Oil and gas companies might have to pay to “frack” and drilling activities could be banned completely within city limits come November.
Councilwoman Chris Fahl, D-4th Ward, proposed a “monitoring fee” for “certain extractive processing” activities and injection well waste disposal processes at the City Council Planning and Development meeting Monday.
The ordinance would apply to both vertical and horizontal drilling operations, including waste disposal, and fees collected would pay for protective measures including water testing, equipment and training for police and firemen, as well as increased insurance costs, Fahl said.
“There’s going to be an increase in insurance liability costs because now there’s something a bit more dangerous going on in (the) city,” she said.
Fahl said that Athens has been “cut to the bone” from state funding and that the city would see little economic benefit from increased drilling activities.
“The citizens of Athens should be protected and should not have to pay for increases in tax liability insurance or training for police officers and firemen,” Fahl said. “That should be the responsibility of the industry.”
In September, the Bill of Rights Committee, a group of Athens residents, asked City Council to consider placing a ban on fracking and waste disposal activities within city limits on the November ballot.
In November, Council said they would discuss the fracking ban ordinance in January, but have yet to bring it up in a meeting, said Richard McGinn, spokesman for the committee.
Although he said the ultimate goal is to prevent any fracking in Athens, McGinn said he is “urging” his committee members to “support that legislation with all of their vigor and all of their energy”.
McGinn said that though the proposal would still allow drilling activities, it is a step in the right direction and an intermediate solution to the problem.
The committee is in the process of reaching out to cities upstream that share the Athens watershed in the hopes that they will also consider fracking bans.
“Our goal is to prohibit fracking in our city but also to approach upstream communities, including Lancaster, Logan, Nelsonville and Albany,” McGinn said.
He added that if Council does not place the ordinance on November’s ballot, the committee is hopeful that they would get enough signatures to have it included.
Jenna Richardson, an Ohio University sophomore studying communication studies who organized the Anti-Fracking Concert and Benefit at Casa Nueva this past Friday, said that though she would rather see a ban on all fracking and waste disposal activities, she thinks the fee is a great idea.
“Despite regulations, there is nothing that we can physically do to ensure that fracking activity is safe and won’t affect the area being fractured,” she said.
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