You Won't Believe What We Found Hidden In This Small Ohio Town

(Robert Reed) So this is what’s called a Pandora’s box, literally. (John Russell) Inside that box are boots from a former worker at a fracking waste recycling facility, a company called Austin Master Services. (News anchor) The company accused of storing illegal amounts of radioactive and fracking waste in Martins Ferry. If you’re looking at, like, the background earth level in this area, we’re about 50 counts per minute. (John Russell) Bev Reed here is holding the Ludlum 3000, a radiation detector, the same type that the oil and gas industry uses.

(Videographer) It’s up to about 230 now. (Bev Reed) You can actually smell the chemicals coming off of it still, too. These guys get soaked in this stuff every day at work. (John Russell) And that’s not just a problem for the workers in the facility. (John Davies) This is Austin Master, right here.
(John Russell) This is how many feet from the Ohio River? It is probably 150 feet from the river, I would say. (John Russell) It could be a disaster for millions. They have what in there? 10,000 tons of radioactive debris is inside that building right now.
They’re permitted for 600 ton. (News anchor) There’s still flooding on First Street in front of Austin Master Services in Martins Ferry. (Robert Reed) How could you permit the facility in a flood zone that has toxic waste and radioactive tailings from this industry? How could you let them within 1,000 feet of your water source? It’s just all craziness.

(John Russell) How did we get here? (Mike Siebieda) That’s a good question. My personal opinion would be greed. (John Russell) This is the story of how a company put the health of millions in jeopardy. (John Davies) I’m not willing to trade health for jobs.
I’m not gonna do that to my people. (John Russell) How the fracking industry laid waste to working-class communities. (Megan Hunter) Every day, in little communities in the Ohio River Valley, this is what it looks like. And it’s people begging for enforcement. (John Russell) And how one town fought back.
(News anchor) The Ohio Attorney General Yost has placed a temporary restraining order on the Austin Master Services facility in Martins Ferry.

(John Russell) This is the Ohio River Valley. It’s where I grew up and where I live now, and it helped build our country through industry: steel mills, strip mining, and coal mining. (John Davies) I think your businesses are taking advantage of the area here. These—which ones?
All of them. (John Russell) That’s John Davies. He’s the mayor of Martins Ferry, Ohio. I think they target the valley because of the economic downturn in the valley. And people are hungry to get good-paying jobs.
(John Russell) And it’s history repeating itself here in “Frackalachia.” About ten years ago, oil and gas production began in this region. And people here—rural communities, business folks, politicians— they were all eager to welcome the economic revival promised by fracking. Even Mayor Davies got caught up in it. Everybody’s excited.
Everybody’s applying for these jobs. They’re not weighing the risk.

And I did the same thing. I took one of them jobs. (John Russell) What job did you take?
I actually drove one of them brine trucks. (John Russell) You drove a brine truck? Wow. Fracking produces massive amounts of waste, hazardous, toxic waste, some of it radioactive, that someone has to deal with. That’s where Austin Master Services comes in.
(Mike Siebieda) You’re getting radioactive material. You’re getting just stuff that’s been underground for a long time, right? (John Russell) Mike Siebieda used to work for Austin Master services here in Martins Ferry. (John Russell) What’s it like? It smells like sewage.
Yeah, it smells like you’re going into, you know, a processing plant for human waste. (John Russell) Austin Master Services opened here in Martins Ferry in 2015. On paper, they’re supposed to be safely processing and disposing of oilfield waste, including the radioactive components. But in practice, that’s not what happened.

10,000 tons of radioactive debris is inside the building right now.
They’re permitted for 600 ton. To put that in perspective is they have— well, you could figure there’s an average truck coming in is 20 to 25 ton. So you’re looking at 500 truckloads more than what they’re allowed to have. (John Russell) The mayor gave us a contact for a former trucker who picked up fracking waste to bring to Austin Master. He says he was never told that the waste loaded onto his truck was radioactive, and he was never given PPE or guidelines for how to keep him and his family safe from exposure.
When we spoke to him, he was about to be interviewed for another job, so he chose to remain anonymous. And in an area dominated by this industry, it is hard to find workers willing to speak openly about the hazards that they’re exposed to.

When I read what they were, what they had in the building, I’m like, it must be into the ceilings. I mean, you must be talking about mountains of dirt all over the floor covering the whole facility. (John Russell) Mike no longer works at Austin Master Services.
What they probably do is just bled it dry and took in as much waste they could fit inside of the building without shipping it to Texas, because it’s very expensive. You can make a lot of money doing this. There’s a big need for this. But it’s also very expensive. So if you’re able to take in all that money by accepting all this waste and not have to put any out, you’re going to get rich really quick.

(John Russell) We are on our way to talk with the lead activist of a group called Concerned Ohio River Residents. (detector beeping) (Bev Reed) So I’ll just show you how radioactive this stuff is. So it’s in the thousands of counts per minute. (John Russell) That’s a sample of some of the contaminated waste produced by fracking. (Bev Reed) There’s ways they could have kept tabs on that place closer.
There’s a million ways that you can regulate stronger, you know? But they didn’t do it. (John Russell) Bev got involved after first seeing an Ohio Department of Natural Resources inspection report of Austin Master Services from 2020 showing waste piled up at the facility. (Bev Reed) And so that’s when we started going to council meetings.

We said, how can this be on our water source?
Like, what are you— how can we feel protected as citizens? And, yeah, just didn’t have much luck back then. (John Russell) For years, they felt like they were screaming into the void. And then..
. (News anchor) The state of Ohio is taking legal action against a company in Belmont County. (John Russell) In March, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost went after Austin Master Services trying to get them to “stop storing illegal excess quantities of the toxic waste.” (Bev Reed) Right in his press release it said there’s an imminent threat to public health, egregious violations of Ohio law, all these big words that we’ve never heard from the state of Ohio, ever. And all of a sudden we’re like, hello?
We said this three years ago. (John Russell) Then just a few days later, things got serious. (News anchor) The Ohio River is officially in the flood range. So what are we looking at here? Yeah.
Tell us about it. That’s the flood water on, beginning of April during the crest.

This is where the trains, the train cars come in. And this is the truck loading. You can see water all around it.
And we went to a council meeting, and we told them three more feet, five more feet, the river would have been in that pile of toxic waste. And that would mean potentially contaminating the local water supply, which would affect a lot more than just Martins Ferry. (Robert Reed) These people for years got away with this, with [Ohio Department of Natural Resources] going in and inspecting all the time. It’s not, “Oops!” They knew what was going on.
They let it happen. And I’m really ticked off about it. (John Russell) If a company wants to play fast and loose in this industry, what’s preventing them from doing that? (Mike Siebieda) Very little. My experience is that there is not enough people to monitor this.

I would say the state fails us. Our government fails us. Initially, there were no regulations for oil and gas waste facilities in the state of Ohio, and I don’t think the state was prepared for the enormous quantities of waste that we were talking about. (John Russell) Megan Hunter is an attorney with Earthjustice. She knows all about how the oil and gas industry in this region is regulated, and how they get around it.
(Megan Hunter) What happened was EPA in the ’80s, they looked at this oil and gas waste, and they basically issued a determination saying this should not be regulated as hazardous under [the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act] basically because there’s too much of it for us to figure out how to do that.

And because it would be too big of a burden on industry. (John Russell) When the oil and gas boom made its way to Ohio, the state legislature had to design some form of oversight, but didn’t give any powers to the state’s EPA. Instead, it created a new group, the Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management, under the Department of Natural Resources, and gave it exclusive authority. (Megan Hunter) The intent behind giving the Ohio Department of Natural Resources the sole and exclusive authority over oil and gas operations in the state of Ohio, it was the legislature’s intent to kind of insulate them from environmental accountability to the degree that they could.
And so what ODNR was doing, the head of the Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management would issue these things called chief’s orders on kind of an ad hoc basis, saying that these facilities could operate. And that’s how Austin Masters came to be.

ODNR just granted them authority to operate because they didn’t have regulations in place. There was nothing really for them to kind of check the facility against. (John Russell) And the toothless agency can only point out problems.
They can’t even issue fines without getting the attorney general involved. Years of inspection reports show a pattern of carelessness at Austin Master Services. Things like “waste overflowing out of bins,” “waste spilled from truck wash,” “waste stored on the warehouse floor,” “sludge and liquid on the floor.” (Megan Hunter) The agency has discretion on how it chooses to use its enforcement resources.

So if the agency wants to pretend that Austin Master doesn’t exist and turn a blind eye to them, it’s basically impossible for a citizen to hold ODNR accountable for that choice to not enforce.
But the people of Martins Ferry had had enough, and they were determined to hold Austin Master accountable and drive them out. That place should just be gone forever. What accountability do you want to see for Austin Master in this situation that’s happening? I wanna see them clean it up. (John Russell) That’s what the attorney general wanted to see Austin Master do, too.
But it didn’t happen. The waste sat there for months untill… (News anchor) Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost is now asking a Belmont County judge to hold Austin Master Services’ parent company, American Environmental Partners, and owner Brad Domitrovitsch in contempt for failing to meet the court’s clean up deadline.

They even had to shell out $25,000 to keep CEO Brad Domitrovitsch out of jail. But when it came time to actually fork up the money for the cleanup, they basically said, we can’t. Conveniently, they claim that the company had “no remaining assets,” and that Austin Master Services was “effectively a dead company,” and that bankruptcy was coming soon. (John Davies) So they leave and they say, “Oh, well, we run out of money. We can’t afford to clean up.
We took our $10 or 20 million and we’re running. You guys have to clean it up.” You have these people come in and they buy these properties, you know, and they don’t live here, and they just— they don’t care what they put in there. It’s greed at its worst, is what you have going on here. And it stems everywhere from the politicians all the way to the owners.

There is some good news though. (News anchor) Phase one of the cleanup process is now complete. (John Russell) Because of what folks in Martins Ferry have done, on August 9th, ODNR stepped in and started the cleanup at Austin Master. It’s later than planned. Austin Master was supposed to finish their first court-ordered cleanup on April 17th.
But the big win? ODNR says they are not re-permitting the facility for this kind of waste storage. Communities like this across the country do the dirty work behind every modern convenience that we don’t think twice about it. And in all that comfort, it’s easy to miss the downside. We assume that companies care about more than a dollar, or that regulators always stand strong against corporate greed, or that dangerous, seedy industries like this are the most a place like the Ohio Valley can hope for.

But stories like this paint a different picture, one where companies do whatever they can get away with, and regulators go along for the ride until ordinary people stand up and fight for what’s most important: clean water and air; jobs that pay well and don’t kill us slowly; and a say over what life is like in the places that we love most. Then just a few days later, things got serious. And that would mean potentially contaminating the local water supply, which would affect a lot more than just Martins Ferry. And that would mean potentially contaminating the local water supply, which would affect a lot more than just Martins Ferry.

Megan Hunter is an industry policy.
Megan Hunter is an attorney with Earthjustice. Be nice if I remember how to speak normally. Megan Hunter is an attorney with Earthjustice. She knows all about how the oil and gas industry in this region is regulated, and how they get around it. Megan Hunter is an attorney with Earthjustice.
She knows all about how the oil and gas industry in this region is regulated, and how they get around it.

Megan Hunter is an attorney with Earthjustice. She knows all about how the oil and gas industry in this region is regulated, and how they get around it. And the toothless agency can only point out problems. They can’t even issue fines without getting the attorney general involved.
And the toothless agency can only point out problems. They can’t even issue fines without getting the attorney general involved. And the toothless agency can only point out problems. They can’t even issue fines without getting the attorney general involved. So it’s down to do that.
Okay. And the toothless agency can only point out problems. They can’t even issue fines without getting the attorney general involved. Years of inspection reports show a pattern of carelessness at Austin Master Services. Things like x, y, z, x, y, z.
Years of inspection reports show a pattern of carelessness at Austin Master Services. Things like X, y, z.

But the people of Martins Ferry had had enough, and they were determined to hold Austin Master accountable and drive them out. But the people of Martins Ferry had had enough, and they were determined to hold Austin Master accountable and drive them out. That’s what the Attorney general wanted to see out.
That’s what the Attorney general wanted to see Austin Master do to. But it didn’t happen. The waste sat there for months until. But it didn’t happen. The waste sat there for months until.
That’s what the attorney general wanted to see Austin Master do too. But it didn’t happen. The waste sat there for months until the. And they were held in contempt. They even had to shell out $25,000 to keep CEO Brad Dimitrov out of jail.
And they were held in contempt. They even had to shell out $25,000 to keep CEO Brad Dimitrov out of jail. But when it actually came. But when it came to actually forking up the money for the cleanup, they basically said, we can’t.

But when it came time to actually fork up the money for the cleanup, they basically said, we can’t.
Conveniently, they claimed that the company had no remaining assets and that Austin Master Services was effectively a dead company, and that bankruptcy was coming soon. Conveniently, they claimed that the company had no remaining assets and that Austin Master Services was effectively a dead company, and that bankruptcy was coming soon. There is some good news, though. There is, however, some good news. There is some good news, though.
There is some good news, though. There is some good news, though. There is some good news, though. Because of what folks in Martins Ferry have done. On August 9th, Odnr stepped in and started the cleanup at Austin, master.
Because of what folks in Martins Ferry have done. On August 9th, Odnr stepped in and started the cleanup at Austin, master. It’s later than planned.

Austin, Master was supposed to finish their first court ordered cleanup on April 17th. It’s later than planned.
Austin, Master was supposed to finish their first court ordered cleanup on April 17th. But the big win. Odnr says they are not permitting this kind of facility, permitting the facility for this kind of waste storage. But the big win Odnr says they are not permitting the first, not permitting the facility for this kind of waste storage. Okay.
But the big win, but the big win. But the big win. Odnr says they are not permitting the facility for this kind of waste storage. But the big win. Odnr says they are not permitted.
But the big win. Odnr says they are not permitting the facility for this kind of waste storage. But the big win. Odnr says they are not permitting the facility for this kind of waste storage. Communities like this across the country do the dirty work behind every modern convenience that we don’t think twice about in, and all that comfort.
It’s easy to miss the downside. We assume that companies care about more than a dollar, or that regulators always stand strong against corporate greed, or that dangerous, seedy industries like this are the most a place like the Ohio Valley can hope for.

But stories like this paint a different picture, one where companies do whatever they can. But stories like this paint a different picture, one where companies do whatever they can. But stories like this paint a different picture, one where companies do whatever they can get away with.
And regulators go along for the ride until ordinary people stand up and fight for what’s most important. Clean water and air jobs that pay well and don’t kill us. And a say over what life is like in the places that we all love. I don’t know if I love that, but you know what? We’re just going to go with it because we have limited time.
Okay. Let’s do another one on that. As also crazy windy. And I’m probably darker than I was because we’re in the shade. All right, let’s take a drink of water and make sure we’re.
Okay. Still going to go with this. Let’s do one more. Oh, fuck.

That’s where I kind of go.
All right. Oh. You. John’s got to go to therapy right now. All right.
Communities like this across the country do the dirty work behind every modern convenience. So we don’t think twice about. And and all that comfort. It’s easy to miss the downside. We assume that companies care about more than a dollar.
Or that regulators always stand strong against corporate greed, or that or no, stop it! What are you doing? Come on. Okay. Why is this going nuts all of a sudden?
Go back. We assume that companies care about more than a dollar. Or that regulators always stand strong against corporate greed or that dangerous, seedy industry is are the most that a place like the Ohio Valley can hope for. But stories like this paint a different picture, one where companies do whatever they can get away with, and regulators go along for the ride until ordinary people stand up and fight for what’s most important. Clean water and air jobs that pay well and don’t kill us slowly, and a say over what life is like in the places that we love most.

Hopefully that does it. I am. Here we go. Bev Reed here is holding the Ludlum 3000, a radiation detector, the same type that the oil and gas industry uses. And that’s not just a problem for the workers in the facility.
It could be a disaster for millions. This is the story of how a company put the health of millions in jeopardy. How the fracking industry laid waste to working class communities. And how one town fight back. And it helped build our country through industry.
Steel mills. Strip mining. Coal mining. And it helped build our country through industry. Steel mills, strip mining and coal mining.
Sorry. And I feel like most, like 25% of the work I do for more perfect union is burping on voice overs.

Fracking produces. Fracking produces massive amounts of waste. Hazardous toxic waste, some of it radioactive, that someone has to deal with.
That’s where Austin Master Services comes in. Fracking produces massive amounts of waste. Hazardous toxic waste, some of it radioactive, that someone has to deal with. That’s where Austin Master Services comes in. Mike no longer works at Austin Master Services.
Mike no longer works at Austin. Master services. Mike. Mike no longer works at Austin. Master services.
That’s a sample of the contaminated. That’s a sample of some of the contaminated waste produced by fracking. That’s a sample of some of the contaminated waste produced by fracking. For years, they felt like they were screaming into the void. And then.
For years, they felt like they were screaming into the void.

And then. For years, they felt like they were screaming into the void. And then in March, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost went after Austin Master Services, trying to get them to stop storing illegal excess quantities of the toxic waste. In March, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost went after Austin Master Services trying to get them to stop storing illegal excess quantities of the toxic waste.
When he made his way to Ohio, the state legislature had to design some form of oversight, but they but didn’t give any powers to the state’s EPA in 2011 and created a new group, the Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management, under the Department of Natural Resources, and it gave it exclusive authority. When the oil and gas boom made its way to Ohio, the state legislature had to design some form of oversight, but didn’t give any powers to the state’s EPA. Instead, in 2011, it created a new group, the Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management, under the Department of Natural Resources, and gave it exclusive authority.

When the oil and gas boom made its way to Ohio, the state legislature had to design some form of oversight, but didn’t give any powers to the state’s EPA. Instead, in 2011, it created a new group, the Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management, under the Department of Natural Resources and gave it exclusive authority.
Field, like the other 25% of voiceovers, were more perfect union or just really breathy Kristen Stewart impressions. Here’s an inspection report. Show a pattern of carelessness and arson. Master services, things like waste overflowing out of bins, waste spilled from truck wash, waste stored on the warehouse floor, waste near the warehouse building entrance and exit. Waste near the warehouse building entrance and exit, creating potential for waste to be tracked outside of the warehouse.
Note the tire tracks through the waste sludge and liquid on the floor. Liquids on the floor and trucks tracking through it. Liquid leaching from the pile. Excessive waste being outside. Containment.
Excessive waste storage. Bin overflowing. Things like waste overflowing out of bins. Waste spilled from truck. Raw waste built from truck wash.
Waste spilled from truck wash.

Waste stored on the warehouse floor. Waste near the warehouse building entrance and exit. Creating potential for waste to be tracked outside of the warehouse. Note the tire tracks through the waste.
Sludge and liquid on the floor. Liquids on the floor and trucks tracking through it. Liquid leaching from the pile. Excessive waste being outside of containment. Excessive waste storage.
Bin overflowing. Okay, I think that’s it. Maybe I’ll just run through. Second round. Through.
Really quick. Probably dirty. Okay. Maybe different than all the rest. Who knows?
Bev Reid here is holding the Ludlum 3000. A radiation detector. The same type that the oil and gas industry uses. And that’s not just a problem for workers in the facility. It could be a disaster for millions.
This is the story of how a company put the health of millions in jeopardy. How the fracking industry laid waste to working class communities. And how one town fought back. And it helped build our country through industry. Steel mills.
Strip mining. Coal mining. And it helped build our country through industry, steel mills, strip mining and coal mining. Fracking produces massive amounts of waste.

Goddamn.
Some of weapon on the hog out there. Fracking produces massive amounts of waste. Hazardous toxic waste. Some of it radioactive, that someone has to deal with. That’s where Austin Master Services comes in.
Mike no longer works at Austin master services. That’s a sample of some of the contaminated waste. That’s a sample of some of the contaminated waste produced by fracking. For years, they felt like they were screaming into the void. And then in March, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost went after Austin Master Services, trying to get them to stop storing illegal excess quantities of the toxic waste.
When the oil and gas boom made its way to Ohio, the state legislature had to design some form of oversight, but didn’t give any powers to the state’s EPA.

Instead, in 2011, it created a new group, the Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management, under the Department of Natural Resources, and gave it exclusive authority. Things like waste overflowing out of bins, waste spilled from the truck wash, waste stored on the warehouse floor, waste near the warehouse building entrance and exit, creating potential for waste to be tracked outside of the warehouse. Note the tire tracks through the waste. Sludge and liquid on the floor.

Liquids on the floor and trucks tracking through it. Liquid leaching from the pile. Excessive waste being stored outside of containment. Excessive waste storage. Bin overflowing.
Okay. That’s it. Also. Okay. It’s happening right now.
I live across from a TV station. I have no theory about this. Other than me going crazy, but under the static of the room noise, you can hear local advertisements like, take a listen. Now. Okay, I might just be crazy, but there it is.

Okay, I think that’s it. Maybe I’ll just run through. Second round through. Really quick. Probably dirty.
Okay. Maybe different than all the rest. Who knows? Bev Reid here is holding the Ludlum 3000. A radiation detector, the same type that the oil and gas industry uses.
And that’s not just a problem for workers in the facility. It could be a disaster for millions. How the fracking industry laid waste to working class communities. And how one town fought back. And it helped build our country through industry.
Steel mills. Strip mining. Coal mining. And it helped build our country through industry, steel mills, strip mining and coal mining. Fracking produces massive amounts of waste.
Goddamn, some of these weapon on the hog out there.

Fracking produces massive amounts of waste. Hazardous toxic waste, some of it radioactive, that someone has to deal with. That’s where Austin Master Services comes in. Mike no longer works at Austin master services.
That’s a sample of some of the contaminated waste. That’s a sample of some of the contaminated waste produced by fracking. For years, they felt like they were screaming into the void.

And then in March, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost went after Austin Master Services, trying to get them to stop storing illegal excess quantities of the toxic waste. When the oil and gas boom made its way to Ohio, the state legislature had to design some form of oversight, but didn’t give any powers to the state’s EPA.
Instead, in 2011, it created a new group, the Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management, under the Department of Natural Resources, and gave it exclusive authority. Things like waste overflowing out of bins, waste spilled from the truck wash, waste stored on the warehouse floor, waste near the warehouse building entrance and exit, creating potential for waste to be tracked outside of the warehouse. Note the tire tracks through the waste. Sludge and liquid on the floor. Liquids on the floor and trucks tracking through it.
Liquid leaching from the pile. Excessive waste being stored outside of containment. Excessive waste storage. Bin overflowing. Okay.
That’s it. Also. Okay. It’s happening right now. I live across from a TV station.
I have no theory about this other than me going crazy, but under the static of the room noise, you can hear local advertisements like, take a listen.

Now. Okay, I might just be crazy, but there it is.

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