When the Ohio Department of Natural Resources issued permits to construct two injection wells, to store waste from oil and gas drilling, within two miles of the city of Marietta’s aquifers, residents in the area grew concerned.
Washington County — home to the southeast Ohio city of Marietta — already had more of the wells than the entire state of Pennsylvania, as of 2023.
Some locals worried the oil and gas drilling waste could contaminate the community's drinking water supply.
Bob Wilson was among them.
Bob Wilson’s story
Wilson has been working in oil and gas since the mid-’70s — decades before the hydraulic fracturing boom revolutionized the industry. His family owns 170 conventional, vertically drilled oil and gas wells, mostly located between Marietta and Belpre.
Since 2019, after an injection well was drilled nearby, he says 50 of them have stopped producing oil and gas and started pulling up sludgy wastewater instead.
To him, the cause seemed obvious. He reported the problem to the ODNR.
“And I told them, I said, ‘You guys are getting disposal water in my wells.’ And they just completely ignored me,” he said. “They said, ‘It's not possible, can't happen, click.’”
Several of Wilson’s neighbors started losing wells to wastewater, too. Four years ago, one of them joined Wilson in suing a number of injection well companies. After a lower court dismissed his suit, Wilson appealed and another court ruled in his favor. Those companies have since appealed and the cases are now awaiting decisions from the Ohio Supreme Court.
But Wilson says, no matter what happens, the damage can’t be undone.
“They've ruined my business,” he said. “They've ruined my life.”
A 2020 report from the ODNR concluded the wastewater found in Wilson’s well did, in fact, come from the injection site. According to the ODNR, Redbird Development LLC, which owned the site, voluntarily modified the injection well and temporarily stopped using it because of an unrelated pump issue.
The department said it has spoken with Wilson about his complaints.
A scientist’s perspective
Now, as Wilson mourns his once-successful business, he has another mounting concern. The contamination of his wells is proof that fracking wastewater has migrated underground, and he worries it could get into the drinking water supply.
He’s not alone.
“It seems pretty clear that this material is not – the fluids are not staying where they're supposed to stay,” said David Jeffery, who teaches courses on petroleum geology at Marietta College. “It looks like they are migrating through fractures, whether they are natural fractures or induced fractures or faults.”
In its 2020 report, the ODNR said it’s unlikely brine could directly migrate into local aquifers given the composition of rock layers in the area.
Jeffery agrees. He says what’s more likely is that the brine migrates into an unplugged orphaned well and then travels into drinking water reserves from there.
“There are thousands of orphaned wells around here, which are just wells that might have been drilled more than 100 years ago and only the landowner might know that they're there or not,” he said.
Professor Natalie Kruse Daniels, director of the environmental studies program at Ohio University, said she’s concerned it could take a long time for anyone to notice fluid coming out of an orphaned well.
“What concerns me the most is: Are we going to detect it, do people know what to look for and will folks be believed, if and when they notice a change in their water?” she said.
“In Appalachia we've seen multiple cases of drinking water contamination, where it took a really long time for people's experience to be believed and for there to be an action to ameliorate an issue.”
State regulation
DeepRock Disposal Solutions, which owns the injection wells near Marietta, did not respond to a request for comment. But they passed my number on to Matt Dole, a consultant for the Accountability Project Institute, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit with undisclosed donors that’s advocated against state and local Democratic candidates.
Dole says the number of reported leakages is tiny compared to the number of injection wells in the country.
“It is a lower percentage than the number of people who die on their bike going down the street every year,” he said. “It is so minuscule that we think it's wrong to ask the government to regulate.”
The ODNR suspended six injection wells in southeast Ohio’s Noble and Athens counties in 2023, after fracking wastewater migrated out of intended injection well zones.
For Bob Wilson, that’s enough to be concerned about, especially as the ODNR approves additional injection well sites in close proximity to Marietta’s aquifers.
“We care about what's happening with the water situation and everything here because we live here,” he said. “It's not just our businesses. We want to stop it because this is where we live. It’s where our families live.”
More on how the government is responding to their concerns, coming up tomorrow.
