state laws protect us and our children. They do, in many cases, but NOT went it comes to health and safety regulations concerning the fracking of natural gas and oil. In Ohio, there are so many holes in the oil and gas regulations that the loopholes are big enough to drive a bus through.
I wondered what would happen if a truck full of liquid waste (brine) from a horizontally hydrofracked well hit a school bus on one of our rural roads – say Ohio Rt.144 in Athens County where a permit for the Atha Injection well is pending. So I started asking questions.
According to Athens County Emergency Management Agency Director Fred Davis, if there were an accident, the local volunteer fire department would be the first on the scene. If hazardous chemicals were involved, the responders would call a HAZMAT team. They would have to decontaminate the kids – have them take a shower.
They can't take the contamination to a hospital. They would have to clean the ambulance, etc. He said that there should be a placard on the truck that tells what's in it. Each fire department has an emergency response guide that tells how to deal with those substances.
But, for brine trucks carrying fracking fluid from the oil and gas industry, there is nothing in or on the truck to tell what they are carrying. That industry is exempt from those laws. How would first responders know what was in the truck?
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