Facebook daily report challenges Ohio industry claims that fracking is “environmentally friendly”

Accident frequency, lax waste regulation and storage and analog data monitoring pose danger to Ohio’s drinking water supply, industry watchdog says

A new Facebook page monitoring thousands of gas and oil production-related accidents and cleanups happening nearly every day over the last nine years challenges industry claims that it’s environmentally friendly.

Report trends indicate a troubling pattern of lax regulation along with superficial attempts to clean up oil, gas and radioactive fracking wastewater from lands and water across the state, according to FracTracker Alliance, a national nonprofit that studies, maps, and communicates the risks and impacts of oil, gas, and petrochemical development.

“These reports also indicate Analog Age levels of data collection, archiving and dissemination about these accidents,” said Ted Auch, Midwest program director at FracTracker Alliance. “As the industry continues to move forward with its work at light speed in a decidedly digital age, we have an Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) working at a snail’s pace. That gap continues to widen, resulting in increasing levels of data obfuscation and larger and larger data gaps.”

FracTracker mapped and analyzed 1,400 of 1,500 Ohio gas and oil-related incidents earlier this spring provided by Jenny Morgan of Columbus, a Save Ohio Parks steering committee member and longtime environmental public health advocate who accessed them through ODNR records requests.

Fractracker’s analysis concluded that data showed that oil and gas incidents in the state reported over the past five years – and their level of severity – have been grossly misrepresented.

Morgan created the Daily Accident Report: Gas and Oil Facebook page at https://bit.ly/3Xi236X last month.

Her deep dive into ODNR’s reports on inspections, cleanups and sign-offs on oil and accidents followed a WVXU radio interview in which Rob Brundrett of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association claimed the fracking industry had no indication of any water pollution and called fracking “safe and environmentally friendly.”

 “Once I began reading each case individually, I was horrified at how many oil and gas-related accidents are happening on a regular basis,” said Morgan. “These are incident tracking documents the ODNR itself has filed.”

The oil and gas industry uses unregulated chemicals during the fracking process and creates hundreds of millions of gallons of contaminated and radioactive waste annually.

“How are all of these accidents impacting our Ohio land, creeks, plant and animal habitats, biodiversity, drinking water and health?” asked Morgan.

Common denominators in the ODNR reports re-posted on Facebook over the past month are: in many cases, an oil and gas company self-reports an accident; the ODNR inspects the scene and orders cleanup and soil and water remediation; and the responsible party either cleans up the site cosmetically with foam booms across bodies of water to contain whatever dangerous material has spilled into water, or removes contaminated soil and trucks it to area landfills.

Following is an example of how a seemingly minor fracking truck driver error resulted in a major environmental accident documented by ODNR and re-posted by the Daily Accident Report in its #14 entry:

At 9 a.m. on July 11, 2023, an oil and gas contractor’s truck backed up into a Hilcorp Energy Fairfield-Tarka 14H wellhead in Columbiana County, causing a pressurized release of natural gas and about 630 to 840 gallons of contaminated drilling waste, or produced water, to spew vertically from the wellhead. The spill was finally contained by 1 p.m. the following day. About 450 nearby residents were evacuated because of the natural gas leak. About 111 tons of contaminated soil was trucked to Carbon Limestone Landfill for storage.

Yet the state’s Oil and Gas Land Management Commission continues to approve drilling and fracking under Ohio state parks and public lands despite these scientifically-researched and accepted facts:

• People living within a mile of a fracked well experience increased lymphoma (childhood cancers), asthmas, fertility and hormone disruption;
• Fracking depletes up to 40 million gallons of fresh water from lakes, rivers and streams to frack one well, one time. A well can be fracked multiple times over its 20- 40-year life span. Up to 1.5 trillion gallons of water have been used nationwide by fracking since 2011, much of it from aquifers;
• “Produced” water waste from the fracking process can be radioactive. It is removed from the water supply, often forever. It’s injected deep underground in Ohio permitted Class II injection wells, which can leak;
•  Methane gas and carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions from fracking are a prime contributor to and accelerator of climate change;
•  Fracking causes low-level earthquakes, which can damage utility pipes and cause above-ground home and business structural damage.

Ohio is a recognized climate villain because of its extensive extractive gas and oil production and carbon storage industry. The Utica-Marcellus shale region – which includes Ohio, western Pennsylvania and northwestern West Virginia – ranks second in the nation and fourth worldwide in greenhouse and methane gas emissions that warm the atmosphere and contribute to climate change.

Ohio’s populace is also at substantial risk because a federal Department of Energy project creating a carbon capture hub proposed for southeast Ohio relies on unproven technology that endangers the environment, human health and safety, according to FracTracker analysis.

The ODNR oversees the regulation of Ohio’s oil and natural gas industry and has authority over incidents related to oil and gas wells, Class II and Class III injection wells, and oil and gas waste facilities. That likely would include any potential remediation of impacts from oil and gas related incidents, said Karina Cheung, ODNR spokesperson.

She said the Division of Oil & Gas Resources Management has six emergency response group staff; however, depending on the incident, it could involve multiple staff members or groups to ensure incidents are “responded to appropriately and that any needed clean up and testing is completed.”

“I think the Daily Accident Report shows that gas and oil industry representatives like Rob Brundrett are a kind of salesperson,” said Morgan. “He undoubtedly works with well-funded oil and gas industry marketing firms to craft the most compelling sales pitch money can buy. That well-funded message is that gas and oil drilling production is the best thing since sliced bread, despite documented evidence of it having contaminated water supplies, waterways, and harming wildlife, and despite growing research showing harms to human health,”

In Ohio, that sales pitch has included the submission of alleged fraudulent, pro-fracking emails to the OGLMC.

The case against fossil fuels is only growing stronger. Recent news reports have revealed that the fossil fuel industry has known for 70 years  that gas and oil production caused not just air and water pollution, but would also cause climate warming and climate change.

In Ohio, despite evidence from its own ODNR incident files that illustrate how risky and accident-prone many of these oil and gas processes are, the state appears determined to continue drilling our state parks and public lands, said Morgan.

This, even though solar is much less expensive to install and operate than oil and gas infrastructure.

There’s a saying, said Morgan. “’What do you call a solar spill? Just another sunny day!’ Ohio deserves a lot more of these.”

For more information about Save Ohio Parks, the statewide, volunteer organization concerned about the harms fracking causes to our health, the environment and planet, visit saveohioparks.org.