Polk trustees urge fracking moratorium

By Patty Rice Groth

Inquirer Cor­re­spon­dent

At a spe­cial meet­ing held Tues­day, Decem­ber 4, the Polk Town­ship board of trustees adopted a res­o­lu­tion which asks Ohio gov­er­nor John Kasich and local state rep­re­sen­ta­tives to the Ohio Assem­bly to declare a mora­to­rium or enact a ban on deep injec­tion waste wells in this state.

The res­o­lu­tion calls for the mora­to­rium until envi­ron­men­tal stud­ies have been com­pleted and rules and reg­u­la­tions are in place to pro­tect Ohio’s water supply.

The res­o­lu­tion fur­ther calls on the United States Con­gress to enact laws to elim­i­nate the exemp­tion of deep injec­tion waste wells from fed­eral reg­u­la­tions under the Safe Drink­ing Water Act.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, trustees explained the moti­va­tion for tak­ing this step on behalf of town­ship res­i­dents. In recent months, the city of Mans­field, Ohio, enacted amend­ments to its char­ter pro­hibit­ing deep injec­tion waste wells in that city.

Jef­fer­son Town­ship, imme­di­ately adja­cent to Polk Town­ship to the north, recently asked the Craw­ford County prosecutor’s office to draft lan­guage for adop­tion by the town­ship trustees oppos­ing well frac­tur­ing in that township.

At its Novem­ber reg­u­lar meet­ing, the Polk Town­ship board of trustees voted to request a sim­i­lar rec­om­mended doc­u­ment from the county prosecutor.

The res­o­lu­tion unan­i­mously approved was received and a spe­cial meet­ing for the pur­pose of its adop­tion was scheduled.

The stip­u­la­tions of the res­o­lu­tion cite the poten­tial to pol­lute ground water aquifers and trig­ger earth­quake activ­ity, the unknown com­po­si­tion of the injec­tion flu­ids, risk of fluid leaks due to bro­ken or cracked ver­ti­cal well cas­ings, risk of stor­age and trans­port of injec­tion flu­ids, and the risk of road dam­age by trucks mov­ing mass quan­ti­ties of such flu­ids into, out of or through the township.

Author­ity to reg­u­late deep injec­tion waste wells and pro­duc­tion oper­a­tions in Ohio is vested in the Ohio leg­is­la­ture, specif­i­cally the Divi­sion of Min­eral Resources Management/Division of Oil and Gas Resources Man­age­ment within the Ohio Depart­ment of Nat­ural Resources.

Local gov­ern­ments have no reg­u­la­tory con­trol in this matter.

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Dec 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.