Smile, You're on Candid Camera Ashland Oil

On January 6, 2010 we wrote a blog about how the court in the Cantrell v. Ashland case disallowed the plaintiff’s videotape of Ashland’s contractors polluting a creek with liquid pumped from a radioactive sludge pit that they were contracted to clean up.  The jury never got to see what Ashland was doing in the name of “remediation.”  Well, thanks to a mysterious benefactor, the videotape is on the web and we all can see what the jury was not allowed to see.

First, a bit of background.  Ashland Oil negotiated an agreement with the state of Kentucky to identify and clean up radioactive sites in the Martha Oil Field.  An instance of this “remediation” was filmed in 1996 and was submitted as evidence in the Cantrell v. Ashland court case in which the plaintiffs sued Ashland for damages to their property.  The court did not allow this tape to be shown to the jury for several reasons listed here.

We can see the videotape here.  Here is what’s happening on the video:

0:04 – 0:15       Shows the extent of the sludge pit.  What a mess.

0:15 – 0:26       This is the waste line running from the sludge pit to the creek.

0:38                 A worker holding some kind of instrument

0:50                 This is the intake to the waste line that runs to the creek

0:59                 Check out the red “Danger” tape around the sludge pit

1:14 – 1:31      A backhoe loads some radioactive soil into a truck to be hauled away

1:31                 Shows a view of the creek

The court thought this tape would be prejudicial, so they disallowed it.  Remember, this is a clean up at just one remediation site.  Think about this clean up happening hundreds of times under one of the following possible scenarios:

-         The remediation efforts have specific procedures that:

o       Encourage dumping radioactive liquids from the cleanup site into creeks; or
o       Prohibit dumping radioactive liquids from the cleanup site into creeks, but the workers did it anyway; or

-         The remediation efforts do not have specific procedures of how to dispose of radioactive liquids from the cleanup site, so the workers improvised.

Any one of these scenarios results in a radioactive creek, so you see why the land owners are suing for property damages and don’t believe that the cleanup has been done properly.  Anyone think this property has been damaged?  How about that creek?  How about whatever is downstream?  Hopefully no cattle were drinking out of that creek.

Ashland, clean up your mess, again and again!

Oil Field Remediation in Texas

If you think the problems we have here in Martha getting Ashland Oil to clean up their radioactive mess are unique, you're wrong.  Check out how ExxonMobil does oil field remediation in Texas... with a can of spray paint!  A radioactive tank battery was marked "NORM Containing Equipment."  Then this marking was spray painted over so now it's not a problem anymore.  Never mind that there is still radioactive material in that tank battery.

Now Ashland would have (and did, just check out the video above: "Martha Reclamation Program: Dump and Run") just dumped the contents of those tank batteries into a pit and covered it up with dirt.  Either way the radiation is still there, well, radiating.  Anyone other than state regulators think this is OK?

Hat tip: Mike Holmstrom

Louisiana's New Thingamabob

Here’s some interesting news from Louisiana (hat tip: Elizabeth Burns) about a relatively inexpensive way to measure the spread of brine water in soil in order to determine the extent of pollution from produced water pits.

ExxonMobil and Chevron are both settling cases with the state of Louisiana based on a technology called GEM. This is short for Geophex Electromagnetic Survey. It involves a conductivity probe that measures soil conductivity (more salt = higher conductivity) as you push it into the ground with a hydraulic rig. The probe is connected to a computer so that you can see how deep the salt contamination is in the field as soon as you are done pushing the rod as deep as you want to go. Using this toy, and the GEM, the plumes of open produced water pits are completely mapped before any samples are collected.

An attorney working for the state of Louisiana claims it costs about $1200 to map a pit in an open field.  They use a company called ICON Environmental.  The attorney reports that:

He said you can turn it over to the regulators and watch Chevron and ExxonMobil attempt to clean up produced water pits.

Of course this measurement method assumes produced water was dumped into pits.  In the Martha Oil Field a lot of produced water was just dumped into creeks.  Remember what General Kern called Yatesville Lake: Dead Sea II from all the brine.  Maybe the Commonwealth of Kentucky should be talking to the State of Louisiana. 

Ashland, clean up your mess!

Martha Reclamation Program: Dirty Socks Under the Bed

After a piece of radioactive pipe from Ashland Oil’s Martha oil field tripped a Geiger counter at a scrap yard in 1988, Ashland knew they had a problem.  Let’s let Tom FitzGerald, Director of the Kentucky Resources Council, tell the story.  From his August 11, 2005 letter to the Kentucky Department for Public Health:

The discovery of elevated levels of radioactivity in the Martha oil field in the late 1980’s led to the development of a “Joint Agreement on Martha Reclamation Program (MRP)” executed between the Cabinet for Human Resources (CHR) and Ashland Exploration (AEI), in which AEI agreed to a program of reclamation under a document captioned “Martha Reclamation program” (August 1, 1993), modified by Technical Support Addendum (October/December 1994) and Technical Consensus Document (January 1995) in which levels of NORM would be lowered through selective removal of contaminated media, to agreed-upon values for radioactivity, with confirmatory sampling by the company and oversight by the Cabinet. The exemption criteria below which no remediation would be required was set at 5 pCi/gm above natural background and averaged over 100 square meters, in the top 15 cm of soil (with 15 pCi below 15 cm).

Whew!  Reading that was about as fun as clearing kudzu.  We think what he meant was Ashland and the state of Kentucky entered into an agreement to clean up the radiation to an agreed standard, with testing performed by Ashland (overseen by the state of Kentucky) to confirm that the agreed standard was met.  Now, back to Mr. FitzGerald…

After execution of the Joint Agreement in February 1995, procedures were agreed upon by CHR and AEI for selective confirmatory surveys of well sites and tank battery sites, for removal of contaminated soil and piping to a local collection and storage site, and for securing letters from CHR approving the remediated sites for “unrestricted release.” The “First Addendum to Joint Agreement on Martha Reclamation Program” executed in September 1995, contained procedures for release of sites, allowing any site with a reading below 20 micro r/hr at 1 meter above ground to be released, and providing for confirmatory surveys of a statistical sampling of the remediated sites. Over a period of several years as reclamation work was being undertaken by OHM under contract with AEI, data was submitted to the state concerning sites that had been “remediated” and letters of concurrence from CHR of the eligibility of many properties for unrestricted release were issued. The soils and piping removed by AEI were stored on AEI property, and to this day, significant quantities of the NORM-contaminated soil remain at a consolidation site and have not been properly disposed of in a permanent disposal site.

In other words, a process was put in place to survey selected sites where radioactive waste was likely to be, and the radioactive pipes, sludge, scale, soils, etc. that exceeded an agreed measurement threshold were removed to a temporary consolidation site on Ashland’s property.  The waste still sits there waiting for permanent disposal (see above video Toxic Soup: Ashland’s Radioactive Sludge Pits for an aerial view of the toxic waste consolidation site).  Once again, Mr. FitzGerald…

…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.

So, even though we’ve all been through the Martha Reclamation Program for the past 15 years we still have hazardous radioactive hot spots throughout the oil field.  So the clean-up has not been successful.  And we have a temporary radioactive waste dump site that is starting to look permanent.  We have radioactive waste drained out of old storage tanks, dumped into holes and buried. Some of these remediation efforts remind us of when we try to get our teenage kids to clean their rooms; at first things look OK but then we find that all the dirty socks and underwear end up under the bed.

Ashland, clean up this mess!

Ashland: How do you clean up a sludge pit? Dump it in the creek!

In the Cantrell v. Ashland case the plaintiffs tried to get a videotape admitted as evidence that showed Ashland’s contractors on November 12, 1996 intentionally pumping contaminated water and oil from a sludge pit into Blaine Creek, a public waterway that discharges into nearby Yatesville Lake.  Ashland was literally caught on tape.  We don’t have a copy of the actual tape, but we do have an “artist’s interpretation” depicting the events of November 12, 1996 for your entertainment.

The lower court disallowed the videotape and the accompanying testimony of the cameraman as evidence for the following reasons:

1. The court viewed the conduct on the videotape as a remedial measure for the contamination.  So let me get this straight… removing the radioactive waste from a sludge pit and dumping it into a public waterway is a standard remedial measure?  On what planet?  The videotape shows a clear example of the problem, not the remedy.
2. Ashland’s pollution of Blaine Creek was activity on other property, not the plaintiff’s property.  Here we go again.
3. The court viewed the tape as unfairly prejudicial toward Ashland.  Never mind that it merely shows what happened: Ashland pumping radioactive waste into the creek.
4. Finally, seizing on the plaintiff’s statement that the tape depicted a criminal act, the court stated, “Well then, you’re in the wrong Court right now, then.  You ought to be in criminal court.”  Since when is criminal evidence not admissible in a civil case?  Ask O.J. Simpson.

Needless to say, if the court won’t admit this type of evidence, the plaintiffs are fighting an uphill battle against Ashland and the courts.  What kind of message does this send to landowners in oil and gas country?

Ashland, clean up your mess!