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Fracking Waste Ban Passes in Clinton

While most Clinton voters were busy preparing for the second referendum on the proposed budgets, another important referendum was held on May 17 in which voters overwhelmingly passed an ordinance that prohibits activities associated with fracking waste.

Of 515 voting, 496 people voted for the proposal and 19 against. The vote was originally scheduled to be held at a May 8 town meeting, but the vote was tabled to a referendum to be held on May 17. The extra week of preparation seems to have paid off, as 234 voters were checked in to the May 8 meeting, and more than double that number participated in the May 17 referendum.

Fracking uses high-pressure water, sand, and proprietary chemicals to extract petroleum products from bedrock. Proponents of fracking praise the ability to retrieve the resources as a way to reduce a reliance on foreign oil products. Opponents point to environmental concerns such as water contamination and the possibility that fracking can be linked to earth tremors. Fracking waste, the fluid returned to the surface in the fracking process, contains the proprietary chemicals as well as potentially picking up carcinogens and radiation belowground.

While fracking is not practiced in the state, the amount of waste generated at fracking sites often requires the waste to move across state lines either for disposal or repurposing. The closest state to Connecticut with a fracking industry is Pennsylvania. Due to the proximity to that state, local groups have been looking at ways to ban the liquid waste within this state. Some states that allow fracking ship the waste to other states to be stored.

In Connecticut, there is a state-wide moratorium on fracking waste storage that is scheduled to lapse on July 1. In response, several towns in Connecticut have passed ordinances to protect the municipalities from what some say are loopholes in the state’s ban. Madison is one of the towns that passed one such ordinance in April.

The Clinton ordinance prohibits “the storage, disposal, or use of waste from oil and gas explorations or extraction activities or any derivative thereof in the Town of Clinton.” Additionally, the ordinance states that the testing of any waste would be done “via contacting Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection or other third-party analytical laboratories as is current practice of the Town of Clinton for other exposures to potentially hazardous chemical situations.”

The penalties for breaking the ordinance are to a $250 fine, a cease and desist order, the ability to seek legal relief, the ability to file a complaint with any other proper authority and to require remediation of any damage done to any land, road, building, aquifer, well, watercourse, air quality, or other asset, be it public or private, within the Town of Clinton. The Town of Clinton may recoup from the offending person(s), jointly and severally, all costs, including experts, consultants, and reasonable attorney’s fees, that it incurs as a result of having to prosecute or remediate any infraction of this ordinance.