Highly toxic wastewater from America’s fracking boom is buried in deep underground wells. But in some places that toxic waste is bubbling upwards — threatening local drinking water. How Marietta, Ohio is trying to fight fracking waste.

Guests

David Jeffery, professor of geology at Marietta College.

Susan Vessels, president of the Marietta City Council.

Also Featured

Bob Wilson, a conventional oil and gas operator in Washington County, Ohio.

Jessica Archer, president of the advocacy group Washington County for Safe Drinking Water.

Mike Chadsey, director of External Affairs at the Ohio Oil and Gas Association.

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Transcript of Full Broadcast

The version of our broadcast available at the top of this page and via podcast apps is a condensed version of the full show. You can listen to the full, unedited broadcast here:

Part I 

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: Bob Wilson has spent almost his entire life working in oil and gas fields in Washington County, Ohio. I’m 67 years old.

BOB WILSON: I’ve been in the oil and gas business for 51 years.

CHAKRABARTI: Bob runs about 170 wells with his wife and son, and after more than five decades, he knows that it’s normal for oil and gas wells to sometimes, quote, “water out.”

That means when water leaks through the surrounding rock and interferes with drilling. But about seven years ago, Bob began noticing something strange.

WILSON: I’ve seen wells fill up with water before, but normally it’s just dead water. You don’t get anything, but these wells, they just acted different than anything I’ve ever seen. I noticed if I pumped them real hard and shut the casing off, they would pressure up and pump off. So that told me that the water was coming from the perforations in the well, but the minute you open it back up and let the pressure off, the water’s right back again.

CHAKRABARTI: Basically, every time Bob pumped out the water, more would return at high pressure.

WILSON: I’ve got several wells that flow water to surface. You open any valve you want to, it’s like opening a spigot on a sink. There’s no gas, no oil, and it’s water pushing water.

CHAKRABARTI: And the water itself was salty, and Bob says it smelled terrible.

WILSON: If you catch it in a plastic jug or something, it’ll turn a little bit orange-looking.

You can still see through it, but it’s not clear like tap water.

CHAKRABARTI: So Bob started looking for where the water was coming from. Turns out, just up the road from some of his leases, there’s an injection well. These are structures that are created to deal with wastewater generated by the oil and gas extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking.

In order to get oil and gas out of the ground, water, sand, and chemicals are pumped underground at high pressure to crack deeply buried rock and release the fossil fuels. Some of that liquid eventually returns to the surface, and it’s highly toxic. More than 90% of the time, the best solution is to get rid of the contaminated water by injecting it back into the ground, thousands of feet deep.

The EPA says more than two billion gallons of oil and gas-related wastewater gets pumped into injection wells every day. Ohio is home to more than 200 of these wells. The idea is, once the fluid is way back down there, it’s supposed to stay deep underground, but in Bob’s case, that wasn’t happening.

WILSON: I’m having three or four wells a week go down, so I called the ODNR, and I told them that I believe that the disposal wells were flooding my production wells out, and they didn’t want to talk about it.

They said, can’t happen, it’s not possible, click. They wouldn’t even discuss it. So next week I’d be down to four more wells, and I’d call back and same story. They didn’t, absolutely didn’t want to talk to me.

CHAKRABARTI: ODNR is the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the state agency responsible for regulating oil, gas, and injection wells.

And I want to make something very clear right here. Bob’s own wells aren’t fracking wells. They’re conventionally drilled wells, completely different technique, and one that uses far less wastewater. The fracking was happening elsewhere, and the injection wells from the fracking process are what were contaminating his own wells.

So Bob kept calling. He spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to repair his affected wells. Eventually, state inspectors collected some samples of the water, and in 2020, the agency confirmed what Bob had been saying all along.

WILSON: It was like a 43-page letter, and it had the test results and stuff in there, and they confirmed that it was, even though it couldn’t happen, they confirmed that it was disposal water.

And just so you know, these disposal companies were injecting water at 4,000 foot down to 6,000 foot, and it migrated up to my wells that are 1,800 to 2,000 foot deep.

CHAKRABARTI: Today, Bob says 50 of his 170 oil and gas wells are completely flooded with this contaminated fracking water. And because of what’s happening, Bob’s income is one-third of what it was just seven years ago, because he’s lost so much production.

WILSON: We work all month long, and I still don’t mind working, but at the end of the month you all feel like you’re a little bit better off than you was at the start of it. It’s not that way anymore. We’re going backwards, and it seem like you’re just spinning your wheels, we’re not gaining anything.

CHAKRABARTI: And the consequences extend beyond Bob’s business. He is the main natural gas supplier for about 250 rural households in southeast Ohio, and he’s not sure he can serve them anymore.

WILSON: Last winter, February was really cold, and we just run out of gas. We didn’t have enough, and people call … say, we’re out of gas.

Come and do something. When you’re out of gas, you’re out of gas. And or somebody say turn on some more gas. It’s wide open. We don’t have any more gas. And I can tell you I’ve got landowners that I have wells on that had free gas to their homes from their properties, on wells that I own for 60 years.

And because of this problem, they don’t have it anymore. And like I said, there’s no other alternative gas source in this area, so they either going to have to convert to propane, if that’s possible, or go electric. And if you go electric, you gotta change furnaces, hot water tanks, and all that stuff.

So I feel bad for all these people, but I didn’t cause this.

CHAKRABARTI: At least three other conventional oil and gas operators have also reported flooded wells in the past couple of years, and there are broader concerns about why this wastewater can travel as far as it does underground, where it’s going, and whether it could eventually threaten drinking water in the area.

Now, we reached out to a company that operates some of these injection wells in Washington County, Ohio. DeepRock Disposal Solutions is one of them, and their attorney, Laura Goins, sent us a lengthy statement, which includes this. That on July 2nd, Deep Rock voluntarily paused operations at one of their wells in Washington County, Ohio.

This was following a request from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. The statement says, quote, “Operations remain paused in accordance with Deep Rock’s voluntary cooperation. This measure was taken solely out of an abundance of caution and out of a desire to fully cooperate with state regulators to best protect the local community and the environment.” End quote.

We’ll hear more from this statement from Deep Rock Disposal Solutions, an injection well company, a little bit later. Now, Marietta, Ohio, is the largest city in Washington County, Ohio. It’s home to over 13,000 people, and Marietta is now at the center of a growing national debate over these injection wells.

What happens when wastewater created by America’s fracking boom simply does not stay where it’s supposed to? So let’s start with David Jeffery. He’s a geology professor at Marietta College who’s been studying what’s happening underground in this part of Ohio. He’s also a former geologist with BP, and he joins us from Marietta, Ohio.

Professor Jeffery, welcome to On Point.

DAVID JEFFERY: Hi. Thanks for having me, Meghna.

CHAKRABARTI: So let’s get a little bit deeper understanding about what’s in this fracking wastewater. What makes it so toxic?

JEFFERY: I’m not an expert on the wastewater itself. I’m more of an expert on the subsurface geology and the geological analysis that will go on.

But there are materials that help the fluids that when they pressure up and they get into the subsurface, they break into the natural country rock, and then they must have materials in them to help them flow better, and then they carry some sand or ceramic spheres with them called proppant that can get into the cracks and when the material comes back out.

So there are chemicals in them to help the fluids flow back out of those cracks after the fracturing happens so that they can clean them up and then what they’re getting out is the oil and gas after that.

CHAKRABARTI: I believe you wrote in the Ohio Capital Journal that generally speaking, fracking wastewater has, because of how it’s actually injected into the ground and the things that it picks up, heavy metals, toxins, even possibly sometimes radioactive material.

JEFFERY: When the saline fluids go down into the ground into those shales, they can pick up things like radium from the Bedrock down there, all those shales have, have a lot of those radioactive materials. So apparently that’s where that comes from. And from what I understand, some of the trucks that transport that material from the frack sites, wherever they are in Pennsylvania, actually do register fairly radioactive even after they’ve dumped their fluids at the injection site.

So that’s also a concern that there could be radioactivity in some of these fluids as well. Radium and other things.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So I understand that fracking wastewater, 90% of the time, the best option to dispose of it are these injection wells. And why is that?

JEFFERY: Absolutely. That it’s usually a very safe process to do it if the geology is studied correctly.

And when like in the oil industry, when we’re studying the subsurface, we do a subsurface analysis in which we try to understand at great lengths the reservoir that we’re gonna be pumping the material into. We’re gonna be trying to study the trap system that’s gonna be holding the material, and then make sure that there’s some sort of a seal.

And that sort of a geological subsurface analysis is one of the things that most … major oil companies base their economics for all of their wells on. They need to be sure, because it’s a very risky endeavor. So anyways places that are, would be good areas to inject these types of toxic fluids, in my opinion, would be places like already depleted oil and gas fields where we have a pretty good understanding of what the reservoir rock is, what the porosity and permeability is. We have good understandings of what the structural orientations of the layers are, and then we have a good understanding of what the seal is of the system there that’s going on.

So we basically call it the petroleum system, and we try to understand that if we’re trying to get the fluid out of the ground, that we can be sure that it’s down there, and if we’re putting fluids into the ground, make sure that it can stay there and be able to demonstrate that.

CHAKRABARTI: To put it more simply, and correct me if I’m wrong, Professor Jeffery, but the idea with these injection wells is that you find sites where you can inject fracking wastewater, as we heard from Bob, 4,000 to 6,000 feet, so more than a mile underground. And by virtue not just of the depth, but the kind of rock and soil that the wastewater’s being injected into, and the pressures that it’s subjected to, it’s supposed to stay down there, right?

JEFFERY: Absolutely. And like I was mentioning before, the requirements for any sort of fluid accumulation in the subsurface are the reservoir, the trap, and the seal. And when we look at the rocks that are around here, it looks like the reservoir rocks are fairly impermeable and very, not very porous, and they don’t, we don’t have a really good trap to find, and it looks like the seal has been breached by natural fractures in this region.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Jeffery, just before the break, you were saying that most of the circumstances around the injection wells in Washington County would seem to be ideal, except you wrote in the Ohio Capital Journal something very interesting. You said that tests indicate that something is fracking the wastewater.

What exactly does that mean?

JEFFERY: What I might have said, you can never say whatever the ends up in the Journal, but let me see. When you pump things down at high pressures, you might actually unintentionally frack the subsurface. So initially that was one of my thoughts, that perhaps this stuff was escaping because we were actually inducing fractures into that area.

But now I’ve changed my opinion a little bit, and I think the main avenue are basically natural fractures. There might be some fracture stimulation unintentionally going on down there by the injection wells, but I think that it’s these natural open fractures. And down in the subsurface, oil and gas drillers are usually familiar with the fact that when you drill a well, there’s something called borehole breakout that shows that the natural stress regime in the area is actually pushing slightly, and that stress actually causes part of the wellbore to fall and slough off into the hole, and that gives us an indication of what the direction of the primary stress is.

And what that stress does, it pushes very gently on fractures, and fractures that are parallel to that stress will be pushed shut, but fractures that are perpendicular can be held open. And so that’s what I think is probably going on right now. But if you let me jump back a little bit, I think the main piece of data that sort of put me over to supporting Bob and his folks is basically those pressures of those wells. I’m looking at a graph here that has well pressures from tubing and casing pressures that in the about 2023 were down at 20 or 50 psi, and over the last two years up until the end of this data in April or so, those have risen to 340 psi.

So the 20 to 50 is the normal depleted well pressure for some of these Berea wells, and they’ve been producing 80 years, which is incredible for a little eight-foot thick layer of sandstone. And in this case I bet that this is indicating to us that there’s a really big connectivity between the Berea and this injection issue is showing us that we have maybe a gas resource here that is not just the Berea Sandstone, but it’s connected through the Ohio and Chagrin Shale, all the way down into some of these deeper formations.

CHAKRABARTI: … Just to disentangle a little bit of this for the non-geologists listening. … To be fair to the Ohio Capital Journal, they did include a graph from you that shows the potential path from a 4,000-foot injection well and then how the wastewater could travel up, as you said, these natural fractures in the rock.

So I can actually see these arrows of transport from several thousand feet down then wastewater can follow these natural fractures back up to the surface. And to your point, there’s this Berea layer where all the wastewater can travel horizontally along the surface or just under the surface.

So I get that, that there we have not just the composition of the layers of rock, but also these rising pressures that are pushing this wastewater closer to the surface than was ever intended. Now, let me ask you one more question here about the geology and then we’re going to get to the deeper issue of what to do about it.

But I keep mentioning this concern over drinking water. It is one thing, it’s bad enough for Bob, for his wells to go offline because of this injection water, injection well water getting into his wells. But you’ve also mentioned that there could potentially be concerns over drinking water sources in Marietta.

Why?

JEFFERY: Because if you look at the diagram that I made that shows the fracture systems, we already know that the fluids are coming up through the vast Ohio shale. It’s a super thick initially I would’ve thought, I was a doubter, too. I thought that stuff probably isn’t going to be coming up through the Ohio shale unless. And so that’s what coming up 3,000 or more feet up to that through open fractures.

And the fluids in the subsurface move from high pressure to low pressure. So the Berea was the initial probably magnet that was pulling that stuff towards it, because it is such low pressure, and then those fluids as they get into the Berea will migrate towards the well bores because those are pulling even harder.

But if there are fractures going all the way up through that Ohio shale, I think it’s incredibly likely there’s … I don’t think anybody can say, “Oh, it’s just gonna stop there then.” I think it’s likely, especially if they’re seeing pressures within these wells at 350 to 370 PSI, that it’s coming up to the surface.

And we have a number of unverified examples of fluids strangely popping up at the surface into a place called Lake Veto. I’ve even seen some frothy fluids coming out of an outcrop that’s not too far from one of the injection wells. And there may be some new data that’s coming up.

I don’t know if Susan has something to say about that as well. But our aquifers as the fluids in the Berea Sandstone move farther and farther afield, they’ve gone as far as five miles from the injection well. They get closer and closer to the local aquifers, which are basically the gravelly sands that are underneath the Muskingum and the Ohio Rivers.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So again, you have to forgive me for basically putting this in layperson’s terms. The same forces and natural fractures that are pushing the injection wastewater into places like Bob’s own oil and gas wells could push them along natural fractures towards aquifers that are used for drinking water in Marietta.

That’s the simple way to put it, yeah?

JEFFERY: Yeah. And the aquifers pull pretty hard, too, on lowering pressure, so they’re another low-pressure sink in the area, okay.

CHAKRABARTI: So you mentioned Susan, and I’d like to introduce her into the conversation now. Susan Vessels.

She’s president of the Marietta City Council and a lifelong Republican as well, and she joins us also from Marietta, Ohio. Susan Vessels, welcome to On Point.

SUSAN VESSELS: Hi, Meghna. Thanks for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So first of all, tell us not only as an elected official but as a resident of Marietta when did you first become aware that there may be an issue with the wastewater from these injection wells, an issue with what’s happening in Marietta?

VESSELS: I’ve lived in Marietta since 2003 and served on city council since 2020. I was not aware of any dangers associated with oil field waste disposal until the late spring and summer of 2025. Through the efforts of Buckeye Environmental Network communicating with local officials there was a first meeting with Warren Water officials, I believe it was in May of ’25.

And I actually had a councilor, Erin O’Neill, attend that meeting, and she said, “Susan,” she reported back to me, “Susan, there’s incredible interest in this.” There were a few hundred people, at the Warren High School at that meeting. I filed that away in my mind but didn’t really begin thinking about this until Bev Rita, Buckeye Environmental, and Dee Arnold, who later was a founding member of Washington County for Safe Drinking Water, came to a water committee meeting in early July.

And they said “You should know that just outside your city limits, there are currently four injecting injection wells that are permitted to inject 5,000 barrels a day each. So you currently have permitted 20,000 42-gallon barrels of oil field waste a day just outside of your city limits.”

And then they informed us after that there were at that time, in early July of 2025, two pending permits for additional waste water injection wells just outside the city limits.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. Have tests revealed thus far any indication that some of this wastewater is getting into the drinking water aquifers for Marietta?

VESSELS: Currently we do not have any information showing that it is in our aquifers. There was a, once every 10 years, there’s a requirement that a nuclear test is done on the aquifers, and our aquifer did pass that last June of 2025. But the concern is that this waste is making it in this county and surrounding and in Noble County as well, just north of us, this waste is making it from the injection zone to the surface.

And if it’s making it, it’s made it to the surface in nearby Vito Lake, which is about nine miles west of Marietta. So after studying this, think of it as akin to a game of Russian roulette for this community with our geology. If it can make it up in certain areas, it’s just a matter of time with the volumes and the amount of waste that’s being injected that our aquifers are placed at unnecessary risk.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So I understand that the city of Marietta, in order to try to not have to play this game of Russian roulette anymore, has tried some legislative action, including passing a moratorium on injection wells. Can you tell me more about that, Susan?

VESSELS: Yes. After we initially learned about this, in early July, I thought, “We’re going to do a committee of the whole.”

That’s a meeting where every member of council’s required to attend, and the purpose of that was to educate the council on injection wells, because last summer we really didn’t know anything. We didn’t understand anything. And so at that meeting, we invited petroleum engineers, representatives from the injection companies, politicians, licensed geologists, PhD geologists.

And we had a three-hour meeting, and we learned a lot. And the reason why that was extremely important was because I had mentioned earlier that there were two pending permits. One was for a class one, but another, a third permit application was filed just prior to that meeting in the end of July.

And the council motioned that we respond within the 15-day time limit, with a comment and objection letter to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. And so I think that is probably because of the short timeline, the first time that a city has ever responded to one of these wells.

So once we learned about the risk that we were being placed under, there was a councilor, Mike Scales, thought we should do a moratorium resolution. Because ultimately, the council doesn’t have any power to stop this or to protect the city other than to request that the state legislature and the governor enact ask for new rules.

CHAKRABARTI: So Susan, can I just jump in on that point?

VESSELS: Yes, please. Because I think it’s really important. So even if a moratorium was passed, which I think it was in Marietta … enforcing it is a totally different issue. And so actually on that point, we spoke with Jessica Archer, who is president of the advocacy group Washington County for Safe Drinking Water, and she says, and, as I’m sure you’re familiar with, Susan, that now Marietta’s trying to get a lot more support from the state level.

JESSICA ARCHER: At the local level, we don’t have the authority to enforce this moratorium. It has to be enforced by the governor and by the legislature, and we have not been getting any traction up there. So one of the things that our group did was we got nine of the local water authorities together, and they each passed their own moratorium.

So now we’ve got the city moratorium, the nine local water authorities. Those were all delivered to Columbus as well.

CHAKRABARTI: So Susan, let me follow up on that. If all of these moratorium have been transmitted to the state level, have you received any support from the Ohio State Legislature or the governor’s office?

VESSELS: The first moratorium resolution was a city’s resolution. That was passed last October 2nd. Mayor Schlicher and I delivered that physically to the governor’s office last October 24th. And we also delivered cover letters with QR codes linking to that particular resolution for each of the 99 state representatives and the 33 state senators, and physically also delivered it to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

And had a meeting with Chief Ferrell on that same day. But in the months that followed the governor’s office did not so much as acknowledge receipt even with a letter saying, “Thank you for dropping this off.” And there was, little or essentially in the following months no movement from the state legislature or the state Senate.

And so that’s really what motivated working toward getting the other entities in the county with authority over water to produce their own moratorium resolutions. Because if the cities doesn’t hold any weight in Columbus, maybe the city plus another eight entities with authority.

CHAKRABARTI: … I’m sorry to interrupt, Susan. That’s okay. But let me get Professor Jeffery back in here because Professor Jeffery I was very taken with how Susan described that Marietta does not wanna keep having to play Russian roulette with the addition of more injection wells when there’s already a known problem with transport, subsurface transport of this of this wastewater.

I’m wondering, professor, that even if both city and county or possibly even state-level moratoria were put in place and enforced, that wouldn’t necessarily stop the problem that’s already happening with this wastewater moving.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, go ahead.

JEFFERY: Yeah. It’s already there, and it’s under fairly high pressure, and it’s moving away.

In fact, one of when they did stop the injection just a few weeks ago, one of the landowners Bob Wilson, actually told me that as soon as they stopped the injection, you could see the pressure suddenly start to drop off again, so giving us a indication that there is a direct connection betwee n those injection wells and the and his producing Berea wells.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: I just want to read a little bit more of a statement that we received from one of these injection well companies. It’s Deep Rock Disposal Solutions, and we received a statement from Laura Goins, an attorney with the company. And Professor Jeffery, once I read the statement, I’m gonna ask you to respond to it because Goins says that thei preliminary findings they say they retained a third party, a set of experts to investigate what they call the allegations of this brine migration.

And the DeepRock Disposal Solution statement says, quote, “The preliminary findings by independent hydrogeologic and engineering analyses indicate that brine from DeepRock’s wells,” injection wells, “have not migrated outside their intended injection formation. Furthermore, data provided by ODNR suggests that brine presence in nearby wells is more likely attributable to the issues with well construction and mechanical integrity in those wells.”

How do you respond to that, Professor?

JEFFERY: As I was saying before the initial shutdown of those wells, we could see the immediate response in the in the producing Berea wells, so those gas wells that have been flooded out. Those pressures started to go down, and of course, that stuff is spreading, as the pressures going down isn’t necessarily a good thing.

It means that fluid is spreading outward. And if you map out the direction of the wells that it’s impacting, they go in a northeast, east-southwest direction, which is consistent with the major fracture orientation that would be the open fractures in this region. In fact, if you look at maps of where they’re drilling horizontal wells to the northeast of here, they’re perpendicular to that.

So the geology of the area, those oil companies are trying to take advantage of that. Now, I think to back up on this I think the root of all of this problem, I don’t, I haven’t seen any of the data from the third-party investigators or anything, but when you look at the permits for these initial wells I haven’t seen much in the way of any subsurface analysis associated with those.

We’ve been trying to get the ODNR to show us if there was some sort of subsurface evaluation that, that got into the nitty-gritty of what the geology was, showing a structure isopach. Those, that means thickness and the shape of the terrain down there. What is the porosity range?

What are the environments of deposition, how compartmentalized it is?

CHAKRABARTI: Hang on, professor. … I’m so sorry, I just wanna be sure I’m hearing you correctly, that for these new wells that have been recently permitted, permitted, even though there’s already existing concern over what’s happening with the injection wells that are already in the ground, you’re saying that you haven’t seen evidence that there’s been adequate subsurface exploration for where the new wells are proposed to go?

JEFFERY: Yeah, some of the standard things that go on in the oil and gas industry in which you would be trying to take to your boss and saying I think there’s a prospect here, and these are the facts of the area, you would then those maps I was talking about you show those.

You take them with a reservoir and engineer and you do an evaluation to show how big of an area is it, if you are injecting, how far would that spread out and what direction. And then I don’t, I would just, but none of that’s apparent on the permits that I’ve seen.

CHAKRABARTI: I would believe, and correct me if I’m wrong, but this should be a requirement from ODNR that’s providing the permits?

JEFFERY: That’s the whole business, I think. And the most of the geology that I’ve seen is very they’re looking at some of the aquifers at the surface, but the subsurface analysis is not there. And when geologists are trying to drill wells we also go through something called a risk analysis.

There’s a lot of risk that’s associated with this, and we actually apply numbers to the likelihoods of what the ranges could be of the reservoir actually being there, what’s the porosity, what’s the permeability. And we put real numbers on those, and we actually use those numbers for reservoir trap and seal to whether they’re there or not and what their effectiveness is.

… And we incorporate that into our economics and into whether there are possible into the entire oil company’s economics is basically uses those numbers.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, no, these risk assessments are absolutely critical, right? Because as you said, they not only factor into the engineering of any kind of oil and gas exploration, but the risk is also that can be quantified in terms of money later on.

So I totally hear you on that. I’m just a little it gives me pause to hear that even though there’s already existing concerns that maybe there’s a lack of regulatory requirement for new injection well exploration. I should say we reached out to state level officials, didn’t hear back from any of them.

But Susan Vessels, I wanna just get your quick response to what Professor Jeffery just said.

VESSELS: … What DeepRock said that they don’t have any evidence of their wells migrating in this vicinity.

One of the items that I had in the city’s comment and objection letter focused on the American Growers Well, which belongs to DeepRock. Last summer, Alliance Technical Group did testing of two Berea wells in the vicinity of that DeepRock American Growers injection well.

And the Berea that was 900, approximately 900 feet away, came up positive for frack fluid stabilization chemicals, PFHxA and PFHpA. That frack fluid stabilization chemical was not found in a Berea well that Alliance Technical Group tested that was 1.9 miles away.

The interesting thing is that although we have frack fluid stabilization chemicals in that … Berea well, those frack fluid stabilization chemicals are also found across the Ohio River.

Those same chemicals are found in the drinking water in Williamstown, West Virginia.

So what is there, why is there frack fluid stabilization chemicals in the drinking water in West Virginia? ODNR has said in their response to the city’s comment letter that it must have come through the air.

If it comes through the air, then why is it not in the Berea that’s two miles away from the injection, but it is in the Berea that’s 900 feet away and the aquifer that is 5,000 feet away?

CHAKRABARTI: Interesting. Really interesting. I wanna actually just make something clear for all listeners, because the oil and gas industry is obviously hugely important in Ohio and surrounding states.

And I don’t want folks to come away with the wrong impression about both of your views on the oil and gas industry as a whole. Susan Vessels, do you support fracking or oil and gas extraction in Ohio, right?

VESSELS: I like electricity. I like to be able to heat my home, as do other people.

But it needs to be done in a safe way so that we do not put our drinking water at risk. And that’s why the moratorium resolution is asking that to stop injecting so close to our aquifers. And so if it can be done safely, wonderful. But it under the current rules it’s not being done safely.

The current rules allow these placement of these injection wells outside of any city with a so long as the population is, cannot be inside of a city with a population in excess of 5,000. That’s really the only rule. There’s no consideration for the number of injection wells and how closely they are placed.

The rules are just insufficient to protect cities. So that’s why we have to rely on the state legislature and the governor to change.

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Jeffery, I’ll get to that same question with you just a little bit, but before we run out of time in order to do our due diligence here, we reached out to the Ohio Oil and Gas Association group.

It’s an industry group, and there we spoke with Mike Chadsey.

MIKE CHADSEY: At the end of the day, if we got away from injection that would slow down and arguably stop the Appalachian Basin of producing crude oil and natural gas. Which matters because if you put Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, and I’m not suggesting this, but if we became our own country, we would be the third largest natural gas producer in the world.

CHAKRABARTI: And by the way, that industry has also been booming because natural gas production in Appalachia has more than quadrupled since 2012. So obviously there’s an equivalent growing need to get rid of that fracking wastewater, and Chadsey says there aren’t many solutions other than injecting it locally.

CHADSEY: What would be the other solutions? So one of them would be, more trucking. Trucking it out west, down south, and so that’s more time on the road, more truck traffic, more transportation costs, fuel consumption, things of that nature.

CHAKRABARTI: Chadsey also told us that he has heard that Ohio’s been characterized as a dumping ground for fracking wastewater.

He and his group disagree. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources says roughly a third of the wastewater injected in the state comes from Pennsylvania and West Virginia, a third, meaning two-thirds come from in-state fracking.

CHADSEY: I’ve also heard that injection wells are not regulated. They are, very stringently, and they should be.

We often hear that DNR is not paying attention or engaged. They do inspections. They do water testing regularly.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so that obviously brings us back to the deep concerns of Marietta, Ohio residents. Chadsey and his group says the response from state regulators, in their view, has been adequate. And if there’s more evidence that Marietta’s drinking water is being threatened, he says there are several ways to respond.

CHADSEY: There’s something called monitoring wells that can be drilled, you know, if, let’s say there’s aa10-year flow pan between an injection well and a aquifer. And so the idea is you can put in a monitoring well to see if there’s been any impacts, and then you can also do what’s called an interceptor where you can pump that water out.

You can also stop injecting. You can remove water and put it someplace else. And so there are multiple remedies, should there be a need for that down the road. But right now, we’re all just waiting to see what, if anything, the DNR says on this issue and what that path forward is.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so that’s Mike Chadsey, Director of External Affairs for the Ohio Oil and Gas Association.

Professor Jeffery, Mike also said that his association’s message to people in Marietta or Washington County, Ohio, is that he says injection wells are safe. There’s no impact to drinking water. They’re confident about that. Your response.

JEFFERY: I think in this case in particular, I support injection wells.

I think he’s correct in most of what he said, but I think the evidence here that we have with those rising pressures and that those fluids at the surface, it’s not staying in the formation that is the Bass Island Dolomite 5,000, 4,500 feet underground. And when it’s not staying there, it is actually coming up to these shallower formation, then that’s a problem.

Your injection project is a failure there.

CHAKRABARTI: Can I just ask a quick question? Actually an engineering question. Very quickly, a quick response would be appreciated. When these, the existing injection wells were first drilled and created, was there any evidence that or adequate exploration that showed that these, the natural fractures could actually transport the water far beyond their intended location?

Did we know?

JEFFERY: I don’t think we knew it as well then. I think we discovered it through this process. So it actually opens up quite an interesting conversation about how this oil and gas system works here. And in fact, it might actually indicate there’s a huge, giant gas accumulation that’s a basin-centered gas accumulation that we are also injecting fluids into the middle of and potentially hurting the porosity and permeability systems.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, I just wanted to ask because I suppose a lot of people are wondering, did they know it during their first explorations, and if so, why did the injection wells go in? But if we didn’t, that’s one thing. But now we have evidence that this brine is being transported.

And so Susan, I wanted to go back to you. In terms of just clearly, what do you want to have happen now? You’ve talked about the concern and the moratorium you’d like to be enforced over new wells. But as Professor Jeffery said, there seems to be evidence already that the existing injection wells, when the one that you had mentioned, they stopped pumping wastewater into it, that also helped, too.

Do you want something done with the existing wells, Susan?

VESSELS: Yes. The moratorium resolutions, all nine of them ask to stop all current injection of waste within six miles of our aquifers. I think that’s an extremely easy ask. Perhaps it should be farther. The six miles was chosen because of the Redbird study showing that waste was migrating horizontally 5.43 miles and to the surface in the western part of the county.

Our aquifers, there are three aquifers plus Williamstown, West Virginia, are all located between 1.3 and 1.8 miles from these four existing injection wells. So, you know, I think ultimately this is not safe. And that in order for the oil and gas industry to continue to behave responsibly as to communities, they need a new rule that simply states, “Do not inject close to public drinking water aquifers.”

So I think we’ve asked that all injection halt.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. Professor Jeffery, this makes me wonder, though, for new injection wells in the region, are there places where they could be drilled that are far enough away from, as Susan says, public drinking water supplies?

JEFFERY: I would have to map that out. But our aquifers extend up and down the Muskingum River that sort of cuts the county right in half and then along the Ohio River. And with this natural fracture pattern, I don’t know how pervasive it goes, but certainly here within most of Washington County.

I do have some other studies that sort of verify that on top of just this injection escape. But going beyond Washington County, I can’t say much about what their conditions are there. There might be places that are adequate there, but it would take a lot more study, and they need to go through that risk analysis and then the reservoir engineering analysis and then a detailed subsurface analysis to be able to determine that.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.