Save Ohio Parks statement on deceptive comments

Save Ohio Parks was instrumental in uncovering 1100 supposed pro-fracking comments submitted to the Oil and Gas Land Management Commission that at least 150 people whose names were on the comments said they never submitted.

We talked with over 100 Ohio citizens who told us they never submitted the comments bearing their names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. Many told us they did not know what fracking is. Some did not speak English, some did not have a computer, and some were children.

We learned these comments were submitted by Consumer Energy Alliance, which had gathered the personal information of Ohioans for a different purpose, then used it on comments supposedly in favor of fracking our state parks and public lands. CEA has a track record of using citizens’ personal information without their knowledge and consent on pro-fossil fuel comments in several states, including a previous case in Ohio in 2016.

Save Ohio Parks brought this information to the Oil and Gas Land Management Commission chair in August 2023 and asked her to remove the comments from the commission website. She declined but instead referred us to Attorney General Dave Yost’s office. We provided our documentation to the attorney general’s office, but never heard anything back from either Yost or the commission chair.

Now we find out Yost’s investigation was closed months ago. The attorney general’s findings confirm what we told the commission a year ago: that Consumer Energy Alliance had gathered personal information from at least 1100 Ohioans for one purported purpose, then without their knowledge or consent had used that information for public comments supposedly in favor of fracking our state parks and public lands.

The attorney general has proposed a new administrative rule that would label what Consumer Energy Alliance did — collecting personal information of Ohio citizens for one purpose but using it for another unrelated purpose — as a “deceptive act.” We support this rule but would like to see penalties specified for engaging in such deception.

Save Ohio Parks again calls on the Oil and Gas Land Management Commission to remove these 1100 comments, which the attorney general has now confirmed were never submitted by the people whose names are on the comments. It is not right to leave the personal information of Ohioans that they did not submit posted publicly on a state website.

We further call on the commission to stop rubber-stamping fracking of our Ohio state parks and wildlife areas, and instead listen to the thousands of Ohioans who actually did submit public comments against oil and gas extraction from the public lands that Ohio citizens own, pay for, and use.

The commission is required by statute ORC 155.33(B)(1)(h) to consider “any comments or objections … submitted to the commission by residents of this state” in deciding whether to approve or deny a parcel proposed for fracking — yet they have not once discussed or referred to the extensive public comments opposed to fracking Ohio public lands, even as they continue approving fracking of our parks and wildlife areas.

This must stop. We the people of Ohio own and use our public lands — just 3% of all land in Ohio. We do not want to see this land irrevocably altered by industrial fracking.