“Tough’ Hubbard citizens will keep out injection well, trustee says


By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

HUBBARD

Hubbard people are “tough.” They kept out a demolition debris landfill through years of fighting, and they will do the same for an injection well proposed for the southeast corner of state Routes 80 and 7, said Hubbard Township Trustee Rick Hernandez.

“We do have a hard fight,” Hernandez told about 150 people who turned out Thursday at Brentford House banquet hall for a town hall meeting organized by citizens and environmentalists.

Injection wells are under the control of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, but citizens can prevail “if you step up and you stand up and stay firm and you keep the pressure on and you keep writing those letters,” he said.

It will “show that we are not going to take it. We’ve had it,” he said.

Bobcat Energy of Canfield resubmitted its application for an injection well in Hubbard Township to the ODNR earlier Thursday after failing to provide all of the required information on its July 12 application, said ODNR spokesman Steve Irwin.

The well would be behind King Collision and Katie’s Corner Ice Cream on North Main Street.

Injection wells are a means of disposing of the wastewater from hydraulic fracturing for gas and oil. Trumbull County has 17 such wells and will have 23 soon if five additional ones proposed for Brookfield Township and one for Hubbard Township are approved.

Ones in Vienna closed after a spill that fouled a stream and wetlands, one in Weathersfield and one in Youngstown closed down after they caused seismic activity.

Guest speaker was Youngstown fire Battalion Chief Silverio Caggiano, who serves on many hazardous materials committees for the state.

Caggiano said the “cloak of secrecy” under which the oil and gas industry operates leaves first-responders entering hazardous materials emergencies “blind,” because truck drivers hauling the industry’s waste don’t always provide material safety data sheets that enable first-responders to know how to respond.

Waste from drilling pads go into injection wells by way of trucks, but those drivers get no training on how to handle hazardous materials leaks, he said.

Over 1,500 signatures have been gathered on a petition opposing the well, organizers said.