Xyara Asplen

Guest contributor

It's been over a month, now, since we first learned that the Blue Ridge Landfill in Estill County had become the dumping grounds for illegally imported radioactive fracking waste...and so far, things seem to be business as usual.

When the land men showed up last year, looking to lease our mineral rights for fracking, one of my first concerns was that my home would become convenient disposal for the huge quantities of poisonous water and sludge generated by the oil and gas industry. And now, in the county where I grew up, and possibly across this beautiful state, it already has.

Despite hundreds of folks from our community in Estill County and beyond showing up to demand accountability and answers, both have been in mighty short supply. It's no secret among the locals that trucks creep in and out of the dump at all hours of the night, and I grew up hearing a lot of speculation as to what they were burying in there.

And then, suddenly, it wasn't speculation anymore. At least 2,000 tons of concentrated radioactive tailings from out-of-state oil and gas fracking operations (something we've been fighting to keep out of our own foothills) had slipped in "under the radar" and been dumped loose from the containers it was brought here in -- and no one seems to even know just exactly where, let alone have a plan for recovery.

No one seems to know, either, how much of that loose radioactive particulate matter may have become airborne during the time the dumpings occurred (several months, July through November of last year); how much of it may have drifted across the road to the frighteningly close middle and high schools. I attended that middle school the year it opened, and you sure can smell the dump from there. When we smell something, it means we're breathing in its particles. This thought keeps me up at night, and I'm not even a mom.

The Blue Ridge Landfill is neither equipped nor allowed to accept this sort of waste. TENORMs, they call it, for Technologically Enhanced Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material. The half-life on the stuff is more than a thousand years, so when we're told, "Oh, the air tests came back fine, don't worry about it," it's a little insulting. The liners at the landfill last about 30 years, and are partway into that already. The landfill is near the Kentucky River, a pretty major watershed in these parts (don't forget, once it gets in the water, it's in all our backyards).

So you'd think there'd be outrage that we (and our future generations) have been put at this kind of risk, and that our officials on all levels would rally to shut down these privately owned corporations that acted illegally (Blue Ridge Landfill is owned by Advanced Disposal, and then of course there are the companies that brought the waste in).

But, unfortunately, we live in a state where our Energy and Environment Cabinet is headed up by the recently retired president of Eastern U.S. Operations for Arch Coal, Charles Snavely, whose attitude toward regulations can be summed up by his statement that, as the new regulator, he'll make sure “we are not a hindrance to any industry.” When he says about the fracking waste dumped in Estill County, "We will hold the violators accountable to the law just as we would in any situation under our jurisdiction,” I'm not reassured enough to just sit back and assume it's taken care of.

When our regulatory agencies are deeply beholden to the same industries they're supposed to protect us from, I suppose the officials have the difficult choice between working for the people whose communities are being poisoned, or the people who made them rich. It's not hard to see which way that decision usually goes.

And so it's business as usual. There were a couple of "Notices of Violation" issued, stating essentially that "if you don't stop this sort of thing, we might have to do something about it!" The Attorney General's office opened an investigation, but there hasn't been much noise since.

And meanwhile, no fines have been issued, no charges filed and the trucks still come and go across from the schools. The owners of the Blue Ridge Landfill rest easy knowing that the money continues to flow; the fracking operations continue to produce uncountable quantities of toxic sludge; our government continues its lip service while turning a blind eye -- or maybe that's a wink.

So now the question is this: Will Estill County -- our land, our water, our kids -- be written off as just another cost of doing business, or will this terrible tragedy serve to ignite the flame that burns through decades of government complacency and industry exploitation, and demands, once and for all, that the wellbeing of our community take precedence over the tired old expectation of "business as usual?"

Xyara Asplen is a second generation artisan, homesteader and advocate for local resiliency who grew up in Estill County, Kentucky, and now lives in the Red Lick Valley outside of Berea.