newsCOUP

“I Turned Blue”: Workers Share Horrifying Experiences Treating Fracking Wastewater Project: TENORM   Published: December 2023 by Joshua Boaz Pribanic for Public Herald "I'm pretty sure I was at death's door. If I wouldn't have gone to the hospital and got oxygen and got help, I would've been in bad, bad shape." Over the past six months, Public Herald has been contacted by four additional Eureka wo...

Yellowstone Series: Government Uses Poison Linked to Parkinson’s in Montana Waterways Since 1948 Project: Yellowstone Series   Published: November 2022 by Emma Lichtwardt & Joshua Boaz Pribanic for Public Herald Public Herald has found that since 1948, in the name of conservation, the Montana government has been using a poison linked to Parkinson’s disease in lakes, ponds, and rivers across the st...

“They’re a Bunch of Liars” – Records Expose Lies About Injection Well Safety Project: newsCOUP   Published: October 2022 “Everybody right now that’s in the DEP’s oil and gas management are liars,” Barr told Public Herald. “They’re really, really bad. They’re covering up, and they just cover up, cover up.” Just north of Pittsburgh, close to the city’s water supply, an injection well in nearby Plum...

Senator Says Pennsylvania Bypassed Feds & Issued “Illegal” Permit That Threatens Dimock Waterways With Radioactivity From Fracking NPDES Permits – Part One, Dimock Pa. “The EPA never saw this application until I brought it to their attention…meaning, DEP gave [Eureka] a fake permit,” Senator Muth told Public Herald. On public record, on at least three occasions , DEP claims it secured a waiver fro...

We Found The Names of Radioactive Waste Locations That Government Kept Secret Radioactive Oil & Gas Test Sites Uncovered & Mapped by Public Herald For about six years, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has obscured the radioactive hazards of oil and gas operations. Now, for the first time, all 144 names and locations are being released by the team at Public Herald.   Su...

“A Permanent Reactor” Fracking’s Radioactive Health Threat to Ohio Will Last 1,600 Years Without Action Don't miss this final episode in the Ohio three-part series about the "permanent nuclear reactor" — created from mountains of fracking waste piling up in communities across America. “This is a permanent reactor near your house, and it will always be a reactor because the waste got pooled togethe...

Investigation Uncovers Ohio Is “Illegally” Building Radioactive Mountains, Affecting 26 Waterways “It is an extremely, overwhelmingly strong bet that the waste and disposal practices in Ohio are seeing a great deal of material that exceeds the limits,” said Ohio attorney Terry Lodge. “The state is acting illegally.”  READ PART 2 » Support Investigative Journalism — Become a Patron »  

newsCOUP Ep. 13: Under Chief's Orders Ohio Operates a Radioactive Industry Off The Record “They just feel that our lives are worth nothing, that we’re expendable,” said Anderson. “People's lives matter. You can't sacrifice them for corporate profit.” Eight years later, Chief’s Orders facilities, who would handle radioactive waste from fracking, are operating with no updated rules or oversight. Tod...

Pennsylvania’s Largest Fracking Waste Landfill is Under Criminal Investigation for Dumping Radioactive Leachate A community group’s letter about a landfill accepting fracking’s radioactive waste caught the attention of the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Environmental Crimes Unit. In the heart of President Joe Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, the Friends of Lackawanna are fighting the m...

newsCOUP: Stopping Radioactive Water: Officials Want to Ban Oil & Gas Injection Wells at Pennsylvania Headwaters to Block EPA Permit “Unanimously, we are against a toxic waste injection well in Clara Township. And the main reason is because of the water.” “When you have all of the officials in town unanimously wanting to fight this...with their support, that's powerful,” Barr told Public Herald. A...

“They’re Going to Die” – Experts & Whistleblowers Reveal Life of Trafficking Radioactive Waste "That first initial burst of water was just some really dirty stuff, sometimes it was as black as the screen of your phone when you shut it off, just black. I spent a lot of time underneath that rig literally getting rained on when they were pulling the pipe by that water. You would be out there just lit...

DOH Does Not Take Concerns From Physicians and Community Seriously On June 21st, two local health advocacy organizations, Philadelphia Physicians for Social Responsibility (Philly PSR) and Environmental Health Project, were able to meet virtually with Dr. Rachel Levine, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH), to advocate on behalf of families regarding a cancer health study in th...

Pennsylvania Regulators Won't Say Where 66% of Landfill Leachate w/ Radioactive Material From Fracking is Going..."It's Private" DEP is not tracking how much TENORM is leaving a landfill via leachate to the WWTP. The DEP says that the transaction is private between the two entities: the landfill and the treatment plant.   When we told Dr. Julie Weatherington-Rice, a semi-retired earth scientist wi...

We kind of actually said to ourselves, we think covid was here beforehand, and people that maybe tested negative for the flu maybe had it, and will we ever know? Probably not. That is why everyone is really scared, because if you have the symptoms you could be spreading it. We don't have the equipment. We might have cots, we might have rooms, available schools, gymnasiums, to put people, but what...

newsCOUP: A Dangerous Secret That Could End Fracking Investigative Journalists Justin Nobel and Joshua Pribanic come together in this explosive podcast* to discuss one of the hottest topics to come out of fossil fuels.  The idea of “safe” fracking transformed oil and gas in America for the 21st century and helped create a worldwide resurgence for an otherwise dying industry. But as we hear in this...

Pittsburgh’s Freshman State Representative Sara Innamorato is drafting a bill to regulate TENORM (Technically Enhanced Radioactive Material) from fracking waste in response to Public Herald’s leachate investigation . Public Herald’s August 2019 report described how a regulatory loophole allows radioactive fracking waste dumped at landfills to be sent as leachate to sewage treatment plants and disc...

A Public Herald investigation has uncovered that DEP is allowing 14 Sewage Waste Treatment Plants to discharge radioactive fracking waste as landfill leachate into 13 Pennsylvania Waterways. The process DEP created to “treat” and discharge the leachate through sewage plants appears to date as far back as the fracking boom (2009 or longer). Read Full Investigation w/ Interactive Map »  

Today on the show we’re talking about direct action. What’s the right approach? Should you go to court? Should you contact your elected officials? Should you take action on the state, break the laws and perform acts of civil disobedience? And, do you do this alone? Or, do you get your community involved…do you get masses of people involved?   READ THE FULL REPORT »

“We need a smoking gun.” — Investigators at Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s office told Public Herald during a meeting in 2017. A criminal investigation of the oil and gas fracking industry is underway in Pennsylvania, the nation’s second largest producer of natural gas. Pennsylvania’s Office of the Attorney General (OAG) has “assumed jurisdiction over several criminal investigations involving env...

Investigation: Clorox Selling Pool Salt Made From Fracking Wastewater by Joshua B. Pribanic for Public Herald | Edited by Melissa A. Troutman February 11, 2019  |  Updated February 12, 2019 | Project: Smoking Gun, newsCOUP   You might be shocked to learn that a Clorox product used to treat swimming pools came from fracking wastewater. Public Herald has discovered that Eureka Resources, a company b...