Toxic Waste Dump is Death Sentence to Ogallala Aquifer

I am a Nebraska citizen from Holt County. I grew up on a Sandhills ranch. I still enjoy
our pure water straight from the Ogallala Aquifer, untreated and unfiltered. KXLs first
route was to cross just west of our private well where, because of our high water table, it
would have been laying in ground water. As an RN for almost 35 years, I am quite
concerned about water contamination. Water is worth fighting for!
I grew up respecting our government and leaders. Through my KXL efforts, Ive come to
see a different government than what I thought I knew. Respect has been exchanged for
distrust and disgust. The controlling interest is financial power, and a major player is the
petroleum industry. Ive always thought fracking would be much more threatening to our
state than KXL and so I was devastated when I learned of the disposal well planned for
Western Nebraska, north of Mitchell.
Scotland, Ireland, France, and The Netherlands are a few in a list of countries which have
halted fracking. Vermont and New York State have banned fracking. California and
Maryland are pushing for a ban. Concerned Health Professionals of New York were
among several entities that convinced their state to ban this extremely destructive
practice. Health authorities in Colorado and Utah have expressed concern about adverse
health impacts related to fracking, including increased infant mortality.
Nebraska is the most water-rich state in our country and fracking, along with disposal
wells, is the number one enemies to water. Please dont believe industry lies claiming
your water will be protected. The industry PR people pull off deceptive media tricks by
using pleasant terms, such as calling the waste water brine or salt water. This water is
so contaminated it cant even be treated to be reusable! The high saline concentration is
toxic in itself, but this fracking wastewater, mixed with sand, is loaded with toxic
chemicals and is radioactive. Radium is released when the deep underground rocky shale
is blasted apart and is flushed back up in the wastewater. An injection well or disposal
well is much too nice a name for a toxic waste dump.
Industry lobbyists have made it easier for themselves by convincing Congress to include
a provision known as the Halliburton Loophole, which exempts the fracking industry
from major federal laws such as the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and
parts of the Resource Recovery and Conservation Act. Companies are not required to
disclose fracking chemicals because they claim the information is proprietary. But
independent studies reveal very toxic concoctions with hormone-disrupting chemicals,
which cause problems with fertility, the immune system, and the thyroid and also with a
well-known potent carcinogen, benzene.
Given the nature of the chemicals used in the fracking process, we may see increases in
cancers, neurologic diseases, cardiac and respiratory diseases, and developmental
disorders in coming years, but it will take time for these effects to show up, said Gina
Angiola, M.D., Board Member of Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility and

cofounder of CHP-Md. (Food&Water Watch, Maryland Legislators Introduced Fracking

Moratorium Bill. 02-05-15)
The plan is to actually drill through our Ogallala Aquifer to dump 10,000 barrels of waste
daily! Water knows no boundaries. The toxic wastewater will only be separated from
good water by a cement casing, which has notorious failure rates. Underground shifts
from earthquakes would seem to only increase this failure rate.
Any water contamination on the western edge of the aquifer will eventually flow
eastward with the natural directional flow of the aquifer. The ultimate worst location for
an underground toxic waste dump is on the western edge of the vast Ogallala Aquifer, one
of the largest fresh water aquifers in the world. This is a death sentence for Nebraska,
which has the lions share of this precious resource. Imagine all those toxins migrating
forever into the future, posing serious problems for fuure generations of Nebraskans. A
monitoring well to test for leakage will only do that; there is no solution for cleaning up
an aquifer. This is not a local issue, this is a public issue. This is absolutely insane! No
common sense, only dollars and cents.
A U.S. Geological Survey study of pollution from oil production in North Dakota, where
horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing are heavily used, identified two potential
plumes of groundwater contamination covering 12 square miles. The cause was traced to
a casing failure in a wastewater disposal well. Drilling companies had incorrectly
assumed that, once injected underground, the wastewater would remain contained
Although it is a common method of disposal for fracking wastewater, the last significant
government study of pollution risks from oil and gas wastewater injection wells occurred
in 1989 and found multiple cases of costly groundwater contamination. In subsequent
years, studies have continued to link underground injection of drilling wastewater to
pollution as well as earthquakes. (Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media
Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking, Unconventional Gas and Oil
Extraction, Water Contamination pages 20 and 24, 07-10-14)
Forcing gargantuan quantities of waste into the ground causes earthquakes, as has been
happening across the country. Injection wells used for the disposal of liquid fracking
waste have been implicated as causing a rash of earthquakes in Ohio, Texas, and most of
Oklahoma, and the frequency continues to increase. Earthquakes in turn will only cause
further underground migration of toxins.
"During the first four months of 2014, Oklahoma had experienced 109 earthquakes of
magnitude 3 or higher on the Richter scale. By mid-June, the number of earthquakes had
topped 200, exceeding the frequency of earthquakes in California." (Compendium of
Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking,
Unconventional Gas and Oil Extraction, Earthquakes and seismic activity page 37, 0710-14)

Northwestern Colorado already has 20,260 fracked wells in Weld County alone, blasting
into the Niobrara Shale, which underlies corners of Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska. I
foresee a big push to increase fracking in Nebraska, particularly if drillers can access our
aquifer water and inflowing river water. Water is the number one requirement, using
between 2-8 million gallons per fracked well, and wells are sometimes fracked multiple
times. Fresh water is wasted and permanently removed from the natural water cycle.
Fresh water is most valuable to our agricultural state.
A disposal well on the western edge of the Ogallala Aquifer is an abomination. It is only
about industry profits. The petroleum industry is swimming in fracked oil and is
determined to bribe Congress to lift the export ban on U.S. produced oil, allowing them
greater profits on the lucrative world market. Dont let Nebraska be used as a toxic dump
by other states! This is absolutely not in the best interest of our state and future
generations of Nebraskans.

Educate yourself. Best source for fracking research and studies: Compendium of
Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of
Fracking (Unconventional Gas and Oil Extraction. This can be found by
searching the Internet or see link below.
Attend the Nebraska Oil and Gas Commission hearing in Sydney, NE on February
24, 2015. Speak your mind!
Write or visit your elected leaders.
Submit editorials to papers
Organize locally.

Cindy Myers, RN
Rural Holt County, Nebraska
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_26800380/dead-babies-near-oil-drilling-sites-raisequestions
http://concernedhealthny.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/CHPNY-FrackingCompendium.pdf
http://www.omaha.com/news/nebraska/proposed-fracking-wastewater-injection-site-inwestern-nebraska-raises-some/article_763bfe82-a7df-11e4-ae17-9b8ff82d05a1.html
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/government/state-orders-injection-well-shut-downafter-northwestern-oklahoma-earthquake/article_4184d155-d9b2-523d-a8d5033174ff8584.html
http://www..org/pressreleases/maryland-legislators-introduce-fracking-moratorium
foodandwaterwatch -bill/