The entrance to Salt Fork State Park, April 5, 2024, Jefferson Township in Guernsey County, Ohio. (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal. Republish photo only with original article.)
Ohio Democratic lawmakers want to prevent oil and natural gas drilling under Lake Erie and state parks.
State Reps. Tristan Rader, D-Lakewood, and Christine Cockley, D-Columbus, recently introduced Ohio House Bill 399.
The bill would prohibit the director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources from issuing a permit that would remove oil or natural gas from under a state park or Lake Erie.
“Protecting our environment is just a critically important thing,” Rader said. “I think protecting our public lands, conserving the space we’ve already decided should be conserved, is actually a pretty salient idea.”
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill into law in 2023 that allowed fracking for natural gas in Ohio’s public lands and state parks. Since then, fracking has begun in Salt Fork State Park, the state’s largest state park.
“I think the natural progression of where we’re headed next is drilling in state parks,” Rader said. “So my goal is to try to stop that at all costs. Let’s actually do what we set out to do, and preserve these lands, instead of extracting from them, farming them, destroying these habitats.”
There have been approximately 2,000 incidents associated with oil and gas wells in Ohio over the past eight years, according to FracTracker Alliance — a nonprofit that collects data on fracking pipelines.
Ohio has 76 state parks that are managed by ODNR.
“Our state park network is just so phenomenal,” Rader said. “We own a lot of lands as a state that’s conserved for various reasons.”
Lake Erie
Federal law prohibits drilling in the Great Lakes and Rader said he thinks it’s important to “have some state protections to layer on top of some of these federal protections.”
“I think redundancy, right now, when it comes to federal law is incredibly important, especially when you see an administration that is absolutely gung ho and drilling in all places, and doesn’t seem to really respect federal law very directly, and is willing to either go to court or ignore courts,” Rader said.
Ohio Oil and Gas Association President Rob Brundrett said he is unaware of interest in drilling under Lake Erie.
“We have not seen much interest from our members over the years to explore Lake Erie,” he said. “However, we do believe there could be a potential benefit in the exploration and production from the Great Lakes.”
Drilling in Lake Erie could pose risks to the drinking water and wildlife, including millions of walleye, Rader said.
“Oil wells, oil drilling, (and) oil pipelines have a high risk of adding all kinds of toxins, whether it’s from the brines they use or spills that happen all too often,” he said. “I want to try my best as a human being to leave this planet better than where I found it, and part of that is keeping our lakes and streams and green spaces free of pollution.”
This is not the first time a bill like this has been introduced. Former Democratic state Rep. Mike Skindell introduced a similar bill in 2023 during the last General Assembly that would have prevented fracking under Lake Erie, but the bill only received sponsor testimony.
Rader is hopeful his bill will get a couple of hearings and maybe a vote, but as a Democratic bill in a Republican-controlled Statehouse, the cards are stacked against H.B. 399.
“Of course it’s Ohio, I’m not holding my breath,” Rader said. “But without putting the idea forward, without having the bill in, you don’t have that chance. So that’s what we’re doing.”
Protecting the planet should be a partisan issue, Rader said.
“I think there are some folks on both sides of the aisle that think this is actually pretty important,” he said. “I think conservation is a concept that’s pretty core to conservatism, actually, as well as liberalism. It’s something that I do think we’ll get some buy in.”
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