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It is important to get follow up on how issues that evoked a lot of public attention have progressed.

July 11, 2023 there was a public hearing held on the proposal to convert an old production well called Orville Higinbotham #1, in Nicholson Township, Pennsylvania, to a Class II-D commercial brine disposal well, that is a well into which large volumes of radioactive, biochemically toxic fracking waste water would be pumped under high pressure. Typically this liquid is delivered to the well by a constant stream of diesel powered trucks.

Following the public hearing this proposal was withdrawn by ‘the Permittee’, G2 STEM, LLC, of Fairfax, Virginia.

Why could the people in Nicholson Township in Fayette County, PA, successfully keep out this industrial development?

In this county in southwestern Pennsylvania there is a history of strong community organizing to defend water and other natural resources. The Mountain Watershed Association (MWA), https://mtwatershed.com/about/, was founded in 1994 to oppose a proposal for underground coal mining in the Indian Creek Watershed. Since then MWA has addressed the legacy of pollution form coal mining and restored more than 70% of this watershed. With more than 2,500 members and supporters MWA is taking a proactive stance to protect the water quality of all who live in this watershed. MWA reached out to their members. The hearing room was packed full.

Furthermore, others knowledgeable about abandoned mines and water flow patterns nearby testified at this July hearing. The environmental policy advocate from Protect Penn-Trafford, https://www.protectpt.org/about, provided valuable testimony on the likely paths for contamination of the Monongahela River by the proposed injection well. Protect Penn-Trafford was established in 2014 as a community based, nonprofit, designed to protect the community from the harmful impacts of the fossil fuel industry.

This year, you can meet the executive direct of Protect Penn-Trafford, Gillian Graber, at the Community Sentinel Awards Ceremony hosted by FracTracker Alliance and Halt the Harm Network on November 9, 2023. [https://www.fractracker.org/get-involved/sentinel-award/] Save the date to attend virtually or join the live event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for an evening of music, art, celebrations of our communities and their successes, and an exciting partnership with the Natural History Museum’s new exhibit, We Refuse to Die.

Given such loud public support, the PA State Representative, Charity Grimm Krupa, was motivated to draft HB 1656, which would ban injection of fracking waste into wells through out Pennsylvania.

See Rep Krupa’s description of HB 1656 at,

https://www.legis.state.pa.us//cfdocs/Legis/CSM/showMemoPublic.cfm?chamber=H&SPick=20230&cosponId=41227

HB 1656 now has bipartisan support in the General Assembly of Pennsylvania. But companies looking to make money from injecting toxic waste will keep looking for isolated areas where few people are able to protect their well water. As recently stated by PA Senator Gene Yaw, fracking must expand to supply the development of the hydrogen hubs. There is a lot of fracking waste to be disposed of before a bill gets passed into law in Pennsylvania. The best way a township can protect its water is to pass a rule excluding such land use. The landowners must demand this to protect the quality of their private drinking water. Consider the communities in Pennsylvania that are still waiting for a company that extracts gas to restore their clean water. Consider the parallel situation described in the book, Desperate, by Kris Maher, published by Scribner in September 2021.

Now there its even more evidence that proximity to producing frack wells is dangerous for our health. See, https://concernedhealthny.org/compendium/. Proximity to fracking waste water is also dangerous.