In a recent public radio interview, an Ohio oil and gas industry spokesperson claimed fracking was safe and environmentally friendly.

The statement raised the interest of Save Ohio Parks steering committee member Jenny Morgan, who filed a records request with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) to see if the claim was true. She received thousands of ODNR reports on inspecting and cleaning up Ohio oil and gas accidents over the last nine years.

Morgan was so disturbed by descriptions of methane gas leaks and radioactive fracking wastewater spilled into area waterways that she started a daily accident report on Facebook, summarizing, dissecting and posing questions about cleanup and mitigation.

She found that thousands of fracking-related accidents and cleanups happening nearly every day over the last nine years challenges the Ohio gas and oil industry’s claims that fracking is environmentally friendly.

“Once I began reading each case individually, I was horrified at how many oil and gas-related accidents are happening on a regular basis,” said Morgan, a longtime fracking waste brine activist, singer, poet and songwriter.

“These are reports the ODNR itself has filed. This is an industry that uses dangerous, unregulated chemicals during the fracking process and creates hundreds of millions of gallons of contaminated and radioactive waste annually. How are all of these accidents impacting our Ohio land, creeks, plant and animal habitats, biodiversity, drinking water and health?”

The ODNR was asked to respond to emailed questions, but despite being given five days to respond, did not respond in time for this mailing.

Report trends indicate a troubling pattern of lax regulation along with superficial attempts to clean up oil, gas and radioactive fracking wastewater from lands and water across the state, according to FracTracker Alliance, a national nonprofit that studies, maps, and communicates the risks and impacts of oil, gas, and petrochemical development.

“These reports also indicate Analog Age levels of data collection, archiving and dissemination about these accidents,” said Ted Auch, Midwest program director at FracTracker Alliance. “As the industry continues to move forward with its work at light speed in a decidedly digital age, we have an Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) working at a snail’s pace. That gap continues to widen, resulting in increasing levels of data obfuscation and larger and larger data gaps.”

FracTracker mapped and analyzed 1,400 of 1,500 Ohio gas and oil-related incidents Morgan provided from the ODNR earlier this spring. Its analysis concluded that data showed oil and gas incidents in the state reported over the past five years – and their level of severity – have been grossly misrepresented.

Morgan’s deep dive into ODNR’s reports on inspections, cleanups and sign-offs on oil and accidents followed the WVXU radio interview in which Rob Brundrett of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association claimed the fracking industry had no indication of any water pollution and (laughably) called fracking “safe and environmentally friendly.”

Common denominators in the ODNR reports re-posted on Facebook over the past month are: in many cases an oil and gas company self-reports an accident; the ODNR inspects the scene and orders cleanup and soil and water remediation; and the responsible party either cleans up the site cosmetically with foam booms across bodies of water to contain radioactive fracking “produced water,” or removes contaminated soil and trucks it to area landfills.

Following is an example of how a seemingly minor fracking truck driver error resulted in a major environmental accident documented by ODNR and re-posted by the Daily Accident Report in its #14 entry:

“At 9 a.m. on July 11, 2023, an oil and gas contractor's truck backed up into a Hilcorp Energy Fairfield-Tarka 14H wellhead in Columbiana County, causing a pressurized release of natural gas and about 630 to 840 gallons of contaminated drilling waste, or produced water, to spew vertically from the wellhead. The spill was finally contained by 1 p.m. the following day. About 450 nearby residents were evacuated because of the natural gas leak.”

About 111 tons of contaminated soil was trucked to Carbon Limestone Landfill for storage. Yet the state’s OGLMC continues to approve fracking under Ohio state parks and public lands despite these scientifically researched and accepted facts on fracking:

• People living within a mile of a fracked well experience increased lymphoma (childhood cancers) asthmas, fertility and hormone disruption.
• Fracking depletes up to 40 million gallons of fresh water from lakes, rivers and streams to frack one well, one time. A well can be fracked multiple times over its 20- 40-year life span. Up to 1.5 trillion gallons of water have been used nationwide by fracking since 2011, much of it from aquifers.
• “Produced” water waste from the fracking process is radioactive and removed from the water supply, often forever. It's injected deep underground in Ohio permitted Class II injection wells, which can leak.
• Methane gas and carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions from fracking are a prime contributor to and accelerator of climate change.
• Fracking causes low-level earthquakes, which can damage utility pipes and cause above-ground home and business structural damage.

Ohio is a recognized climate villain because of its extensive extractive gas and oil production and carbon storage industry. The Utica-Marcellus shale region – which includes Ohio, western Pennsylvania and northwestern West Virginia – ranks second in the nation and fourth worldwide in greenhouse and methane gas emissions that warm the atmosphere and contribute to climate change.

Ohio’s populace is also at substantial risk because a federal Department of Energy project creating a carbon capture hub proposed for southeast Ohio relies on unproven technology that endangers the environment, human health and safety, according to FracTracker analysis.

“The sheer frequency of these gas and oil accidents is overwhelming,” said Morgan. “I think what the Daily Accident Report really does is show that gas and oil industry representatives like Rob Brundrett are salespeople. These industry reps are paid a lot of money and undoubtably work with oil and gas industry front groups to craft the most compelling sales pitches money can buy, which in Ohio has included submitting alleged fraudulent, pro-fracking emails to regulators.”

She added, “Never mind that oil and gas contaminates water supplies, waterways and harms both wildlife and the health of our citizens across this nation. This is the industry that knew since the 1950s that gas and oil production would cause not just air and water pollution, but climate warming and climate change.”

The state appears determined to continue fracking under our state parks and public lands, even with all the evidence – in their own files – showing how risky and accident-prone these many oil and gas processes are, said Morgan.

“This, despite the fact that solar is much less expensive to install and operate than oil and gas infrastructure. There’s a saying: ‘What do you call a solar spill? Just another sunny day!’ Ohio deserves a lot more of these.”

For more information about Save Ohio Parks, the statewide, volunteer organization concerned about the harms fracking causes to our health, the environment and planet, visit https://bit.ly/3Qts26r.