News
Trumbull County Residents Concerned About Fracking
By: Olivia Bevan
Posted on:
There was more protesting about fracking in Ohio Monday morning.
Concerned residents blocked access to an injection well in Trumbull County.
They spoke against, quote, "the failure of Ohio regulators to adequately test and monitor dumping of toxic fracking waste."
A news release says the protestors gathered "to express concerns about the contents of the 1,000 gallons of fracking wastewater that spilled along five miles of road" in a residential area near Vienna on July 7.
They demanded that Ohio's Department of Natural Resources "begin systematically testing out-of-state frack waste that", they say, "is injected into over 170 wells throughout Ohio."
Susie Beirsdorfer is with the group Frack Free Mahoning.
"We feel some desperation," she says, "the brine has not been tested since 1989 according the ODNR. We don't know what's in the brine. We wanted to get the message out that we don't want the brine. We want fracking stopped and a the very least it's time to test the brine."
Beirsdorfer says the protest ended peacefully.
ODNR spokeswoman Heidi Evans says the fluid that spilled near Vienna has nothing to do with fracking and is actually production brine from an oil field.
Evans says inspectors from the Environmental Protection Agency and ODNR were on site the day of the spill and the cleanup was done that day.