Environmental advocates and Ohioans converged in Columbus last week to call out the environmental havoc that extending lease terms to frack Ohio’s state parks and public lands, with many trails, will cause Ohio’s air, water, soils, biodiversity—and future generations.
Save Ohio Parks; Freshwater Accountability Project; Buckeye Environmental Network; and Third Act Ohio were among environmental groups speaking to Oil and Gas Land Management Commissioners directly for the first time allowed them in three years about the dangers that await the state as it expands natural gas fracking under Ohio’s state parks and public lands.
Topics included: The undemocratic legislative process used to pass the state law that mandates fracking Ohio public lands; potential drinking water contamination in Washington County, Ohio, where injection wells storing toxic, radioactive gas and oil wastes are communicating with conventional oil wells, threatening rural drinking water wells and groundwater; fracking and injection well-caused earthquakes; destruction of biodiversity and habitat from fracking that could cause the extinctions of endangered Indiana bats, eastern hellbenders and eastern black bears; and methane gas emissions from natural gas production and utility use that cause rare cancers in young children, increase respiratory disease and accelerate climate warming and climate change.
Speakers peppered their testimony with personal stories, research, statistics and emotions ranging from anger to appeals to love the planet and future generations of young people.
However, members of the Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commissioners asked no questions and unanimously voted 4-0 to award Grenadier Energy III LLC of The Woodlands, Texas rights to frack 171 acres of Leesville Wildlife Area in Carroll County. Commissioners accepted $6,000 per acre, or $1m, plus a 12.5% royalty and 5.5% of production as an additional financial incentive.
Commissioners also rubberstamped nominations 4-0 in repeated votes to advance bidding next quarter on more than 4,726 acres to frack Egypt Valley Wildlife Area in Belmont County and 1,842 acres in Jockey Hollow Wildlife Area in Belmont and Harrison counties. They also advanced to bid in the next quarter eight acres across the street from the Noble County Correctional Institution in Noble County and 11 rights-of-way along state highways.
The wildlife areas targeted are popular hiking and birding areas re-claimed by conservation groups from coal mining over the past 30 or more years.
In a move many environmentalists and the public consider a sell-out to the gas and oil industry, the Ohio state legislature and Gov. Mike DeWine made the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) dependent on fracking for half of its state parks budget beginning in 2027.
Save Ohio Parks organized a 30-member coalition in early 2025 calling for DeWine to declare a statewide moratorium on fracking Ohio’s state parks and public lands. He has refused to meet with them or discuss the issue despite more than 7,000 public comments uploaded to the OGLMC website against fracking public lands.
Typically, 98% of comments uploaded onto the OGLMC website oppose fracking Ohio public lands.
Leatra Harper, director of Freshwater Accountability Project and an advocate for fresh water since 2012, said the magnitude of environmental and public health damage from fracking is already evident and will likely only get worse as the negative impacts of fracking increase.
“The state of Ohio’s lack of adequate regulation and oversight has never addressed the cumulative contamination impacts of this industry, which are compounded by the negative impacts of methane emissions warming the atmosphere and accelerating climate change; toxic, radioactive brine-spreading on roads; and gas and oil well pad explosions,” she said.
“We who follow the science know that pollution from fracking is definitely affecting the health of our children and grandchildren here in Ohio,” said Judy Smucker of Third Act Ohio.
“Especially here in Ohio, where we are now known as the dumping ground of America– the dumping ground for other states to come and add their fracking forever- chemicals into Ohio injection wells.”
No other state in allows fracking of its state parks, said Cathy Cowan Becker, board president at Save Ohio Parks.
“Our parks and wildlife areas were set aside for the use and enjoyment of all Ohioans. These lands are meant to be protected. Fracking them is a betrayal of the public trust and future generations.”
