BOKOSHE, Okla. — Citizens from Bokoshe, population 500, have filed a class-action lawsuit against almost 50 companies they suspect of allowing power plant and fracking waste to leak into their groundwater, according to an article by The Huffington Post.
Bokoshe residents first became aware of a problem when they found out a coal ash dump site was discharging toxic chemicals into their groundwater and into the air, the article reported.
According to the article, this month citizens also found that hundreds of millions of gallons of fracking wastewater has been discharged in their town, a practice that was stopped in 2009 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) but still affects local groundwater.
The fracking wastewater has been tracked to oil and gas wells in Oklahoma and Arkansas where wastewater pits are apparently not properly lined, the release noted, but the power plant coal ash waste at the local dump is legal and permitted there for the next 30 years.
Read the full article here.
