For reasons that may not be immediately obvious, our legislators are pushing to allow the oil and gas industry to use “residual waste” water from fracking sites as an anti-icing treatment, sprayed on our roads.

Analyses of this waste water, recently published in a journal of environmental science and technology, indicate that chemical and radioactive pollutants in this wastewater (or “brine,” as Big Gas peddles it to us) were discovered to be many times higher than current drinking-water standards allow.

These pollutants can be tracked into our houses and will ultimately run off the roads and find their way into the groundwater from which our life-sustaining water, whether from home wells or municipal suppliers, is taken.

There is no upside to this decision. Everything contained in fracking’s “residual waste” is dangerous to human, animal and plant life, and both of these pathways lead to potential illness and death.

So why are our legislators pushing to spread it on our roads? Because dumping it on roads is cheaper than disposing of it safely. Follow the flow of lobbying money from Big Gas to our legislators. That’s where you’ll find the answer to this deadly practice.

Reid Joyce,

Middlesex Township