After sounding the alarm on fracking waste injection wells for more than a decade, Roxanne Groff from Athens County is now finally starting to see some of the fruits of her and her friends’ labor. 

A handful of Athens County injection wells were suspended after Ohio Department of Natural Resources determined they pose an “imminent danger to the health and safety of the public and is likely to result in immediate substantial damage to the natural resources of the state,” according to letters from Chief of the Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management Eric Vendel.  

“I cried,” the 75-year-old activist said when she heard the news. 

Groff’s advocacy against injection wells started back in 2012 with the Hazel–Ginsburg well. It has since grown to include many Southeast Ohio residents who are also sounding the alarm — something Groff believes helped led to the wells being suspended. 

“All of us together, all of the community members stood up for themselves and pushed back,” Groff said. “We know that this is dangerous.” 

Injection wells in Athens 

There are seven class 2 injection wells in Athens County, but five are no longer in operation and the ODNR Division of Oil & Gas Resources Management expects those wells to be plugged, ODNR spokesperson Karina Cheung said in an email. Historically, three injection wells have been plugged in the county, she said. 

Class 2 wells are used to inject fluids — primarily brines — associated with oil and natural gas production, according to the EPA. 

Included in the five Athens wells that are out of operation are three K&H injection wells that were operational until a decision by the Oil and Gas Commission on April 19.

The plugging permits for the three K&H wells will be issued soon and will be effective for two years once they are issued, Cheung said. She said the wells will be plugged this summer (according to the company Tallgrass Energy that owns the K&H wells).  

The Frost well was last used in 2021 and has been ordered to be plugged by the Chief of the Division of Oil & Gas Resources Management.

“The company is in receivership and the Division has been in communication with the receiver about their obligation to plug the well,” Cheung said in an email. 

Plugging a well includes removing all uncemented casing and tubing from the well, and using cement to plug the well “ in a manner to isolate all oil, gas, and brine to formations that they originate in,” Cheung said. 

The exact cost of plugging a well is tough to determine.

“Plugging costs vary due to differences in wells and the costs of abandonment and decommissioning of the surface storage facilities associated with the wells,” Cheung said in an email. 

But just because the wells will eventually be plugged doesn’t mean the environmental risks are gone, Athens County resident Susie Quinn said. 

“All the stuff that they’ve injected down there, it’s still down there,” she said. “This is not a cleanup. It’s just there stopping anymore from going in.”

The Quinns got earthquake insurance for their house nearly a decade ago because “we’ve had so many little ones because of the fracking and injection wells.”

Groff echoed Quinn’s sentiments about the plugged wells. 

“The threat remains … all that waste is there,” she said. “It’s down there. It’s under pressure. If it feels like going somewhere, it’s going to find a crack, and it’s going to keep going through that crack … until it gets to someplace where it either comes up to the surface or it just stops fracturing.”

Advocacy against the wells 

The first Athens County injection well was the Hazel–Ginsburg well in 1984, Groff said. At the time Groff was an Athens County Commissioner, a role she served in from 1983 to 1995.

It wasn’t until 2012 when her advocacy related to fracking began, after Madeline ffitch was arrested for chaining herself to two barrels and blocking the driveway to the Ginsburg well.

The Ginsburg well was last used in 2015, Cheung said.

“The Division of Oil & Gas Resources Management granted a permit to plug the Ginsberg well, but the owner of the well did not plug it within the permit’s two-year expiration date,” Cheung said in an email. “The Division is conducting regulatory enforcement regarding the Ginsberg well.”

Local environmental groups started popping up, like Athens County’s Future Action Network and Torch CAN DO, which stands for Torch Clean Air Now, Defend Ohio. These groups helped organize informational meetings with epidemiologists and geologists as well as protests to spread the word about fracking and raise awareness. One of their protests was a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party complete with a Queen of Hearts and little toxic tea bottles.

Groff, along with the other activists who joined the fight, have been preaching for years about the environmental impact of injection wells.

“You drill a hole into the ground and then you shove toxic radioactive waste under immense pressure,” Groff said. “Now what kind of fool do you think we are that you don’t think that that’s going to go somewhere?”

There were more than 1,400 fracking incidents associated with oil and gas wells in Ohio between 2018 and September 2023, according to FracTracker Alliance — a nonprofit that collects data on fracking pipelines. 

There have been 26 incidents in Athens County during that same time period involving release, unintentional gas release and a fire, according to FracTracker. 

“Everybody knew that was going to happen,” Groff said. “We absolutely unequivocally knew that we were right. There was nothing that swayed anybody in this group from thinking that we were making stuff up.”

The Athens County Commissioners also got involved and held meetings. 

“These wells are just terrible and what they’ve done and everything that was said that was going to happen, happened,” Athens County Commissioner Charlie Adkins said. 

Groff and the team of activists were overjoyed when ODNR ordered the injection wells to suspend operations.  

“The language they used is exactly what the people have been saying … they’re an imminent threat to the health and the welfare and well being of the environment and the people who live here,” Groff said.                            

Quinn always believed they could make a difference. 

“We went from Torch CAN DO to Torch can done,” she said. “We’d like to pass our homesteads on to our children. We want to do this for our grandchildren.”

Fight continues

Even though some of the wells are no longer in use, Groff isn’t hanging up her activist hat just yet. 

For one, not all injection wells are suspended. The last two remaining wells in operation in Athens County are in Canaan Township and Lee Township, Cheung said. 

The long-term effects of the injection wells are not totally known at the moment and could not show up for years or decades, Groff said. 

Athens County Commissioner President Lenny Eliason said he would like to focus on long-term monitoring.

“Appalachia has been extracted for years for a number of different materials and the pain of the short term gains sticks around a long time after,” he said. “So we have to get people that are more forward thinking about balancing what that short term gain is going to bring in the long term.”

When asked if the drinking water had been affected by the injection wells, Groff and Quinn said they don’t know yet. 

Referring to the state, Groff said ““Your incompetence caused this to happen. If you want to assure people that this is not an imminent threat and danger, then prove it and the only way you can prove it is to continue to test the water.”

Even though their advocacy is not quite done, they are relishing their victory. 

“It’s not only just a huge win for everybody here in Athens County, it’s a message to the rest of the people in the state that, with due diligence, you can be in control,” Groff said. “You just have to fight like hell to make yourself heard.” 

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This story is provided by Ohio Capital Journal, a part of States Newsroom, a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit. See the original story here.