Fracking Brine Coming to Mansfield, Ohio

This is a follow-up to an earlier post about fracking brine injection wells slated for inner-Mansfield.

According to the latest news in The Mansfield News Journal, the Mansfield City Law Director has informed concerned citizens attempting to fight the propesed injection sites they have no legal standing.

Again, according to the News Journal article, Spon, the City Law Director, is working to help concerned citizens while taking the calming approach of somewhat downplaying the significance of using the inner-city industrial park site as a dumping ground for fracking brine, stating that the issue is not fracking itself, and is simply fracking-related brine.

The points that are easy to overlook in this issue are:

• This is not a salt-water brine like your grandmother would have used to make pickles, this is the same toxin-filled brine that is used for fracking. Calling it fracking-related brine  does not change what it is.
• It only takes one small bubble in the injection well's concrete casing to allow a toxic cocktail to leak out into the local water supply. (Have you ever seen concrete that didn't have at least one small bubble?)
• The injection well casing only goes so far down, so after that depth it only takes one weak spot in the underlying ground (something no one among us can control) to allow a leak.
• The fact that Ohio already has 184 of these deep-well fracking brine injection sites, dumps the stuff on the roadway to control ice and dusts, and (in some counties) coats road salt with it does not mean it is safe. (Is it honestly safe or have Ohioans so far simply been lucky there have been no larger problems?) In fact, if, like most everything else that affects human life, the fracking brine toxins have a cumulative effect... well, it's accumulating - you can fill in the rest.

So I'll end this post with a link to the original post on this site and another to the News Journal article, Mansfield Can't Fight Fracking Waste Wells, covering this so you can check out the original source if you want to, and a wish for Mansfield residents and all of us, that a safe resolution for disposing of fracking brine can be found before it's too late.

After a massive signature-collecting campaign on the part of anti-fracking groups, the United States Forest Service (USFS) withdrew over 3,000 acres of Ohio land from the "fracking-board" (land that was slated for lease-sale on December 7, 2011.)

The halt may or may not become permanent as the withdrawal is simply providing time to review the potential effects of fracking.

According to a report on Truth-Out, there are things working against the groups and individuals working to protect the environment and Ohio residents from the effects of fracking. If you go through the article in critical-thinking mode, you will notice that all of the the reasons listed boil down to one thing - money.