We're driving on the packed crushed gravel of a country road, trying to avoid the deep chocolate-milk-colored puddles, filled from the recent snow melt. Amish school children are walking home on an uncharacteristically sunny and warm January day to homes that are now within sight of Geauga county's first deep-shale gas well. “We” includes my two girls, ages 3 and 7, off from school and in the back seat, content for now it seems. But we are also one car of a caravan of a dozen or so cars, all of which just departed a press conference at the Middlefield library, the second meeting I'd attended there in two consecutive days. The topic: high volume slick-water hydraulic fracturing of deep shale for natural gas extraction. Let's stick with the simpler term “fracking”. Whatever you call it, my girls, though polite, were not too thrilled with the press conference.
The previous night I had attended an informational meeting hosted by Vanessa Pesec of the Network for Oil and Gas Accountability and Protection (NEOGAP). The meeting was intended to provide would-be leasers of mineral rights information on risks to environmental and human health associated with fracking – risks whose documentation has been growing, building a strong case for a state-wide (if not nationwide) moratorium on the process. Most of the attendees of the meeting, however, seemed pretty well-informed already and perhaps hoped to convene with some like-minded folks from the area. Questions were asked, though most were rhetorical in nature.“Do they really think they can do that”? We knew full well “they” did think they could do that.
One undercurrent in the meeting was the question of government – namely where was it? Why did Columbus and Washington seem so unconcerned that the drinking water of an untold number of Ohio residents and U.S. citizens could become undrinkable in the pursuit of an energy source that, the speaker informed us, was largely being exported?
As it turned out, we had one elected official in our midst; County Commissioner Tracy Jemison identified himself and offered information on the county's protection of the roads from the heavy truck traffic required for each well – hundreds or thousands of round trips per well site – as well as the deal struck whereby truck traffic was prohibited during the minutes Amish children walk to and from school. Then he was asked for his opinion of the safety of fracking in general. He offered that the extraction of gas “should be done responsibly” and he expressed some doubt whether he believed current regulations and oversight were sufficient to protect the public and its natural resources. He also quickly disavowed his potential influence on state officials saying “Your letter is as good, or better, than mine”. After the meeting several of us commented that this sounded like a cop out, like a politician hiding behind the law – namely HB 278 passed in 2004 - that made the ODNR the sole authority in making decisions around gas and oil extraction, taking away any local control beyond road protection. Surely though if the commissioner were to urge the governor and state legislators for a moratorium the request would be taken with some seriousness in Columbus.
But the meeting this sunny day was to harness the media to inform residents of the larger Cleveland metropolitan area what was happening in Geauga county. We also hoped that images of the well and measured words of warning from Ron Prosek, president of NEOGAP, as well as members of the Ohio Environmental Council and the Buckeye Forest Council, might spur the public's interest and action.
Our caravan stopped on the road in front of the well pad. We, the gas-well paparazzi, gawked at the sight. The well did impress. I had resisted a visit since learning of its establishment. Now I could see its several acre footprint; the 100-foot-tall tower (give or take) which had a couple of tiny workers climbing over it; its close proximity to two dwellings, including one yard with a child pulling a sled around. The mix of equipment included several large rectangular metal boxes – perhaps generators or storage facilities – that looked newly painted in reds and oranges. I wondered if Chesapeake Energy, the company developing the site, thought the splash of color against the backdrop of snow, fallow fields, barren trees, and white Amish houses would make gas development seem festive?
From there it was on to Chickagami Park about a mile as the crow flies, headwaters to the Grand River, an Ohio Wild and Scenic River, which empties into Lake Erie near Mentor Headlands Park. My fellow caravaners mingled under a picnic pavilion overlooking a gentle slope that led to some of the wetlands that would slowly contribute water to the upper Grand. As we sipped hot chocolate and waited for everyone to arrive, my girls now playing in the soggy snow, strategic considerations continued. How can a small group of concerned citizens challenge the power of a multi-billion dollar industry, which has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the political process? Without much apparent support from the established state government, how will we protect that which we hold dear - the rural quality of life we enjoy in northeast Ohio, the value of our homes and land, and, most importantly, the health of ourselves and our children?
My thoughts turned to another river a couple of basins to the west.
The fire that ignited the greasy garbage floating on the Cuyahoga River during the summer of 1969 was only one of many stretching back 100 years of unregulated industry along the river's banks. It wasn't even a particularly costly fire - another in 1952 resulted in well over a million dollars in damage. But the country's ideas of environmental stewardship had been changing. Some environmental historians have attributed that change to the publication of Rachel Carson's expose of pesticide contamination in her book Silent Spring. Others have noted the importance of the first photos of the Earth from space – with the obvious delineation of habitable space versus the rest of the visible universe. Another important factor may have been the growing post-war middle class; with increasing affluence societies tend to demand cleaner environments. Whatever the case, this Cuyahoga River fire joined the seminal moments in the blossoming of America's modern environmental movement. It was time to reign in the freedom of industry to pollute a public resource.
The changes that led to the clean-up of the Cuyahoga River were arguably driven by Cleveland's mayor Carl Stokes, who championed the city by making cleanup of its central waterway a priority. He also introduced and pushed for state and federal laws that would clean up rivers across the state and nationwide, especially in industrialized cities. The mayor's outspoken, unrelenting efforts kept the media's attention focused on the problems and solutions, and the wishes of an engaged public helped sustain the effort.
I don't want to paint too rosy a picture of this time in my brief description. I'm no historian and, as a second-trimester fetus when the fire occurred, I wasn't really observant of the process of change. But the ramifications of the actions taken at that time are measurable in the water quality and biological activity in the river, and Lake Erie, today. A confluence of pressure by an informed public and political will exercised in the public's best interest can accomplish a lot. The Clean Water Act was signed into law in 1972 by a Republican president and efforts of many organizations to clean up and maintain the ecological integrity of the Lake Erie watershed continue to this day.
Alas some other things have changed since that time, and those of us convened at Chicagami Park would deem those changes “not for the better”. Since the Great Communicator declared that government was the problem, decisions by politicians from both parties and even Supreme Court justices have shifted the balance of power away from the public back toward private business interests. For example, a political decision from the previous administration largely exempted gas companies pioneering the then-new type of gas-extraction from the Clean Water Act. Though the process utilizes chemicals that are known toxins, carcinogens, and endocrine disruptors, energy companies will force tens of thousands of gallons of such chemicals into the rock below our land, houses, and water tables at each well site, revealing the specific chemicals used only if they feel like doing so. Current federal and state laws and rules and ODNR staffing leave us ill-prepared to control and oversee what specifically happens to that water when it comes back out of the well, now possibly laced with heavy metals and radioactive elements.
That afternoon at the headwaters of the Grand River I heard someone use the word “corporatocracy”. Indeed, in the United States today, governing– in the public's best interest - has become problematic. We concerned citizens had an uphill climb before us if we wanted to avoid the potential damage that might be wrought by the tens-of-thousands of gas wells the industry hopes to drill and frack in Ohio.
But this was all the concern of the adults, standing in front of a news camera, taking turns making quiet speeches to the twenty other adults taking turns to listen. I turned to look at my girls throwing melty snowballs. They were having too much fun to stop and think that the water of that snow would likely make it's way to the wetland a few yards away. From there it would become the Grand River, eventually draining into Lake Erie if it doesn't evaporate, soak into the ground and join the water table, or get consumed by a plant or animal first. Tonight at dinner they will likely forget to acknowledge that the water in their little cups from the household tap that their parents have set in front of them was pumped up to us directly from water-bearing rock beneath our 7 acres. They'll drink it down between chewing and giggling and chattering without wondering what the water might have picked up on it's subterranean journey to our well, to their bodies. But if deep-shale natural gas-extraction is to become a dominant feature of our shared landscape, their parents won't be able to think about much else.
