By Celia Hawk and Cathy Becker
January 26, 2026
Introduction
The summer of 2024 was the driest summer Ohio has seen in over a decade. For Ohioans this meant decrease in agricultural yield and severe ecological challenges, with many Ohioans seeing nearby water sources drying up. Water is becoming an increasingly precious resource in Ohio, so it is important to investigate the impact of water use by industrial activity in the state. This report will examine the use of Ohio’s freshwater by oil and gas extraction from state parks, wildlife areas, and other public lands.
Hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, works by pumping millions of gallons of water into the ground, mixed with chemicals and sand, in order to fracture rock and extract oil and gas. Fracking projects rely on local water sources such as nearby lakes and streams. Therefore, hydraulic fracturing under state parks and public lands relies on the extraction of freshwater from those public lands or adjacent plots. Very little of this freshwater is recycled. Not only are most of the chemicals used in fracking toxic, but when the water comes back up from deep underground, it brings with it radioactive elements along with oil and gas. The resulting wastewater must be disposed of in frack waste injection wells to be stored deep underground.
In 2014, Ted Auch at FracTracker found that the average well on Utica shale in Ohio utilized 5.04 million to 5.69 million gallons of freshwater. Additionally, the study found that the freshwater to recycled water ratio at these wells sat at 12:1. Since then, the amount of water used at each well has increased as wells are being placed at increasingly far distances from the land they frack. Within the same 2014 report, FracTracker found that water use at fracking wells increased to 221,000 to 330,000 gallons at each well per quarter. These findings demonstrate the potential of the oil and gas industry to cause resource scarcity due to water usage in Ohio.
Ohio’s program to lease state parks, wildlife areas, and public lands for oil and gas extraction began in May 2023, after passage of HB 507 mandating fracking of Ohio’s public lands. Since then, the Oil and Gas Land Management Commission has approved 4312 acres of Salt Fork State Park, almost 7300 acres of six wildlife areas (Valley Run, Zepernick, Keen, Egypt Valley, Leesville, and Jockey Hollow), as well as rights-of-way near 25 highway areas and land near a state prison fracking – a total of about 12,000 acres of public land.
Methodology
This study estimates the amount of freshwater to be used by all approved and pending nominations for oil and gas extraction from public lands. However, because the program to frack Ohio’s public lands is relatively new, the state has awarded only some of the permits that specify the actual amount of freshwater used by specific wells.
We filed public records requests of both the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and Ohio Department of Transportation to get the leases and permits for wells associated with fracking each nomination for public land that had been approved and a bidder had been selected.
In cases where we got the permits for wells fracking a nomination, we used the actual permits in our calculations. These permits list the amount of water allowed to be withdrawn each day, the amount total of water allowed to be withdrawn for that well, the amount of water estimated to be recycled, the source of the water, and the watershed (in all cases, the Ohio River).
In cases where an actual permit to frack public land was not available, we estimate the amount of water using nearby proxy wells. These proxy wells were selected based on their proximity to the proposed projects as well as the relative size of the well operator company. For example, when estimating the amount of water a proposed fracking project would use, the wells nearest to the leased parcel were examined and the well owned by the company of the most similar size as the company with the lease to frack that land was used for calculations. If the same company owned multiple wells in the area, the well with the closest proximity to the proposed project was selected. This was done by using definition queries within ArcGIS to locate wells within the same county and township as the proposed or approved fracking projects.
All the wells chosen to calculate the total approximate amount of water used were constructed after 2010, the year that fracking began in Ohio, with preference in selection given to the more recently constructed wells. This is due to the fact that the amount of water used for fracking projects has increased in recent years, meaning recent operations more accurately reflect the water usage for the current proposed projects examined in this report.
For public lands in which permits have been granted for a specific number of fracking pads and wells, the actual number of wells and well heads were used in the calculation. Some nominations had just one well permitted for fracking that area, while others had two, three, or in one case, five wells approved for fracking the land specified in that nomination.
For approved nominations that do not yet have a permitted well or wells to frack that land, this study estimated only one proxy well in calculating the amount of water that will be needed. This methodology was used to prevent overestimating the number of well heads that will be fracking public lands. However, fracking projects often use more than one well, so the projections in this study likely underestimate the true quantities of water that will be required for all approved nominations to frack state parks and public lands.
Lands included in analysis
This report examined all approved and pending nominations of public land managed by:
- Ohio Department of Natural Resources (state parks and wildlife areas)
- Ohio Department of Transportation (rights-of-way along state highways)
- Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (correctional facilities)
This report examines lands in various phases of the approval process as of January 16, 2026, including:
- Nominated – These lands have been nominated by the oil and gas industry for fracking, but no decision has been made yet. We counted these lands but used one proxy well to estimate water usage. (On January 12, 2026, the Oil and Gas Land Management Commission had decided on all pending nominations.)
- Approved – These lands have been approved for fracking by the Oil and Gas Land Management Commission and have been put into a bidding process, but no bid winner has been selected yet. We counted these lands but used one proxy well to estimate water usage.
- Bid Awarded – These lands have been approved for fracking and a bid winner has been selected by the Oil and Gas Land Management Commission, but a permit has not yet been issued. We counted these lands but used one proxy well to estimate water usage.
- Permit Issued – These lands have been approved for fracking with a bid winner selected, and the Ohio Department Natural Resources has issued one or more well permits to the bid winner to frack that land. In these cases, we counted the actual number of wells used to frack this land, and the actual amount of water authorized to be withdrawn daily and in total by each well.
As previously mentioned, because the process for fracking public land in Ohio is relatively young, we have the actual fracking permits for only two ODNR lands – three wells plus a unitization that are fracking Valley Run Wildlife Area, and two wells fracking Salt Fork State Park. The Valley Run wells were originally permitted to Encino Acquisition Partners, a company subsequently sold to EOG Resources. The Salt Fork wells were permitted to Infinity Natural Resources.
We had to file public records requests with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to obtain these permits. The public process under the Oil and Gas Land Management Commission extends only to decisions to approve or deny a nomination and award a bid for approved lands. After that, each agency issues its own lease for oil and gas companies to frack the public lands it manages. Then ODNR issues the permit for each frack well, regardless of which agency manages the land, as only ODNR has the authority to regulate fracking activities in Ohio.
Because ODNR issues permits for the public lands it manages, we were able to get permits for Valley Run Wildlife Area and Salt Fork State Park. If we could not get the permit for a nomination approved for fracking, that’s because the permit had not been issued yet.
The process was more convoluted for wells to frack ODOT lands. Because ODNR issues permits for all oil and gas wells fracking public land, regardless of whether they or another agency manages the land, we initially asked ODNR for the permits to frack the ODOT nominations for which a bidder had been selected. ODNR told us they would need the leases ODOT had executed with the oil and gas company that had gotten the bid to frack each nomination before they could find the permits they had issued for those leased lands.
So we first had to submit public records requests to ODOT to get those leases – then we had to submit those leases to ODNR to get the permits. In the end, we were able to get most of the permits to frack ODOT lands for which a bidder had been selected. In many cases these ODOT lands are being fracked by more than one well, including in one case five wells. In the cases where we could not get the permits for ODOT nominations from ODNR, we used proxy wells to estimate water use, projecting just one well for each nomination. This mostly involved recently approved ODOT nominations, but likely means we are underestimating their actual water use.
Not included in this analysis were nominations of public land for fracking that the Oil and Gas Land Management Commission had denied, or that were withdrawn from the approval or bidding process by the company that nominated them. Due to Ohio state law, the name of the company that nominates state land for fracking is kept secret until a bid is awarded.
Results
The projected total amount of freshwater that will be used for fracking on state parks and public lands based on all the approved and proposed projects on ODNR, ODOT and ODRC land is approximately 1,903,203,717 gallons – enough to fill over 2,883 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The state is allowing fracking companies to withdraw 112,443,000 gallons per day. Only approximately 10.7% or 208,050,345 gallons of the water for the proposed and approved projects will be recycled, according to the permits.
A majority of the water used for these projects comes from local lakes and creeks (for example, Leatherwood Creek for fracking Salt Fork State Park, and Atwood Lake for fracking Valley Run Wildlife Area). All of the water comes from the Ohio River watershed.
Fracking our state parks and public lands will use at least 1.9 billion gallons of freshwater that should be preserved for Ohioans. Even if the state’s estimates for how much of this water will be recycled come true, this means about 1.7 billion gallons (1,695,153,372 to be exact) of Ohio’s fresh water will be taken out of the water cycle and can never be used again. It must be disposed of in frack waste injection wells, where the wastewater has been found to leak and migrate into production wells and orphan wells, leading to concern about safe drinking water. Some injection wells have been shut down due to imminent danger to public health.
As droughts become more common and Ohioans become more concerned about our access to clean water, it becomes increasingly important to consider the amount of water used by the fracking industry. Our state parks and public lands were made for the enjoyment of all Ohioans. By subjecting Ohio’s state parks and public lands to the industrial development of oil and gas extraction, the Ohio legislature has approved accelerated withdrawals of water that belongs to the people of Ohio and our environment.
The data used to calculate water use figures can be found in this spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Wx0d9dhvPjHseftsyCeqRw5Y802nPWsM1oQORjpFAo4/edit?usp=sharing
All the permits we got from ODNR for actual wells and permits for proxy wells that we used to estimate water use in this report can be found in this folder:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_9EcmDeEdwzoacqOTh1638PWez9V7l8r?usp=sharing
Because some of this data was obtained by using permits from nearby proxy wells, this study should be repeated in the future as the actual permits for wells to frack Ohio’s public land become available.
Celia Hawk was an intern for Save Ohio Parks in Summer 2025. Cathy Becker is board president of Save Ohio Parks.