Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) finalized a five-year long investigation on landfill leachate radioactivity in a press release last Friday, declaring “there is no significant risk to human health from radium in landfill leachate.”

DEP Secretary Jessica Shirley added that “the takeaway here is that there is no risk to human health from radiation in landfill leachate.”

When Public Herald took a closer look at their report, we saw DEP’s own findings of detected radium in leachate conflict with that message.

After choosing a benchmark established by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that wasn’t meant to assess risk to human health from radioactivity in landfill leachate, the agency came to bold conclusions. In this case, DEP discretion manufactured what it considered safe, not necessarily establishing, by way of public input or congressional approval, regulations that would best apply for safe discharges of radium to public waterways.

Overall, DEP found all of Pennsylvania’s 49 landfills discharged measurable levels of radioactive leachate. The agency reported radiochemistry results ranging from 1.443 to 122.731 pCi/L, and said 11 of the 49 landfills were above 5 pCi/L, the federal drinking water limit for combined radium-226 and radium-228.

DEP did note that raw landfill leachate is not drinking water, with respect to what’s safe to discharge.

To determine safe levels of radium in discharge, the agency used NRC’s benchmark of 600 pCi/L annual-average limit meant for untreated wastewater coming out of licensed industrial facilities handling radioactive material. DEP’s report stated that because landfill leachate is subject to further treatment, like a sewage facility, before discharge, DEP “can conclude that there is currently no concern” with combined radium in treated discharges to groundwater or surface waters.

This places DEP at odds with a foremost expert on this issue.

In 2019, Public Herald spoke with Duke geochemist Dr. Avner Vengosh who told our team that a sewage authority is “not capable of treating radioactive material in fracking waste,” and that in leachate from fracking waste he would expect “salts, metals, and radioactive elements” none of which would be “retained or removed through conventional wastewater treatment plants.”

The problem is plainly stated by former DEP radiation official David Allard who told Inside Climate News that “There really are no standards for leachate”. In that vacuum, DEP chose the most industry-friendly value available.

DEP Benchmark Could Have Been 3 pCi/L instead of 600 pCi/L for Radium Discharge to Waterways

According to DEP, landfill leachate can be “either treated on-site or sent to a treatment facility before being discharged into a stream or river.” When framed that way, a much lower federal number comes into view.

In 1982, EPA set a 30-day average limit of 3 pCi/L for dissolved radium-226 in certain radioactive mine discharges under the Clean Water Act.

Those limits in 40 CFR Part 440 include a daily maximum of 10 pCi/L for dissolved Ra-226, 30 pCi/L for total Ra-226, and a 30-day average of 3 pCi/L for dissolved Ra-226 and 10 pCi/L for total Ra-226.

Those are not landfill leachate rules, they don’t map perfectly onto DEP’s combined radium dataset, but they do show that there was another choice for assessing the risk to public health. And that when EPA assessed the risk of regulated radioactive industrial discharges to public waters, it used a number 200 hundred times lower than DEP’s 600 pCi/L for what’s considered a safe radioactive benchmark for human health.

If the safe discharge threshold shifts to 3 pCi/L, the number of unique landfills above that line rises to 12.

That doesn’t mean the EPA mining rule applies directly to Pennsylvania landfills. It does mean DEP’s “no risk” message depends heavily on which number it chose to emphasize — a number chosen outside of public input. And it shows their hand for how the agency measures risk to human health knowing the massive amounts of radioactive shale gas waste being introduced to landfills in the state.

One question DEP didn’t try to answer is what unmeasured risk is happening to the environment where fish embryos and macroinvertebrates are more sensitive to radioactive material? There’s no indication in the investigation that this question will be tackled in the follow-up to the report.

Seven Years Ago: Public Herald’s Investigation On Radioactive Rivers

In 2019, Public Herald reported that DEP was allowing at least 14 sewage treatment plants to discharge radioactive fracking waste as landfill leachate into 13 Pennsylvania waterways spanning the Chesapeake Bay and Ohio River watersheds. Public Herald also reported that DEP did not have annual leachate volume data for those facilities.

That reporting put the central question in plain view years before DEP released this latest investigation — not just whether radium can be measured in landfill leachate, but where that leachate goes next and what happens when it reaches public water.

The discussion about how much radium a waterway can receive before there’s a radioactive problem takes us back to Vengosh’s earlier warning. During the Seneca Nation’s fight against a proposed fracking waste treatment facility at the headwaters of the Allegheny River, he warned that “one can expect to see a build-up of radiation in river sediment” even if only a small amount of radioactive material remains in the outfall, as long as the discharge volume is large enough.

DEP’s latest investigation unfortunately does not resolve that downstream question, or push for the elimination of radiation in watersheds. It sidesteps it.

In 2019 in Belle Vernon, Public Herald reported one sewage plant discharge sample detected 8 pCi/L of combined radium-226 and radium-228, while leachate straight from the landfill tested at 50 pCi/L (this story is connected to the Tervita Sanitary Landfill).

Plant superintendent Guy Kruppa whistleblowed about the issue, stating he saw trucks coming in during the night carrying oil and gas waste to the landfill said the one-time discharge sample was “without a doubt on the low end”, and that the lower radium reading was “not necessarily a reduction of radium but rather a dilution.”

“Once the effluent is being disposed into the river, the radioactive element will sink or absorb into sediment at the bottom of the river at the disposal site and start to accumulate there,” Vengosh said. His own studies in Pennsylvania found high concentrations of radionuclides in river sediment.

Not only would radium in leachate get into the water untreated in these instances, it can also “kill the bugs” at the sewage treatment plant and force the discharge to release additional contamination to the waterway.

That is a much more realistic claim than DEP’s sweeping message of “no risk.” In Guy Kruppa’s case, he watched the bugs get killed and radium be released and was shocked at DEP’s lack of response during that time.

“We contacted the DEP and told them that we think they are taking frack waste,” Guy told Public Herald in the 2019 report.

“And I told them this thinking I was going to tell them something they didn’t know. And the DEP guy said, ‘yeah, we know.’

“I said ‘you know the landfill is taking frack waste?’ And DEP said, ‘yeah, they’re only allowed to take so much.’ I said do you know how much they’re taking? And DEP said, ‘yeah, they record it on our system.’

“I said do you know they’re taking it at night and on weekends when the landfill is closed. And DEP said, ‘well they’re not allowed.’

“And I said, ‘It might not be allowed, but they’re doing it.’ And DEP said, ‘Well, I don’t know what to tell you.’ And I said, ‘I know what to tell you, they’re taking it!’

“DEP said, ‘it’s on an honesty policy and they’re supposed to report it.’ I told them they’re taking it under the cloak of darkness, long before the landfill opens.

Four Examples Show DEP Gets It Wrong

First, Vengosh told Public Herald that a sewage authority “is not capable of treating radioactive material in fracking waste” and that the salts, metals, and radioactive elements in leachate would not be “retained or removed through conventional wastewater treatment plants.” EPA’s own 2018 CWT study similarly states that “[t]reatment processes at POTWs are not effective at removing all types of pollutants in O&G wastewater.”

Second, the 2016 DEP TENORM study did not show that POTW treatment solved the problem. Citing from language in the study and Public Herald’s coverage, its unfiltered averages for one POTW influenced by oil-and-gas waste were 190 pCi/L Ra-226 and 28.1 pCi/L Ra-228 in influent, versus 103 pCi/L Ra-226 and 10.4 pCi/L Ra-228 in effluent. At another POTW, the unfiltered averages were 103 pCi/L Ra-226 and 11.6 pCi/L Ra-228 in influent, versus 145 pCi/L Ra-226 and 5.00 pCi/L Ra-228 in effluent after treatment. Public Herald summarized the same study by reporting that POTWs accepting oil-and-gas wastewater lowered radium by only 9.3% to 69% on average, that one POTW still discharged 138 pCi/L after treatment, and that at Ridgway the radium level in treated waste nearly doubled on average.

Third, DEP’s own 2016 study did not rule out environmental impacts at leachate treatment sites. In its conclusions, DEP wrote that while there was little potential for direct exposure from sediment-impacted soil at landfills, “there may be a radiological environmental impact to soil from the sediments from landfill leachate treatment facilities that treat leachate from landfills that accept O&G waste for disposal.” Public Herald also quoted that study as finding that “[t]here is a radiological environmental impact to soil from the sediments from POTW-I’s,” meaning POTWs influenced by oil-and-gas waste. And as Vengosh reported the radium will settle to the sediment…so why isn’t the sediment being tested before ruling whether a discharge is safe?

Fourth, later work found exactly the kind of downstream accumulation DEP’s latest press release glides past. The 2023 Ecological Indicators paper found that the effectiveness of effluent management systems “designed for historical landfill waste streams in treating O&G waste is not established,” and that total radium was enriched in sediments downstream of effluent discharges, up to 4x relative to upstream values. Daniel Bain, a research professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Geology and Environmental Science who studies radioactivity, told Inside Climate News last week that DEP’s new report is “an interim report,” not proof the problem is solved, and warned that regulators are “just acting like the end of the pipe is the end. They aren’t thinking about what’s going to happen as things accumulate in the streams.”

DEP’s Calls For Four More Quarters of Testing

DEP’s report says gamma spectroscopy produced high uncertainty values and high minimum detectable concentrations, limiting the ability to determine true concentrations accurately. The Department noted radiochemistry is more accurate, but acknowledges that only one combined radium data point is available for 47 landfills, with two landfills sampled twice because they had the highest results. DEP then recommends at least four more quarters of radiochemistry sampling.

What DEP doesn’t report is a set of baseline data, so there’s no foundation of radiochemistry at any of the landfill sites before fracking takes place. But that didn’t stop them from stating they don’t believe fracking waste has contributed to radium levels in landfill leachate.

Despite everything Guy Kruppa did to inform the agency — or when facilities like Wayne Township Landfill who accepted drilling waste ended up showing similar radium discharge levels above 3pCi/L as Tervita — DEP is still downplaying the issue.

Bain told Public Herald, “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find a good baseline. I don’t know that we really have a good baseline, but they’re acting like we do.”

Bain also warned, “There’s discrepancies between what people say they’re sending to the landfill and what people say they receive at the landfill. Those have not been reconciled.” And he cautioned against reading too much into low readings at landfills that have accepted shale waste, “Landfills are designed to drain slowly. Landfills are designed to slow things down. Landfills are designed so the water doesn’t go through [quickly]. We’ve designed landfills to maximize slowness.”

For Bain, this issue requires a lot more than four quarters of testing. Ultimately the radium is there, it’s soluble, and it can travel in leachate.

What DEP Showed, And What It Did Not

DEP’s investigation did show radium in untreated leachate at all 49 landfills. DEP did show 11 landfills above 5 pCi/L. DEP did show none exceeded the borrowed 600 pCi/L comparator.

But DEP did not show a landfill health standard for TENORM in leachate. DEP did not show a pre-fracking baseline for landfill radium or downstream waters. DEP did not show that treatment systems are designed to remove radium in a way that prevents long-term buildup in sediments and waterways. And DEP’s own report says more radiochemistry sampling is warranted.

“Pennsylvania Is The Wild West”

Andrew Gross, a rogue scientist, comes to mind after reading DEP’s conclusions and recommendations to the landfill leachate investigation.

In 2020, Andrew visited Pennsylvania on a drizzly day to collect water, air and soil samples for independent radioactive tests. He told our team:

“Pennsylvania is definitely the wild west when it comes to radiological health regulations. I’ve never seen anything like it. And for me, especially being a guy from Louisiana, that really strikes me as odd, that we’re so much better off down here than all of the people who are so smart up there. Putting this radioactive material into municipal waste sites is a giant concern. That could be life-altering for a lot of people, people in the vicinity, people downwater of streams, all those things.”

This story is Part 1 of Public Herald’s reporting on DEP’s Landfill Leachate Investigation

I think our immune systems have had enough pundits trying to sanitize COVID.

For years, the public has been trained to hear COVID and think respiratory illness — a virus that looks like a cold for most people with a neat little recovery arc aided by vaccination or natural immunity. This framing is still baked into the World Health Organization’s public description of coronavirus disease, which states most people infected will experience “mild to moderate respiratory illness.” A message repeated by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s plain-language COVID page, which says COVID-19 “most often causes respiratory symptoms.”

But the evidence no longer fits that story. It hasn’t for a long time.

What more and more studies are finding is that what’s unfolding is not merely a respiratory infection with some unlucky lingering effects. Instead, we are experiencing a virus — COVID (i.e. SARS-CoV-2) — repeatedly showing the capacity to damage, dysregulate, and deplete the immune system; sometimes for months, sometimes for far longer, and sometimes in ways our public and private health institutions don’t name plainly, or test properly.

That is why the official COVID definition needs to change.

Not tweaked. Not softened with a footnote. It needs to be discarded and changed.

A study to begin an end to the old definition

The 2025 paper in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases “Persistent attenuation of lymphocyte subsets after mass SARS-CoV-2 infection” looked at 40,537 patients across pre-COVID, mass infection, and post-COVID phases.

Its findings are not subtle.

During mass infection, T cells, CD4-positive helper T cells, CD8-positive killer T cells, Natural Killer cells (NK), and B cells all dropped significantly. Even 20 months later, CD8-positive T cells remained 9.9% below baseline. The recoveries varied by age and sex, with older adults and males showing more prolonged lymphopenia, meaning abnormally low lymphocyte counts. And in patients with cardiovascular disease, T lymphocytes remained 72.9% below baseline for 20 months post-infection.

The authors didn’t hedge the implication. They wrote that their findings “redefine SARS-CoV-2 infection as a condition of long-lasting immune compromise.”

Read that again.

Not how COVID “may contribute to lingering symptoms.”

Or how COVID “can sometimes affect other organs” and “appears to have complex sequelae.”

It says COVID has a long-lasting immune compromise.

If a peer-reviewed study of that scale can say it that clearly, then our public institutions can no longer be snorting cocaine off a germy toilet to flex immune-maxxing, or make excuses that it’s best to lead with the language of a respiratory inconvenience.

How children’s data destroys the “mild Omicron” fairy tale championed at the Washington Post

The minimization got worse in the Omicron era when the Washington Post attempted to conclude in an “investigation” that Omicron was less severe and Long Covid rates were going down before they had enough data to make those conclusions. Essentially, the public was fed a message in every direction that things were now “milder” or “less severe” — usually with a subheading about vaccine success. One that got the most play was COVID was now “Like a cold.”

All of these slogans aged like milk once you start looking at the follow-up data in new studies.

A 2025 Lancet Infectious Diseases pediatric RECOVER study examined a massive cohort of children and adolescents and found a troubling reinfection reality. Although T-cell responses remained stable in kids, neutralizing antibody concentrations declined over time, possibly compromising immunity upon reinfection, and during the Omicron era, while reinfection ran wild, protection from natural infection diminished more rapidly.

This was hardly a story about a virus getting gentler over time in any meaningful public health sense.

The COVID story happening to children worldwide was a story about how repeat exposure continued to exact multisystem harm while immune protection fades in ways the public was never asked to take seriously.

That same RECOVER work tied reinfection in children and adolescents to a higher risk of Long Covid and a wider range of post-acute problems: including heart, kidney, autonomic nervous system, cognitive, respiratory, and damaging (written as fatigue-related) outcomes.

In other words, we were all sold a story that COVID was “mild,” while our kids’ immune systems, and our own immune systems, developed compound damage.

Long Covid is not ME/CFS by another name

Today is International Long Covid Awareness Day. And the distinct, unique, immune-damaging characteristics of this disease have been under attack since the name Long Covid was formed.

In the past (and in some cases this is still ongoing) far too many ME/CFS advocates and researchers tried to convince people with Long Covid that it was nothing new, another post-viral [add your acronym here], even going so far as to use people with Long Covid to openly call their disease a political identity, or suggest Long Covid wasn’t real and it was all ME/CFS or its subtypes.

HIV faced a similar public relations campaign problem with ME/CFS in the 1980s — but it was firmly shutdown when biological testing moved away from symptom criteria hypothesis to reveal people with HIV had persistent, immune-damaging virus in blood samples.

Like HIV in the 80s, Long Covid has too been cornered into a definition of symptoms analysis, and symptom-cluster hypothesis, where ME/CFS criterias such as PEM are used to represent the disease presentation of people who have measurable changes to immune cells, cardiovascular systems or organ damage.

Thankfully, new studies are shattering this kind of disease conflation toward symptom management and providing hope for potential targeted treatments.

In a 2026 Frontiers in Immunology paper, researchers compared Long Covid with ME/CFS using transcriptional and single-cell immune signatures and found Long Covid patients exhibited marked reductions in naïve CD4-positive and CD8-positive T cells, regulatory T cells, mucosal-associated invariant T cells, and gamma-delta T cells, along with reduced Natural Killer-cell frequency and altered activation patterns consistent with impaired cell-killing potential.

The study also found expansion of effector T cells, activated B-cell signatures, activated platelets, low-density neutrophils, and that monocytes shifted toward inflammatory signaling. Mechanistically, the authors identified Galectin-9–TIM-3 as a potential pathway driving depletion of gamma-delta T cells and mucosal-associated invariant T cells in Long Covid.

What matters here is not an academic taxonomy. What matters is that Long Covid again shows up as a state of specific, measurable immune remodeling and depletion, and not merely vague post-viral malaise. The same paper reports that idiopathic ME/CFS showed less pronounced immune alterations in several of those compartments, including no comparable reduction in mucosal-associated invariant T cells or Natural Killer cells and no similar T-cell exhaustion signature (all key biological features of Long Covid).

This is significant because one of the great bureaucratic escapes of the last five years has been to blur Long Covid into generic chronic illness language, as if naming the immune injury might force an obligation to respond.

The haunting persistence question is here

Then there is this question that keeps haunting every serious conversation about Long Covid: what if part of the immune damage is being driven by COVID that is still there?

And in 2024, a Lancet Microbe study on blood transcriptomics out of Belgium reported evidence of persistent SARS-CoV-2 in blood, finding both antisense-RNA — i.e. the negative sense RNA COVID uses for replication — alongside COVID’s positive sense parts like spike and viral proteins, often referred to as viral remnants. The transcriptomics study went even further and found two new strong candidates for Long Covid biomarkers, revealing COVID’s antisense-RNA viral load could be a significant long-term measurement.

Today, the Belgium researchers are working to externally validate Long Covid biomarkers. In-time, if the validation holds, it could lead to new FDA-approved whole blood testing for Long Covid patients.

That line of work was paradigm-shifting in 2024, because it moved the debate away from symptom criteria toward measurable biological signatures.

This is also where the conversation intersects with the Long Covid Action Project’s (LCAP) book: A National Treatment and Research Agenda for Long Covid. LCAP (an activist group I founded for Long Covid) argued in their book for a research and treatment framework grounded in viral persistence, immune dysfunction, and biomarker development rather than symptom management alone.

And as the European AIDS Treatment Group wrote in its discussion of Long Covid lessons from AIDS researchers, the field should borrow from HIV reservoir science and biomarker development rather than wait for perfect certainty while patients deteriorate.

That comparison can make some people uncomfortable. It should.

Not because COVID is HIV. It is not.

But because HIV research taught medicine a lesson many officials still refuse to apply here: when a virus can create durable immune dysfunction, you do not keep defining it by the first doorway it used to enter the body. You define it by the system it damages.

What should the COVID definition say?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s HIV definition is brutally simple: HIV is a virus that attacks the body’s immune system. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases says the same thing in more technical language, explaining that the virus targets and destroys CD4-positive T cells.

This clarity is what COVID is missing from its current description.

Here is a definition that federal agencies should adopt for COVID:

COVID is a virus that can damage and dysregulate the body’s immune system, causing long-lasting immune compromise, including Long Covid.

This is more honest than the current respiratory framing. And at this point, it is more faithful to the evidence.

And the band played on… until we challenge it

So this is my challenge to agencies that still shape the nation’s understanding of COVID and Long Covid.

To HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Your own department says that, under your leadership, HHS is taking “bold, decisive action” to identify the root causes of chronic disease and “Make America Healthy Again.” If that slogan is going to mean anything beyond branding, then prove it here. Order HHS and the agencies beneath it to stop leading with the word respiratory for COVID when it is now described in peer-reviewed literature as causing long-lasting immune compromise. Put immune damage in the federal definition. Direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the RECOVER initiative, and every major HHS-facing public page to reflect biology instead of politics.

To NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya

You wrote that the NIH must “deliver results that matter to the public.” If NIH is serious about unified strategy, then unify the science and the public definition. A pathogen associated with persistent lymphocyte depletion, altered immune-cell architecture, reinfection immune vulnerability, and Long Covid cannot honestly be presented to the public as a mostly respiratory problem. COVID’s definition change would bring results that matter to the public.

To CDC leadership

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has enormous power. A respiratory-first COVID definition has helped teach physicians to overlook immune injury, helped employers trivialize repeat infections, and helped insurers and institutions treat Long Covid as ambiguity instead of biology. Change the definition, and you change the future toward COVID solutions.

To NIAID leadership

If immune dysregulation, viral persistence, and altered lymphocyte subsets are central to the aftermath of COVID, then this is squarely your terrain. Treat it like one. Stop allowing the public to imagine this virus as a short-lived respiratory event when the latest science now says otherwise.

And to FDA Commissioner Marty Makary

The Food and Drug Administration cannot pretend this is someone else’s problem. During the AIDS crisis, the FDA became part of the federal response not just by regulating drugs, but by helping shape how the disease was recognized, tested, and acted on. The FDA’s own history notes that in 1985, after HIV had been identified as the cause of AIDS, HHS announced the FDA’s decision to license the first test for the virus. This kind of test could happen again for COVID and Long Covid based on new biomarkers discovered using whole blood transcriptomic testing. The agency’s current HIV pages also make clear that the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research regulates prevention and treatment drugs for HIV and works to make safe and effective therapies available. Knowing this, the FDA belongs in this conversation. If COVID is causing long-term immune damage, then the agency that oversees diagnostics, biomarkers, antivirals, and treatment approvals should be pushing an immune-injury framework, not inheriting a respiratory focus fantasy.

These agencies should not get to hide anymore behind inaction.

Definitions are not neutral. Definitions govern what gets screened for, what gets funded, what gets denied, what gets dismissed, what gets coded into disability systems, what employers are told to take seriously, and what the public is taught to forget or tackle head-on.

A COVID respiratory definition has helped downplay reinfection. It has helped trivialize Long Covid. It has helped turn a measurable immune problem into a debate over mood, resilience, and personal beliefs.

That time needs to end.

Because if the science says immune damage, and the agencies still say respiratory illness, then the lie is no longer scientific.

It is institutional. And therefore, we can change it.

“This is a permanent reactor near your house, and it will always be a reactor because the waste got pooled together. And it will make as much radon and radium today as it will tomorrow and the next day and the next day and 30 years from now and 100 years from now and 500 years from now because the half life of this stuff is like, forever … So while it’s a naturally occurring material, when you concentrate it, you create a reactor.” The late Dr. Julie Weatherington-Rice, an earth scientist and adjunct professor for Ohio State University with a Ph.D. in soil science speaking with Public Herald

01/16/26 update: following the release of this report DEP has assured Public Herald the remaining questions are being reviewed by the Department’s three separate programs and will have answers soon.

Pennsylvania DEP has provided Public Herald with a limited update on Eureka Resources ongoing waste removal at its three sites — two in Williamsport and one in Bradford County — but failed to answer Public Herald’s core questions about radioactive testing.

In August 2025, DEP traced a sheen on the West Branch of the Susquehanna to an oil and gas wastewater spill at Eureka’s Second Street tank farm in Williamsport, prompting emergency response actions: containment booms, notice of violations and repeated cleanup inspections. As DEP investigated, inspectors also documented large volumes of waste stored beyond legal time limits at the Williamsport sites, leading to orders requiring removal. Those inspections further validated a Public Herald 2024 exclusive whistleblower report detailing how Eureka operated dangerously, illegally polluted waterways, and was a threat to the public.

DEP now says Eureka began removing the stored material from the Williamsport Second Street facility on October 27, 2025, following the spill, and has since begun emptying the Williamsport Catawissa Avenue facility (a.k.a. “Reach Road”).

Collectively between those two Williamsport sites, approximately 2.5 million gallons of illegally stored fracking waste fluids have been removed to date.

The radioactive wastewater, once held at Eureka for treatment, has now been trucked to Kleese Disposal in Ohio, and a “waste oil product” has been sent to a recycling facility. DEP says Eureka is evaluating additional “acceptable” disposal or fluid-management options, including reuse within the gas industry.

According to DEP’s latest, removal has not yet begun at Eureka’s Standing Stone facility in Bradford County, who’s also illegally storing fracking’s radioactive waste.

DEP shared that its Waste Management Program issued Notices of Violation on January 8, 2026 for all three facilities, citing noncompliance with prior enforcement actions and warning of escalated enforcement if the waste is not removed by the end of January. Links to those DEP records are included at the end of this article.

2.5 Million Gallons and What DEP Hasn’t Published

DEP’s new disclosure supplies a single total for the waste removed from the two Williamsport sites (approximately 2.5 million gallons), but does not publish a basic ledger for the public to determine: 1. the baseline inventory at each site, 2. the gallons removed from each site to date, and 3. the gallons remaining at each site 4. the radioactive measurement of the fluids.

Because DEP has chosen not to provide that ledger, we have to rely on the 2025 numbers shared by the Department that were published at Public Herald.

In the articles “Twenty-Six Days Later: DEP Logs Cleanup at Eureka — Still No Radium Tests, & Company Now Floats Lower Spill Totals” and “Oil in the Walls, Booms in the Drains,” DEP established that the Second Street tank farm in Williamsport held 1,378,897 gallons of oil and gas liquid waste across 70 tanks (a figure DEP documented in August 2025). DEP’s new note now states that roughly three quarters has been removed from Second Street.

If DEP’s earlier documented inventory (1,378,897 gallons) is used as the baseline for Second Street, then the “not yet removed” remaining at Second Street should be approximately 345,000 gallons of radioactive fracking waste fluids.

Also in Williamsport, DEP says about half of the material at the Catawissa Avenue facility remains. At our best guess, the Department’s own update implies roughly 1.81 million gallons remain across the two Williamsport facilities combined (about 345,000 gallons at Second Street plus about 1.466 million gallons at Catawissa Avenue) that’s expected to be sent to Ohio.

This estimate should be treated cautiously. DEP has repeatedly allowed key figures in this case to drift or be re-framed over time, most notably the company’s shifting spill totals in the early phase of the Williamsport incident, and DEP’s continued reliance on preliminary or incomplete disclosures instead of publishing full lab work and a consistent inventory ledger.

At this time, the third Eureka site, Standing Stone, known for fatal accidents and Public Herald’s investigation about producing packaged pool salt from treating radioactive wastewater, is untouched — all of its waste remains on-site.

The most recent public inventory figure DEP established in 2025 — detailed in “Oil in the Walls, Booms in the Drains” — was 923,178 gallons of oil and gas liquid waste stored unlawfully beyond time limits at Standing Stone. DEP has not provided any updated Standing Stone inventory totals in its January 2026 communications to Public Herald.

Notices of Violation January 8, 2026: DEP Documents Noncompliance For All Three Eureka Facilities

DEP’s January 8, 2026 Notices of Violation make explicit that enforcement orders have been in place for months, and Eureka has not complied.

Location #1: Catawissa Avenue, a.k.a. Reach Road (Williamsport)

DEP states it issued an Administrative Order on July 9, 2025 requiring Eureka to remove all oil and gas liquid waste from the site within 90 days and dispose/recycle through a permitted facility, along with an Assessment of Civil Penalty requiring payment of $5,500 within 30 days. DEP says Eureka has not complied with the Order or paid the penalty as of January 8, 2026, and “recommends” removal of the waste and payment by January 31, 2026, or escalated enforcement may follow.

Location #2: Second Street (Williamsport)

DEP states it issued an Administrative Order on August 19, 2025 requiring Eureka to remove all oil and gas liquid waste from the site within 30 days and dispose/recycle through a permitted facility. DEP says Eureka has not complied as of January 8, 2026, and again “recommends” removal by January 31, 2026, or escalated enforcement may follow.

Location #3: Standing Stone (Bradford County)

DEP states that a Commonwealth Court stipulated order dated August 12, 2025 required Eureka to empty Tank T-33 by September 30, 2025 and not use the tank until repairs and testing were conducted.

DEP further states it issued an Administrative Order on September 2, 2025 requiring removal of all oil and gas liquid waste within 90 days. DEP says Eureka has not complied with either the court order or DEP’s administrative order as of January 8, 2026, and once again “recommends” removal by January 31, 2026, or escalated enforcement may follow.

All three Notices cite noncompliance as unlawful conduct under Pennsylvania’s Solid Waste Management Act enforcement provisions, underscoring that this is not a paperwork dispute. It makes clear it is ongoing, documented failure to comply with corrective orders at multiple facilities.

The Radioactive Question DEP Keeps Evading — And Why A 2016 TENORM Study Matters Here

Public Herald’s central unanswered question since August remains the same one DEP has still not answered in January 2026: “what is the radioactive content of the waste at the site, what testing has actually been performed (including whether gamma spectroscopy was used), and what are the results in soil, water, and drinking water infrastructure affected by the spill and by illegal long-term storage?”

Although, DEP has assured us that they are working on answering whether radium is being tracked in soil, water, drinking water systems, and the tanks themselves surrounding the August 2025 Eureka wastewater spill — and whether that testing is using gamma spectroscopy at a minimum 21 day holding period.

In our August 2025 article “DEP Releases Update on Eureka Resources — Fails To Use The “Right Test” For Radiation,” DEP describes the use of an AccuRad radiation meter to survey the spill site and said it did not detect radiation above background — the conclusion DEP made scientifically couldn’t be made for radium (the key radioactive component of fracking waste) with that type of tool. Public Herald has asked the Department to produce gamma spectroscopy results for the tank fluids, the residual waste, or downstream pathways in order to make the conclusion about background changes for radium. That is one of the gaps Public Herald has repeatedly pressed DEP to close.

Public Herald also notes it has been waiting — since the end of the Wolf administration — for records connected to a statewide mandate to monitor landfill leachate for radioactivity, and contests DEP’s rationale for withholding lab reports as “under investigation.” The Wolf mandate was prompted by TENORM concerns unveiled by whistleblowers and journalists reporting on the issue (TENORM is an acronym that refers to fracking’s concentration of radioactive waste).

DEP’s own 2016 TENORM Study Report documents that oil and gas waste streams/fluids can carry radium at levels orders of magnitude above drinking-water standards (5 pCi/L), in fact above a thousand times those standards for radium (more than 5000 pCi/L), and that treatment pathways do not reliably remove radium to safe levels as promised by companies like Eureka. DEP’s Radiation Protection program materials also acknowledge the study’s revisions and data table corrections — an institutional reminder that measurement choices, methods, and reporting transparency matter when it comes to fracking waste.

Dr. Daniel Bain, University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Geology and Environmental Science research scientist who’s published studies on fracking’s waste, shared a warning to Public Herald in 2025 that the threat in this story is not abstract,

“There’s a lot of radium associated with all this [fracking waste] and if it doesn’t get put somewhere safe people are going to get hurt.”

What we are seeing is this waste has real radioactive consequences when it is not publicly auditable in real-time and has been mishandled, spilled, or moved into dangerous disposal pathways with lackluster oversight.

What Comes Next? Public Herald Sent Five Questions: DEP Answered One

DEP’s January 2026 update primarily responds to only one of Public Herald’s five questions: the status of removal and where it is going. DEP has still not answered the radioactive testing questions that began this series.

The Department’s continuing refusal to provide radium-specific results and gamma spectroscopy data in a time-sensitive manner leaves the public in the dark about basic scientific records for evaluating risk, accountability, or remediation.

January’s paperwork shows DEP is telling Eureka to remove all waste and produce disposal documentation or face escalated enforcement in the coming months. But the public’s unresolved questions, about radioactivity or the status of the plume, are not solved by hauling the waste out of state.

Without a published inventory ledger, without full lab results, and without radium-specific testing data for impacted pathways, the public cannot verify what was in the tanks, what entered the river and stormwater system, what remains in the environment, and what risks are being exported into disposal channels with limited transparency.

Ohio will now be faced to answer those questions as well, or hide them underground or leave it scattered throughout NPDES permits. If Public Herald’s 2021 reporting, published in partnership with Sandusky Register, is any indicator, “Investigation Uncovers Ohio Is “Illegally” Building Radioactive Mountains, Affecting 26 Waterways.” expect The Buckeye State to be an open door for the rest of Pennsylvania’s unsolved waste issues.

***

For readers who want to dig more into the history of DEP & Eureka for this story, see prior reporting, including Oil in the Walls, Booms in the Drains and Twenty-Six Days Later.

Public Herald would like to thank all of our subscribers and paid subscribers here on Substack and at Patreon for helping to keep these investigative reporting projects alive.

DEP enforcement records referenced in this report:

• 01/08/26 DEP Enforcement: Standing Stone (Bradford County)

• 01/08/26 DEP Enforcement: Second Street (Williamsport)

• 01/08/26 DEP Enforcement: Catawissa Avenue, a.k.a. Reach Road (Williamsport)

Editor’s note: For the full background and earlier timeline, see our previous report, Oil in the Walls, Booms in the Drains: DEP Says Eureka’s Cleanup Fails to Contain the Damage

On September 12th, DEP sent the following update about Eureka Resources to Public Herald: inspections have continued at the 2nd Street facility in Williamsport after the August 17 spill from Tank N3. (all new inspection records are included at the bottom of this report)

DEP reports that cleanup work remains underway and that Eureka has submitted schedules for waste removal across all three of its facilities.

By September 11, Eureka was reporting that the N3 spill released 11,430 gallons, with 8,424 gallons recovered and 3,000 gallons “not recovered.”

DEP makes clear these are company-supplied estimates, still under review, and must be treated as preliminary. That distinction matters. If DEP accepts lower numbers pushed by Eureka, the company’s fines could be reduced. Public Herald’s whistleblower investigations have already documented how Eureka has misled both workers and the public in the past — a pattern that makes any effort to recast spill totals highly suspect.

When we told Eric Steppe, former Eureka worker turned whistleblower, about the latest numbers change, he said:

“They are bold-faced liars. That’s how they’ve stayed afloat for so long. Burning every bridge laid for them. On occasion I was sent to try and repair something and 4 out of 5 times was told the hardware store or auto parts store was freezing Eureka’s accounts until their debts are paid in full. That’s one of the reasons everything in that hell hole was duct-taped and zip-tied together.”

In contrast to Eureka’s change in spill numbers, DEP’s own records from August documented that 16,000 gallons spilled from Tank N3, which had a total capacity of 26,000 gallons. Those are the official numbers against which Eureka is now trying to substitute its own.

DEP also found that the Williamsport site to-date unlawfully contained 1,378,897 gallons of oil and gas liquid waste stored since July 1, 2024, spread across 70 tanks.

What New Records Show

The latest inspection reports track gallons of oil collected, floors swept, and storm drains managed:

• On September 2, inspectors observed new absorbent socks in storm drains, 8,000 gallons recovered from inside the building (after heavy rainfall), and report 30,000–40,000 gallons still onsite per the company’s estimate.

• September 4, reports keep the recovery total at 8,424 gallons, with oil-dry applied, storm drains still boomed.

• September 5, records confirm 8,424 gallons recovered total, with only the B-side containment still needing cleanup.

• September 9, records reveal continued staining on the south wall, B-side residues, and a frac tank being emptied.

• September 11, Eureka changes spill total to 11,430 gallons released vs. 8,424 recovered vs. 3,000 unrecovered figures appear — again, company estimates, not DEP’s.

Overall, the records are long on gallons and absorbents, but short on science. None include radium results or plans to test for radioactivity.

The Unanswered Public Health Question: Radioactivity & Radioactive Ingrowth

It is now more than 21 days since the spill. In that time, DEP could have collected and analyzed new tank samples using gamma spectroscopy to establish the radioactive profile of the waste. Yet, none of the Eureka spill inspection reports contain any such data.

Oil and gas waste from fracking contains high concentrations of Technically Enhanced Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (TENORM), and wherever this radioactive TENORM waste is stored, water-soluble radionuclides such as Radium-226 are recorded in high concentrations when properly tested.

Public Herald’s earlier reporting on DEP’s 2016 TENORM study revealed that Eureka’s treatment process only removed about 9% of radium from the wastewater it processed in Williamsport. Wastewater entered Eureka’s treatment system “hot” at an average 9,600 pCi/L of combined radium and, after treatment, still measured an average 8,800 pCi/L — leaving treated water thousands of times higher than the federal safe drinking water limit of 5 pCi/L.

That history, alongside what Eureka workers shared with Public Herald about tank N3 and tanks where the remaining wastewater is stored, shows the waste sitting at the 2nd Street site in 2025 would contain high radium concentrations. Without test results, the public has no way to know the radioactive burden of the 16,000+ gallons released from N3 or the thousands of gallons unaccounted for in DEP’s latest reports.

But that’s not the whole story for storing radium.

A further danger lies in the way radium-226 can become more radioactive over time inside storage tanks — a process called radioactive ingrowth.

Radium itself has a long half-life of about 1,600 years, but as it decays it produces radon-222 gas and a cascade of short-lived daughters like polonium and lead isotopes. In a closed system, these decay products accumulate until they reach a balance point known as “secular equilibrium”, when the rate of new daughters being created equals the rate they decay. At that point, the total radiation from the waste is far greater than the original radium alone.

In other words, tanks holding oil and gas wastewater don’t just store radioactivity — their contents can become more radiotoxic the longer they sit.

Here’s what Dr. Daniel Bain, a research professor at University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Geology and Environmental Science who studies radioactivity, had to say about it:

“The problem with all radiation is that it continues to decay and the decay products can be worse than the parent products. Over time it has the potential to turn into something that’s able to admit even more intense ionizing radiation, so you want to avoid that and keep it separate from humans, animals and the entire system.”

“There’s a lot of radium associated with all this and if it doesn’t get put somewhere safe people are going to get hurt. It’s an astonishing amount. Right now they're dumping it on roads in the summer and DEP knows about it and isn’t doing a damn thing. They’re dumping it in landfills and it’s slowly making its way out. And by the time this all gets out it will be too late. In the long run, if it’s delayed by 20 years, you’ve got 20 years of mess to clean up.”

Why Fighting For The Right Number Matters

Eureka’s recalculated spill totals — 11,430 gallons lost, 8,424 recovered, 3,000 unrecovered — are a self-serving attempt to shape the narrative. DEP cautioned that these numbers are “preliminary” and not reviewed. Allowing the company to define the scope of its own disaster raises the risk that penalties will be quietly reduced.

This is not the first time. Public Herald’s whistleblower reporting, published between 2023–2025, showed that Eureka managers downplayed the hazards of fracking wastewater and misled staff about radioactive waste handling. The attempt to substitute company math for independent DEP calculations follows that same pattern.

Company Closure Plans

Eureka has filed a “clean closure process summary” on Aug. 23, pledging to remove all liquid and solid waste from its three facilities. The plan outlines a two-month schedule: pump and truck liquids, vacuum solids, cut open tanks if needed, pressure-wash interiors, and haul residues for disposal. A companion schedule charts September through November for deconstruction and tank cleaning at 2nd Street, Catawissa, and Standing Stone facilities.

But those documents are logistics, not science. They don’t tell us how radioactive the material is, what risks remain at the Williamsport site, where the waste will end up, or how much of the thousands of gallons “not recovered” may have seeped into drains and soil.

By The Numbers, A Historical Comparison

• DEP estimate (Aug. 18, 2025): 16,000 gallons spilled from Tank N3 (26,000 gallon capacity).

• DEP finding (Aug. 19, 2025): 1,378,897 gallons unlawfully stored onsite across 70 tanks in Williamsport (a similar amount was unlawfully stored at Standing Stone) .

• Company’s Sept. 11 estimate: 11,430 gallons spilled; 8,424 recovered; 3,000 unrecovered (preliminary, unverified).

• Radium in wastewater (Public Herald reports & 2016 TENORM study): 9,600 pCi/L entering Eureka’s Williamsport treatment; 8,800 pCi/L after treatment — only 9% removed. EPA safe drinking water limit = 5 pCi/L.
  

What Accountability Requires Now

The latest DEP updates show absorbents deployed, oil dry swept, frac tanks staged, and gallons counted. But none of it answers the real questions.

What was the total radioactive content of the waste spilled from Tank N3? How much radium remains in floors, drains, and stormwater lines? And why, after nearly a month, has DEP not released gamma spectroscopy results that could tell downstream communities the true amount?

Until DEP independently verifies spill totals and publishes radium data, the public is left with what Eureka says happened — numbers that serve the company’s bottom line, not public health.

Our concern is that DEP has held off this long to inform the public about the total amount of radium, a cancer-causing radiotoxin. Due to ongoing public trust issues surrounding DEP, Public Herald is calling for independent testing of Eureka’s tanks, as wells as the plume of pollution, to be performed by Dr. Daniel Bain in his lab at the University of Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, until that’s done, we may never have reliable data about the total radium sitting in Eureka’s tanks; what was released to public waters on August 17; or what’s been released years prior when waste was sent to Williamsport’s POTW and neighboring landfills.

For new readers: SCOOP features a freeform version of Public Herald investigations. Check out the TENORM series for more polished work on this subject.

Review all new inspection records and Eureka communications from DEP

Public Herald & Scoop Coverage of Eureka Resources

• Twenty-Six Days Later: DEP Logs Cleanup at Eureka — Still No Radium Tests, & Company Now Floats Lower Spill Totals — Sep 12, 2025 — Quote: “"There’s a lot of radium associated with all this and if it doesn’t get put somewhere safe people are going to get hurt."

• Oil in the Walls, Booms in the Drains: DEP Says Eureka’s Cleanup Fails to Contain the Damage from Fracking Waste — Sep 02, 2025 — Quote: “Two Weeks On, Waste Still on the Floor: DEP Tightens Grip on Eureka After Susquehanna Spill”

• DEP Releases Update on Eureka Resources — Fails To Use The “Right Test” For Radiation — Aug 22, 2025 — Quote: “DEP cited violations at Eureka’s Standing Stone, Reach Road, and 2nd Street plants, but still failed to require radium-226 testing of wastewater.”

• Unlawful Fracking Waste Operations Found at Eureka (The Radioactive Threat to Pittsburgh’s Water) — Aug 21, 2025 — Quote: “Eureka Resources unlawfully stored 1.38 million gallons of fracking waste in 70 tanks for over a year, effectively operating as an unpermitted disposal site.”

• Breaking: Eureka Resources Spill Thousands of Gallons of Radioactive Wastewater into West Branch of Susquehanna River — Aug 19, 2025
  Quote: “DEP inspectors determined that approximately 16,000 gallons of untreated fracking wastewater escaped from Eureka Resources’ tank farm on 2nd Street in Williamsport into the West Branch Susquehanna River.”

• “I Turned Blue” — Fracking Workers Share Horrifying Experiences Treating Fracking Wastewater — Dec 10, 2023 — Quote: “One worker recalled collapsing and saying, ‘I turned blue’ after exposure at Eureka Resources while treating radioactive brine.”

• Senator Says Pennsylvania Bypassed Feds & Issued “Illegal” Permit That Threatens Dimock Waterways With Radioactivity From Fracking — Aug 29, 2022 — Quote: “DEP’s permit omissions mean companies like Eureka Resources can discharge waste without enforceable limits on radium or other radioactive isotopes.”

• We Found The Names of Radioactive Waste Locations That Government Kept Secret — Jan 24, 2022 — Quote: “Our investigation revealed at least 14 facilities—including multiple Eureka Resources plants—handling radioactive oil and gas waste without public disclosure.”

• “If Only I Would’ve Known” — Oil & Gas Whistleblowers Speak Out About Exposure to Radioactivity on Fracking Jobs — Dec 14, 2020 — Quote: “Workers at facilities like Eureka Resources describe being ordered to handle concentrated radioactive solids without protective equipment.”

• Pennsylvania is Discharging Radioactive Fracking Waste into Rivers as Landfill Leachate — Aug 7, 2019 — Quote: “Eureka’s Standing Stone facility appears in DEP documents as a central processor of radioactive brine contributing to NPDES discharges.”

• Investigation: Clorox Selling Pool Salt Made From Fracking Wastewater — Feb 11, 2019 — Quote: “Public Herald traced Eureka Resources’ crystals from treated brine to shelves across America under the Clorox Pool Salt brand.”

• newsCOUP Ep. 20: “I Turned Blue” — Workers Share Horrifying Experiences Treating Fracking Wastewater — Dec 2023 — Quote: “A former Eureka employee recounted: ‘I thought I was going to die after breathing in those fumes.’”

• newsCOUP Ep. 16: We Found The Names Of Radioactive Waste Locations That Government Kept Secret — Jan 2022 — Quote: “For the first time, the public could see Eureka Resources among the list of secret radioactive waste sites.”

• newsCOUP Ep. 1: Clorox Selling Pool Salt Made From Fracking Wastewater — Feb 2019 — Quote: “Clorox was sourcing its pool salt from fracking brine treated at Eureka Resources.”

The Latest On The Eureka Spill in Williamsport

On September 2, 2025, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) contacted Public Herald with the following update that includes new fines for Eureka Resources:

DEP has continued its investigation following the spill from an aboveground storage tank at Eureka Resources’ 2nd Street Williamsport facility on August 17, 2025. DEP has continued to perform additional inspections; these reports are attached.

As previously stated, DEP is working with the agencies and entities involved with this case to explore all options and resources for carrying out cleanup efforts, which will continue as long as necessary. For clean-up actions addressed by the City and county authorities, it is at their discretion whether to seek cost recovery from the responsible party.

Eureka Resources has incurred penalties from DEP for multiple facilities through multiple programs.

Under DEP’s Waste Management Program:

· For the Standing Stone facility, Eureka previously paid $6,000 in stipulated civil penalties, and paid $6,000 today (September 2, 2025) toward $6,100 in stipulated penalties for the January 2025 Consent Order and Agreement (COA).

· For the Catawissa Avenue Williamsport (aka Reach Road) facility, DEP issued an Assessment of Civil Penalty (ACP) for $5,500, which is due August 31.

· For the Second Street Williamsport facility, the Administrative Order (previously provided) is currently the only active enforcement action.

Under DEP’s Air Quality Program:

· ACPs of $1,000 each were issued to both the Standing Stone and Second Street Williamsport facilities on April 5, 2024. Both were paid.

· ACPs of $2,000 each were issued to both the Standing Stone and Second Street Williamsport facilities on May 7, 2025. These have not yet been paid.

Although civil penalties were not included in the DEP’s January 2025 Consent Order and Agreement, this is an ongoing investigation, and DEP cannot comment on potential future enforcement.

In response to DEP’s August 19 Administrative Order (previously provided), Eureka Resources timely submitted a written report and corrective action plan to DEP on Monday, August 25, 2025. The plan and schedule addresses the clean-up and removal of oil and gas liquid waste at the Second Street property, as well as removal of residual waste from all three Eureka facilities.

Also attached is an Administrative Order (with cover letter) for the Eureka Standing Stone facility, issued today.

Since August 17, 2025, when a sampling port on Tank N3 failed at Eureka Resources’ 2nd Street facility in Williamsport, the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has been on site daily, documenting a slow, sprawling cleanup of thousands of gallons of radioactive fracking wastewater.

• Aug. 22 inspection: DEP confirms a permanent plug was installed on N3; ~5,400 gallons pumped into RT tanks; 6,000 gallons recovered inside the building. Oil covered the NOMAD room, adjacent offices, and treatment areas. A 250-gallon tote was filled from floor collection.

• Aug. 25 inspection: After heavy storms, oil migrated through the loading dock and southern foundation wall. Oil & water mixture was found in the PT-2 tank trench. DEP observed staining, ongoing leaks, and recommended absorbents. No Eureka staff were present during this inspection.

• Aug. 26 inspection: Cleanup crews using shop vacs in offices; oil dry spread across the NOMAD room. 6,000 gallons recovered to date, with more still on the floor. Storm drains showed absorbent booms; rainfall added stress but drains were not ponded.

• Aug. 27 inspection: Recovery estimates rose to 8,000 gallons inside the building; 7,200–8,000 gallons pumped to RT tanks. Trenches cleared, frac tanks staged with oil/water mix. Oil still seeping at the loading dock where the spill exited.

• Aug. 28 inspection: DEP notes cleanup “about as much as possible” from N1-9 containment; still 8,000 gallons recovered inside; storm drain socks saturated and needing replacement. Oil stains remain on the south wall. City fire and codes officials joined DEP onsite.

River inspection

On Aug. 25, DEP’s water quality team checked the West Branch Susquehanna River at the Hepburn Street Flood Station. No oily sheen was visible at the outfall; a slight sheen upstream was attributed to organic matter. Cleanup contractor Eagle Towing was replacing booms.

DEP has not provided answers to Public Herald’s questions about whether testing has been performed for all fracking contaminants, including radioactivity using gamma spectroscopy, both at the site of the spill and from the tank that spilled.

New Administrative Order: Standing Stone site in Bradford County

On Sept. 2, 2025, DEP issued a new Administrative Order (documents provided at end of article) against Eureka’s Standing Stone facility (Bradford County):

• DEP found 923,178 gallons of oil and gas liquid waste stored since April 2024 — without approval and beyond the one-year limit.

• Eureka’s conduct legally reclassified the site as a residual waste disposal facility without a permit, violating the Solid Waste Management Act. DEP labeled it unlawful conduct and a statutory nuisance.

• The order requires Eureka to remove all waste within 90 days and submit manifests within 100 days proving proper disposal or recycling. Transfer of the site must be reported to DEP at least 10 days in advance.

• DEP’s cover letter delivered the order directly to Eureka executives and its board.

The earlier Williamsport Administrative order

• DEP required Eureka’s 2nd Street site to remove all oil and gas waste within 30 days and repair alarms on all tanks — alarms found to be disconnected or inoperable across most of 70 tanks holding 1.38 million gallons.

• The release had reached storm drains flowing to the West Branch Susquehanna River. DEP cited the Solid Waste Management Act and Clean Streams Law, calling the conduct a statutory nuisance.

A pattern of recklessness across sites

• Catawissa Ave. (Reach Road) Williamsport site (July 9, 2025): DEP had already fined and ordered Eureka for over-storage.

• 2nd Street site (Aug. 17–28, 2025): 16,000 gallons spilled; alarms disabled; over 1.38M gallons stored.

• Standing Stone site (Sept. 2, 2025): 923,178 gallons stored unlawfully for more than a year.

Three sites have the same operator stockpiling violations of radioactive waste past limits, silencing alarms, and failing to prevent spills.

Public Herald’s investigations have shown that Pennsylvania’s regulators are prone to chasing violations after they occur, rather than preventing them. In Eureka’s case, the Deptartment had every opportunity to stop the spill before it happened.

DEP’s own records discovered alarms disconnected, alarms that were only a short walk from DEP’s Williamsport office where inspectors have known Eureka is reckless (Read worker whistleblower testimonies published in 2023 and 2024).

With oil on the floor for weeks, and unlawful storage across multiple counties…the question is no longer whether Eureka will spill again — it’s whether DEP will do their duty and enforce the law by ending permits for dangerous operators.

09/02/25 DEP Eureka investigation documents:

724810-InspectionReport-2025-08-22-4040212

724810-InspectionReport-2025-08-25-4041451

724810-InspectionReport-2025-08-26-4041800

724810-InspectionReport-2025-08-27-4043359

724810-InspectionReport-2025-08-28-4044467

Eureka Resources LLC Administrative Order

Eureka Resources LLC Cover Letter Administrative Order

Follow up Inspection 8-25-25 (Incident 8-17-25)

Listen to Public Herald’s Podcast to hear worker testimony about recklessness at Eureka Resoureces » 

Photographs from DEP’s Inspection Records

Eureka Resources 2nd Street Plant – 419 2nd

Street, Williamsport, Pennsylvania. © Steven Rubin for Public Herald

DEP has sent the following update about Eureka Resources spill into the West Fork of the Susquehanna to Public Herald, which included 8 documents:

“DEP has continued its investigation following the spill from an aboveground storage tank at Eureka Resources’ 2nd Street Williamsport facility on August 17, 2025. DEP has inspected the facility daily since the spill occurred (see attached inspection reports). DEP is working closely with the PA Fish and Boat Commission, Williamsport Sanitary Authority, Lycoming County Emergency Management Agency, City of Williamsport, and Williamsport Fire Department. DEP will explore all options and resources for carrying out cleanup efforts, which will continue as long as necessary. To prevent additional releases to the river, the ongoing cleanup efforts are currently focused on the Eureka facility and the connected stormwater system to remove any remaining pooled material.

Representatives from DEP’s Waste Management program have taken samples from the site, including of the spilled material, and in the river above and below the point of discharge to be tested for constituents of petroleum products and radioactive material. A member of DEP’s Emergency Response Team used an AccuRad radiations meter to survey radiation at the site of the spill during the initial investigation response, and did not detect any levels of radiation above background levels. The closest downstream public water supplier in Milton has been monitoring its intake and has reported no impacts. Based on all available information, DEP determined it was not necessary to recommend a broad-based restriction on public access to the river.

On Tuesday, August 19, 2025, DEP issued an Administrative Order (attached) to Eureka Resources ordering them to take immediate interim action to prevent further release from the leaking tank at the 2nd Street Williamsport facility, to submit to DEP within five days a plan to remove all liquid waste spilled at the site, and to remove all liquid waste currently stored at the site within 30 days. DEP found that as of June 29, 2025, the waste had been stored for over one year, placing it in violation of the permit.

DEP has been closely monitoring the status of all three of Eureka Resources’ facilities and has taken several actions as materials stored at the various sites began to exceed the one-year threshold of waste being stored on site. On July 9, 2025, DEP issued an Administrative Order and Assessment of Civil Penalty for the Catawissa Avenue (aka Reach Road) Williamsport facility (see attached materials). DEP also continues to work through a similar enforcement process for the Standing Stone Bradford County facility.”

Public Herald will continue to report on this story in the coming week and address the issues raised by DEP in this udpate. For now, it’s important for us to point out that the state has again relied on the wrong testing for radiation regarding radium-226 — an isotope with the highest levels of detection in fracking wastewater.

Public Herald investigations have shown that while the DEP may test or monitor leachate coming out of facilities handling TENORM and affected groundwater, the type of testing used at landfills or sewage plants to monitor for ‘hot’ loads of waste isn’t capable of producing accurate measurements for radium unless it’s measuring with gamma spectroscopy in a minimum 21 day window. In this case, trying to determine the dangerous levels of radium-226 in an instant wouldn’t be possible.

When we told Dr. Julie Weatherington-Rice, a soil scientist and adjunct professor for Ohio State University, about DEP’s type of testing, specifically for tracking TENORM at landfills, she said, “Pennsylvania is counting on smoke and mirrors for protection because they’re not using the right test and they’re not using the right equipment. They don’t know what they put in that landfill. They think they do, but they don’t.”

In the case of the West Fork of the Susquehanna River, DEP again, at least from what we currently know, has failed to use the right test.

Two detectors described in the guidance — geiger-muller counters and zinc sulfide scintillation detectors — can be used to detect beta, gamma and alpha decay radiation in oil and gas waste, but the testing emphasis is placed on gamma radiation.

Pennsylvania is relying on a system that tries to quickly detect levels of gamma, whereas radium is emitting high levels of alpha. According to experts like Dr. Weatherington-Rice, the only way to accurately detect alpha-emitting radioactivity levels is with a different system of testing that landfills, sewage plants, DEP, and oil and gas industry representatives are not required to perform.

The DEP admits difficulties with alpha testing. Geiger-muller counter probes must be held close to the surface of the material because “instruments cannot detect alpha radiation through even a thin layer of water, dust, paper, or other material,” and using scintillation detectors to monitor alpha emission “is often conducted in laboratories rather than field settings.” Additionally, non-zinc sulfide scintillation detectors cannot be used to read alpha emissions.

Andrew Gross, the former head of an oil & gas radioactivity company, called Pennsylvania the regulatory “Wild West.”

“Pennsylvania is definitely the Wild West when it comes to radiological health regulations — I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Gross. “And for me, especially being a guy from Louisiana, that really strikes me as odd, that we’re so much better off down here than all the people who are so smart up there.”

Review all 8 documents from DEP about Eureka Resources spill »

Public Herald will be releasing an updated report about what these documents share in the coming week. Stay tuned.

Embed documents for your website using code:

<iframe src="https://embed.documentcloud.org/projects/222416-eureka-update-082225/?embed=1" width="100%" height="600px"></iframe>

On August 18, 2025, residents of Williamsport, PA, saw a sheen of radioactive fracking wastewater floating on the West Branch of the Susquehanna River that was traced to a spill of 16,000 gallons of wastewater stored by Eureka Resources at their Second Street facility.

While Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) responded swiftly to the discovery — the agency erased a dire health hazard in their documents about the spill. Across 30 pages of findings, nowhere does DEP mention radioactivity, despite over a decade of Public Herald reporting showing that radium, a cancer-causing substance, is a constant contaminant in Marcellus Shale waste. This omission is more than an oversight — in this case it’s a public health cover-up for those directly exposed to the spill.

DEP’s Administrative Order for Eureka Resources

The DEP’s Administrative Order dated August 19, 2025, is followed by a cover letter, delivered by DEP Waste Program Manager Lisa Houser to Eureka that opens with formal violations:

“Enclosed is an Administrative Order … for violations of the Solid Waste Management Act … and of the Clean Streams Law.” (DEP Cover Letter, August 19, 2025)

Inside the Administrative Order it describes how the site was already found to be in disrepair by DEP and in violation of its COA from January 2025. Inspectors found 1.38 million gallons of waste stored in 70 tanks for over a year before the spill, making it an illegal disposal facility, and tanks that were improperly maintained.

“Because Eureka stored oil and gas liquid waste for longer than a year at the Site without approval by the Department, the Site is a ‘solid waste’ and ‘residual waste’ ‘disposal facility.’”

That means Eureka was not just treating waste. By law, it was operating an unpermitted disposal facility — a direct violation of Pennsylvania’s Solid Waste Management Act.

There were also high-level alarms “disconnected or inoperable,” and a tank named “Tank B8” lacked sufficient freeboard.

Read the full report & documents from DEP at Public Herald »

DEP informed Public Herald they “traced the source of the sheen to a release of oily liquids from an aboveground storage tank at the Eureka Resources facility that reached a storm drain. DEP and Lycoming County EMA deployed absorbent boom in the river to contain the spill.”

DEP’s investigation found that approximately 16,000 gallons of wastewater was released from the 26,000 gal storage tank, with upwards of 8,000 gallons of that being outside of the tank’s containment area and into a building on site.

Discharge from the facility is said to have ceased and DEP continues its investigation and oversee cleanup efforts.

DEP, in response to ongoing questions from Public Herald about our 2024 investigation, says Eureka has chosen to no longer accept waste at their facilities…

Read the full report » 

Today is Long Covid Awareness Day, and Public Herald Studios is proud to announce the release of a vital new resource in the fight against Long Covid: A National Treatment and Research Agenda for Long Covid, authored by the Long Covid Action Project (LCAP) CURE and Steering Committees — founded by our own Joshua Boaz Pribanic.

This book is more than a call to action — it’s a blueprint for change. Modeled after the historic 1989 document by HIV/AIDS activists that transformed NIH’s approach to that crisis, LCAP’s work outlines 14 principles to overhaul how government and industry address Long Covid drug testing. These principles demand urgent shifts toward:

• Long Covid Biomarkers

  • Calling for transcriptomic RNA viral load and immune biomarker testing

  • And standardizing multi-omics in clinical settings and research

• Research recommendations into SARS-CoV-2 viral persistence

• Solutions for immune system changes linked to Long Covid

• Pediatric focus in research

• Antiviral, mAbs, pAbs and other drugs of interest (includes an Appendix of 50+ drugs)

Why does this matter? “As of 2024, an estimated 17% of U.S. adults (45 million Americans) have had Long Covid, in addition to more than 5.8 million children affected by the disease.” More than 400 people worldwide are suffering from prolonged health impacts tied to SARS-CoV-2 viral persistence — a reality that demands recognition as a national public health emergency by HHS. Yet, current research agendas lag behind patient needs.

LCAP’s book bridges this gap. It serves as a foundation to prioritize effective trials, therapeutics, and public policy that address the root causes of Long Covid, doing away with symptom-focussed agendas.

Join us in amplifying this critical work:

🔗 Download the free PDF copy

🛒 Purchase the book to support Long Covid Awareness Day and Month

Share this resource. Demand action. Let’s ensure the voices of millions living with Long Covid are heard — before this crisis deepens any further.

In Solidarity,
Public Herald Studios

P.S. The time to act is now. Forward this post, tag policymakers, and help us make viral persistence and immune dysfunction in Long Covid impossible to ignore.

#LongCovid #PublicHealth #LCAP #Activism #LongCovidAwarenessDay #LongCovidAwarenessMonth

🔗 Download the free PDF copy

🛒 Purchase the book

Subscribe now

Learn About Long Covid - Watch This Short Film

Project: TENORM  Published: December 2023

by Joshua Boaz Pribanic for Public Herald

"I'm pretty sure I was at death's door. If I wouldn't have gone to the hospital and got oxygen and got help, I would've been in bad, bad shape."

Over the past six months, Public Herald has been contacted by four additional Eureka workers who are for the first time sharing their stories about the dangers of treating fracking wastewater.  

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Stay tuned to Part 3 of the NPDES permit series where the remaining four workers at Eureka Resources share their stories with Public Herald. For more stories about TENORM, go to: https://publicherald.org/tenorm. 

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Post is sponsored by Pittsburgh Medical Malpractice Lawyers at Pribanic & Pribanic

Project: TENORM  Published: December 2023

by Joshua Boaz Pribanic for Public Herald

"I'm pretty sure I was at death's door. If I wouldn't have gone to the hospital and got oxygen and got help, I would've been in bad, bad shape."

Over the past six months, Public Herald has been contacted by four additional Eureka workers who are for the first time sharing their stories about the dangers of treating fracking wastewater.  

Support Investigative Journalism — Become a Patron » Read the Full Story »

Subscribe now

Project: Yellowstone Series  Published: November 2022

by Emma Lichtwardt & Joshua Boaz Pribanic for Public Herald

Public Herald has found that since 1948, in the name of conservation, the Montana government has been using a poison linked to Parkinson’s disease in lakes, ponds, and rivers across the state. And that EPA and state agencies have not fully disclosed its risk to human health. FWP records obtained by Public Herald show Montana agencies have applied rotenone 253 times at more than 200 different water bodies, to an estimated length of 533 miles of surface water.

The Yellowstone series from Public Herald is investigating the pollution and treatment of waterways in Montana, and throughout the United States. If you have a story to share about water, contact our team. For more stories in this series subscribe to newsCOUP.

Support Investigative Journalism — Become a Patron » Read the Yellowstone Series Part 1 »

Project: newsCOUP  Published: October 2022

“Everybody right now that’s in the DEP’s oil and gas management are liars,” Barr told Public Herald. “They’re really, really bad. They’re covering up, and they just cover up, cover up.” Just north of Pittsburgh, close to the city’s water supply, an injection well in nearby Plum Borough suffered mechanical issues in 2021 the same time that residents next door reported water problems. DEP concluded that the injection well wasn’t causing their water pollution.

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“The EPA never saw this application until I brought it to their attention…meaning, DEP gave [Eureka] a fake permit,” Senator Muth told Public Herald. On public record, on at least three occasions, DEP claims it secured a waiver from EPA, which skipped federal approval. But, Senator Muth said, EPA officials told her they’d never seen the permit let alone issued a waiver.

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For about six years, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has obscured the radioactive hazards of oil and gas operations. Now, for the first time, all 144 names and locations are being released by the team at Public Herald.

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Don't miss this final episode in the Ohio three-part series about the "permanent nuclear reactor" — created from mountains of fracking waste piling up in communities across America.

“This is a permanent reactor near your house, and it will always be a reactor because the waste got pooled together. And it will make as much radon and radium today as it will tomorrow and the next day and the next day and 30 years from now and 100 years from now and 500 years from now because the half life of this stuff is like, forever … So while it’s a naturally occurring material, when you concentrate it, you create a reactor.”

If you missed Part 1 & 2 you can listen to those reports or read the story at https://publicherald.org/tenorm.

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“It is an extremely, overwhelmingly strong bet that the waste and disposal practices in Ohio are seeing a great deal of material that exceeds the limits,” said Ohio attorney Terry Lodge. “The state is acting illegally.” 

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“They just feel that our lives are worth nothing, that we’re expendable,” said Anderson. “People's lives matter. You can't sacrifice them for corporate profit.”

Eight years later, Chief’s Orders facilities, who would handle radioactive waste from fracking, are operating with no updated rules or oversight. Today, that leaves the potential for unregulated radioactive waste to enter rivers and watersheds across Ohio.

Read the full report » https://publicherald.org/under-chiefs-orders-ohio-operates-a-radioactive-industry-off-the-record/

In the heart of President Joe Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, the Friends of Lackawanna are fighting the massive expansion of Keystone Sanitary Landfill, a waste dump that accepts radioactive material created by fracking for oil and natural gas.

“This is the future of our community at stake,” said Michele Dempsey from Friends of Lackawanna. “Our community lives or dies on this [expansion] decision, and so we gave it our hearts and souls.” Dempsey’s community is just one of many across America where, since fracking began, state and federal regulators have sent radioactive material to residual waste sites. As this waste piles up in public and private landfills, the size and risk of these “TENORM Mountains” looms large.

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