Sign on to hold the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD) accountable for profiting from our natural resources by leasing to the oil and gas industry and selling our precious freshwater while collecting property taxes from all who live in the district. The future liabilities could increase our taxes to cover the costs of remediation from the future harms of engaging in fracking.
Despite the growing evidence of the costs of environmental damages created by fracking and its infrastructure (Unconventional Oil and Gas Development) in regions like Southeast Ohio, the hazardous air and water pollution the industry generates appears to be of no concern as the MWCD once again leased another beautiful reservoir to be fracked.
We had hoped Tappan Lake would be preserved as an important source of drinking water, but last year we were dismayed when the MWCD announced that Tappan Lake will be fracked by Encino Corporation with the MWCD reaping over $40 million by leasing another 7,300 acres at $5,500/acre. This does not count the royalties the MWCD will receive to lease Tappan along with the additional water it will sell to the industry, which will be destroyed forever for any other use, turning it into a toxic, radioactive waste product that must be disposed of rather than used for drinking, agriculture, recreation or any other publicly beneficial use. Already, people living near Tappan Lake are experiencing the industry's impacts with noise, air and light pollution, truck traffic and clear cutting as well as massive water withdrawals that affect environmental flow (research in the region cited here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36179823/).
The MWCD has received hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue by using our public resources and selling millions of gallons of freshwater at very low prices to serve the industry. This is water that is permanently destroyed, turned into toxic, radioactive waste once it is used for fracking. Spills, leaks and subsurface migration of contaminants from fracking and its many injection wells needed to dispose of the frack "brine" threaten remaining water supplies in the region.
Please join us to hold the MWCD accountable for the harms caused by engaging in fracking and demand that the Conservancy District be denied its ability to tax those living in the District for the future damages. Warnings of massive future costs caused by fracking are increasingly obvious. Here is just one example:
- "Bonding levels are much too low"…despite documented instances in which fracking wells have cost $700,000 or more to plug. Link: https://frontiergroup.org/resources/who-pays-costs-fracking/
Please sign this petition asking Ohio legislators to investigate MWCD profits and future liabilities so taxpayers are not on the hook for damages in the future!