300-foot buffer proposed for Ohio park drilling

BARBARA RODRIGUEZ

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — A state nat­ural resource agency’s pro­posed rules for drilling in state parks would require nat­ural gas and oil com­pa­nies to stay at least 300 feet — the length of a foot­ball field — from camp­grounds, cer­tain water­ways and sites deemed his­tor­i­cally or archae­o­log­i­cally valuable.

Doc­u­ments on pro­posed rules were released by the state Depart­ment of Nat­ural Resources this week after the Ohio chap­ter of the Sierra Club filed a law­suit claim­ing the agency ignored repeated requests by the group to review them.

The pro­pos­als for drilling leases also includes an 89-page report list­ing “best man­age­ment prac­tices” on top­ics like site restora­tion and guide­lines for emer­gency and pol­lu­tion inci­dents. Other pro­pos­als include state approval before com­pa­nies could store drilling waste in pits and an agree­ment on the loca­tions of all drilling equipment.

East­ern Ohio is in the midst of a nat­ural gas boom as devel­op­ers seek to cap­ture rights to Utica Shale deposits. The state passed a law in Sep­tem­ber that opened its parks and other state-held lands for drilling, and offi­cials have been devel­op­ing leas­ing terms for drilling companies.

Oppo­nents say they’re con­cerned about the envi­ron­men­tal impact of the drilling, which includes hydraulic frac­tur­ing, or “frack­ing.” The process involves drillers blast­ing mil­lions of gal­lons of water, sand and chem­i­cals deep under­ground to break up rock deposits.

Sup­port­ers of the law say there’s a poten­tially vast reser­voir of oil and gas in the Utica Shale, which lies below the Mar­cel­lus Shale, where oil com­pa­nies in Penn­syl­va­nia have drilled thou­sands of wells in search of nat­ural gas and oil.

But nat­ural gas drilling has become a con­tentious issue in Penn­syl­va­nia, where pub­lic health advo­cates have crit­i­cized a new law that will limit acces­si­ble med­ical infor­ma­tion on ill­nesses that may be related to gas drilling. It takes effect April 14.

Accord­ing to the National Con­fer­ence of State Leg­is­la­tures, more than 130 bills have been recently intro­duced in 24 states to address frack­ing. It includes a range of top­ics like waste treat­ment, dis­posal reg­u­la­tions and require­ments to pub­licly dis­close the com­po­si­tion of frac­tur­ing fluid chem­i­cals. At least nine states have pro­posed frack­ing sus­pen­sions or stud­ies on their impact.

It’s unclear whether the 300-foot buffer rule in Ohio will be applied above ground or below. A mes­sage left for a nat­ural resource agency spokesman was not imme­di­ately returned Thurs­day morning.

Jed Thorp, the Sierra Club’s Ohio chap­ter man­ager, said the pro­pos­als are inad­e­quate. He said he’s hope­ful state law­mak­ers will even­tu­ally reverse the law.

“When peo­ple go to a state park, they don’t want to see frack­ing, or hear frack­ing, or smell frack­ing,” he said in a state­ment. “They want to relax.”

Thorp also said the Sierra Club, which filed its law­suit Mon­day, won’t drop its suit. He said the agency failed to fol­low the state’s pub­lic records law by ignor­ing requests for the doc­u­ments as far back as October.

Posted by AP News on Apr 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.