COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Oil and Gas Land Management Commission opened parcels of land underneath Salt Fork State Park and two other state-owned wildlife areas to oil and gas development, in the face of roaring chants from a room full of approximately 100 protesters during the hearing.
The commissioners granted seven of the 10 requests for tracts spanning thousands of acres at Salt Fork in Guernsey County, plus smaller swaths of Valley Run Wildlife Area in Carroll County and Zepernick Run Wildlife Area in Columbiana County.
The commissioners rejected a request to frack under Wolf Run State Park. Their rationale for the latter decision could not be heard over the thunder of chants like “don’t frack our futures.” At one point, a woman dressed as Milburn Pennybags (as seen on the cover of Monopoly board games) threw a handfull of faux gold coins in the air just in front of the commissioners.
At one point, activists effectively hijacked the meeting. Roughly a dozen or so stood in front of the commissioners holding a “NO FRACKING OUR OHIO PUBLIC LANDS” sign, obstructing view of commissioners. Chants and a sing-along forced a roughly 15-minute recess. The commission eventually returned to the hearing room and approved various land nominations, ignoring the chants breaking out just a few feet in front of them.
After the meeting, Ryan Richardson, who chairs the commission as a representative of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which owns state park lands, quickly exited the hearing room and declined interview requests.
Ohio Oil and Gas Association President Rob Brundrett is serenaded by protester Jenny Morgan singing "these parks are your parks, these parks are my parks" to the tune of the Woody Guthrie classic, as activists brought the OGLMC meeting to a standstill. (Jake Zuckerman/Cleveland.com)Jake Zuckerman
Wednesday’s vote sends the parcels out for a bidding process, from which the OGLMC is to select the “highest and best” offer. The state can post the bid as soon as January, according to ODNR spokesman Andy Chow. From then, bidders have 30 days to make an offer. Only once a bid is selected will the state reveal the companies interested in the land and the terms of their offers.
The term “fracking” refers to the industrial process of drilling thousands of feet below ground and turning laterally. From those horizontal wells, companies pump high volumes of water, sand and chemicals to free methane (the primary component of natural gas) from shale. That allows drillers to extract resources from an area surrounding a well instead of directly below it.
State law allows for surface interruptions at state parks, but Gov. Mike DeWine has said his administration would not. The applications approved Wednesday would require drillers to start from a well pad adjacent to the parks.
Republicans at the Ohio Statehouse created the land leasing program in 2011. However, the OGLMC under Gov. John Kasich and DeWine failed to roll out rules to administer and implement it. It took a new state law passed late last year, which also dubiously expanded the legal definition of “green energy” to include natural gas, to effectively force-start the state leasing program into existence.
Randi Pokladnik, a retired research chemist affiliated with the grassroots Save Our Parks, said Wednesday’s outbursts were a foreseeable reaction to people who don’t want fracking, and must now shoulder the burden of its environmental and health consequences, going unheard.
“For the people that live in Southeast Ohio, like we do in Harrison County and Guernsey County around these parks, that’s just going to make things all the worse for them,” she said. “They’re already subjugated to it on it private land. Now it’s public land.”
Rob Brundrett, president of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association, issued a statement shortly after the meeting. He said the association will “continue to review” new provisions to its standard lease agreement (also adopted Wednesday) aimed at limiting noise from drilling operations during hunting season.
“We are pleased to see the Commission continue to advance nominated parcels to the bidding process laid out by the statute,” he said.
The industry interest is unmistakable: this year, 98 individuals have registered to lobby the OGLMC on behalf of the likes of Marathon, Shell, BP, Encino Energy, Columbia Gas, EQT Corp., Gulfport Energy, TC Energy, Ascent Resources, Calpine Energy Solutions, Vistra Corp. and others. Before the new legal system took form, Encino offered the state as much as nearly $2 billion over 15 years for rights to drill under Salt Fork.
The commissioners took the perhaps unexpected step of rejecting a nomination to frack 2,100 acres of Wolf Run State Park in Noble County. This amounted to the only instance of a wholesale rejection to frack a given protected area.
The decision comes after Kara Herrnstein, special counsel for Ohio State University, wrote a letter Monday seeking the rejection of the Wolf Run nomination. She said of the 2,100 acres, OSU owns 770 of them, including the Eastern Agricultural Research Station. The OGLMC, she alleged, failed to identify OSU as the owner of its land and notify the public of as much, as it’s required to do. She said the school uses the land for academic research that requires removal of “external variables” and maintaining precisely controlled land conditions.
The commissioners previously met in September with the intention of deciding on the 10 different land nominations to drill under state parks and wildlife areas that have been on their desks all summer. They punted on the decision at the time, however, citing a need for more stakeholder input. They did so in the face of a similar room of dozens of angry environmentalists urging rejection, citing a need to protect state lands from development. In the weeks before the hearing, Cleveland.com and the Plain Dealer published articles about more than 100 Ohioans saying their names were used without their knowing consent on letters submitted to the OGLMC urging them to support fracking Salt Fork State Park. Commissioners are required by law to consider the public comments they receive.
Attorney General Dave Yost, shortly after publication, announced an investigation into the matter but has declined to provide updates on it. House Minority Leader Allison Russo, a Columbus-area Democrat, pressed him for more details in a public letter sent Tuesday.
“A thorough investigation is imperative so Ohioans have confidence that any state process meant to include public input is, in fact, functioning to reflect public opinion and not another conduit for public corruption,” she said. “Identity theft in Ohio is a serious crime, and I look forward to the Attorney General improving public confidence in our state agencies and ensuring criminal activity does not permeate our state approval processes.”
In both 2011 and 2022, the laws creating and implementing the system for fracking state parks were passed almost exclusively with Republican support. Gov. Mike DeWine, who signed the more recent legislation into law, declined to comment.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Senate President Matt Huffman, a Lima Republican, said before the Senate spearheaded the 2022 law change, Ohio effectively couldn’t frack under parks, despite state law, because the state’s governors weren’t on board. He praised the day’s votes, but said fracking should go forward in an “environmentally sensitive way” for plants and other wildlife.
“The state can derive a lot of revenue from those,” he said. “Revenue, on this side, means perhaps lower taxes, or just as likely, other benefits to the public, whether it’s fixing up state lodges, whether it’s more money for public schools.”
At the hearing, Claire LeMelle, 19, of Springfield, joined with the protesters who physically obstructed the meeting with a banner. While the commissioners didn’t do what she wanted, she thinks the energy didn’t fall on deaf ears.
“I feel like most of us came into it thinking that’s what happened,” she said. “That’s the nature of these things. You have to expect the worse and come and act anyways, because there’s really nothing else to do.”
A lawsuit filed by the Ohio Environmental Council, Sierra Club, and others seeking to overturn Ohio’s land leasing law also remains in process. The suit alleges lawmakers failed to heed constitutional rules that limit bills to one subject and require readings of bills over multiple days. A judge declined to freeze the law as the case proceeds, and it awaits trial.
Meg Edwards, 24, who joined the protesters in obstructing the ongoing meeting, said after the meeting that the issue isn’t settled yet.
“The fight isn’t over until drills are in the ground,” she said.
Jake Zuckerman covers state politics for Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.