Gary Pearce posted on March 05, 2013 08:42
“I really don’t see it as an issue,” said Senator Buck Newton. “If it went from County A to County B, I’m not sure why County B would have a major objection to that.”
“It” is waste brines and toxins from fracking, which – John Murawski reports in the N&O – could end up being injected into deep wells in coastal North Carolina.
Believe me, Buck: “County B” will object. County B always objects when someone proposes dumping waste there from County A.
Ask Governor McCrory. Voters down east dumped him in 2008 when the Perdue campaign ran an ad that said he supported dumping New York City’s garbage in Eastern North Carolina.
Ask Governor Hunt. He caught hell in Halifax County when he pushed for a landfill to store PCB-contaminated soil.
Ask Governor Martin. He went radioactive in Northampton County when he proposed dumping low-level nuclear waste there.
Or just ask your Republican colleagues in the legislature. Like Rep. Rick Catlin, a Republican from Wilmington who is a hydrogeologist and environmental engineer. He said: “It’s going to be very controversial…You’re basically contaminating an aquifer forever. Please don’t inject any down here.”
Sounds like it’s an issue.
Tyler Clark, a former state geologist, warned: “Once you put it in the ground, it’s not going to stay there, it’s going to go somewhere. It would be hard to predict where it could travel.”
Of course, that may explain why the legislature threw the state geologist off the fracking commission.