By Roxanne Groff and Heather Cantino, Athens County’s Future Action Network (ACFAN) steering committee members since 2012

The story of how Athens County closed six injection wells in our county is about the collective efforts of scores of concerned people who knew the dangers of fracking and injection wells and put their energies together to stop these wells from being permanent structures in our communities.

Injection Wells, 2012

On June 26, 2012, Madeline ffitch was arrested at the Ginsburg open pit injection well in Alexander Township, Athens County. The direct action collective, Appalachia Resist!, organized the protest. This event, the arrest, and the incredible show of support for Madeline’s defense revealed a stark reality to Athens Countians: toxic radioactive oil and gas waste was being dumped into open cement pits in our county and then was being injected into our land! This realization led to deep dives into agency records of the history of the Ginsburg well. It was the beginning of twelve years of fighting both old and new injection wells throughout Athens County.

Ohio has had what is known as primacy for its underground injection well control program since 1983, when USEPA gave up control to Ohio to regulate wells that take oil and gas waste from conventional and now horizontal fracking wells. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) regulates these wells, located almost entirely in the Appalachian region of eastern and southeastern Ohio. Known as SWIW (Salt Water Injection Wells - a misnomer for toxic radioactive oil and gas waste wells!), they are holes drilled a few thousand feet deep into geologic strata that will supposedly “contain” the waste. There are no barriers constructed for containment beyond the casings along the way down.

Toxic Effects of Well Operations

Well operations have long been known for accidents and spills of hundreds to thousands of gallons of toxic, radioactive volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Radium 226 and Radium 228 are known to be in the oil and gas waste. These radioactive carcinogens are bone seeking, cancer causing substances from deep in the earth brought up with the oil and gas and its waste during the drilling process. Exposure to VOC vapors can cause a variety of health effects, including eye, nose, and throat irritation; headaches and loss of coordination; nausea; and damage to the liver, kidneys, or central nervous system. Some VOCs are suspected or proven carcinogens. The wells also emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas 86 times more powerful than carbon dioxide (at the 20-year timeframe).

Former Executive Director of Buckeye Environmental Network, the late and sorely missed Teresa Mills (who had researched a cancer cluster years before around a much more highly regulated hazardous waste injection well in northern Ohio), taught a few of us how to ask for and read agency injection well permit, inspection, and violations records. We found sloppy paperwork, inadequate geological evaluations, and numerous violations, suspensions, and agency permits for well re-openings over decades. Athens County commissioners passed a resolution in October 2013 requesting that ODNR shut down and plug the Ginsburg well, due to its 25-year history of violations.

Protests, 2012

Many years of subsequent protest by hundreds of people have finally borne fruit. The four large injection wells recently ordered closed by ODNR have been protested since late 2011, when the first K&H well had one day’s notice in the Athens paper (which no one in Torch reads) and was approved despite public outcry. Commenters cited Ohio Administrative Code’s (OAC 1501:9-3-04) mandate (at the time) that wells prevent pollution of land, surface water, and drinking water sources.

Our concerns, substantive and relevant to public health, safety, and environmental conservation, should have merited a public hearing, because Ohio law (at the time) required that the Chief grant a public hearing if ANY comments are substantive and relevant to health, safety, or good conservation practices. (OAC 1501:9-3-06 (H)(2) (c)). We got no response. In 2012, K&H Partners of WV applied for a second injection well application in the small community of Torch, Athens County.

Another well permit application was meanwhile in process in 2012 for a site on St Rt. 144 about eight miles from Torch, 500 feet from the Hocking River, on a narrow, curvy high school access and bus route. This application was protested again by County residents and Commissioners. Instead of the public hearing demanded, ODNR set up a dog and pony show (“open house”), which we took over with mic checks and a welcome to ODNR from our community before getting kicked out.

Those who had protested inside were joined by over 100 people dressed in Tyvek suits and carrying giant skull cutouts and banners. Hot Snowville Dairy cocoa and a solar-powered mic system warmed the crowd with rallying cries and songs in the frigid night. The event got extensive coverage and was the last time ODNR’s Division of Oil and Gas held an event in Athens County.

Demands for Public Hearings

ODNR has never held a public hearing in Athens County, as requested for every well application since 2011, though Athens County Commissioners responded to residents’ appeals and held three hearings on permit applications beginning in November 2013 (for K&H2), when about 160 people attended.

In addition to public comments and our demands for public hearings (including the three hosted by Athens County Commission), community members have organized further nonviolent direct actions, rallies, and educational presentations, and local activists participated in citizen science by monitoring air pollution at the Ginsburg well, cited in the report, Warning Signs (comingcleaninc.org/warningsigns), published in 2014.

ACFAN also sued the state over the K&H#3 well permit. Our case was dismissed because the state claimed that we filed it for the wrong permit, the public-noticed one to drill rather than the one to begin operations, which was not public-noticed!

ACFAN and Buckeye Environmental Network

In 2017, ACFAN and Buckeye Environmental Network, under Teresa Mill’s leadership, co-organized one of the several Appalachian region’s pre-tribunal sessions for the Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT) on Human Rights, Fracking, and Climate Change, held in 2018. The Tribunal process led to a 2019 advisory opinion by the International Court in Rome, which concluded:

“The PPT:

1. Recognizes the full responsibility of State and non-state actors for the commission of systematic violations of human, peoples, ecological, and nature rights as they are affirmed and sanctioned in the existing international law; **

2. Underlines the failure of existing international juridical systems and documents to fully address the responsibilities of the same actors with respect to the spectrum of clearly documented violations of peoples and nature rights; and

3. Recognizes and congratulates those countries and sub-state jurisdictions that have banned fracking, and condemns those countries and sub-state jurisdictions that have revoked bans and moratoria on fracking.” ACFAN and Buckeye Forest Council/Buckeye Environmental Network also participated in efforts to end Ohio’s primacy over its injection wells. That battle, now championed by Earthjustice, continues.

Demands for Geological Assessment

From the first well application, hundreds of public comment letters of concern included demands for adequate geological assessment. Rock formations in SE Ohio and much of eastern Ohio are shale and other formations that fracture easily and have caused earthquakes. Earthquakes have increased both in frequency and intensity since fracking in the region began (as is currently happening dramatically in Texas).

Wells are injected with enormous amounts of waste, millions of gallons per well, at high pressure. Well operators routinely request and receive permission from ODNR to use higher and higher pressures, which causes additional fractures and, as one would expect and is finally being documented, results in fluid migration far from the designated receiving zone.

The toxic radioactive waste can migrate, as it now has, upward and miles from injection into nearby oil and gas production wells and aquifers! This is what we said would happen, as confirmed by professional geologists. ODNR scoffed at our concerns until they finally had to pay attention.

Victory: Injection Wells Ordered to Suspend Operations

In the spring of 2023, Eric Vendel, Chief of ODNR’s Division of Oil and Gas, ordered the three K&H injection wells in Torch as well the Frost Well on St. Rt. 144 to suspend operations. The wells had been leaking and migrating toxic radioactive oil and gas waste for years!

The language in the order is exactly what we said the danger these wells would present to the community: “The Chief finds that the operation of the K&H Injection Wells has and is impacting nearby production wells and that such impacts endanger and are likely to endanger public health, safety, or the environment. If the K&H Injection Wells continue to operate, additional impacts may occur in the future and are likely to contaminate the land, surface waters, or subsurface waters. Thus, the continued operation of the K&H Injection Wells presents an imminent danger to the health and safety of the public and is likely to result in immediate substantial damage to the natural resources of the state.”

In July of 2024, the new well owners applied for the wells to be plugged.

Congratulations to the grassroots efforts by ACFAN, Athens County’s Future Action Network (formerly Athens County Fracking Action Network)!

Congratulations on the incredible efforts of folks from Torch, who live near the K&H wells and founded Torch Can Do! (Torch Clean Air Now, Defend Ohio).

Congratulations to the Buckeye Environmental Network (BEN), Athens County Commissioners, Athens City Council, and hundreds of people who spoke out, donated for legal expenses, attended rallies, protests, and the tribunal session…and never backed down.

We believe that environmental justice is not practiced in Ohio by our legislature or state administration.

We will continue our efforts to change state laws to make the safety of our communities a priority and to force our state government to recognize its responsibility to address our public health, air, water, and climate crises.