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2004 law gives control of new wells to state, leaving residents little recourse. In three-year period, number in Summit soars
By Bob Dyer
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Sunday, Aug 10, 2008
God forbid we should inconvenience an elk.
What about inconveniencing people? Actual human beings? Old ones and young ones and big ones and small ones?
That is happening right here in Summit County — day after day after day — and nobody makes a peep.
Companies that drill oil and gas wells have free rein. If someone wants to slam in an oil well right behind your house, you and your mayor or your township trustees are powerless to stop it.
That wasn't the case until September 2004, when the Ohio legislature — goaded by drillers and property owners who wanted to cash in — took away all local control and handed it to the state.
Today, the only group that can turn thumbs-down on a drilling application is the Ohio Department of Natural Resources — and those folks have rejected exactly one Summit County application since the law went into effect.
The lone rejection wasn't exactly controversial: A drilling company falsely claimed it had the rights to a certain piece of land.
In short, the floodgates are wide open.
During 2004, only four oil or gas wells were drilled in Summit County. The first full year after the change, 18 wells were drilled. The next year: 23. Last year: 30.
If oil wells are perfectly fine in any neighborhood in Ohio, what's so sacred about Alaska?
Look, I'm not trying to belittle the effort to preserve nature and wildlife, because once it's gone, it's gone. But doesn't anyone else see a contradiction between our desire to maintain purity in uninhabited areas while simultaneously allowing huge drilling rigs right next to people's homes?
How would you like to be Ellis and
Delores Bell of Fairlawn? The retired couple worked a lifetime to save enough money to move to a nicer neighborhood. They found the right spot in 1999; it was a convenient location, and their yard backed up to pretty Rosemont Country Club.
Suddenly, in March, they learned that two wells would be drilled on club property right behind their home.
The deafening clatter went on 24 hours a day for two weeks — floodlights blazing throughout the night.
Even now, their noise problems aren't over. Every two hours or so, a pressure-relief valve lets off a hiss that lasts about a minute. The eruptions wake them at night.
The sights are just as bad as the sounds. Drillers are not required to create any kind of buffer, so when the Bells head out to their patio, they have a wide-open view of two ugly green pumps only 152 feet away.
A fence eventually will be built tightly around the pumps, but nothing is required along the property line.
''I didn't move to Fairlawn to be living next to an industrial park,'' says Delores Bell, a former surgical technician at Cuyahoga Falls General Hospital.
Tight squeeze
If a typical well is being drilled straight down, it must be 300 feet from the neighbor's property line. But if it's angled away, as in the Bells' case, the wellhead can be as little as 75 feet from the line.
Seventy-five feet! Less than the distance from home plate to first base!
Although Bell and her husband lobbied hard to get Fairlawn officials to help them stop the project, Fairlawn's hands were tied.
Local governments do have some input, but not much. A county engineer can ask to have the ingress/egress roads reworked. If the drillers are tracking mud all over a public road or exceeding a road's weight limits, police can cite them.
When Fairlawn pointed out that the proposed location for storage tanks behind the Bells' house would be in an area susceptible to flooding, the tanks were relocated to higher ground a short distance away.
But those things are trivial in the overall scheme of things. If a proposed well meets the basic criteria — game over.
State law makes absolutely no distinction between drilling in an industrial park and drilling in your backyard.
The new law, House Bill 278, has had a bigger impact in Northeast Ohio than any other part of the state. Six of the 10 counties with the most drilling activity are here, including Geauga (second), Cuyahoga (third), Stark (sixth) and Mahoning (10th). Summit is 16th, but only nine wells behind Mahoning.
The progression in Summit (where most wells produce both natural gas and oil) has been a straight line upward.
''The increase in urban wells is driving that progression,'' says Mike McCormick, the permitting manager for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources' oil and gas section.
City fights back
At least one local official has had it. Munroe Falls Mayor Frank Larson declared war after a permit was issued for a piece of land right in the heart of his city.
Even worse, the location is just east of Water Works Park in Cuyahoga Falls, home to 18 water wells that serve 60,000 people in his city, Silver Lake, Cuyahoga Falls and a sliver of Akron.
And immediately east of the proposed site is the Cuyahoga River. That area is prone to flooding, and the Water Works wells are replenished by groundwater.
A drilling permit was issued last October. The city managed to win a stay order from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, and a hearing is scheduled for Friday before the Oil and Gas Commission.
But Larson is not optimistic. He says the commission is top-heavy with people who have direct ties to the industry.
He's right. Four of the five members are employed by, or have done work for, oil and gas companies. The lineup includes:
• An employee of Dominion East Ohio Gas.
• An employee of a drilling company.
• A geologist employed by a company that provides well-field services.
• A Columbus lawyer who represents energy companies.
The mayor says the drillers ''haven't even attempted to explain [the steps that would be taken] if something would happen and contaminate the groundwater and it gets into the water system. . . .
''How are they going to put the toothpaste back into the tube? [The state says] the drillers are insured and the inspectors will be there. Great. The inspectors will be able to say, 'Wow, they screwed that one up, didn't they?' ''
Booming error
Something certainly went wrong in Bainbridge Township, on the western edge of Geauga County.
Eight months ago, a driller hit an unexpected pool of methane gas thousands of feet underground. A nearby house exploded in the middle of the night. Nobody was hurt, but 15 families were displaced, and methane leaked into the water wells of houses all over the neighborhood.
So the Munroe Falls mayor is certainly not being paranoid.
At least mayors have the resources to take a driller to the mat. Regular folks, such as the Bells, do not. But together, public officials and steamed-up citizens apparently have made enough noise to get some attention.
Rick Simmers, manager of the 20-county North Region of the Division of Mineral Resources Management, says the state is ''in the very early stages of re-evaluating the [new urban-drilling rules],'' a process he said will continue through the fall. He says the talks involve mayors, county commissioners and fire officials.
The Natural Resources folks have the ability to change some of the rules, such as the minimum distance from the wellhead to the property line. But to really change the whole equation, the legislature will have to act — the same legislature that decided your backyard is no different from the heart of an industrial district or the middle of a forest.
Maybe it would help if we imported some elk.
Bob Dyer can be reached at 330-996-3580 or bdyer@thebeaconjournal.com.
Get the full article here.
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