No doubt that most people are feeling the effects of this summer’s relentless heat (12 days above 90 degrees in the Ohio River Valley so far) and drought conditions. Farmers are worried about crops and homeowners watch as their lawns turn brown. Our family spends lots of time hauling water from our rain barrels and cisterns to water our garden and flowers beds. Rain events have become sporadic, lake levels are down and woodland streams are barely a trickle. Water is a precious common resource. Sadly, in Southeastern Ohio, we are witnessing a tragedy of commons being perpetrated on our region by out-of-state oil and gas companies.

Garret Hardin first coined the term “Tragedy of the Commons” in his 1968 essay. The tragedy of the commons refers to a situation in which individuals with access to a public resource called a “commons” act in their own self-interest and degrade or deplete the common resource.

Every day we see countless water and brine trucks traveling back and forth on U.S. Route 250 near our home. No doubt they are hauling in water for fracking and hauling out toxic brine wastes. At one point, an enormous swimming-pool-like structure was erected just off Route 250 on the west side of Tappan Lake. There were several sites where water was being pumped from local streams and placed into this huge tank. Hoses took the water from the tank uphill toward a well pad. This practice is not unusual in our area as fracking gobbles 1.5 to 9.7 million gallons of water per well according to the United States Geological Survey. That amount of water being withdrawn from small streams is alarming.

A 2023 study by Ohio Northern University “shows that these water withdraws are having an impact on small streams in the area.” Researchers found that withdraws “could have lasting negative impacts on the stream biota and have the potential to affect downstream users, including regionally-endangered species. The stream ecosystem might be severely impacted.” Given that Harrison County alone has 537 active wells, the amount of water used for fracking is staggering.

This fresh water is mixed with sand and toxic chemicals, possibly including PFAS. It is then injected into fracking wells to fracture the bedrock below and release oil and methane gas. Some of that mixture returns to the surface and it referred to as produced water. “For every barrel (42 gallons) of oil produced, four to seven barrels of produced water may be generated.” The produced water contains salty brine as well as radioactive nuclides that become dissolved in the fracking mixture.

Out-of-state companies use Ohio’s bedrock like a commons to store this toxic mixture in Class II injection wells permitted by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. The ODNR reported about 22 million barrels (924 million gallons) of produced water from Ohio along with 12 million barrels from other states was injected into Class II wells in 2022. No one can say for sure where these liquids migrate from the original injection site, and in fact these wastes have been known to move. “The Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management found that waste fluid injected into the three K&H wells had spread at least 1.5 miles underground and was rising to the surface through oil and gas production wells in Athens and Washington counties.”

Rural Ohio residents’ sources of drinking water are being threatened by this process.

Last year, Ohio state parks became the latest victim of this tragedy of the commons. HB 507, a bill passed during a lame-duck session and without public comments in December 2022, opened up state lands to fracking. No public land is safe from the environmental destruction and health effects of fracking. Ohioans must watch precious public areas like the wildlife area in Carroll County near Leesville Lake be leased away. The Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission, a five-member commission responsible for granting the leases, continues to ignore the science-based evidence of the dangers and instead considers only the economic gains.

Ohio’s Republican politicians have led us to this tragedy as they welcomed this industry with open arms under the Kasich administration. They did not do their homework like some states. They did not consider the risks to rural residents or the land. They saw dollar signs. They still see only dollar signs and believe that Southeastern Ohio can drill its way into prosperity. That is not the case as a 2022 report from the Appalachian Regional Commission shows many of the same counties being heavily fracked remain “stressed economically”.

As another election cycle gears up, we hear the chant, “Drill baby drill.” Appalachia Ohio has been logged, mined and now drilled to death. A look at a map of Ohio drilling sites in Southeast Ohio shows the ridiculous amounts of wells already drilled in our region. We certainly export a lot of methane gas, making the United States the largest exporter of liquid natural gas in the world. But, unlike manufacturing industries, rural Ohio’s frack pads don’t make value-added products. Instead, corporations exploit and export another resource from our region in return for a meager amount of money to the local communities.

Exporting resources is not a recipe for economic prosperity. Appalachia historically has been treated as a mineral colony for outside interests and our commons — our water, our land, our air and even our bodies — are receptacles for fossil fuel wastes. At a time when we should be pivoting toward renewable energy, Ohio continues to put all its eggs in one energy basket.

Dr. Randi Pokladnik was born and raised in Ohio. She earned an associate degree in Environmental Engineering, a BA in Chemistry, MA and PhD in Environmental Studies. She is certified in hazardous materials regulations and holds a teaching license in science and math. She worked as a research chemist for National Steel Corporation for 12 years and taught secondary and post-secondary science and math classes for more than 20 years. Her research includes an analysis of organic farming regulations and environmental issues impacting the Appalachian region of Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia. She lives near Tappan Lake in an eco- log home that she and her husband built in 2001. Her hobbies include running, gardening, sewing and doing fun things with her granddaughters Randy