Despite the oil & gas industry and regulators pushing a story that injection wells meet strict safety standards, citizen complaints to the DEP offer a glimpse into how those standards fail to protect water.

Public Herald’s latest RTK of DEP’s citizen complaint records uncovered 18 complaints (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11CM8KWN_mvvvbDM9FCjRHkA8m-qJ6fezOyJuiF2vcSE/edit#gid=1689475627) from 2016 to 2021 for underground injection control (UIC) wells, 15 of which included water pollution concerns (83% of complaints)”

Eight of the 18 injection well complaints resulted in violations to the commonwealth’s Clean Streams Law. But at five more injection wells, DEP inspectors found Clean Streams Law violations and chose not to issue citations, which makes the real total of complaints with Clean Streams Law violations 13 of 18 complaints.

Pennsylvania’s Auditor General and Attorney General take:  “Despite decades of documentation and scathing reviews by Pennsylvania’s Auditor General and Attorney General, DEP still does not use its authority to set limits on radium from oil and gas waste in NPDES discharge permits.

When asked if DEP could require radium monitoring for facilities like Eureka’s, EPA responded via email, “[M]onitoring for those constituents is not required under the federal regulations. However, state permit writers can require additional monitoring in permits issued to specific direct discharging facilities.”

In other words, the Pennsylvania DEP could be eliminating the threat of radium in waterways. They’ve simply been choosing not to.”