Wayne National Forest’s decision to allow the leasing of land for horizontal drilling may not be as imminent a danger as anti-fracking advocates think.
“There are a lot of positive things in the report,” said Al Blazevicius, chair of the Strategic Advisory Committee on Hydraulic Fracturing, at the committee’s meeting Wednesday. “It’s not like a hard launch to drill anywhere in Wayne.”
Blazevicius noted that Wayne National Forest’s report has regulatory measures that are not required by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, including the ban of horizontal drilling in source water protection area and areas where endangered species will be affected; the requirement of closed tanks for wastewater disposal storage; and the requirement of visual screening and noise muffling at drilling sites.
Wayne National Forest somewhat underestimated the area needed for horizontal drilling and the impacts that would have on the land, Blazevicius said. He added that they also didn’t account for possible road damage from horizontal drilling operations.
“I didn’t see that the report analyzed the effects of the large increase in truck traffic (from horizontal drilling operations),” he said. “They said they couldn’t analyze that because they don’t know where the well sites will be.”
According to the Wayne National Forest report, truck traffic will be part of the site-specific analysis that will be conducted for each permit request.
Although Wayne National Forest only represents one percent of the leasable land in Athens County, Blazevicius said their decision is very symbolic for the community.
Committee members also discussed road surveillance so they can document the current road conditions in the case that horizontal drilling operations begin, but the cameras that were ordered have not yet arrived, said John Branner, committee member and engineer.
The committee voted in favor of changes to the current Road Use Maintenance Agreements and plans on submitting them. Committee members recommend the agreements apply to not only horizontal drilling operations but injection sites as well. Athens County Sheriff Pat Kelly, County Commissioner Mark Sullivan and committee member Rob Wiley were not present at the meeting to vote.
“We’re clearly going to be getting a lot of injection waste in the state over the next few years,” Blazevicius said. “We’re going to request that the county engineer develop a Road Use Maintenance Agreement for injection well operators.”
Although Assistant Athens County Prosecutor Keller Blackburn was not present at the meeting, committee members discussed his legal review of their request to see if it is possible to put a local tax on injection wells, especially for out-of-state injection waste.
“(Blackburn) concluded that we have no local ability to impose a tax,” Blazevicius said. “We can’t interfere with interstate commerce acts to prevent out-of-state waste from coming in, but we do have the ability at a state level to be able to impose a testing requirement.”
Blazevicius added that the testing requirement might help reduce the inflow of waste disposal from out of state but that it would have to be implemented at the state level.
“The benefits of testing the injection waste water is that later on, if a substance shows up in our drinking water or there is an unknown surface spill, we will know where it came from,” said Patricia Davidson, committee member.
Committee members also went over their recommendations for horizontal hydraulic fracturing practices, which were not released to the media. The committee originally planned to vote on the recommendations at Wednesday’s meeting, but members pushed back the vote after Blazevicius proposed that they look over new regulations in Pennsylvania that were just released.
Dick Shaw announced his resignation as a committee member. The committee meets on the first Wednesday of every month.
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