Support The Preserve Act – Save Our State Parks
Yes on Senate Bill 132
Please contact your State Senator and the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee and urge them to support SB132.
*Heartfelt thank you to Nickie Antonio, who introduced SB 132 yesterday to the Senate Agriculture & Natural Resources Committee. The bill bans fracking under state parks and public lands. -Save Ohio Parks
*We live on an increasingly destabilized planet due to the global heating caused by fossil fuel emissions.
*Oil and gas extraction activities, including fracking, drilling and production around and under our state parks releases radioactive materials that endanger workers, nearby communities, and the environment. The United States has known about these dangers for at least 38 years, ever since the EPA report revealed the health risks of unregulated radioactive oil and gas waste.
*Every stage of oil and gas production can produce what is known as “technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive material”, TENORM. During drilling, radioactive elements are carried to the surface via used drilling fluids and drill cuttings. During fracking, radioactive elements mix with flowback fluid. And radioactive elements are often present in the massive volumes of wastewater produced by a working oil or gas well.
*The U.S. oil and gas industry produced an estimated nine trillion gallons of this dangerous wastewater in 2024 alone, much of it produced in Ohio.
*Radioactive materials not only contaminate oil and gas compressors, pumps, pipes, and storage facilities, creating a hazardous environment for workers, but also enters the environment through the mismanagement of oil and gas waste.
*Radioactive waste can leak out of storage pits, tanks, and landfills or spill during transportation and contaminate local water resources, such as happened in Athens county this past year.
*The January 2, 2025, fire at the Gulfport Energy well pad in Antrim, Ohio illustrates how poorly the Oil and Gas industry in Ohio regulates its own industry. There have been nearly 2000 well pad incidents in Ohio over the past eight years.
*The people of Ohio pay for, own, and use our public lands. We do not want to see them fracked.
*Of the 585 comments regarding new nominations to frack Salt Fork State Park, 576 comments opposed fracking in Salt Fork State Park – 98% of Ohioans who filed public comments oppose fracking Salt Fork.
*The proportions are similar for comments on seven wildlife areas that have already been approved for fracking. Yet Ohio’s oil and gas commissioners recently approved the Salt Fork nominations despite 98% opposing them.
*It is a total betrayal of all Ohioans and most especially, our children’s future, to allow the oil and gas industry to frack our most precious public lands.
-Judy Comeau-Hart, Proponent Testimony, FaCT: Faith Communities Together for a Sustainable Future
Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee
Committee Activity is posted here.
Chair Tim Schaffer (Republican – Buckeye Lake area)
Senate Building
1 Capitol Square
First Floor – 137
Columbus, Ohio 43215
Phone (614) 466-8076
Vice Chair Kyle Koehler (Republican – Dayton area)
Senate Building
1 Capitol Square
Ground Floor – 035
Columbus, Ohio 43215
Phone (614) 466-3780
Ranking Member Paula Hicks-Hudson (Democrat – Toledo area)
Senate Building
1 Capitol Square
Ground Floor 057
Columbus, Ohio 43215
Phone (614) 466-5204