Room 702
350 Capitol Street
Charleston, WV 25301
(304) 558-2971
(304) 558-1035 (fax)
Dr. Gupta,
In Fayette County, leukemia and other cancers are among the highest in the nation. Fayette County also has long been used as an industrial waste dump.
On July 9, Danny Webb Construction, Inc. (DWC) will ask the Environmental Quality Board to allow the disposal of highly-toxic, radioactive horizontal-hydrofracturing (frack) waste to continue with no permit, arguing that DWC’s facility has financially benefited the County.
This letter is to demand that as Commissioner for the WV Bureau of Public Health, you file a Motion to Intervene in Evidentiary Hearing 15-09-EQB to prevent any further dumping by DWC.
Undeniable evidence in DWC’s most recent permit application reveals extremely high radionuclides in the waste plus dangerously flawed injection wells. In addition, frack contaminants were discovered in Wolf creek, just downstream from these wells and upstream from the main county public water intake, by Duke University scientists and USGS researchers.
There are documents indicating criminal negligence on the part of the WV Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). Far from restraining this rogue polluter, the DEP appears to have colluded with the Environmental Quality Board and blocked the scientific verification of high radioactivity in DWC’s on-site sludge pits. Moreover, when removing those pits, the DEP fraudulently listed the sludge as “not radioactive,” in order to dump it into Raleigh County’s landfill! As a regulating agency, the DEP certainly knew that the high radioactivity in the waste would be concentrated up to ten times higher than in the sludge.
Meanwhile, DWC has been allowed to ignore important protective regulations since it began dumping in Fayette Co. in 2002. This includes the last 18 months when DEP rescinded the old DWC permit but then immediately issued a waiver which allowed the company to proceed as before.
At its recent zoning board meeting, Fayette Co. Commissioners clearly agreed that DWC does not financially benefit their County. Therefore, allowing this scofflaw facility to continue endangering public health is a dereliction of your agency’s duty. The above-described Motion to Intervene is a preventative intervention. As a WV taxpayer, I demand that your office take it.
Sincerely,
Tom Rhule, Communication Director
WV Mountain Party
304 989 1629