The recommendations of an Athens County “fracking” committee about regulating the controversial drilling and injecting practices might soon reach the agenda of state legislators.
The Athens County commissioners accepted a final set of recommendations from a 33-page report by the Athens County Strategic Advisory Committee on Hydraulic Fracturing on Tuesday and will send the suggestions to the County Commissioners’ Association of Ohio for review.
Most of the recommendations would need to be implemented at the state level, Commissioner Larry Payne said.
The recommendations would regulate many parts of the fracking and injection processes, including chemical usage and disclosures, well locations, inspection of wells and consequences for illegal activity, said Al Blazevicius, chair of the committee.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources receives revenue from a tax paid by injection-well operators based on the number of barrels they inject, but local government does not receive any taxes from fracking or injection, Blazevicius said.
“There is nothing we get locally except road degradation, which we already have experienced, and then contamination,” Blazevicius said.
Although the ODNR supports increasing the tax on out-of-state “frack waste,” Blazevicius said multiple counties need to lobby senators in order for changes to be made to the current tax rate.
“We need something at the state level that will not cause problems with interstate commerce laws, but will somehow increase monies from out-of-state waste to at least discourage it and increase our local economic benefits,” he said.
Blazevicius said he has been in touch with Ohio Rep. Debbie Phillips, D-92nd, about drafting a bill that would tax out-of-state “frack waste” in an effort to benefit the local economy.
The County Commissioners’ Association of Ohio lobbies at the state level, so its members will present the recommendations to state legislators, Payne said.
The committee, comprising local residents and officials, drafted the recommendations after eight months of research and discussion at its monthly meetings.
Although horizontal deep-shale drilling has not yet reached the county, local injection wells are currently accepting not only Ohio waste, but waste from out-of-state fracking operations, Blazevicius said.
“There is an increasing number of (horizontal hydraulic-fracturing) wells being drilled in Ohio and West Virginia,” Blazevicius said. “A lot of that waste is being disposed of in Athens County.”
The committee’s report also outlines the possible costs and benefits of fracking if it does come to Athens County, Blazevicius said, but he added that long-term local economic benefits from the extraction process are not likely.
“The drilling phase of the process lasts for several years, and that’s when we would have more jobs,” he said. “But we don’t think that would be a long-lived economic benefit.”
ls114509@ohiou.edu
