Energy Dominance Will Make Americans Sick – CleanTechnica

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Last Updated on: 2nd March 2025, 01:42 am

Energy dominance! What a wonderful image that phrase conjures up. In our mind’s eye, we see Uncle Sam, resplendent in red, white, and blue clothes and with a flowing white beard, smashing other countries over the head with oil and gas derricks that have signs proclaiming “USA!” on them. Energy dominance means never having to say you’re sorry for turning neighborhoods into toxic waste dumps where schoolchildren get sick and die from drinking polluted water. What a wonderful world it will be; what a glorious time to be free!

The key to energy dominance is fracking, the process of injecting water containing a stew of toxic chemicals deep underground to force more oil and methane to the surface. What is in that water? Nobody knows, because the fracking industry has bribed state and local officials to pass laws that allow them to keep that information private, because it contains trade secrets that must be protected at all costs. Unfortunately, people who are made sick or die from the pollution do not have enough money to bribe public officials, and so their interests are ignored for the most part. Nothing says democracy quite like protecting wealthy corporations instead of people.

According to Inside Climate News, in 2003 — before the fracking boom really got into high gear — wastewater from fracking amounted to around 168 million gallons per year. In 2023, that figure ballooned to 3.3 billion gallons. Where does all that toxic water go? No one really knows for sure, but fracking also creates solid wastes — about 929,2167 tons of it in 2023. 96 percent of that solid waste was sent to landfills or hazardous waste treatment facilities like the Max Environmental Technologies landfill in Yukon, Pennsylvania.

“The Max,” as it is known, has been out of compliance with requirements of the Clean Water Act for most of the past three years and with the federal hazardous waste law, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), since July 2023. Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh and Duquesne University have tested the outfall pipe from the facility and found the radioactivity in the sediment downstream of the discharge point was 1.4 times higher than it is upstream of that pipe. The researchers suggest the radioactivity is linked to the landfill’s intake of oil and gas waste. “I wouldn’t eat the fish. I wouldn’t swim in the water,” said John Stolz, a professor of environmental microbiology at Duquesne, who co-authored the study and has researched oil and gas waste in Pennsylvania for 15 years.

EPA water quality data for Sewickley Creek shows that much of it is classified as “impaired.” A drainage pipe from The Max leaks crud from the landfill into the creek. Signs near the pipe warn the goo coming out of the pipe is highly toxic. They say, “Warning! Hazardous Waste Discharge Point. Arsenic, lead, cyanide, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, and more are permitted substances for discharge at this site.” Hexavalent chromium is an especially nasty substance. According to the National Institute of Environment Health Sciences, some of the adverse health effects from hexavalent chromium exposures include nasal and sinus cancers, kidney and liver damage, nasal and skin irritation and ulceration, and eye irritation and damage. You may be asking yourself, “Wait. These chemicals are permitted?” Yes indeed, America. When you own the government and the regulators, anything is possible. And soon President Musk and his trained poodle will fire everyone in the NIH so we will speak of these things no more. Go back to sleep, America. Energy dominance will set you free — if it doesn’t kill you first.

Energy Dominance Means More Toxic Waste

For decades, residents have raised the alarm about the 160-acre landfill and its impact on the town. They blame it for serious harm to their health, their children, their animals, their waterways, and their land. They say exposure to pollution from the landfill has led to more cancers, miscarriages, respiratory distress, and neurological diseases. Over three generations, since the landfill’s opening in 1964, they have endured odors, dust, noise, and toxic spills. They’ve watched their neighbors fall ill, die, or move out, and they live in fear for their own health. The Environmental Protection Agency ranks Yukon higher for key health problems like cancer and heart disease than state and national averages.

Oil and gas companies and the state and federal agencies responsible for regulating them have never fully reckoned with the toxic waste from fracking, in part because the industry has lobbied successfully for regulations that exempt most of its waste from stricter rules that govern “hazardous” waste. Even though communities like Yukon are experiencing higher rates of cancer and heart disease, Kamala Harris during her presidential campaign had to step lightly when talking about fracking because many Pennsylvania residents are quite happy to see their neighbors get sick and die to support the goal of energy dominance by the United States. As long as they and their kids aren’t affected, why should they care about somebody else’s health problems? You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, right? All this commie pinko crap about pollution is just woke nonsense and the people who complain belong in jail for treason, apparently. As Tom Petty said, “It’s good to be king.”

Fracking waste poses enormous regulatory challenges for state and federal authorities because it is highly toxic and often radioactive. Options for disposing of it range from injecting it underground — what could possibly go wrong? — to repackaging the often extremely salty water as a dust suppressant for public roads which can contaminate soil and water from runoff when it rains, or sending it to landfills. Each option is a flawed long-term solution.

Activists and scientists say the government has failed to contend with the massive amount of this waste being created every day. Even basic details like where fracking waste ends up are often difficult to confirm. In 2023, a study of landfills concluded that state records tracking oil and gas waste in Pennsylvania were “conflicting and inadequate.” It found significant discrepancies between the amount that companies reported delivering to landfills and what the landfills said they accepted. These discrepancies make it much harder to assess the environmental impacts. “Part of the problem is that nobody can really get a handle on how much waste is actually there,” said John Stolz, a co-author of the study.

The odds of the federal government — what’s left of it — getting a handle on the toxic waste problem have gotten a lot worse since the Moron of Mar-A-Loco turned Elon Musk loose to eviscerate the federal government in the name of energy dominance. His policies will promote more fracking and more toxic waste with less environmental oversight.  We are going to dominate the world of energy even if it kills us, which it very well might.