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TRANSCRIPT:
After speaking at a county commissioners meeting I asked Carol Rimedio-Righetti why she and Anthony Traficanti and then county commissioner John McNally signed off on the permits for the D & L injection well (that we now know caused all the earthquakes and whose owner went to jail for dumping toxic, radioactive fracking waste into the Mahoning River.) She replied that Lupo LIED to them about what kind of well it was, and THEY did not know WHAT he was going to be injecting into it. I said: “WOULDN’T YOU RESEARCH SOMETHING LIKE THAT BEFORE YOU PERMITTED IT!?”
Most big money business deals in Youngstown are behind-closed-door negotiations involving our elected and appointed officials and corporations. Many times citizens find out long afterwards what our elected and appointed officials have done “business-wise”. Many times the ONLY WAY THEY FIND OUT is by obtaining public records under the Ohio Sunshine Laws. Public records have consistently revealed that our elected and appointed officials have represented CORPORATE INTERESTS instead of REPRESENTING THE PEOPLE.
These records have revealed among other things that our county commissioners signed off on fracking wells to be drilled in our protected drinking water watershed of the Meander Reservoir.
More public records reveal they permitted CNX Gas Co., LLC to drill the Cadle well even though at that time they had 148 environmental violations in Pennsylvania relating to fracking waste spills. An alert citizen, reading public records found that this fracking well, located on Blott Road in North Jackson, had a casing (pipe) split AS SOON AS IT WAS DRILLED and HALLIBURTON came up from Texas to cement it shut.
Public records reveal the same county commissioners authorized the sale of 8,250,000 gallons of our MVSD water to frack this well. Former Mayor Sammarone had a billboard installed on West Avenue in front of the water department stating a Maintenance and Storage facility was being built. The public records show that $62,000 was spent to build an overhead filling station for fracking tanker trucks at the same time. Public records show millions of gallons of our MVSD water being sold by our Board of Control (at that time Mayor Sammarone, Finance Dir. Bozanich and Law Dir. Farris) to fracking businesses including tanker cleaning companies associated with D & L.
Mike Ray was appointed by Mrs. Rimedio-Righetti to be the 4th ward councilperson when she became commissioner. Mr. Ray works part time for American Electric Power and is the chairman of the Public Utilities Committee for the Youngstown City Council. American Electric Power owns fracking pipelines throughout the United States. Councilman Ray was the organizer of the January 12, 2012 public hearing at the Covelli Center where the Ohio Department of Natural Resources stated that the D & L injection well had NOTHING TO DO WITH the earthquakes we had in Youngstown throughout 2011, which we now know is totally false.
State Representative Joe Schiavoni came to the Youngstown City Council and spoke in favor of fracking, saying that it would bring jobs to Youngstown, and also made robocalls against the citizen ballot initiative to protect our drinking water, The Youngstown Community Bill of Rights. His father, Louis, as a Mill Creek Park Commissioner approved Sunoco Logistics, LLC putting a fracking product pipeline underneath sections of Mill Creek Park on the way to the cryogenic plant at New Middletown and State Line Road.
Public records show that while fracking corporations interests are furthered, NO ONE REPRESENTS THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE PEOPLE. NO ONE HAS BROUGHT OUT THE EXTENSIVE RESEARCH ABOUT THIS ONE INDUSTRY’S ENDANGERMENT OF HUMAN HEALTH AND STOOD UP TO PROTECT THE PEOPLE.
Now Youngstown is receiving the Marcellus drilling wastes from Pennsylvania which are radioactive and potentially threaten human health, as the expert from the Ohio State University, Dr. Julie Weatherington-Rice, has emphasized in her seminars at YSU. Along Ohio Works Drive and on the banks of the Mahoning River, IWC/Groundtech is doing frackimg waste treatment which includes evaporating the liquids and down-blending radioactive solids into dirt. The nuclear industry has deemed this too dangerous to do, and declared it illegal. Kasich calls this downblended dirt a beneficial material in our Ohio state budget. This radioactive waste is put into roll-off dumpsters and trucked through our city, down Rte. 680, and dumped in the Poland landfill.
The Marcellus residual waste trucks are on all of our highways here, on their way to injection wells in Vienna, Niles and Warren. There are now many businesses that have “popped up all over town” that mostly operate at night cleaning fracking waste tankers, venting to the atmosphere toxic chemicals and using vacuum trucks to suck out the partial solids and liquid waste. We have NO inspectors making sure all of this dangerous waste is disposed of correctly. The Kleese injection well leaked in Vienna and was NOT reported, the fracking wastewater killed all fish and wildlife in a wetlands and a pond. From those spill reports we NOW KNOW what the toxic fracking chemicals being injected are (click to enlarge):
ALL are cancer-causing and this list is not detailing the radioactive elements.
It is NOT ACCEPTABLE that Youngstown serves as the WASTE DUMP of the Pennsylvania Marcellus fracking industry!
The PEOPLE’S RIGHT to health and safety in OUR own community is greater than any fracking CORPORATION’s right to plunder our resources & POLLUTE to make PROFIT.
ALL of us can UNITE to fight back and get rid of the illegal state laws that Kasich let the frackimg industry write and get passed. All Ohio law comes from localities UPWARD. Change the “business as usual” before we are the next big fracking disaster!
NOTES
1) D&L Northstar One earthquakes http://www.vindy.com/news/2013/aug/20/up-to--quakes-linked-to-dampl-well/?print
1b) D&L Northstar One earthquakes http://media.cleveland.com/business_impact/other/UICReport.pdf
2) D&L dumping https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.505282829491516.121262.205575299462272&type=3
3) Halcon (Cadle well) pipe break http://www.frackfreeamerica.org/swapwells.html
4) http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Electric_Power
5) Youngstown earthquake hearing, Jan. 2012 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMGmmCQIKPA&feature=player_embedded
6) Community Bill of Rights http://www.protectyoungstown.org/
7) Pipeline in Millcreek Metropark http://www.millcreekmetroparks.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/August-12-minutes.pdf
7b) http://www.vindy.com/news/2015/jul/09/replacement-of-pipelines-at-metroparks-i/?print
8) Dr. Julie Weatherington-Rice, radioactivity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGGOX9NxOb4&feature=youtu.be
9) Radioactive waste http://frackfreemahoning.blogspot.com/2014/05/radioactive-fracking-waste-plant-youngstown-ohio.html
10) Tank cleaners https://www.facebook.com/ProtectMahoningValley/photos/a.971372116243058.1073741867.638488332864773/972556932791243/?type=3&permPage=1
10b) wastewater tanks
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.973274826052787.1073741868.638488332864773&type=3
11) Warren, Ohio, KDA injection wells(3) http://apps.ohiodnr.gov/mineral/oil/MRMImages/17/8/325668.pdf
12) KDA injection well dumping http://frackfreemahoning.blogspot.com/2015/04/oil-gas-waste-spill-or-fracking-dumping.html
12b) Vienna fracking waste dumping https://www.flickr.com/photos/frackfreeamerica/sets/72157651384090718
