What next?

Since Woodie Cantrell lost his lawsuit against Ashland Inc. in March, several of us have been kicking around ideas about what may happen next.  Just idle speculation, you know.  Here are a few thoughts:

• Nothing will happen.  Folks want to forget about Ashland ever being here and move on with their lives.
• Someone will sue for property damages, based on actual damages occurring to their specific property, e.g. a radioactive un-remediated sludge pit that needs cleaning up.  The plaintiff would attempt to get the court to force Ashland to pay for the necessary clean-up.  Given the ongoing ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, juries in the future may be more willing to slap Ashland around a little.
• Someone will sue for personal injury.  The water table here is polluted with Ashland's brine waste.  People drank this water from their wells, including the students and faculty of Blaine School.  There are several cancer deaths that could be tied to exposure to radioactive radium and barium isotopes through drinking water.

Most likely we will end up with a few sludge pit remediations paid for by either Ashland or the Kentucky taxpayer, and most people will continue with their lives happy to put Ashland Oil in their rear-view mirror.

Radiation at Blaine Elementary School

Over 15 years ago radiation was discovered in the drinking water and playground equipment at Blaine Elementary School, about 5 miles from Martha.  The playground equipment was made from pipes provided by Ashland Oil to the school.  Of course the pipes were loaded with radioactive scale and were removed from the school grounds once it was discovered that they were radioactive.

The drinking water at the school was tested and subsequently shut down.  The water table was evidently found to be contaminated so bottled water was brought in for the students.  Eventually a dedicated water supply was provided for the school and all this slipped down the memory hole.  Try googling the internet.  There’s nothing out there…except this:

From the Public Papers of Governor Brereton C. Jones, 1991-1995, page 359-360

House Committee on Appropriations Testimony

Washington, D.C.

February 28, 1995

“I went to Blaine Elementary School in Lawrence County, Kentucky, where $430,000 had been approved to help build thirty-one miles of water lines for the area.  The principal, who met me at the door, was nearly in tears because she was so excited.  The 320 students who went to that school had to drink bottled water because of the presence of radioactive sludge from nearby oil-field pits.  Some of them had never, ever, had running water in their homes.  And that $430,000 was only a part of the funding.  The community also had gotten a Community Development Block Grant of $750,000, a Farmers Home Administration grant of $500,000, a Farmers Home Loan of $400,000, plus more than $118,000 in local money and almost $35,000 in in-kind labor.  So that $450,000 has been parlayed into a construction project exceeding $2.3 million.”

What Governor Jones was telling the House Committee on Appropriations was that an original $430,000 contribution from the Appalachian Regional Commission was leveraged with additional federal and local taxpayer money into a $2.3 million water system for Blaine, Kentucky, all because Ashland Oil contaminated the water table with radioactive waste.  We may be mistaken, but, unless it is included in the local money or the in-kind labor we don’t see any Ashland contribution to this water system.  Blaine Elementary School had to shut down its well, buy bottled water, and the taxpayers had to buy a new water system for the school.  Ashland used to be considered by folks to be a good corporate citizen around here.  It seems that in the end they just did a dump and run.

Look at the video Toxic Soup: Radiation at School for more information about Ashland’s radioactive contamination at the school.

Ashland, clean up your mess!

The Radioactive Pollution

Naturally occurring radioactive material, or "NORM," is a term used to describe radioactive material that occurs naturally but is radioactively enhanced or concentrated through human activity. Radioactivity associated with NORM in waste generated by the exploration and production of gas and oil is produced by the decay of uranium and thorium. Radium-226, a decay product of uranium which occurs in the Devonian shale that is a source rock for much of the oil found in Kentucky, is the decay product of most concern, because unlike the highly insoluble uranium, the radium (Ra226) is water and brine-soluble and is brought to the land surface and often concentrated as a by-product of the production of oil. The process of development of the oil resources, including the waterflooding of producing formations, and surface activities to separate oil from wastewaters, has resulted in the surface disposal of concentrated levels of radium-226 in disposal pits, and the concentration of radium-226 on land areas associated with tank batteries used for separation of oil and produce (brine) water, at concentrations which exceed levels at which the Environmental Protection Agency has recommended that action should be taken to require removal and proper management of the radioactive materials and contaminated soil.

The principal contaminant of concern in the radiation problems associated with oil production activities appears to be radium-226, which was noted by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality to have "a number of physical and chemical features that make it a particularly potent hazard to human health:"

* It emits both alpha and gamma radiation
* It behaves much like calcium and is incorporated into the bones in the human body
* It is a known carcinogen
* It has a half-life of 1,620 years
* It undergoes radioactive decay to produce radon - another hazardous substance.
* Radium-226 can enter both aquatic and terrestrial food chains leading to human consumption.

The current level of information regarding the extent of the problem of oilfield radioactive wastes in the state is virtually nonexistent, and it is not known beyond the Martha oil field, whether a problem exists with oilfield waste radioactivity. Data developed on the Martha oil field through field surveys conducted by the Cabinet for Human Resources and the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Cabinet, as well as a consultant for an oil company in the area, indicates the existence of numerous sites where levels of radium-226 has been detected at excessive levels. These areas include apparently dozens of brine/sludge pits in the Martha oil field that were formerly used for separation of oil and produced water (brine), and for disposal of oil-related sludges and clays as well as other land areas which currently or formerly supported tank batteries (oil/water separators) or piping and equipment storage, many of which exhibit levels of radium-226 as much as hundreds of times above the levels deemed unacceptable due to health consequences by the United States Environmental Protection Agency for human exposure.