mkd58933:
Those two lunkheads will be looking for new jobs for sure. Maybe they’ll find employment with Trump’s new and improved EPA.
Better punishment to appoint them the orange king’s diaper changers and managers.
sugarhoser:
If only there was a way to verify that the waste was disposed of properly from pick up to disposal. Check in, check out, get check ! Oh that’s right because people are crooks and have zero morals. That why we elect them twice ! Fuknuds
Gimme a Break:
I hope the only water they and their families are allowed to use comes from that pond.What never ceases to shock me are many frac’ers – which intentionally contaminate and destroy billions of gallons of drinking water – have kids and pets. The insanity (and cruelty) of our species is off the charts. “Made in God’s image.” Ya, right.
Mark Gulbrandsen:
Private contractors working in that industry should be required to turn in verifable paperwork showing what shipment was dropped off where and when before they ever get paid. So I agree that the generater of these pollutants should also be sued for the irresponsability they have shown regarding this.
Raoul Nelson:
Oil company states they were unaware of dumping? They paid contractor to dump and likely asked not to be told HOW the waste was dumped. Oil company should be liable for NOT providing oversight. We need the EPA to protect us from companies who privatize profits and socialize expenses.
Mark Gulbrandsen:
Does the EPA still exist under the Orange Moron?
S V:
EPA will be a shell of what it was. And, Republicans voted last night to extend Trump’s 2027 tax cuts… adding $5 trillion to the national debt. But wait – they said it won’t be that high expensive because of planned spending cuts – 1 cut mentioned: “wasteful spending on environmental policies”.Going to be one hell of a lot of starving homeless frac-poisoned Americans, especially when the billionaires take social security after they’ve taken everything else. MAGAts will worship their orange nazi til they die, it’s much too painful for them to use their own brains, think for themselves and see who is stealing from them, destroying their pensions and the amazing infrastructures and institutions American paid through lifetimes to create and maintain.
Mark Gulbrandsen:
They had already used up any spending cuts Doge came up with…
Dennis Willis:
This is all too common and the oil company is full complicit. The companies hire low bid contactors, turn a blind eye and deny responsibility when the contractor breaks the law or is involved in an accident. At a bare minimum the contractor breaks should require the loads be documented, and require receipt from an authorized disposal facility.
Mat Maca:
Keep them in prison until the land and water has fully recovered, releasing them for a few hours only to clean up the hazardous material without hazmat clothing.
Parker Young:
Utah votes for people like this.Alberta and Saskatchewan too
mkd58933:
Over, and over, and over again.
Nofraud:
Sigh…
Prickly Pear:
I love to see jerks like this get caught! Makes my day.
Spicy McHaggis:
They sound perfect for trump appointees, perhaps to the EPA.
Nature Advocate:
The vehicle they used to dump the toxic waste should be impounded, then sold. They should pay for the cleanup by selling their homes, etc. I still smell oil in the creek near my home from the Chevron Oil Spill in 2010. It made a lot of people sick.
Troy Lovell:
Dirtbags. These kinds of people could not care less about the world we live in. Too much of this going around, right MAGA?Too much hanging God with our clean up.
Michael James:
The company that emptied the porta-potties after the Bryce Canyon Marathon dumped the waste into the Sevier River. So, there’s precedent.
robert barr:
Send them to jail and feed hydrate them from the plants around the pond and the pond water. Make the punishment fit the crime!
The O.G. of R.P.:
What is tRump’s EPA going to do about it? Probably not a stinking thing. Rules just get in the way of profits, don’tcha know. Just ask them.
Stephen K:
If these two guys, Braden and Jeremy, formed a much much bigger toxic waste company they could not only get away with it, they’d earn millions each year from state subsidies.
3dogman:
Make the two Cretans drink the pond water from their dumping site.
Pete the Yooper:
Don’t worry Trump will pardon ‘em.
Drill, Baby, Drill !!!!!
Galen:
exactly!
Pete the Yooper:
BUT don’t worry: Jonathon Braun, a predatory loan shark FREED by Trump in 2021, is BACK IN JAIL today, after committing a series of, wait-for-it, PREDATORY crimes against, among others, a MINOR(Matt Gaetz anyone ??) as well as SEXUAL assault. Hey, I thought PARDONS were for persons who had REHABILITATED their lives. Silly me.
A leopard never changes its spots ??
Troy Lovell:
Trump has never pardoned a single person that was worthy of it. The purpose of Trump’s pardons, in my view, is to create an army of orcs that he knows don’t give a shit about the law, and that are beholden to him and will kill/steal/rape/abuse/threaten/dump on command. The more violent the rapists, the better according to Orange Rapist Feloniass.He has pardoned 69 people convicted of fraud. All at the same time that he talks about going after fraud. Another example that his administration is not after fraud, just the middle class.
aquaduct:
RFKJR is in town, maybe he can testify as an expert witness that minimally processed petroleum products are actually healthy for the environment and human consumption.
mkd58933:
Sounds like something Bobbie Brainworm would say.
‘Beyond anything I’ve ever seen’: Two men charged with felonies after toxic wastewater dumped in Utah pond, The wastewater came from an oilfield in Bear River, Wyo., near the state line by Anastasia Hufham, April 4, 2025, The Salt Lake Tribune
Two men were charged Tuesday after Utah officials say they dumped oily wastewater into a northeastern Utah pond on multiple occasions.
“The sheer quantity of the pollution was beyond anything I’ve ever seen as an investigator,” said Brent Kasza, a special agent for the Utah Trust Lands Administration.
The state agency said the wastewater came from an oilfield in Bear River, Wyo., near the state line with Utah.
Two contractors — Braden Lance and Jeremy Oliver — were hired to take the waste to a disposal facility in LaBarge, Wyo., over 100 miles from Bear River. Instead, Lance and Oliver dumped the wastewater into a small pond near Woodruff, Utah, about 13 miles from the Bear River oilfield — a much shorter distance away.
Kasza said the contractors “were pocketing the money provided for their expenses they didn’t incur.”
Lance and Oliver were both charged with four third-degree felony counts of “unlawful discharge of pollutants,” case records show. Their initial appearance in the Rich County Justice Court is set for April 22.
The dumped wastewater contained oil, hydraulic fluid, grease, sand and mud, the state agency said in a press release, which are all common contaminants in wastewater produced from oil drilling.
The state said it received a tip about the illegal dumping in February 2024. When Kasza first visited the “pond-like area” in Rich County, he smelled a “strong chemical odor” and saw that surrounding plants “had turned black and died,” the agency said.
The company that owns the oilfield in Bear River was not aware of the dumping, according to the release. A spokesperson for the state agency said it is not naming the company because the company has not been charged in this case.
“Discharging pollutants near a small, rural town in Utah is unconscionable,” said Michelle E. McConkie, director of the Trust Lands Administration, in a statement. “This illegal activity appears to have caused damage to the immediate environment and also has the potential to cause harm to the local community.”
The Trust Lands Administration manages 3.3 million acres of land across Utah to generate revenue for institutions like public schools and hospitals.
Refer also to:
… The Environment America Research & Policy Center report, “Fracking by the Numbers,” is the first to measure the damaging footprint of fracking to date. …
“At health clinics, we’re seeing nearby residents experiencing nausea, headaches and other symptoms linked to fracking pollution,” said David Brown, a toxicologist who has reviewed health data from Pennsylvania. “With billions of gallons of toxic waste coming each year, we’re just seeing the ‘tip of the iceberg’ in terms of health risks.” The “Fracking by the Numbers” report measured key indicators of fracking threats across the country, including:
• 280 billion gallons of toxic wastewater generated in 2012,
• 450,000 tons of air pollution produced in one year,
• 250 billion gallons of fresh water used since 2005,
• 360,000 acres of land degraded since 2005,
• 100 million metric tons of global warming pollution since 2005.
Fracking also inflicts other damage not quantified in the report — ranging from contamination of residential wells to ruined roads to earthquakes at disposal sites.
Reviewing the totality of this fracking damage, the report’s authors conclude: Given the scale and severity of fracking’s myriad impacts, constructing a regulatory regime sufficient to protect the environment and public health from dirty drilling — much less enforcing such safeguards at more than 80,000 wells, plus processing and waste disposal sites across the country — seems implausible. In states where fracking is already underway, an immediate moratorium is in order. In all other states, banning fracking is the prudent and necessary course to protect the environment and public health.
2012: How Encana/Ovintiv dumps its waste in my community, enabled by politicians we pay and industry’s self regulator, the feeble, lying cowardly and corrupt AER:
“He was pouring stuff into any hole he could find.”
2011: Baytex submits action plan to ERCB following accidental land spraying with crude oil Accidental or intentionally accidental?
2006: Companies lie, tell Canadian farmers toxic waste is “free fertilizer” to con them into signing contracts, letting companies dump the waste onto farmers’ private lands in exchange for a few dollars.
2005: Slides from an Encana presentation on its toxic frac fluids, and waste dumped on national wildlife lands in Alberta. These are sensitive protected lands, so you can bet farmers and ranchers get the same if not worse contamination and toxic disrespect. Encana suggests in its slides that contractors hired by Encana are responsible for using less toxic fluids.
2003: Alberta Landspraying, aka Dumping toxic oilfield waste, while drilling (LWD) Review One of the companies doing the waste dumping during this review, was, you guessed it: Encana/Ovintiv
… Visible impacts to vegetation were correlated with areas where spread materials persisted…and were observed on 71% of sites. …
Mudpacks from poorly conducted land spray operations kill native prairie and take years to ameliorate.
Problem land sprays have been left with inadequate clean up.
Staff time to process applications, plan and monitor land spray applications has been unacceptably high. … Industry has failed to meet mapping and record keeping requirements. Mapping has been non-existent or completely inaccurate with examples of company maps with incorrect GPS coordinates and sites that have received double spray applications over the same land base. …
We cannot ignore that one of the integrated uses on Public Land is food production.
… The AEUB [then ERCB, now AER] had conducted drilling waste audits on 51 LWD sites throughout the Province. The information (paper) audit consisted of a review of information supplied from companies on disposals conducted between 2001 and 2003. Of the 51 audits, eight passed….
Discussion and Summary
The review of the LWD file paper trail and of field inspection reports from the Medicine Hat office highlighted a number of failures and problems, which were common to both review components. The most common problem was that of LWD projects being applied outside of the approved area. … Finally, siting problems were common to both review components with LWD materials being applied through watercourses, on high wildlife habitat like sagebrush cover and on fragile sand dune sites. … The file review and field observations revealed that on a high percentage of sites, LWD is not being conducted according to the guidelines and is having a negative impact on native range.