Rolling Stone investigative author coming to Valley

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) – An award-winning environmental journalist is coming to Youngstown to give a presentation.

Justin Nobel will be at Youngstown State University’s McKay Auditorium on May 2 from 4-6 p.m. presenting his new book, which has many local connections and incidents.

Nobel was the author of a 20-month investigative segment in Rolling Stone magazine, winning the National Association of Science Writers award.

Nobel specifically writes about the U.S. oil and gas industry and talks about the 3 billion gallons of brine it produces each day. While the brine had been said to be benign, Nobel’s investigation began when an Ohio community organizer told him that someone made a liquid de-icer out of oilfield brine and that the product contained enough radium to be defined by the EPA as radioactive waste but was billed as “safe for pets” and sold at retailers.

The investigation is the springboard for Nobel’s book, “Petroleum-238: Big Oil’s Dangerous Secret and the Grassroots Fight to Stop It.”

The event is sponsored by Buckeye Environmental.

The Valley became a hot spot for fracking, the process of extracting gas from the ground in deep rock formations. Brine is a byproduct of that process and was the center of a Department of Justice lawsuit against Hardrock Excavating and its owner Ben Lupo for dumping the waste in a tributary of the Mahoning River.

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