Hypocritical New Brunswick Paving the Way for Fracking to Resume? Will prohibit dumping frack waste in municipal systems and prohibit importing frack waste. Will it be legal to inject it putting communities at risk of being destroyed by earthquakes? And will it be legal to export frack waste?

New Brunswick government says no to fracking wastewater at municipal sites by Andrew Cromwell, November 14, 2016, Global News

The Gallant government has addressed one of the more high profile issues in its ongoing moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in the province.

The government says it will not allow fracking wastewater to be disposed at any municipal wastewater facility in the province. It says provisions to the clean water act will be introduced.

“To not only prohibit the disposal of hydraulic fracturing wastewater in municipal wastewater treatment systems but also ensure that hydraulic fracturing wastewater from other jurisdictions is not imported into New Brunswick for disposal,” said Environment and Local Government Minister Serge Rousselle. [But legal to ship it to Nova Scotia and Quebec?]

The government says this form of wastewater disposal is no longer standard industry practice. [What is then?] Energy and Resource Development Minister Rick Doucet says it’s meant to clarify the situation for municipalities with systems that are taxpayer funded.

“We’re not going to be putting frack wastewater into those systems that could contaminate or ruin their own system,” he said. [But ok to ruin those systems in neighbouring provinces to keep profits rolling in for companies to cheap to appropriately deal with their frac waste?]

Fracking wastewater is one of five conditions the government says must be met before a moratorium on the practice can be lifted.

Fracking opponents feel this latest news could be a big blow to the effort to reestablish the industry in New Brunswick. [Really? When it’s easy to ship the toxic frac waste to Nova Scotia, and let Lafarge burn it off making cement while using Nova Scotia families as guinea pigs?]

“There’s some cowboys in the oil and gas industry that will take the cheapest disposal option possible every day 365 days a year,” said Lois Corbett of the Conservation Council of New Brunswick.

“This is taking an inexpensive and dangerous practice off the table all together.” [No it isn’t. New Brunswick’s toxic frac waste can be shipped next door and dumped, like it was in previous years.]

The province says other options are available for disposing of wastewater [Like shipping and dumping it or making cement with it in Nova Scotia and or injecting it and inducing life threatening and community destroying earthquakes?] but they will still have to meet various regulations.

[Emphasis added]

Fracking wastewater to be banned from municipal treatment systems, Province to introduce legislative changes to force industry to look elsewhere for wastewater disposal by CBC News with files from Joe McDonald, Nov 14, 2016

Watch: Changes will force industry to find a way to treat wastewater 2:10

In 2014, Dieppe engaged in discussions with Atlantic Industrial Services of Debert, N.S., to take in 30 million litres of treated wastewater from hydraulic fracturing operations.

“This respects best practices on protecting public health, the environment and water, and it respects the the need to protect public infrastructure,” said Doucet.

“This basically is taking the onus off the municipalities so it is not a situation where they are being approached.”

The New Brunswick government has an indefinite moratorium on allowing hydraulic fracturing to obtain natural gas. One of the conditions required for the lifting of the moratorium is there be a plan in place to treat wastewater from fracking sites.

“If industry wants to meet the conditions to lift the moratorium, they will need to find a different plan for wastewater disposal,” said Doucet.

“The use of municipal sewage treatment plants to treat wastewater from hydraulic fracturing is no longer standard industry practice,” he said. “The trend is to require industry to dispose of this wastewater without using public infrastructure.” [While letting industry destroy communities and the subsurface with frac and production waste injection well induced seismicity?]

… Lois Corbett, the executive director of the Conservation Council of New Brunswick, welcomed the announcement. “What New Brunswick is doing is … catching up with a few jurisdictions that have been good enough and wise enough to come forward and close an existing loophole,” said Corbett. “And … modernizing their own legislation to ensure we keep toxic materials out of wastewater treatment and that means that’s a good move.” [Emphasis added]

[Refer also to:

2016 09 12: NE BC, near Dawson Creek: Explosion at Encana fracking water facility injures worker. “We don’t know the hydrological and geological implications of drawing the saline aquifer down. We may be creating a different kind of problem.”

2016 09 03: Another 5.6M (later upgraded to 5.8M by USGS) Earthquake Hits Frac Ravaged Oklahoma: Mitigation Obviously Not Working! Quakes Increasing, No Matter How Many Injection Wells Shut Down or Injection Volumes Reduced. State Of Emergency Declared for Pawnee County. 58,628 people felt the quake, as far as 2,323 km away in Boston, MA

2016 09 02: New York signs law prohibiting fracking, and oil, natural gas waste in city; Alberta & other jurisdictions allow it dumped in landfills, on roads, leases, near communities and water ways (perhaps in them, who’s checking?). NORM increasing because of unconventional oil & gas, “has become a much more significant health, safety and environmental issue”

2016 06 16: Will waste water kill fracing? EPA bans disposal of frac waste at public treatment plants. Injecting it causes seismicity, recycling it is costly, using it to irrigate and landspraying it contaminates food, dumping it into waterways kills fish, pits filled with it leak, breathing it in aerosols corrodes lungs. What will companies do with it?

2016 06 08: BC Frac Waste Injection Gone Awry? Toxic Landslides Raise Alarms about Fracking, Site C, Almost two years after slides began carrying heavy metals into creeks, few answers

2016 06 02: B.C. ‘enhances’ earthquake monitoring at oil & gas wells after last year’s fracking shake, 4.6 quake last year largest on record in B.C.; 4.8 on day of Ernst vs AER hearing at Supreme Court of Canada largest in Alberta so far

2015 12 28: It’s an epidemic: Encana gets exclusive access to Dawson Creek’s treated sewer water for fracking operations

2015 05 20: The ‘Shocking’ Cost of Letting Companies Pollute for Free; This year alone, Fossil Fuels subsidized to tune of $5.3 Trillion

2015 03 24: Another Frac Panel? When will the many peer-reviewed studies and reports showing frac harm, bad economics and deadly jobs be enough? Former Chief Justice of Court of Queen’s Bench NB, Professor Engineering & President Emeritus University NB, former board chair of NB Community College appointed to study fracing

2015 02 11: If injected industry waste pollutes your groundwater, can you sue for trespass? Texas Supreme Court Justices “found a way to avoid issuing that opinion that could have had huge economic and political implications” … “The impacts to the oil and gas industry would be huge.”

2015 02 06: Fracking Waste Water Redux: it’s even worse in New Brunswick
Penobsquis residents hung out to dry