that should be protected in any respect prices. Sadly, people who find themselves made sick or die from the air pollution wouldn’t have sufficient cash to bribe public officers, and so their pursuits are ignored for essentially the most half. Nothing says democracy fairly like defending rich firms as a substitute of individuals.

In response to Inside Local weather Information, in 2003 — earlier than the fracking increase actually received into excessive gear — wastewater from fracking amounted to round 168 million gallons per yr. In 2023, that determine ballooned to three.3 billion gallons. The place does all that poisonous water go? Nobody actually is aware of for certain, however fracking additionally creates stable wastes — about 929,2167 tons of it in 2023. 96 p.c of that stable waste was despatched to landfills or hazardous waste therapy services just like the Max Environmental Applied sciences landfill in Yukon, Pennsylvania.

“The Max,” as it’s recognized, has been out of compliance with necessities of the Clear Water Act for many of the previous three years and with the federal hazardous waste regulation, the Useful resource Conservation and Restoration Act (RCRA), since July 2023. Scientists on the College of Pittsburgh and Duquesne College have examined the outfall pipe from the power and located the radioactivity within the sediment downstream of the discharge level was 1.4 instances greater than it’s upstream of that pipe. The researchers counsel the radioactivity is linked to the landfill’s consumption of oil and fuel waste. “I wouldn’t eat the fish. I wouldn’t swim within the water,” mentioned John Stolz, a professor of environmental microbiology at Duquesne, who co-authored the research and has researched oil and fuel waste in Pennsylvania for 15 years.

EPA water high quality knowledge for Sewickley Creek exhibits that a lot of it’s labeled as “impaired.” A drainage pipe from The Max leaks crud from the landfill into the creek. Indicators close to the pipe warn the goo popping out of the pipe is very poisonous. They are saying, “Warning! Hazardous Waste Discharge Level. Arsenic, lead, cyanide, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, and extra are permitted substances for discharge at this website.” Hexavalent chromium is an particularly nasty substance. In response to the Nationwide Institute of Atmosphere Well being Sciences, among the hostile well being results from hexavalent chromium exposures embrace nasal and sinus cancers, kidney and liver harm, nasal and pores and skin irritation and ulceration, and eye irritation and harm. It’s possible you’ll be asking your self, “Wait. These chemical substances are permitted?” Sure certainly, America. If you personal the federal government and the regulators, something is feasible. And shortly President Musk and his skilled poodle will fireplace everybody within the NIH so we are going to converse of this stuff no extra. Return to sleep, America. Power dominance will set you free — if it doesn’t kill you first.

Power Dominance Means Extra Poisonous Waste

For many years, residents have raised the alarm in regards to the 160-acre landfill and its affect in town. They blame it for critical hurt to their well being, their youngsters, their animals, their waterways, and their land. They are saying publicity to air pollution from the landfill has led to extra cancers, miscarriages, respiratory misery, and neurological illnesses. Over three generations, because the landfill’s opening in 1964, they’ve endured odors, mud, noise, and poisonous spills. They’ve watched their neighbors fall unwell, die, or transfer out, and so they dwell in worry for their very own well being. The Environmental Safety Company ranks Yukon greater for key well being issues like most cancers and coronary heart illness than state and nationwide averages.

Oil and fuel corporations and the state and federal businesses chargeable for regulating them have by no means absolutely reckoned with the poisonous waste from fracking, partly as a result of the business has lobbied efficiently for rules that exempt most of its waste from stricter guidelines that govern “hazardous” waste. Although communities like Yukon are experiencing greater charges of most cancers and coronary heart illness, Kamala Harris throughout her presidential marketing campaign needed to step frivolously when speaking about fracking as a result of many Pennsylvania residents are fairly glad to see their neighbors get sick and die to assist the aim of power dominance by america. So long as they and their children aren’t affected, why ought to they care about any individual else’s well being issues? You’ll be able to’t make an omelet with out breaking a couple of eggs, proper? All this commie pinko crap about air pollution is simply woke nonsense and the individuals who complain belong in jail for treason, apparently. As Tom Petty mentioned, “It’s good to be king.”

Fracking waste poses huge regulatory challenges for state and federal authorities as a result of it’s extremely poisonous and infrequently radioactive. Choices for disposing of it vary from injecting it underground — what may probably go mistaken? — to repackaging the usually extraordinarily salty water as a mud suppressant for public roads which may contaminate soil and water from runoff when it rains, or sending it to landfills. Every choice is a flawed long-term answer.

Activists and scientists say the federal government has did not cope with the large quantity of this waste being created on daily basis. Even primary particulars like the place fracking waste finally ends up are sometimes troublesome to verify. In 2023, a research of landfills concluded that state information monitoring oil and fuel waste in Pennsylvania had been “conflicting and insufficient.” It discovered vital discrepancies between the quantity that corporations reported delivering to landfills and what the landfills mentioned they accepted. These discrepancies make it a lot tougher to evaluate the environmental impacts. “A part of the issue is that no one can actually get a deal with on how a lot waste is definitely there,” mentioned John Stolz, a co-author of the research.

The chances of the federal authorities — what’s left of it — getting a deal with on the poisonous waste drawback have gotten lots worse because the Moron of Mar-A-Loco turned Elon Musk unfastened to eviscerate the federal authorities within the title of power dominance. His insurance policies will promote extra fracking and extra poisonous waste with much less environmental oversight.  We’re going to dominate the world of power even when it kills us, which it very properly may.