(Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection - Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Corner)

Last fall I received a phone call from someone in Parkersburg who reported that she witnessed brine waste (production waste from high-pressure hydraulic fracturing, i.e., fracking) being transported from railway freight cars in Parkersburg to trucks, which were taking the waste to the Deep Rock Disposal LLC facility in Warren Township, just outside Marietta. On receiving this news, I contacted the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Oil & Gas Resources Management (DOGRM), to ask about this issue. I was told that this process of shipping brine waste from West Virginia to Ohio is legal. This is one of the several ways that ODNR is failing Washington County — that is, the legal transport of brine waste from West Virginia to Washington County.

As much as half of the brine waste that comes to Washington County is from out of state (West Virginia and Pennsylvania). West Virginia has little injection-well activity because it requires companies to reveal the contents of brine waste. Federal law, by the so-called Haliburton Rule, allows companies to keep secret what is actually in brine waste. Of course, independent studies have noted that brine waste is radioactive and contains forever chemicals, heavy metals like arsenic, carcinogenic materials, and lead.

This practice of interstate shipment of brine waste by DOGRM is one of the several ways that this agency has failed us in Washington County. DOGRM continues to apply old (more lax) standards to the review of Class II injection well requests for permits; several permits have been approved since 2022 using the pre-2022 standards. This agency has typically refused to hold public hearings about permit requests. Furthermore, the DOGRM has not followed up on violations of its own rules. The county commissioners’ constituents in opposition to injection wells are represented by five water authorities, two townships, one village, the city of Marietta and the hundreds of people who attended injection-well events at Warren High School last April, at Marietta High School last fall (about a permit request for a Class I injection well at Ohio EPA), and the event at Washington State College where three nationally recognized experts on injection wells made presentations about the dangers and risks of injection wells.

Washington County now ranks number one in the state in the volume of brine waste injected into its grounds. From 2010-2025 over 3 billion gallons of brine waste were injected, one-third within two miles of the water protection area. What is important about injection wells is that the brine waste injected (albeit over 6,000 feet underground) does not stay where it is placed. Paid advocates and apologists for the oil and gas industry claim that brine waste stays permanently in the place where it is injected.

But this is not the case — it migrates. Traditional vertical production wells (not fracking wells) and orphan wells provide pathways for this migration. In 2020 a huge blow out of brine waste occurred in Noble County, for which Ohio taxpayers had to pay clean-up costs. Vertical production wells in Washington and Athens counties have been destroyed or damaged by brine waste (a legal suit on this issue is pending in Ohio courts). An investigative report on a major leak of raw petroleum at Veto Lake has still not yet been provided by DOGRM; it is likely that pressurized brine waste followed a pathway and pushed the petroleum to cause that breach, described as an “unprecedented migration.” Brine waste has migrated into water supplies in Oklahoma. It is just a matter of time before that happens here.

At its April 9 public meeting the Washington County commissioners were each asked by a member of Washington County for Safe Drinking Water whether they would step up and ask for a moratorium on injection wells in the county. Each commissioner made the same comment: that they do not believe that they are experts in this field of geology and engineering and that they trust the agency experts to make the appropriate judgments about the safety of injection wells. In light of the failures of DOGRM cited above to serve the interest of the citizens of Washington County, there is little reason to warrant this trust. We as members of Washington County for Safe Drinking Water and the hundreds of other residents of the county who oppose the proliferation of brine waste disposal in the county do not expect the county commissioners to review permit requests or to monitor injection wells. We are just asking them to join the Marietta City Council and many other agencies in the county to declare a moratorium on injection wells until assurances of safety of water aquifers and other resources can be made. Under the courageous leadership of Republican City Council President, Susan Vessels, a writ of mandamus signed by city council members and other city officials was delivered to Gov. Mike DeWine’s office November 2025. The governor has yet to respond. It is time for other elected officials in the county to step up or suffer the consequences at the ballot box!

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George Banziger, Ph.D., was a faculty member at Marietta College and an academic dean at three other colleges. He is a member of the Green Sanctuary Committee of the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Marietta, a member of the Washington County for Safe Drinking Water, and a contributor to Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action team.