Fracking is toxic. We can’t lose more land to it

By Randi Pokladnik

In 2024, 62 acres of the Leesville Wildlife Area in Carroll County were opened up for fracking by Ohio’s Oil and Gas Land Management Commission (OGLMC). The winning bid was placed by Encino Energy, a Texas-based company.

Earlier this month, the OGLMC awarded another bid for more fracking on a second parcel of state land near the area. The Texas-based company Grenadier Energy III was approved to frack 170 acres of the Leesville Wildlife Area.

Fracking well pads and infrastructure will require clearing areas that could range in size from 4 to 30 acres. Studies show gathering lines, the pipelines from well pads to main pipelines, are the largest contributor to forest fragmentation. Without a continuous forest canopy, migratory bird populations decline and plant populations are affected. In addition to gathering pipelines, transition pipelines and distribution pipelines, roads to well pads also cause disruption.

Companies are exempt from disclosing the chemicals used during hydraulic fracturing, but a 2022 report from Physicians for Social Responsibility reported there were at least 1,606 chemicals used in fracking that could impact drinking water. Leaks, spills, and runoff from operations threaten groundwater and surface water quality, also impacting aquatic ecosystems. 

Our region experienced severe droughts in 2024 and 2025. Lake levels dropped and some water wells went dry during those summer droughts. Fracking requires 1.5-16 million gallons of water per well. Under section 1521.29 of the Ohio Revised Code, a facility is allowed to withdraw surface water in the amount of “up to two million gallons per day in any thirty-day period.” We have observed water being withdrawn from streams in our area via pumps and discharge lines crisscrossing the hillsides to supply fracking pads.

Billions of gallons toxic and radioactive waste brine are generated by the industry, according to data reported to states. This brine is exempt from the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Every day, “brine” tankers travel through fracked communities to deliver the toxic brew to Class II injection wells.

Anyone who has read technical and science-based studies of the health and environmental effects of fracking, such as the 2023 “Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking and Associated Gas and Oil Infrastructure,” would not want this toxic activity taking place anywhere, let alone in our communities and state lands. The members of the nonprofit group Save Ohio Parks have come to the realization that the OGLMC disregards science and rubber stamps the lease requests from the fossil fuel industries.

Our family has been aware of the negative impacts of fracking since it first made an appearance in Harrison County around 2012. But last summer, we had front row seats to observe the process at a well pad less than a mile from our home. We could hear the construction noise every day, and once the actual fracking process was initiated, it sounded like we were living at an airport runway. The road adjacent to the pad was so heavily trafficked that we decided to find an alternative route into New Philadelphia.

I wondered how the noise, lights and air emissions from the drilling, diesel trucks and compressors were affecting the wildlife and neighbors adjacent to the pad. Records show well pads often have accidents, reported spills or even fires and explosions.

In 2023, Ohio Department of Natural Resources Director Mary Mertz proposed requiring most wells to be set back 1,000 feet from property lines rather than 150 feet. Regardless of setbacks, Ohio parks visitors will not be prevented from seeing, hearing, and smelling the externalities. Do we just cross our fingers and hope nothing happens to the well pads around our parks?

Although an American flag sits at the top of every drilling rig, much of those hydrocarbons are not even used locally. The United States is a net exporter of natural gas and one of the top exporters of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the world.

The oil and gas industries will make money, and the local people will be left to clean up the mess, just like we are cleaning up acid mine wastes and orphan wells. The Trump Administration has cut funding for both of these programs.

The fracking pads next to our parks will never be returned to the original forested land, but will serve as a reminder of what was lost due to excessive greed in the Ohio legislature.

Randi Pokladnik is a founding member of Save Ohio Parks. She is a chemist with a Ph.D. in environmental studies and resides in Uhrichsville.

This opinion piece was first published in the Canton Repository on January 22, 2026.