Forest, water supply at risk

Late last year, two federal agencies decided to open Ohio’s only national forest to large-scale, high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for oil and natural gas. The plan from the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service opens eastern reaches of the Wayne National Forest, abutting the Ohio River near Marietta and its watersheds, to industrialization.

If this scheme moves forward, oil and gas companies will bulldoze vast swaths of now healthy, forested watershed to build a huge network of wells, compressor stations, gathering lines and service roads.

Given the industry’s dismal record of toxic spills into Ohio’s waterways, the Forest Service’s plan should alarm anyone who cares about the Ohio River’s water quality.

Ohioans may recall that in May 2014, a well-head failure caused 100 barrels of drilling mud to spill into a tributary creek of the Ohio River near Beverly, Ohio, contaminating the creek with the drilling mud and crude oil.

Weeks later, the Eisenbarth well in Monroe County caught fire, spilling 54,000 gallons of hazardous fracking chemicals into another tributary of the Ohio River. The incident killed 70,000 fish along 5 miles of creek.

And in March 2016, a truck hauling drilling wastewater overturned in eastern Ohio, sending thousands of gallons of toxic water into a nearby creek and contaminating a drinking water reservoir in Barnesville in Belmont County.

Most recently, Energy Transfer Partners — the same Texas company behind the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline — spilled an estimated 2 million gallons of drilling fluid from its Rover Pipeline in two separate incidents in Richland and Stark counties.

But the problems with the federal fracking plan reach far beyond water pollution. By opening national forest lands to fracking, the plan will enable wholesale industrialization of entire watersheds, including national forest land and adjacent property.

The forests that Ohioans now cherish for their solitude and beauty — for hiking, hunting, fishing and backpacking — will be forever transformed into industrial zones.

And for wildlife such as river otters, bobcats and the endangered Indiana bat, the habitat destruction and devastation caused by fracking will make their survival and recovery that much more difficult.

The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management gave short shrift to these and other problems when they approved their fracking plan, in violation of federal environmental laws. For that reason, a coalition of groups last week sued to block it.

Ohio’s only national forest deserves better than being bulldozed for oil industry profits. Americans who use their national forests deserve better, imperiled wildlife deserves better, and millions of downstream water drinkers deserve better.

Taylor McKinnon Public lands campaigner Center for Biological Diversity Salida, Colorado

Butch Willis Columbus