The county currently has seven active wells used to dispose of waste from hydraulic fracturing.
There are several local organizations — the Athens County Fracking Action Network and Appalachia Resist! to name a few — that clash with the natural gas industry's practice of hydraulic fracturing.
Athens County doesn't actually have wells specifically used for fracturing underground rock to extract oil and gas, but it is home to seven wells where fuel companies inject byproduct waste from that extraction.
All seven wells are classified as class II injection wells, which house brines and wastewater, among other substances, according to a fact sheet from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
ODNR just recently approved a permit for a 4,200-feet-deep well to operated by K&H Partners in Troy Township, near Coolville.
As of last fall, there were 199 active injection wells in Ohio, a state where the byproduct fluids aren't required to be tested prior to their injection. In all of Pennsylvania there were only 10 permits for such wells, as of last fall.
In 2014, well operators injected 2,757,508 barrels of brine into six of Athens County's active injection wells, according to ODNR.
Scroll around The Post's interactive map of the county's seven wells. Depending on where you're from, you might drive right past two or three on your way home from Athens.
All but two are situated close to the Hocking (or Ohio) River, and five have even been used in some capacity for at least 20 years. One well down the road from Federal Hocking High School is 110 years old, though it was only converted into a class II injection well in 2013.
Click on each point on the map to find out more information about each of these wells that cause so much controversy in Southeast Ohio and throughout the United States.
@SamuelHHoward
sh335311@ohio.edu
