Who do Ohio lawmakers represent in the fracking free-for-all carving up acres of our state parks and public land for oil and gas money? They sure as heck don’t represent the people. Public resistance to fracking in Ohio State Parks is almost universal. Ever since a Republican-facilitated law went into effect last spring that required a state commission to lease huge tracts of state parks and wildlife areas for fracking for natural gas, opposition from park-loving Ohioans has only grown.
Recently, the Oil and Gas Land Management Commission fielded public comments from nearly 600 citizens about pending oil and gas company bids to frack under almost 900 acres of Salt Fork State Park. The vast majority — about 98% — opposed more fossil fuel drilling in the state’s largest park, a rural recreational magnet for tens of thousands of yearly visitors.
People know that the risks and harms of fracking for public health and the climate are real and growing. Besides a history of leaking loads of planet-warming methane into the atmosphere and eroding local air quality, fracking industrial zones and wells threaten ground water — including drinking water. The drilling process involves injecting enormous quantities of fluid (mixed with a cocktail of chemicals) deep into the earth at super high pressure to fracture rock formations and extract methane gas or oil.
Evidence of a correlation between those fracking operations and an array of reported health problems by those who live near a fracked oil or gas well is building. All of which explains the negative feedback from thousands of Ohioans to more fracking where they live and play. Their dissent is fortified by hundreds of scientific studies and countless expert witnesses who document how fracking can go wrong, poison water, contaminate the air and emit massive amounts of greenhouse gas pollution.
But last week the state’s oil and gas commissioners ignored the alarms and dismissed the pleadings of people to protect their parks. Panel members, most of whom have close oil and gas associations, sided with the fracking industry again. One of the few pro-fracking voices in favor of more oil and gas extraction in Salk Fork and other public land was surprisingly the director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
But before Mary Mertz endorsed further destruction of our state parks and pristine wildlife sanctuaries for short-term profit, she at least asked that the winning out-of-state drillers use their “best efforts” to catch water contamination in local wells and to minimize other polluting impacts of industrialized fracking on the surrounding community. How reassuring to the people who inhabit fracked regions of the state — or to the millions who retreat to them every year to fish, hunt, hike, kayak, or camp.
Surely, state lawmakers have taken measure of the enduring public protest against fracking and the defilement of Ohio’s natural playgrounds. Surely, they responded accordingly as elected representatives of the people. Surely, visions of sugar plums dance in your head because only two days after the commissioners awarded hundreds of acres in Salt Fork to the “highest and best” Big Energy bidders and parceled out more acreage in state wildlife areas for fracking, Statehouse Republicans also awarded the polluters of parks a Christmas bonus.
They tucked a last-minute gift to the fracking industry into an unrelated bill (on nuclear energy) with a sneaky provision to extend the standard lease terms of contracts to frack under state parks from three years to five. That stretched the total amount of time drillers from Texas, West Virginia, Colorado, etc., can spoil Salt Fork and other Ohio natural resources from six to eight years. The lame duck measure quickly sailed through the legislature to the governor’s desk.
Republicans voted to expand fracking in state parks despite the recent groundswell of constituent objection to that very expansion. In doing so, the GOP gerrymandered supermajorities in the General Assembly made clear who they represent when oil and gas money is on the table and state parks are cash cows to be milked for all they’re worth. Human and environmental consequences be damned.
These politicians didn’t listen to, care about, or even feign representation of Ohioans fighting valiantly to save our beloved parks. They just green-lit constant fracking in those parks. More well pads, pipelines, gas flares, industry accidents, leaks, chemical run off, contaminated water, fracking truck traffic, 24/7 noise, transient workers, decimated wildlife, destroyed ponds, streams, roads, property values and public health.
That is not representative government that serves the people. That is unaccountable autocrats, cocooned in safe districts, doing whatever the hell serves them. Republican Gov. Mike DeWine could, of course, block the lawmakers’ sellout of citizens and veto the bill to enrich big oil and gas companies — who are also big GOP donors. But the guy solely responsible for the fracking free-for-all under Ohio state parks and protected wildlife terrain won’t.
DeWine infamously caved to the fracking industry over the clamor of outraged Ohioans in 2023 when he signed another last-minute, industry-friendly Republican bill that forced state agencies to grant lease applications to oil and gas drillers in state parks. That is his sorry legacy. DeWine will quietly cave again because money talks in Ohio and tragically plunders the peoples’ parks for cheap gas.
Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.This article appears in Dec 4-17, 2024.