Windham and Nelson at the epicenter of Ohio’s Utica shale formation

October 20, 2012 at 7:30p.m.

WINDHAM

In what should be the still of the night, Natalie Baker can feel her house shake.

It is a strange, disconcerting and troubling sensation, Baker says of the vibrations caused by a drilling rig 1,800 feet away off Frazier Road in Portage County’s northeast corner.

The neighborhood on the township line between Windham and Nelson is the epicenter, the hottest hot spot, in Ohio’s Utica shale formation — with 14 new wells planned, permitted or already under construction. Some are only a few hundred feet apart.

Half of the wells would produce oil and gas; the other half would be used for injection of briny wastewater.

“Who would want to live with 14 wells? I’m not confident that a leaking well would be detected and corrected right away,” Baker, 46, said. “Fourteen wells in one place is a nightmare.”

And apparently, unprecedented in Ohio.

Jeff Daniels, a geology professor and director of the Subsurface Energy Resource Center at Ohio State University, said he was unaware of any place in Ohio where there is such a concentration of production and injection wells.

From all indications, the Ohio Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management will approve the entire cluster of wells, despite environmentalists’ protests and increasing neighborhood tensions.