About Us |
We are a community group who assembled in the summer of 2015 in response the injection well and frack waste handling operation run by Jeff Harper of K&H Partners in Torch, Ohio. Our goal is to raise awareness and stop contamination in our community.
Trucks pouring into the K&H
Residents of Torch and Coolville, Ohio, near the K&H injection well facility have come together to educate the community and public officials about impacts they're experiencing from the industrial facility that has taken over their community in the past three years. Noise, smells, truck traffic, and earth tremors have been common, day and night.
Why should I care about INJECTION WELLS in my Ohio community?
"Fracking" is used by oil and gas companies to get more out of a gas well. With horizontal fracking, millions of gallons of water laced with carcinogenic chemicals are shot into the ground under high pressure to fracture shale. This releases the gas & oil trapped there.
What happens when this "water comes back to the surface? Because it is toxic to plants, animals, and humans, it must be "disposed of."
Here's where injection wells come in: they allow the toxic, radioactive waste to be pumped back into the ground where it disperses. Only the oil & gas companies (and sometimes the government) know what chemicals are in this toxic mix, and they are NOT telling. Residents of Torch, OH now find that 3 of these Class II injection wells have been built right under their noses by K&H Partners of West Virginia in spite of opposition by Athens County Commissioners and many county residents. Only a chain link fence and "No Trespassing" signs mark the location. Holding tanks, deceptively painted green, are visible from the four-lane. The only signs of life are tanker trucks lined up around the clock waiting to expel their waste. No sign tells of the millions of gallons of toxic waste being pumped into the ground next to the rest stop. Our County Commissioners and many residents have grave concerns about the wells:
*Wells are just steel and concrete pipes into the ground. These wells are not enclosed containers--Where the toxic waste will migrate underground is unknown (Drouin, 2014).
*The holding tanks vent carcinogenic chemicals 24 hours a day. ODNR and EPA do not monitor the nearby air to determine the levels of these fumes.
*Aquifiers in the region are not mapped. The K&H pipes only go down about 2000 feet. The drilled holes are about 4000 feet deep (ODNR website). Class II wells have no monitoring wells around them (USEPA).
*Seismic activity has been linked to injection wells in OH and other states. (Oskin, 2015) A 3.5 magnitude earthquake shok Athens Co., Ohio on Nov. 20, 2013 (The Columbus Dispatch 2013). Athens County was also rattled by an earthquake centered in Virginia on August 23, 2011. The wells and our homes are not built to withstand tremors.
*Tanker trucks rumbling down our roads filled with hazardous toxic waste are only labeled as "Brine" because oil & gas waste is exempt from federal hazardous waste regulations and important parts of the federal Safe Drinking Water, Clean Air, and Clean Water acts (U.S. EPA, 2014).
*ODNR does NO testing of groundwater, surface water, or drinking water for contamination anywhere around the wells it permits and from which it profits.
*Our fire departments and first responders have no Material Safety Data Sheets to know what chemicals are burning if there is a fire.
*The ODNR's Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management supersedes the EPA and issues injection well permits (ODNR 2010). NO public hearing has ever been granted when local residents and officials request one from ODNR concerning these permits.
Please join dozens of neighbors who are concerned about thsi toxic, radioactive waste too.
References:
Drouin, R. as_fracking_booms_growing_concerns_about_wastewater.
Oskin, B. fracking-is-not-the-cause-of-quakes-rather-its-frackings-wastewater from washingtonpost.com
State Impact PA: Deep Injections Wells: How Drilling Waste Gets Disposed Underground
U.S. EPA. Regulation of Hydraulic Fracturing Under the Safe Drinking Water Act
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