(A News and Sentinel Op-Ed - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

The sleight of hand is worthy of a Vegas magic act. Buckeye Environmental Network and its radical allies, like Marietta Council President Susan Vessels, hope to yell and threaten their way to killing Ohio’s robust oil and gas industry by focusing first on injection wells.

They’re clawing for any toehold they can find, but make no mistake – an outright ban on fracking is their goal. So, let’s address some of their more egregious claims:

They say that injection wells are an environmental danger.

They’re not.

There are 740,000 injection wells in the United States, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. They serve a wide range of users, including municipalities and industry – injection wells may even be used as part of environmental cleanup solutions. There’s even a well class that allows for the storage of carbon dioxide.

All this to say, the injection wells aren’t scary. They are heavily regulated, built safely, and environmentally safe for handling waste.

They say injection wells often fail.

They don’t.

An injection well could fail. It’s true. Your car could also crash. Your house could burn down. A meteor could hit you while you’re crossing the street. We don’t live our lives based on the bad things that could happen, and the government doesn’t set regulations in that way. If they did, crosswalks would have steel-reinforced roofs, your house would be built of nonperishable materials only, and cars wouldn’t be allowed on the road.

The reality is that of 740,000 injection wells, there have been fewer than 200 incidents over the last 25 years. That’s less than eight per year on average across the nation, and these incidents range from minor to those requiring mitigation. In Ohio, there have been zero incidents. Zero incidents in 25 years.

Even for oil and gas injection wells, the incident rate averages 4,000ths of 1 percent annually. For comparison, you’re eight times more likely to die while riding a bicycle than an injection well is likely to experience an incident.

It’s fear-mongering meant to serve a political goal, rather than anything based on science, to say that injection wells are dangerous and deserve still more regulation than that to which they are already subject.

An injection well “so near” Marietta’s water supply is dangerous.

Folks, Marietta’s water treatment plant is a bike path (irony!) and riverbank away from the Ohio River. The EPA reports that approximately 50,000 sanitary sewer overflows occur each year in the United States. Remember – the number of injection well incidents is 200 over 25 years. Rest assured, the Marietta water treatment plant is very safe.

Now, imagine if we replicated that water treatment plant, except we put it miles from the water source, underground, in solid rock. This doesn’t even require a geology degree from Marietta College – it’s safer.

When you drill miles down into solid rock and add additional casing as required by the heavy burden of government regulation, it’s very safe. A few miles might as well be a thousand under the circumstances.

Think of it like this: Let’s say you have some brine water that you don’t want to put down your sink. You’re a reasonable person, so you put it in a Tupperware container, take it to your basement, dig a hole, pour concrete walls, put the Tupperware container in, and bury it further in concrete. That brine isn’t going to go down your sink. And an injection well isn’t going to poison Marietta’s water supply.

You don’t have to take my word for it. The science, the engineering, and the independent oversight are all designed around one non-negotiable priority: protecting people. The fearmongering, on the other hand, is about asking you to look past the science to help radical environmentalists achieve their goals. Don’t fall for the trick.