Since Minnesota sub took this MNNPR story down in denial..."Seeing the mounting problems, one city tried to stop Dukuly-linked businesses from operating within its borders — but the move ultimately backfired, helping to inspire a law that now prevents cities from shutting down problem group homes."...
Marietta, Ohio, a historic city along the Ohio River, has become an unwitting hub for interstate fracking wastewater disposal, with hundreds of millions of gallons of radioactive brine pumped underground into more than 240 permitted injection wells statewide, far more than neighboring Pennsylvania’s 19 or West Virginia’s few dozen. Pennsylvania alone exported roughly three-quarters of its fracking brine needing permanent disposal to Ohio last year, and rural Washington County, home to Marietta, saw 59 percent of the 562 million gallons of waste injected under it over the past two years come from out of state. Ohio’s status as a dumping ground traces back to a decades-old federal decision allowing the state to self-regulate its injection wells long before fracking existed, making it easier to drill wells there than in states with federal oversight.
The wastewater isn’t staying underground as intended. Bob Wilson, who owns traditional oil and gas wells outside Marietta, has watched brine erupt from his own wells, telling reporters, “There should not be any water here at all,” while noting pressure readings higher than he’d ever seen, and he’s now suing several injection well companies after losing wells to the intrusions. Geologist David Jeffery of Marietta College said the flooded wells show brine is “migrating” through underground rock formations, a danger compounded by as many as 66,000 undocumented old oil and gas wells scattered across Ohio that could serve as unknown conduits for contamination. Cory Haydocy, former executive director of the Ohio Oil and Gas Commission, said, “The state and industry have possessed definitive proof for years that these injection wells were threatening the surrounding geology,” after the commission “explicitly confirmed” underground migration back in 2024.
The stakes are especially high because four injection wells within two miles of Marietta’s drinking water source have taken in wastewater from Pennsylvania fracking sites with median radium-226 levels ranging from 428 to 1,800 times the EPA’s drinking water standard, prompting City Council President Susan Vessels to warn, “If we get anything nuclear in our water, that’s it. We’re done.” After the state approved a fifth and sixth injection well near the city, officials declared an emergency last year, citing brine “regularly migrating to the surface” and seismic activity in Washington County that had increased nearly 20-fold since 2023, evidence they said showed underground rock formations were “moving and likely fracturing.” Marietta and eight other local water authorities have since called for a moratorium on new wells and a halt to injection within six miles of the aquifer, while a lawsuit from Buckeye Environmental Network and Earthjustice challenges permits issued to DeepRock Disposal Solutions, the company behind several proposed wells; in July, regulators shut down four injection wells in the county, including one owned by DeepRock, after determining nearby high pressures at wells like Wilson’s “could only be caused by nearby injection wells.”
An ICE spokesperson told the radio outlet that Nixon Pérez Paz had two convictions for drunk driving, but STLPR did not find any court records to confirm that account. The spokesperson also said that Nixon Pérez Paz had an open container charge in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2010, but prosecutors had dropped that.
“If immigration hadn’t picked up my brother, my sister-in-law would still be alive, and the children wouldn’t be going through this sorrow,” Ronaldo told the radio outlet. He’s now caring for his three young nieces but doesn’t know how to explain their parents’ deaths to them.