With this week's data, we're seeing plenty of Covid at all three county sites. Let's start with the West Point (WSPT) sewage treatment plant: the Sars-CoV-2 7-day rolling average more than doubled since last week. The last 7DRA number was calculated on 6/4.
WSPT is one of three King County(-ish) sewersheds in this dataset. You can find overviews, individual sewershed results, and a breakdown of variants for the state wastewater surveillance program, along with other metrics like case counts and hospitalizations for Covid-19 and other respiratory illnesses, at https://doh.wa.gov/data-and-statistical-reports/diseases-and-chronic-conditions/communicable-disease-surveillance-data/respiratory-illness-data-dashboard#WasteWater. If you go to the page and click "learn more" in the statewide view tab, you can find out lots of details about how these data are calculated and how to interpret them. The dashboard gets updated every Wednesday (generally).
Note: when the state switched over to new data providers in September, they also removed the previous historical data from the graphical interface. That's because the two providers used different methodologies that made direct comparisons difficult. Unfortunately, it also removed valuable context for interpreting the results. So, keep in mind we're just seeing what happened in September 2023 until now.
The West Point (WSPT) sewage treatment plant Sars-CoV-2 7-day rolling average continues to bounce around the levels its been at for weeks, with maybe a very slight uptick that’s hard to see on this graph. The last 7DRA number was calculated on 5/14.
WSPT is one of three King County(-ish) sewersheds in this dataset. You can find overviews, individual sewershed results, and a breakdown of variants for the state wastewater surveillance program, along with other metrics like case counts and hospitalizations for Covid-19 and other respiratory illnesses, at https://doh.wa.gov/data-and-statistical-reports/diseases-and-chronic-conditions/communicable-disease-surveillance-data/respiratory-illness-data-dashboard#WasteWater. If you go to the page and click "learn more" in the statewide view tab, you can find out lots of details about how these data are calculated and how to interpret them. The dashboard gets updated every Wednesday (generally).
Note: when the state switched over to new data providers in September, they also removed the previous historical data from the graphical interface. That's because the two providers used different methodologies that made direct comparisons difficult. Unfortunately, it also removed valuable context for interpreting the results. So, keep in mind we're just seeing what happened in September 2023 until now.
"Spraying roads with “produced water,” highly saline wastewater containing proprietary drilling chemicals as well as benzene, arsenic and radium 226 and 228, both radioactive isotopes, has been outlawed in #Pennsylvania since 2016."
“The reality is, even though dumping on roads is illegal, it is happening all the time, every day,” said Hess.
"In the oil fields north of Fort Stockton, #Texas, a large leak discovered at the beginning of December has joined a growing list of aging oil and gas wells in the area that have sat quietly for decades only to reawaken and spew toxic water."
“The worst thing about this one is that it’s toxic [and] radioactive #ProducedWater that is going into the #groundwater,” said Burch."
Fracking needs water (clean) that gets returned to the surface as "produced" water (not clean). A LOT of it.
"The land has subsided by as much as 11 inches since 2015 in a prime portion of the #Permian Basin, as drillers extract huge amounts of oil and water, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of satellite data. In other areas where drillers dispose of #wastewater in underground wells, the land has lifted by as much as 5 inches over the same period."