Northwest Ohio Alliance to Stop Fracking

05/11/2026

It might seem odd, but Ohioans are being forced to subsidize the centers even as the projects cause their electric bills to spike and the centers’ biggest product — artificial intelligence — is projected to put thousands of Ohioans out of work over the coming decades.

In January, Policy Matters Ohio estimated that some tax breaks for Google and Meta are so big they amount to taxpayers giving up $1 million for each job created. That money is being gifted to companies the top executives of which have a net worth of $1.8 billion and $215 billion, respectively.

Economists say Ohio's heavy data center subsidies are a bad idea. But they say banning construction of large new centers is also a bad idea.

04/30/2026

Incoming fracking at Ohio wildlife area met with warnings of heavy truck traffic and habitat loss
Julie Grant·April 28, 2026
Conservation
Energy
Pollution
Recreation
Wildlife
An Ohio commission is considering proposals to lease thousands of acres of a remote state-owned wildlife area for fracking. Some people who live near the Egypt Valley Wildlife Area think the leases make sense, while others are concerned about their cultural and ecological impacts.

LISTEN to the story
Audio Player

00:00
00:00

Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.
Randi Podladnik and her husband moved to the Tappan Lake area of southeastern Ohio in the late 1990s, trading the industrial pollution of their former home for a quiet rural community.

In 2013, she says the fracking industry started changing the landscape.

Headstones in the foreground, on green grass, in the background is a crane on a well pad.The view from Patterson Cemetery in the Tappan Lake area: an active well pad. Photo: Julie Grant / The Allegheny Front
“If we just stay in our house and don’t leave, we can pretend like it’s not happening,” she said, while driving the hilly, windy roads, dodging truck after truck. “But as soon as you leave, you run into brine trucks and sand trucks, and it’s taking your life in your hands sometimes to travel the back roads.”

Some of the trucks carry sand for the fracking process, and others transport contaminated wastewater from well pads to injection wells. As Podladnik drives, she points out fracking sites and also huge stacks of logs.

A large pile of logs next to a pile of scrap wood.Trees cut down for well pads, pipelines and other oil and gas development are piled up near Tappan Lake. Photo: Julie Grant / The Allegheny Front
“You can always tell when they’re doing in a pipeline or a well pad, because wall-to-wall trees they’ll be trucking in here, where they cut them through the forest,” Podladnik said.

In the past year, a frack pad was built close to her house, and now she says there’s nowhere to hide from the noise and industrialization of their country home.

Industrial size trucks in a residential neighborhoodIndustrial trucks, some carrying sand or wastewater brine from the oil and gas industry, frequently travel the rural neighborhoods near Tappan Lake. Photo: Julie Grant / The Allegheny FrontIndustrial trucks, some carrying sand or wastewater brine from the oil and gas industry, frequently travel the rural neighborhoods near Tappan Lake. Photo: Julie Grant / The Allegheny Front
On the main road leading toward Lake Tappan, long-time resident Sherry Lindon said in recent years, trucks started flying by at all hours.

“It means a lot of nights I can’t sleep. It’s just noise, noise, noise,” Lindon said.

She said the trucks have made it unsafe for kids to play in the neighborhood, and pointed to tire tracks in her yard that she said were from the trucks.

“It’s just not been pleasant. The only thing I can say is hopefully some people are making money from the fracking, and hopefully it’ll go away,” she laughed.

Thirty miles south, the Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission has put over 12,000 acres of a remote wildlife area, called Egypt Valley, out to bid for fracking. In addition, there are proposals to lease another 8,000 acres at the state-owned site — meaning the entire wildlife area could be open to fracking.

Podladnik warns that what’s happened near her home portends the future for Egypt Valley.

“I wonder [if] the people who fish or harvest deer or things like that from that area, how is that going to be affected down the road?” she asked.

A roadway leads to a green hilly vistaDriving into the Egypt Valley Wildlife Area. Photo: Julie Grant / The Allegheny Front
Egypt Valley Wildlife Area
Unlike Tappan Lake, there’s almost no traffic moving through the Egypt Valley Wildlife Area. On a recent weekday, the only vehicle on the road was a school bus, along with a couple of pickup trucks parked along the side of the road near waterways where people fish.

For decades, this land was cleared for surface coal mining. In the 1990s, as that mining was ending, conservation groups, including the Ruffed Grouse Society, along with the state, acquired what is now more than 18,000 acres here, used mostly for hunting and fishing. But this area is not pristine.

“The history of land use results in a condition that is very heavily departed from a highly intact ecological system,” said Karl Malcolm, vice president of conservation for the Society, which works to promote healthy habitat for grouse and the American woodcock, two game birds that have suffered long-term declines in Ohio from loss of habitat.

Today, the rolling green hillsides at Egypt Valley are covered with brush and young trees. The land is dotted with wetland areas and small ponds, which the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) stocks with bass and other fish. The ODNR reintroduced river otters in the 1990s, and according to its website, there is now a thriving population here.

Malcolm said it costs “tremendous amounts of money” for the state to remove non-native invasive brush species, like buckthorn and honeysuckle, at Egypt Valley and its other properties, while promoting bird-friendly grassland and shrubland habitats.

“Given the history of land use, how do we manage this in a way that’s gonna promote opportunities to hunt and also deliver conservation outcomes for other species of concern?” Malcolm said. “It comes at a high cost.”

He supports fracking in Egypt Valley for the revenue it would bring into Ohio. Malcolm calls it a reasonable solution.

“Where you have oil and gas revenue coming into the state, if there’s a mechanism to have some or all of those revenues invested in conservation outcomes, I see the benefit of being able to capture that value,” he said.

A man with a beard stands behind a store counter, on the wall behind him are mounted deer headsKyle Wood, owner of Woodland Outdoor Supply, which sells hunting equipment. Photo: Julie Grant / The Allegheny Front
This fiscal year (FY 2026), the state has budgeted $3 million dollars in royalties from fracking in state wildlife areas to support conservation efforts.

Leasing Egypt Valley for fracking makes a lot of sense to Kyle Wood, who owns an outdoor and hunting supply store not far from the wildlife area.

“They’d be crazy to pass that up,” he said. “You’re talking about a lot of money there for that kind of acreage. So I think they would be fools to pass it up.”

Impacts to wildlife
The ODNR has added an addendum to lease agreements at Egypt Valley that well pads be built outside the wildlife area’s boundaries, that fracking companies limit noise pollution and not drill during hunting seasons. Also, it wants water sources to be tested before and after fracking.

red hawthorn berries on green leafy branch
See Also
Is the rare Pennsylvania hawthorn ready for its moment in the sun?
Research shows that oil and gas development can impact wildlife, like songbirds.

As a Ph.D. student at West Virginia University, Laura Farwell, an avian and landscape ecologist, studied the impacts of fracking on forest songbird communities in the central Appalachian region, which includes eastern Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

She joined a team of WVU researchers surveying birds deep in the forests, and also right up to the edge of drilling sites and pipeline corridors.

They found that fracking activity changed the bird population.

“So there was this immediate effect of sensitive species moving out, but then over time you’d see generalist species moving in,” Farwell said. “The entire sort of bird community would shift.”

Her research team found that when more sensitive, forest-dependent species like blue-headed vireo and Canada warblers move out, others, like cowbirds, a native species that can take over a habitat, start showing up. Cowbirds are often considered a threat to vulnerable songbird species.

At Tappan Lake, Randi Podladnik started noticing cowbirds about five years ago.

“That was the one thing that we said, ‘Where in the heck did these guys come from?’” she said.

Podladnik doubts that people who live near Egypt Valley, or hunt and fish there, understand that the state lease agreements for fracking could also mean heavy truck traffic, land disturbance, noise and pollution in their quiet wildlife area.

“It’s going to an industrial zone, and is that going to get into the wildlife?” she asked.

The Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission is expected to consider bids and new fracking proposals at Egypt Valley at its meeting this summer.

A state commission is considering proposals to drill under most of the Egypt Valley Wildlife Area in southeastern Ohio.

04/27/2026

The trillion-gallon time bomb: Inside the oil industry’s wastewater crisis

Join us for a discussion on how failures to properly regulate oilfield wastewater disposal now threaten public health and the environment.

04/11/2026

Data centers are invading NW OH and building their own polluting power plants to take advantage of the fracked gas access from the Rover and Nexus pipelines - this has to be stopped now or NW OH will be another sacrifice zone like what the frackers did to SE OH!

Citizens question system in place to monitor and regulate emissions from power plant at data center TOPICS:Apollo Power Generation FacilityMeta data centerohio EPA Local residents attend public information session and public hearing for plant to power data center. Posted By: Jan Larson McLaughlin Ap...

03/07/2026

Today the national environmental group Food & Water Watch released a comprehensive, first-of-its-kind report that makes a compelling, urgent case for a nationwide moratorium on the construction of new AI-driven data centers. The report comes as President Trump today hosts a White House “signing ceremony” with seven Big Tech companies that are supposedly pledging to take measures to lower the impact of their massive AI energy demand on everyday Americans.

The deeply researched report lays out the wide range of harms and hazards associated with the sudden explosion of the data center industry in America, including:

Enormous and unsustainable consumption of power and water resources, already resulting in skyrocketing utility bills for families and small businesses.
Dangerous new demand for fossil fuels, posing heightened risks of air and water pollution for impacted communities and a grave threat to our global climate.
A host of other societal threats, from national economic catastrophe, to loss of critical farmland, to unrelenting noise pollution, to threats to children and democracy.
The report, The Urgent Case Against Data Centers, methodically outlines the need for a moratorium on new data center construction nationwide, so that local, state and federal leaders can take the time needed to thoroughly and adequately evaluate these and other inherent harms and threats from this aggressive, profit-driven industry. Its release coincides with a growing national awakening on this issue, including the recent introduction of bills in about a dozen state legislatures to enact statewide moratoria on new data centers.

“As this report clearly shows, we need a halt to the explosive growth of new data center construction now, because political and community leaders across the country have been caught completely off guard by this aggressive, profit-hungry industry. It has yet to be determined if – not how – the industry can ever operate in a manner that sufficiently protects people and society from the profusion of inherent hazards and harms that data centers bring wherever they appear,” said Wenonah Hauter, founder and executive director of Food & Water Watch.

Referring to today’s event at the White House, Ms. Hauter added, “One thing we can be certain of is that Big Tech won’t do anything to help anyone other than Big Tech. Today’s actions from the White House are hollow platitudes to everyday Americans, nothing more.”

Last October, Food & Water Watch became the first national organization in the country to call for a full nationwide moratorium on the approval and construction of new data centers. In a letter to Congress in December, more than 230 national, state and local organizations from across the country echoed this call. Meanwhile, Food & Water Watch has been active in fighting numerous proposals in many states, including California, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. (1)

The nonsense propaganda “report” from FWW bashing data centers:

…

Yesterday, FWW issued a 3-step action plan for all good enviro-zombies to follow in blocking data centers, squarely aimed at PA enviro-zombies:

Big Tech has targeted thousands of communities to house its AI data centers. Here’s how you can defend your community.
Big Tech’s water-guzzling, energy-hungry data centers are sprawling metal colossi that can run as far as the eye can see, some sizing up to millions of square feet. And people across the country are seeing these facilities announced right in their communities. Nationwide, 3,000 new data centers are being constructed or planned right now.

However, corporations and their cronies in office are starting to realize there’s trouble when they throw their baseball into the wrong neighbor’s lawn. Communities are fighting back against these behemoths and winning. Here’s what you need to know to join the fight if — or, more likely, when — they come to your community.

How Data Centers Threaten Our Communities
Data centers devour massive amounts of energy and water, threatening our energy bills, drinking water, and climate. Meanwhile, Trump is working to deregulate the AI industry driving this data center boom, and he’s throwing any environmental caution to the smoggy wind.

His administration is pushing policies that favor climate-wrecking fossil fuels, even extending the lives of dying coal plants to bolster data centers. And the cost of Trump clearly being in cahoots with Big Oil and Big Tech? Us.

The data center boom is nationwide, but some states are being hit harder than others. Pennsylvania has a rhyming history of having its natural resources churned into energy, and in turn to money for corporate polluters. Now, it’s a hotspot for data center proposals.

“The very first oil well in the United States was in Pennsylvania. This was followed by the coal industry, then the fracking industry,” said Food & Water Watch PA Organizer Ginny Marcille-Kerslake. “Data centers are the latest chapter in this long history of corporate pollution. They are coming for our energy, land, and water with little or no regard for communities and the environment.”

As developers across the state attempt to change local zoning and pave the way for covering the landscape with hyperscale data centers, people are noticing — and choosing to fight back. This is how they won in Hazle Township, PA.

Step 1: Know Your Voice Matters
It’s the people who elect our leaders in the Unites States. We democratically choose who to trust, and in turn, we expect those leaders to not only hear our concerns but to act on them. Last year, Pennsylvanians caught a severance of this trust.

Governor Josh Shapiro began his “Pennsylvania Permit Fast Track Program” to “simplify the permitting process and focus on results… driving economic growth and creating jobs.” However, the track went so fast that it completely skipped the part where people have a say.

NorthPoint Development set its sights on Hazle Township for “Project Hazelnut,” a campus that would house 15 data centers, and Hazelnut became one of the first projects enrolled in the Fast Track Program.

A data center application should have first gone to Hazle Township’s Zoning Hearing Board as a special exception according to their zoning rules. But when Ashley, a local resident, found out about Project Hazelnut, she couldn’t find any record of this hearing. So she filed a Right-to-Know to get to the bottom of it.

She discovered that Project Hazelnut never went to the Zoning Hearing Board, which would have presented an opportunity for the community to have their voices heard on the decision of whether to approve the data center.

Ashley understood that constituents are supposed to have a say when an entire campus of data centers is being built in their town. And by submitting a Right-to-Know (a request for public records), she found that the people’s voices had been completely ignored.

Step 2: Sound the Alarm to Your Community
Community members who would be directly impacted by the data center had a right to know what was heading toward them. So Ginny joined Ashley and other concerned residents in spreading the word.

There are so many ways to do this in any community. You can write and submit Letters to the Editor to your local newspaper, hand out flyers in parks near the proposed site, and connect with local groups, whether they’re Facebook birding clubs or religious congregations.

When community members began drawing attention to Project Hazelnut, its data centers, and how their government failed its duties, the Board of Supervisors finally met for a legitimate vote — this time with the public.

Step 3: Apply Pressure to Leaders with the Power
“The response from the community on short notice was outstanding,” said Ginny. “We hoped to get some people to show up, but as I pulled into the parking lot a half hour before the Supervisors’ meeting, it was already full. There ended up being about 200 people there, standing room only!”

At the meeting, neighbors questioned aloud why land clearing was underway despite plans never having been approved. Local resident Bob Zafian asked, “Who’s paying for this? You give someone a 10-year abatement on taxes. Who’s paying? Every single one of these people are paying for it.”

Sherri Homancos said to the Board, “We’ve seen communities in northern Virginia regret approving similar projects, only to face water shortages, bridge strain, and rising utility costs. They also cause increased cancer risk and noise pollution. It’s a loud humming like a generator that never stops.”

In the end, the people’s voices were victorious. The Board of Supervisors unanimously denied NorthPoint Development’s proposal to build Project Hazelnut.

“This huge project which had already been fast-tracked by the state — they were already clearing the land, it was Governor Shapiro’s baby — was denied!” Ginny said.

YOU Can Join the Fight to Stop Data Centers!
Too often, government officials side with corporate interests over people. But across the country, the people are speaking up — and we’re winning. New York just introduced a bill demanding a statewide moratorium on data center construction. Countless communities all over the country, from California to Missouri to Indiana to Maryland, are stopping planned data centers and passing legislation to prevent new ones.

The people’s playbook is winning. Concerned residents are banding together and pressuring local officials to listen. Food & Water Watch is joining in on the fight, from stopping local projects like Hazelnut to pushing for a nationwide halt on data centers until they’re properly regulated.

Pennsylvanians learned what was happening in their backyard, and they stood up to stop it. This is how democracy works. And sometimes it’s up to the people to remind their government. (2)

(1) Food & Water Watch (Mar 4, 2026) – Comprehensive Report Details Case for Nationwide Moratorium on New Data Centers

(2) Food & Water Watch (Mar 5, 2026) – How to Stop a Data Center Near You
https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2026/03/04/comprehensive-report-details-case-for-nationwide-moratorium-on-new-data-centers/
https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2026/03/05/how-to-stop-a-data-center-near-you/

Big Tech has targeted thousands of communities to house its AI data centers. Here’s how you can defend your community.

03/07/2026

Fracking of Appalachian Ohio is just more sickening plunder by outsiders:
By Thomas Suddes, cleveland.com
Dig, drill, saw or blast, then take the money and run back to Wall Street: That’s been Appalachian Ohio’s story. Result: Moonscapes where forests once towered; crystalline brooks and streams now muddy and stinking. These are the consequences of the dig, slash or burn economy that long pillaged Southeast and Southern Ohio.

Appalachia, particularly – a region legally defined as the crescent of eastern and southern counties reaching from Ashtabula (Jefferson) to Clermont (Batavia), in suburban Cincinnati – has been a story of grab-and-run by outsiders.

Then, in 1972, led by Democratic Gov. John J. Gilligan, the General Assembly created the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, which was Gilligan’s No. 1 legislative priority that year.

The Ohio EPA bill’s prime sponsor was then-state Sen. Ralph S. Regula, a Navarre Republican, later a U.S. House member who represented the Canton area from 1973 through 2008. Statehouse bipartisanship: What a concept.

When Gilligan signed the 1972 bill, a history of the Ohio EPA later recalled, “Youngstown, Cleveland and Steubenville had some of the dirtiest air in the nation. Air [pollution] alerts were common. The state’s waterways were not faring much better: A spark from a cutting torch ignited an oil slick on the Cuyahoga River. [And] most garbage in Ohio was disposed in unlined dumpsites that were only minimally regulated.”

Since John Gilligan signed Ralph Regula’s bill, there’s been a Statehouse war between Ohioans who want to preserve (or restore) their state’s natural environment and, on the other side, resource-extracting companies – notably oil, gas and coal combines – whose idea of pretty scenery is an empty hole, a mountain of waste, and high-dollar cash transfers from Main Street, Ohio, to corporate accounts in Manhattan banks.

Coal’s heyday is past, but today’s Statehouse oil and gas lobby is not to be trifled with. During Republican then-Gov. John Kasich’s no-nonsense 2011-2018 administration, Kasich sought reasonable increases in the severance taxes that mineral companies pay on oil and gas, especially if gleaned via horizontal drilling. The industry’s lobbyists beat Kasich’s request like a rug on spring-cleaning day.

Sure, private property is private property, and some rural Ohioans glean cash royalty payments from oil-and-gas drilling on their land. It’s what Big Money cheerleader Ronald Reagan called “the magic of the market.” (He might actually have believed that.)

Whether because a governor has to pick his fights, or because of affinity for the oil-and-gas crowd, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s administration’s operating philosophy seems to be, if not exactly “Frack, Baby, Frack!” then, “get along to go along” -- leasing to frackers access to the land under state parks, property that belongs to all Ohioans, not private landowners.

This rush-to-frack is enormously profitable for the drillers, even though they must pay (very) modest state royalties for the gas they siphon from under the parks. But the question is whether the risk of damaging unique properties that belong to all Ohioans is worth the royalties that frackers must pay.

Two General Assembly members, from Greater Cleveland and Columbus, emphatically say, “No.” Democratic Reps. Tristan Rader, of Lakewood, and Christine Cockley, of Columbus, are telling the Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission they “oppose new permits for oil and gas development under the Egypt Valley Wildlife Area.”

The Egypt Valley tracts, 18,000-plus acres, are in Belmont (St. Clairsville) and Guernsey (Cambridge) counties, and include Piedmont Lake, managed by the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District, and whose dam was built and is managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Said Cockley, “Our parks and state wildlife areas are cherished by countless Ohioans, and opening these sites up to extraction and pollution is a step in the wrong direction.” Moreover, said Rader, “The practice of exploiting public lands and parks must stop.”

The two House members noted that the Oil and Gas Land Management Commission, the leasing agency, will accept until March 7 public comments on the proposed bid to exploit taxpayers’ Egypt Valley property – your property.

If you’re OK with an environmental threat to what should be your kids’ and grandkids’ inheritance as Ohioans, crack open another cold one and get comfy in the BarcaLounger. But if you think tomorrow’s Ohio needn’t be as bleak as today’s, there’s this thing called “email.” Send some.

Thomas Suddes, a member of the editorial board, writes from Athens.

To reach Thomas Suddes: [email protected]
https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/2026/02/fracking-of-appalachian-ohio-is-just-more-sickening-plunder-by-outsiders-thomas-suddes.html

If you’re OK with an environmental threat to what should be your kids’ and grandkids’ inheritance as Ohioans, crack open another cold one and get comfy in the BarcaLounger. But if you think tomorrow’s Ohio needn’t be as bleak as today’s, there’s this thing called “email.” Send some...

02/28/2026

Thank goodness we were able to stop the Thailand-based PTT Global petrochemical complex in Belmont County BUT they still own the land, and Jobs Ohio is still owed the $50 million of Ohioan's money for supporting it! We should be given the land back for the public funds that were spent on it!

Documents obtained by Hunterbrook show Indorama exposed thousands to carcinogens, violated environmental permits, and concealed toxic leaks from regulators.

02/28/2026

Save Ohio Parks: Public comments needed to stop fracking 8,749 acres at Salt Fork, Egypt Valley

Comments needed by March 7 for 6,639 acres in Egypt Valley Wildlife Area; March 15 for 513 acres under Salt Fork State Park and 1,596 more acres of Egypt Valley

Ohioans who love their state parks and public lands need to tell the Oil and Gas Land Management Commission (OGLMC) to stop fracking them.

Over 8236 acres of Egypt Valley Wildlife Area’s 18,000 acres in Belmont County may be handed over for fracking at the commission’s next meeting, along with an additional 513 acres of Salt Fork State Park.

A total of 11,603 acres of Ohio state parks and wildlife areas have been approved for fracking by the commission since 2023, as well as 25 rights-of-way on Ohio Department of Transportation land and 6.9 acres at Noble Correctional Institution.

If approved, the latest round of fracking nominations would come close to doubling the acreage of public lands the state had already approved over the past three years.

Save Ohio Parks asks the public to tell the commission to deny fracking under Egypt Valley Wildlife Area and Salt Fork State Park.

The deadline to submit comments for Egypt Valley nominations 26-DNR-0001 and 26-DNR-0002 is March 7. Comments on an additional two nominations of land in Egypt Valley, 26-DNR-0004 and 26-DNR-0005, are due March 15.

The wildlife area is popular for hiking, fishing, and hunting. Its land was strip-mined for decades, but reclaimed through years of rehabilitation beginning in the 1990s.

Salt Fork State Park in Guernsey County is Ohio’s largest and arguably most beautiful park at 20,000 acres. It was the first state park to be approved for fracking in 2023, despite large citizen protests at OGLMC meetings.

Salt Fork is popular for camping, swimming, fishing, hunting, hiking, and horseback riding. Comment deadline for the 26-DNR-0003 Salt Fork parcel is March 15.

“Everyone who cares about keeping our pristine natural lands from being industrialized and wants to protect our health, our clean air, water and biodiversity in Ohio has a responsibility to act now and tell the OGLMC to say NO to fracking these beautiful, unspoiled land,” said Rebecca Malik, board member at Save Ohio Parks. “Ohio’s public lands were set aside beginning in 1949 the pleasure and leisure of the people of Ohio for all time. They are not owned by one governor or a supermajority political party seeking to monetize and destroy them with the help of the gas and oil industry.”
Arguments against fracking Ohio are many, as well as serious. Ninety-eight percent of citizen comments filed with the commission regarding fracking nominations are consistently opposed to fracking Ohio public lands.

Fracking is dangerous. Research by Save Ohio Parks’ Jenny Morgan and Fractracker Alliance documented and mapped 1,900 gas and oil “incidents” since 2015. This
amounts to an accident or incident every 1.5 days.

An explosion and massive fire at the Groh well pad six miles from Salt Fork State Park in January 2025 forced the overnight evacuation of an entire township and spurred the formation of a statewide environmental organization coalition calling for Republican Gov. Mike DeWine to declare a moratorium on fracking under state parks and public lands. His office has ignored the group.

Gas and oil waste management and storage in Ohio is notably poor. In November 2025, coalition member Buckeye Environmental Network sued the ODNR for using old, lax rules to permit two Class II injection wells in Washington County. The county already has 17 wells—among the most in the state.

Washington County for Safe Drinking Water, a Marietta-based citizen group concerned about groundwater contamination from migrating oil and gas wastewater brine, has asked DeWine for a moratorium on injection well approvals. That request has also been ignored.

Fracking converts Ohio’s fresh water into toxic, radioactive waste. Research by Save Ohio Parks found that fracking approved through January 12, 2026, would use at least 1.9 billion gallons of fresh water taken from Ohio lakes and streams, converting it into toxic radioactive waste that must be stored in underground injection wells forever.

The five current nominations in Salt Fork and Egypt Valley would greatly add to the amount of fresh water taken from Ohio’s water cycle forever.

Lea Harper is director of Freshwater Accountability Project, which has advocated for fresh water and spoken out on the dangers of fracking since 2012.

“Gas and oil waste brine is shot into injection wells with no monitoring wells surrounding them to detect migration of toxic materials,” said Harper. “It deeply saddens me to see the fracking industry taking billions of gallons of water from our lakes and streams each year. That water is destroyed by a single boom-bust industry and forced underground forever, never to sparkle in the sun again. Can we afford to lose that much of our precious freshwater? I don't think so, but few in Ohio government seem to care.”

Each of the 67 nominations so far for state parks, wildlife areas, Ohio Department of Transportation rights-of-way, and Department of Corrections land are listed on the Save Ohio Parks website. Click on each nomination to learn more and find out how to file a comment on the five open nominations of Egypt Valley Wildlife Area and Salt Fork State Park.

Save Ohio Parks is a statewide nonprofit made of volunteers dedicated to educating the public about methane gas (natural gas) fracking’s dangers to human health, the environment and our public lands, in conjunction with Ohio’s lax gas and oil waste management and storage practices.