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Trumbull officials plan multi-county meeting on brine-injection laws
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
The township trustees associations in Trumbull and Ashtabula counties, along with Trumbull County Commissioner Dan Polivka and County Engineer Randy Smith, have invited officials from six counties to a meeting Wednesday to talk about trying to change the state’s injection-well laws.
The meeting will take place from 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Trumbull County Commissioners meeting room, 160 High Street NW. It is open to the public.
Trumbull, Ashtabula, Mahoning, Stark, Portage, Meigs and Morrow counties have half of the injection wells in Ohio and need to band together to change laws that give too little protection to property owners and communities near the wells, said Johnston Township Trustee Dominic Marchese.
“Trumbull County is the leader in the state in waste,” Marchese said of brine-waste injection. “It’s not our waste. It’s not because of our [gas and oil] exploration. It’s people making money.”
Jack Simon, who handles matters related to oil and gas exploration and brine-waste injection for Trumbull County Engineer Randy Smith, said Trumbull County has 19 injection wells, the most in Ohio. Ashtabula and Stark counties have 18, and Portage has 16, he said.
Marchese is chairman of a committee of the Trumbull County Township Association that has worked several months to propose changes to Ohio law to require the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to notify property owners and government bodies within a half mile of proposed injection wells.
Nine other proposals include ones that would limit the hours of operation of injection wells, move hearings related to permits to ODNR regional offices instead of its headquarters in Columbus, require injection wells to be set back the same distance from homes and other properties as gas and oil wells and require injection wells to have water-testing wells on site.
The seven counties invited have 121 of the state’s 240 injection wells, and Meigs and Morrow counties receive much of the waste from West Virginia, Marchese said.
Many people think injection wells are similar to gas and oil wells, but there is a big difference, Marchese said. Carroll County, for instance, has hundreds of producing horizontal gas and oil wells but only three brine injection wells, whereas Trumbull County has seven horizontal gas and oil wells and 19 injection wells.
Neighbors of producing gas and oil wells typically earn money from those wells, whereas neighbors of injection wells typically earn nothing but still get all of the negative consequences of them, Marchese said.
“We’re having issues with earthquakes and spills. The landowners are getting nothing for it,” Marchese said.
Pennsylvania is among the leading states in the country for producing brine waste as a result of gas and oil drilling, but it accepts very little of that waste. Instead, it comes to Ohio, Marchese said.
The officials being invited to the meeting are primarily the county commissioners and county engineer from the seven counties, Marchese said. At the Trumbull County commissioners meeting Wednesday, Simon said two-thirds of the brine injected in Trumbull County comes from Pennsylvania.