Injection-well company applies for 3 more wells on same Brookfield site

Staff report

BROOKFIELD

Highland Field Services, the Pittsburgh company that has permission to drill two injection wells near the Wyngate Manor manufactured home community off state Route 7 just north of Brookfield Center, has applied to construct three more wells on the same site.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources provided The Vindicator with copies of the three applications the company filed Sept. 27 with ODNR asking for permission to drill them.

All three appear to be the same as one another and the same as the two they already have permission to drill – 8,750 feet deep with the potential to inject between 5,000 and 10,000 barrels per day at pressures of 1,736 pounds per square inch.

Construction on the first two wells has not begun, said Jim Hennessey, a resident of Merwin Chase Road near the project site.

The drawings provided with the new applications indicate all five wells would be just north and west of Wyngate.

Wyngate residents, home-owners on Merwin Chase, many other Brookfield residents and members of the Youngstown-based environmental group Frackfree America staged several demonstrations in an effort to discourage ODNR from approving the first two wells without success.

When Frackfree America learned this week that Highland had applied for three more, it said in a news release “a really bad situation just got much worse.”

The group is having a rally at 5:45 p.m. Thursday on the Brookfield Village Green to oppose the additional wells and the ones already approved for construction.

Injection wells force wastewater from the oil and gas industry deep underground at high pressure as a means of disposal.

The news release says the wells don’t belong in a “highly populated area that is very near known epicenters of man-made earthquakes related to injection wells or fracking wells, including the now-famous magnitude-4.0 Youngstown man-made quake that happened Dec. 31, 2011.”