Environmentalists criticize Ohio drilling rules

JULIE CARR SMYTH

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — Envi­ron­men­tal advo­cates were among dozens of wit­nesses lin­ing up to tes­tify Mon­day on a bill lay­ing out Ohio’s new reg­u­la­tions for hor­i­zon­tal shale drilling and the use of renew­able energy.

The tes­ti­mony before the House Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mit­tee was part of a debate on a wide-ranging energy bill that passed the Ohio Sen­ate last week with sup­port of Repub­li­cans and some Democrats.

Con­cern remains among envi­ron­men­tal groups.

The bill requires that well oper­a­tors dis­close chem­i­cals used in hydraulic frac­tur­ing, a tech­nique that involves the high-pressure injec­tion of water and chem­i­cals into the ground to split rock apart and release nat­ural gas or oil. Envi­ron­men­tal­ists say details will be scant, how­ever, and report­ing will come only after wells have been drilled.

The Nat­ural Resources Defense Coun­cil, mean­while, has crit­i­cized the bill for remov­ing the public’s abil­ity to appeal state-issued drilling permits.

The Ohio Depart­ment of Nat­ural Resources says the rules are among the tough­est in the nation.

Ohio sen­a­tors passed the new energy bill Tues­day, send­ing it to the House.

Besides cre­at­ing the new hydraulic frac­tur­ing rules, it adjust Ohio’s renew­able energy stan­dard to include waste heat such as that gen­er­ated from fac­tory smokestacks.

Sup­port­ers said the bill bal­ances envi­ron­ment, pub­lic health and safety, and com­merce by expand­ing chem­i­cal dis­clo­sure and water test­ing requirements.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Repub­li­can, backs the bill as a respon­si­ble com­pro­mise between envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and poli­cies friendly to the state’s devel­op­ing shale drilling industry.

It requires well oper­a­tors to dis­close the loca­tion they’ll draw water from for blast­ing into the well, as well as the rate and vol­ume at which they’ll with­draw it.

The leg­is­la­tion fur­ther requires well oper­a­tors to dis­close all chem­i­cals that will come into con­tact with human water sup­plies dur­ing the drilling oper­a­tion, though not the spe­cific recipe. Water sam­ples must also be taken at all wells within 1,500 feet of any pro­posed hor­i­zon­tal well.

But envi­ron­men­tal groups say the leg­is­la­tion is rid­dled with loopholes.

Rick Sahli, an envi­ron­men­tal lawyer with the Nat­ural Resources Defense Coun­cil, said lan­guage in the bill allows well oper­a­tors to report water with­drawal data “to the best of their knowl­edge,” for example.

It retains an Ohio “manda­tory pool­ing” law that gives drillers the oppor­tu­nity to access oil and gas under a landown­ers’ prop­erty against their will, if enough neigh­bors agree to it to sat­isfy a state review board.

Sahli said a pro­vi­sion pro­hibits med­ical pro­fes­sion­als who access pro­pri­etary chem­i­cal infor­ma­tion about the wells from dis­clos­ing that infor­ma­tion out­side of treat­ing indi­vid­ual patients. He said the word­ing would pre­vent a doc­tor from alert­ing local health depart­ments and first responders.

Posted by AP News on May 21 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.