Time is running out to tell the DRBC to ban toxic frack waste from the Delaware River Basin
To the Editor:
The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) is now considering rules that could allow the import of toxic, radioactive frack waste into the basin. You still have a chance to make your voice heard concerning the proposed rules.
Let’s keep toxic frack waste out of the basin! Comments on the DRBC’s proposed draft regulations, governing frack waste imports and water exports, are being accepted until Feb. 28 at: dockets.drbc.commentinput.com/?id=x2K8A.
We did achieve a huge victory in February 2021, when the DRBC banned fracking in the Delaware River Basin. Now we have to finish the job by getting the DRBC to enact a full ban on fracking.
If we can avert that threat here, it could lead to similar victories for people everywhere who are suffering from the current or threatened impacts of fracking and its toxins.
And if you live in an area where there is already contamination from frack waste, your personal testimony of its impacts can help push the DRBC to ban frack waste imports into the basin.
Everyone, please submit your comments at: . Your comments are needed to keep toxic, radioactive frack waste out of the basin! Get them in by Feb. 28!
As was exposed by Justin Nobel in his investigations and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) report “Hot Fracking Mess” and discussed by Mr. Nobel on the Delaware River Frack Ban Coalition’s webinar “Too Hot to Handle” August 18, the radioactivity of fracking waste is an unrecognized, poorly regulated, and dirty industrial secret that is polluting our world.
Yet the DRBC issued its draft gas regulations that will allow the import of this wastewater into the Delaware River Watershed for processing, discharge, storage and re-use — disposal is prohibited, import is allowed!
Please take a moment now to file a comment to the DRBC to say: Ban fracking wastewater in the watershed! With a reason or two or more, even if you have done this before. Remember, you can file as many written comments as you want.
I thought fracking was banned in the watershed?
Yes, fracking is permanently banned throughout the Delaware River Watershed, but on Oct. 28, regulations were proposed governing whether the wastewater produced by fracking elsewhere can be brought in — and water from the Delaware Basin can be exported for fracking elsewhere — yes, yes — unbelievable but true!
We have to make sure we let the commissioners (the governors of the four basin states and a federal representative) know what we want and are deeply concerned about by filing many comments.
What? Deliberately import and discharge radioactive waste?
Unbelievably, DRBC has proposed this despite having banned fracking as too dangerous and threatening to the water supply for over 17 million people, to public health, and to the outstanding natural assets that would be lost. Import of the waste can endanger these very assets that the DRBC exists to protect.
On our webinar last month, Dusty Horwitt, the author of the bombshell PSR report, “Fracking with Forever Chemicals,” revealed that highly toxic PFAS chemicals have been used in fracking (and they remain in the environment), and the Philadelphia Inquirer found that fracked wells in Pennsylvania had used these chemicals. Each stunning fact revealed about fracking adds to the overwhelming conclusion that fracking must be stopped, its waste production ended — and certainly not imported into the Delaware Basin.
Please speak out to the DRBC. Call for the prevention of pollution by instituting a full frack ban.
Damascus Citizens For Sustainability
Narrowsburg, N.Y.
Damascuscitizensforsustainability.org