The owners of four injection wells, which store waste from oil and natural gas production, voluntarily stopped their operations in Washington County earlier this month, at the request of state regulators.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources said in an email that its Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management notified the owners the injection wells were suspected to be impacting nearby oil and gas wells.
Residents in the area have long had concerns that wastewater stored in injection wells is migrating underground and could contaminate the local drinking water supply.
“If you don't have fresh water, if you don't have clean water, if you don't have safe water, you can't have a community,” said Dee Wells Arnold in an interview with the Ohio Newsroom in November. Her family has lived in the area since before the Civil War.
“I don't think it's worth the risk,” she said.
What are injection wells?
Hydraulic fracturing, which is often called fracking, produces millions of gallons of wastewater. That wastewater has to be disposed of somehow, and generally it’s stored deep underground in Class II injection wells.
Ohio has more than 200 of these injection wells concentrated in the eastern half of the state. Washington County alone had 17 of them in 2023. For comparison, that’s one more than the entire state of Pennsylvania had that same year.
Some people who live near Marietta, including members of city council, have been growing concerned that there are too many of these wells too close to the city’s drinking water supply. That escalated last year when the state permitted additional wells to be constructed within two miles of the city’s aquifers.
Why are four injection wells stopping operations?
For years, oil and natural gas producers in Washington County, like Bob Wilson, have been saying wastewater from these injection wells has been migrating underground and getting into their oil and natural gas wells.
Since 2019, Wilson says 50 of his wells are now pulling up sludgy wastewater instead of producing oil and gas. He says the problem has recently gotten worse.
“I'm still losing wells. I've lost two in almost six weeks,” he said. “They're about to wear me down. I get up and go to work every day and I can't make a living.”
The Buckeye Environmental Network released a report earlier this month documenting rising pressures in several of Wilson’s wells that they say are evidence of migrating wastewater.
Around that same time, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management said the owners of four injection wells agreed to voluntarily stop their operations. That’s after the division notified them that the injection wells were suspected to be impacting nearby oil and gas wells.
What happens next?
The ODNR said in a statement that its oil and gas division is working with the injection well owners to come up with a plan to address the issues.
That division is also hiring a third-party consultant to examine the possible impact on nearby private water wells.
People like Bob Wilson say these actions are too little, too late. He says his business has already suffered catastrophic damage that can’t be undone. He wonders why ODNR is eager to provide permits to out-of-state corporations.
“You have to ask yourself, especially with the ODNR, why is this happening?” he said. “These people work for us, the tax paying citizens of the state.”
An organizer with the Buckeye Environmental Network wants the ODNR to go a step further — and permanently shut down those four wells, and to revoke the permits it gave for those recent additional injection wells close to Marietta’s aquifers.
The ODNR declined a request for an interview.
