Friday, July 20, 2012
youngstown
Janet Reeves, a retired Mahoning Valley nurse, started her talk about fracking Thursday by stating the issue is something that causes stress, makes people anxious and sometimes even angry.
The crowd at the Ohio Environmental Council (OEC) event seemed to agree with her. At times, crowd members booed the name of Ohio Gov. John Kasich and repeatedly stated that fracking, a process in which sand, water and chemicals are pumped into shale at a high pressure to release the gas trapped within the rock thousands of feet underground, needs to be permanently banned.
During her portion of the educational forum, Reeves focused on medical concerns associated with fracking.
There have been a number of people within the medical profession who have asked for a moratorium on fracking until the health issues related to the practice can be fully investigated, Reeves said. There are potential issues, especially for children in their development and growth.
“We have to realize that nothing is foolproof,” she said. “The risks are often not understood.”
John Makley of the Mohican Advocates was another presenter and talked about his group’s efforts to prevent oil and gas production in Ohio’s state parks. The Ohio Legislature passed a law this year that would allow drilling in all state parks if approved by a review board. The board has not yet been appointed.
“This battle for our public spaces is not a new one,” he said. “We’re trying to prevent our parks from becoming part of industrial development.”
The state has said allowing drilling is necessary to provide funding for the parks, citing millions of dollars in necessary projects, Makley said.
There are other alternatives for the state to provide a dedicated funding source for state parks such as an increased tax on oil, he said.
The OEC has recommended the state adopt a moratorium on fracking until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency can complete its study on the practice, which is due to be completed in 2014, said Joe Logan, director of agricultural programs for the OEC.
The OEC also questions how many jobs will come from oil and gas production in the state, he said.
“It’s a boom-and-bust cycle. I don’t expect much in permanent economic activity,” Logan said.
When asked about deep-well injection and why the OEC has not requested a ban on the wells, Logan responded that while what is being done now is not good, the alternative is worse.
“It’s better than what they were doing before, which was just dumping it into the river, which is a horrible alternative,” he said. “The problem we have now is [that] the injection wells are being overwhelmed. There was no idea we would be producing the volumes we are creating now.”