Please, ODNR, don’t relax rules on hydraulic fracturing in Ohio

To the Editor:

This is an open letter to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

Hello, folks at ODNR, I understand that part of the ODNR's purpose is to promote commerce. Other parts are to protect Ohio's citizens, to provide areas for recreation, etc. Yet there has to be a line, where crossing it constitutes a danger to the taxpayers who pay your salaries. Fracking full force ahead with little meaningful regulation is extremely dangerous. 

At the very least, the ODNR should deny industry's request for further exemptions. There's ample evidence depicting the considerable dark side of fracking downplayed by vested interests. Jobs? How about hiring a crew to monitor Chesapeake (half owned by China), Cunningham, Oxford, et al? Ohio's coffers are filling up with fracking tax dollars.

Now, this industry, which is already wreaking havoc in eastern Ohio, wants to be allowed to dump fracking fluids with no one knowing where or how. This scenario, as I understand it, is happening in certain counties in Ohio as I type: just spray it on county roads! Marvelous! What happens then? Evaporation/precipitation equals a toxic cocktail of H₂O, benzene, toluene, radioactive isotopes… and who knows what else? Thanks to the Bush/Cheney administration exempting them from adhering to the Clean Water and Air acts, they can stick their thumbs in their ears and wiggle their fingers at us all the way to the bank.

Common sense dictates that fracking would have a moratorium placed upon it until a thorough examination of its effects is conducted. New York has done so. New Jersey banned it. Here in Ohio, dollars and cents nullified any thinking along these lines.

The earthquake in Oklahoma five or six weeks ago occurred in an area experiencing heavy fracking activity. This part of the state normally gets about 50 very small earthquakes annually; in 2010, there were ONE THOUSAND FORTY-SEVEN earthquakes there!

Arkansas banned fracking in wastewater injection wells within a 1,150-square-mile area in the Fayetteville shale region north of Conway because of 1,100 small earthquakes there. Quite recently, the U.S. government announced a correlation between fracking and earthquakes.

There was a strong earthquake in Virginia two to three months ago, which was felt here in Athens. Remember that?

Paul Tescher
Amesville