Environmental Groups Continue to Fight Injection Wells in Ohio

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From the Associated Press:
COLUMBUS: A coalition of environmental and community groups is asking the federal government to consider suspending Ohio’s authority to oversee deep injection of chemically-laced wastewater from oil and gas drilling.
The Center for Health, Environment & Justice and other groups planned to ask the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday to investigate and audit Ohio’s regulatory program of deep injection wells, operated by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
Read the whole story here. 

You can also read more about the group's efforts at EcoWatch:
Fifty people, including Athens County Commissioner Charlie Adkins and Athens Mayor Paul Wiehl, braved the rain and cold today to gather at the Athens County Courthouse plaza, bedecked for the occasion with a full-sized outhouse, chanting “We are not the nation’s toxic toilet.”
The Athens rally was one of four events in Ohio announcing the filing of a citizens’ petition to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which was written on behalf of all Ohio citizens by Teresa Mills from the Center for Health, Environment and Justice and Buckeye Forest Council. More than two hundred groups and individuals around the state signed the letter calling on the U.S. EPA to do a full audit of Ohio’s underground injection control program and to suspend Ohio’s primacy, or right to control the injection well program. Other events were held in Columbus, Youngstown and Portage County.
Speakers at the Athens event described the long violation history of Athens County’s Ginsburg injection well, at which Appalachia Resist! organized actions last June and November, and of the recent intentional dumping of as much as 250,000 gallons of toxic, radioactive frack waste over a period of month into a tributary of the Mahoning River by Ben Lupo and his companies. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (NRDC) allowed Lupo’s multiple operations to continue for decades in spite of at least 120 violations, many of them serious. Lupo is being tried for federal violations of the Clean Water Act for the Mahoning dumping and faces penalties much steeper than Ohio would inflict, according to Ohio Attorney Mike Dewine.
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