WKSU News: Seneca Lake gets temporary reprieve

Tuesday, June 12, 2012 Seneca Lake gets temporary reprieve Leatra Harper mobilizing citizens to convince Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District not to sell water for fracking by WKSU's KABIR BHATIA	Reporter Kabir Bhatia

$Leatra Harper plans to work with anti-fracking groups, in between visits with these baby ducks$

Leatra Harper plans to work with anti-fracking groups, in between visits with these baby ducks

Courtesy of K. Bhatia

In The Region:

The Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District in eastern Ohio surprised many last week when it halted sales of water to oil and gas drilling companies. The district says it wants time to evaluate the environmental impact and gather public comment. WKSU’s Kabir Bhatia reports on a Senecaville woman who plans to do much more than comment.

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Leatra Harper, husband Steve and friend John Collings enjoy a day on Seneca Lake

Seneca Lake hosts everything from row boats to sail boats to power boats

“I didn’t know this was Ohio. This was just great.”
Leatra Harper has been a frequent visitor to Seneca Lake for almost a decade. Boats dot the sparkling water on the man-made lake off of I-70, between Columbus and Wheeling. It’s ringed with camp sites, vacation bungalows and a small marina. The Harpers like it so much, they moved here from Toledo and had planned to retire here.

“Anybody that knows me, knows that I’m a water person. We thrive on it. We feel very connected to it. I just feel like it’s alive. I feel like every drop of water is a part of us.”

But in recent weeks, the Harpers told their contractor to stop improvements to their small cottage. That followed the news that the Muskingum Watershed would be selling water from nearby Clendening Lake to Gulfport Energy for a process of oil and gas drilling called fracking. And that made them re-think whether this was the place to spend the rest of their lives.

“What about the value of the recreation here? I really think the MWCD really needs to look at that more closely. They’re talking about the need to serve the industry. What about THIS industry. This is not something you can just create.”

Upside of fracking
Fracking mixes up to 5 million gallons of water with small amounts of chemicals. The fracwater breaks up shale deep underground to release natural gas and oil.
A report from the Ohio Shale Coalition earlier this year projected nearly $5 billion in investment from the gas and oil industry by 2014, along with 65,000 jobs. The report, put together by scientists and economists at Cleveland State and Ohio State, also projects almost a doubling of growth in the state’s gross product.

Water stays underground
But Leatra’s husband, Steve, is more concerned about the water being pumped underground. He spent his career working in metals and chemical engineering, and says once the water is down there, it’s down there for good.
“As I understand it, with these injection wells, that’s the reason they take the fracwater, and just deposit it in the depths of the earth. So, to me, it’s not recoverable. And that’s very unusual for an industry to be able to have that as an option, as opposed to cleaning the water as other industries have to. The steel operation I was with in Chicago, the water we extracted out of the Calumet River had to be put back not only AS clean, but the same temperature as at extraction… we had to maintain the environment.”
Some companies, like Devon Energy in Texas, are working on complex methods to purify fracking wastewater. If it works properly, it goes in looking like sludge, travels through filters and evaporators and distillers, and comes out looking like tap water. And the company can then use that same water for fracking again instead of buying more.

First water sale opened floodgates
The Muskingum district is the largest in Ohio, encompassing bodies of water that make up one-fifth of the entire state -- excluding Lake Erie. It announced back in April that it was selling as much as 11 million gallons of water from Clendening to Gulfport.
That original deal ends in the next few days, and watershed spokesman Darrin Lautenschleger says it involved less than one percent of the lake’s water.
But in Gulfport’s wake, a dozen other companies asked for water from Seneca and other lakes, and that’s the reason the district wants to revise its water-sale policy.
“It’s the right time to kind of slow the process down, make sure that we have all of the available and necessary information to make informed and effective decisions. And allow the public to be part of that process, as with all of our operations, so they can get a full grasp of what information’s available, what the concerns are. [It will] allow us to interact with the public and environmental groups on what their concerns are. Then develop the proper policies, and changes in policies, that may be needed.”

Pending study could provide answers
Both the Muskingum Water Conservancy District and Leatra Harper’s group, the Southeast Ohio Alliance to Save Our Water, are eagerly awaiting a study from the U.S. Geological Survey of the impact of removing water from Muskingum’s reservoirs.
The survey is due later this year, and in the meantime, the Harpers are contacting the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and other state and federal agencies to get answers about fracking’s environmental impact.They’re also reaching out to anti-fracking groups in Kentucky, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana and Pennsylvania.

Listener Comments:

I live at Seneca Lake and cross the dam everyday and when the gates are open maintaining level pool there are millions of gallons going down the spillway into Wills Creek for free. My industry sources tell me that they can expect 25-50% of the Utica frac water back for reuse. The income from water sales could help with much needed improvements like dredging the lake as it is filling up with silt and one day will be unuseable for recreation. It was designed as a 100 year dam I was told by MWCD.

Posted by: Dirk Rickard (Senecaville,OH) on June 13, 2012 8:06AM

We all should be concerned about the long term impacts that fracking will have on Ohio. Whether or not you are immediately impacted by the effects on the environment. It is too easy to be lured by the dollars and jobs that the oil and gas industry allege to be investing but let's not forget that once the oil and gas wells cease to produce, those same companies will not hesitate to move on then who will be left with the long term effects of contamination of Ohio's land and aquifers. Once those chemicals are pumped into the ground with the water, there is no cleaning this mess up. Every Ohio citizen should be concerned about the long term effects that fracking is going to have on communities. We should look to our neighbors in Pennsylvania and ask them what effects they have had from fracking.

Posted by: chris stranathan (Port Clinton) on June 12, 2012 10:06AM

You go, Leatra!!

Posted by: robert west (coshocton) on June 12, 2012 9:06AM

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