People from several southeastern Ohio counties gathered in Columbus earlier this month, holding signs that read things like “No Radioactive Waste” to try to get lawmakers to pay attention to what they see as the growing dangers of fracking for oil and natural gas, like transportation of wastewater, or brine.
“So, what is this oil and gas waste made of?” asked Roxanne Groff, board member of the Buckeye Environmental Network, through a bullhorn to the crowd on the statehouse steps.
“It’s radioactive. And I don’t know what else they need to freakin’ know about it, except that it’s full of radioactivity.”
Brine from fracking can be saltier than seawater and contain numerous chemicals from the fracking operation, as well as radium, a radioactive metal.
These activists are worried about brine and other impacts as fracking begins under Ohio’s largest state park, Salt Fork, for the first time, thanks to a 2022 revision of an Ohio law meant to spur oil and gas development on state-owned lands. But this area of Ohio is no stranger to fracking.
Fracking has become a ‘daily life thing’ in Guernsey County
Austin Warehime, an attorney, grew up in the area and has moved back with his family. Photo: Julie Grant / The Allegheny Front
“That’s a brine truck that’s right up there in front of us,” said Austin Warehime, an attorney who drove me around the curvy, hilly roads in Guernsey County, where Salt Fork State Park is located, to show how the oil and gas industry has been changing this rural community, like the increase in trucks carrying brine from fracking operations.
“It’s become a daily life thing for people around here,” he said, then noticing traffic up the road. “And this looks like another brine truck that’s coming right towards us right here. So yeah, you see them quite frequently.”
I first met Warehime in the summer of 2023, at nearby Salt Fork State Park, at a meeting of residents and activists concerned that the state was ramping up to lease its publicly-owned lands for fracking.
Back then, he and his wife were living in Cincinnati. They were ready to start a family and wanted to move back home to Guernsey County, but it was a tough place to find a job. He said some people expected the oil and gas industry to help. And it did help him.
“And so I’m here. I’m practicing law still,” Warehime said. “I’m with EQUES Law Group, and we represent landowners in oil and gas matters.”
A well pad behind a barrier in Guernsey County. Photo: Julie Grant / The Allegheny Front
We drove around looking at several drilling sites where the hills had been flattened for concrete well pads. On one road, he remembered being a kid on the way to school.
“This was part of the bus route, so I saw this road every single day growing up,” he said, pointing to a concrete well pad and pipeline, “It’s changed quite a bit. That was all just trees.”
Warehime’s law firm hears from people in the area with varying views on the growth of the oil and gas industry. Some landowners are happy when a landman approaches them to build a pad or a pipeline on their property:
“They feel like they hit the lottery because they’ve never had really enough money to get by even, and now all of a sudden they can go buy a new car and have reliable transportation, or they can pay for medical bills,” Warehime said.
He also sees clients who worry that the environment and beauty of the area are being destroyed, but there’s not much they can do to stop it.
Under Ohio’s “unitization” law, if a company gets 65 percent of landowners in a unit of land to agree to lease their mineral rights, it can apply to the state to force dissenting landowners in the unit into leases.
Warehime advises unwilling landowners to come to an agreement with the energy companies because citizens almost always lose these legal fights.
“Reasonable people look at that, and they go, ‘Well, I could either get rid of all my money by trying to fight this, or I could make a lot of money, accept it, and deal with the consequences later with some money to actually deal with those consequences,’” he said.
A well pad is being constructed in Guernsey County. Photo: Julie Grant / The Allegheny Front
A county covered with wells, with oil production as a major driver
The success of the oil and gas industry is easy to see on a well-locator map on the Ohio Department of Natural Resources website. Salt Fork State Park looks like an island in a sea of hundreds of oil and gas wells covering Guernsey County.
Guernsey County, Ohio is outlined in red. The green dots indicate producing oil and gas wells, the black lines are horizontal(fracked) wells. Salt Fork State Park sits within the small square labeled Jefferson [Township]. Map created by ODNR well locator tool.
A report by the Energy Policy Center at Cleveland State University found nearly 300 producing oil and gas wells in Guernsey County at the end of 2023, the last time the report was published.
Since then, “we’ve seen a significant increase in the number of new wells that are being drilled,” said research supervisor Mark Henning, an author of the report.
He expects an increase of over 100 new wells in what he calls Ohio’s shale counties, including Guernsey, in the next issue to be published in late April.
Statewide perspective: screenshot of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources oil and gas well locator map.
Henning’s team is looking at possible drivers for the drilling increase, including the war in Ukraine and natural gas exports. He also points to the “oil window” in Guernsey and nearby counties. “It’s a relatively thin strip of land where there’s been more activity in the last year or so, where producers have gotten better at predicting where the oil will be,” he said.
Drilling operations have created dangers
The fire at a Gulfport Energy well pad in Antrim, Ohio, on January 2, 2025. Taken from a Facebook video post by Antrim fire chief Donald Warnock.
In January, a Gulfport Energy well pad exploded less than five miles from Salt Fork State Park.
“There has been an explosion on what we presume at this time is an unoccupied well pad,” said Donald Warnock, fire chief of Antrim, an unincorporated community in Guernsey County, in a video posted to update nearby residents.
“Currently, one set of tanks is burning, possibly two. State route 22 is closed,” he said.
No one was injured, but activists say incidents like this are not uncommon.
“We see fires, explosions, spills, truck accidents spilling brine. And those are the reported incidents,” said Jenny Morgan of the group Save Ohio Parks, which tracks industry accidents. She points to an analysis of state data that shows nearly two thousand well pad incidents in Ohio over the past eight years.
Also, research has connected living near fracking sites with health problems like migraine headaches, difficulty breathing, poor birth outcomes, and even childhood cancers.
Morgan worries about hikers, boaters, and other visitors when fracking begins to access the gas under Salt Fork State Park. Her group and 29 other organizations signed a letter to Governor Mike DeWine in February asking for a moratorium on fracking on state parks and public lands, including four wildlife areas.
“I don’t want them to frack our parks and public lands; that’s the first order of business,” Morgan said. “It absolutely needs to not happen in these public spaces.”
Last year, the Oil and Gas Land Management Commission awarded bids at four wildlife areas and two bids for Infinity Natural Resources to frack under Salt Fork.
Save Ohio Parks and three other environmental groups recently lost an appeal in their lawsuit challenging the commission’s process.
Fracking Salt Fork has begun
Aerial photo of the lake at Salt Fork State Park. Photo: ODNR
Fracking is starting to happen in Salt Fork.
The state does not allow well pads within state parks, so the first well pad Infinity has constructed is on private land about a third of a mile outside the park’s southern boundary, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. The company is drilling four wells on it.
Infinity plans a second well pad, which has not yet been constructed, about a mile from Salt Fork’s northern boundary.
The wells on these pads will go deep underground, and then turn horizontally, and run laterally for miles under the park. Drillers pump millions of gallons of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, at high pressure into the well to fracture underground rock and release oil and gas.
Infinity’s lease agreements with the state include requirements to sample and test all water wells and sources of water, including Salt Fork Lake, within 3000 feet of any oil or gas well before it starts drilling.
The company also must reduce noise and light pollution and limit traffic in the park from fracking activities.
Visiting Salt Fork
Salt Fork State Park has a large lake, lodge, and golf course. Photo: Julie Grant / The Allegheny Front
During a visit to Salt Fork State Park in December, there weren’t any visible signs of fracking. Of the few people who were there, two hunters said they didn’t know about fracking but didn’t support anything that might affect the wildlife.
At the Salt Fork Park Lodge, Mark and Sherry Hlivko of northern Ohio were on vacation, looking at silver jewelry in the gift shop.
“This is an amazing place. It’s clean. The rooms are cabiny looking; it’s romantic. Yeah, we love it,” Sherry Hlivko said. They planned to do some hiking and visit Cambridge, a nearby town.
The Hlivkos perked up at the idea of fracking in the area. Their daughter and son-in-law used to work in the industry in nearby Carroll County.
“They were doing awesome, making good money. It was amazing. Yeah, we want the fracking to come back,” Sherry said.
They didn’t know the state had permitted fracking under the park and had some concerns.
“As long as it doesn’t disturb the nature, the park, in any way,” Mark said. “Yeah, and the animals can still live,” Sherry added.
Guernsey County Commissioner Dave Wilson hasn’t seen any problems. “So far, the fracking activity in the area surrounding the park has had no noticeable effect within the park itself,” he said.
While Wilson has heard some complaints about the impact of industrial-sized trucks on rural roads, he said fracking has been a financial boon to the local tax base and a local school district.
County commissioners recently banned the use of fracking wastewater on the roads, which has been used for dust suppression.
“We feel that nothing is perfect,” Wilson said. “But in the net, this has been a very positive thing for Guernsey County.”
As demand for energy increases and the state continues to approve drilling under its public lands, it looks like the industry is here to stay.
