Part of the Series
Gas Rush: Fracking in Depth
Ben Lupo, owner of D&L Energy and Hardrock Excavating, pleaded not guilty Thursday to federal felony charges under the Clean Water Act.
Lupo is accused of ordering the dumping of thousands of gallons of chemical-laced fracking waste into streams in Youngstown, Ohio.
On the night of January 31, state investigators acted on an anonymous tip and caught Lupo’s employees dumping oil and gas drilling waste – fluid, mud and oil – into a storm sewer that empties into a tributary of the Mahoning River, according to the Justice Department.
Lupo admitted to state authorities that he ordered the initial dumping and later told investigators he ordered employees to dump the contents of a fracking waste storage tank into the storm drain on six occasions. A Hardrock Excavating employee, however, told authorities that he was aware of 20 dumping incidents since November 2012, according to the Justice Department.
Lupo’s storage tanks hold about 21,000 gallons of waste.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a controversial drilling technique that is facilitating an oil and gas boom in Ohio and nearby states. Fracking produces large quantities of chemical-laced waste fluids and mud.
Lupo’s D&L Energy operated the Northstar 1 fracking wastewater injection well that caused a series of earthquakes in 2011 and early 2012, including one quake that measured 4.0 on the Richter scale. Truthout published an investigative report on the earthquakes last summer.
Lupo has been charged with violating the Clean Water Act, a federal offense that carries a maximum penalty of a $250,000 fine and up to three years in prison, said to Steven M. Dettelbach, the US attorney for the Northern District of Ohio. State regulators also revoked operating permits for D&L Energy and Hardrock Excavating, a brine-hauling firm owned by Lupo.
Test results released by Ohio regulators on Thursday show the presence of harmful pollutants, including benzene and toluene, in the watersheds contaminated by the waste. The pollutants support the criminal charges against Lupo under the Clean Water Act, regulators said.
Brian Cook, chief counsel for the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA), said on Thursday that ongoing cleanup efforts in the polluted watersheds are expected to continue into next week.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said his office is pursuing its own case against Lupo as the state-level investigation continues.
DeWine said during a news conference he is “very happy” that Lupo is facing criminal charges on the federal level because the federal government has “much stronger laws than the state of Ohio does.”
“I believe it’s time that Ohio law catches up to where federal law is,” DeWine said.
Ohio has become a popular destination for fracking waste disposal, where a majority of the liquid waste is injected into underground wells. The state accepts large volumes of waste from other heavily fracked states, like Pennsylvania, and environmentalists are concerned that Ohio is becoming a fracking waste “dumping ground” due in part to lax regulations.
On February 12, a coalition of Ohio residents sent a letter to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo asking him not to lift a moratorium on fracking in his state out of fear that even more waste will end up in Ohio. The letter accuses the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which regulates fracking waste disposal, of approving injection well permits at “alarming rates” and having “a long history of ignoring repeated flagrant violations, not even enforcing its weak rules, ignor[ing] citizens’ concerns and denying evidence of problems.”
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy