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Company seeks to inject brine near airport well
By Kalea Hall
VIENNA
KTCA Holdings has requested state authorization to inject brine and other wastes at a well on Youngs-town-Kingsville Road.
But Vienna Township trustees are doing what they can to prevent the authorization.
“We are trying to prevent it because of the location,” said Phil Pegg, Vienna trustee chairman.
The well at 1143 Youngs-town-Kingsville Road is two minutes south of the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport, located at 1453 Youngstown-Kingsville Road, which concerns Pegg.
Kleese Development Associates, KDA, sold the proposed injection well in early 2016 to KTCA Holdings, an Oklahoma City, Okla.-based company formed in August 2015.
KTCA last week requested from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources a “chief’s authorization to inject” at the well site. The department’s Division of Oil and Gas Resources “is currently reviewing to see if they have met the construction and testing requirements on the previous permit to drill,” ODNR spokesman Eric Heis said.
No time line has been set for an issuance of chief’s order, Heis said.
KDA had drilled the well in late August and early September, according to Vindicator files. Protesters gathered to stop the drilling because of concern with KDA, a company that had more than 2,000 gallons of light waste oil spill from storage tanks at other injection facilities on Sodom Hutchings Road in April 2015. The spill reached nearby ponds, streams and wetlands. That facility was shut down by ODNR.
“In this Valley, we have had four other earthquakes because of the injection,” Pegg said. “They can damage the runway. They are gambling with the jobs and with the airport.”
In fall 2014, ODNR ordered the shutdown of two brine-injection wells on state Route 169 in Weathersfield Township after a 2.1-magnitude earthquake.
On New Year’s Eve 2011, a 4.0-magnitude earthquake hit Youngstown.
The earthquake was later connected to brine injection at the D&L Energy well on Ohio Works Drive in Youngstown.
Vienna trustees have submitted a letter of concern on the basis of safety because of earthquakes and truck traffic, Pegg said.