Buckeye Environmental Network
March 25, 2025
Anton Krieger

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March 19th, 2025 – The Harrison County, OH Board of Commissioners announced plans to reverse a recent resolution permitting the use of oil and gas waste “brine” for winter road treatment, according to a WTOV9 report. 

Commissioner Dustin Corder noted: “We’re working on rescinding that resolution. We agree with some of the research that we’ve done and some of the people who have reached out to us it’s probably best we go with the other counties and decline those things as well.”

The decision came following outreach from environmental justice advocates, who raised concerns about the dangers of spreading the toxic, radioactive waste product.

“I was happy that someone finally read the facts and data and made a decision based on that for a change” said Dr Randi Pokladnik, a resident of Harrison County and long-time environmental justice activist, who wrote a letter to the Commissioners on March 7 in response to the resolution. Just a day earlier, Pokladnik joined about 100 Ohioans at the Ohio Statehouse for a Symposium organized by Buckeye Environmental Network, where activists and experts shared data and stories about oil and gas waste in Ohio. At the event, Pokladnik spoke to the press about how her own community has already been impacted by the gas industry.

Jenny Morgan of Westerville, a contract researcher for Buckeye Environmental Network and author of The Daily Accident Report, followed up with a letter referencing data about industry incidents from ODNR’s own records, and Buckeye Environmental Network Oil and Gas Waste organizer Anton Krieger sent a copy of a packet of educational information about the dangers of spreading oil and gas waste that he had prepared for Ohio legislators following the Statehouse Symposium.

“This isn’t BEN’s first success at the local level, and it certainly won’t be the last! When elected officials find out they’re spreading high levels of radium 226 and 228 on their roads, they end up making the switch to nonradioactive products,” Krieger said.

In October of last year, Guernsey County Commissioners voted unanimously to deny the use of oil and gas waste brine as a dust suppressant on local roads, as reported in The Daily Jeffersonian, after Buckeye Environmental Network and partners shared information. “Brine is a pollutant,” said Commissioner Jack Marlin. “We made up our minds that we were totally against that.”

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Oil & Gas Waste

Starting around 2011, BEN’s biggest fight has been against the spread of the toxic and radioactive byproduct of the oil and gas industry—oilfield brine. For every barrel of crude oil or natural gas produced, seven to ten barrels of oilfield brine which contains extreme levels of radioactivity and toxicity due to carcinogens such as radium, heavy metals, forever chemical, and chlorides. There are multiple avenues of migration for oilfield brine.

Road Spreading is a practice where townships and counties will spread oilfield brine from conventional oil wells on roadways in an attempt to deice and suppress dust on their roadways. This practice was legalized in 1985 before the State of Ohio had adequately studied oilfield brine. Fast forward to a study completed by Ohio Department of Natural Resources in 2019, all but one well studied had levels of radium too high to discharge into the environment according to Ohio’s Administrative Code. We are working with local elected officials and the State Legislature to make common sense policy changes to reflect this new finding.

Injection wells is a practice that gets rid of oilfield brine by injecting it into the earth at high pressures. ODNR manages Ohio’s injection well program which makes it much easier to obtain a permit for an injection well than other states. Ohio has 250+ injection wells, Pennsylvania has 12, and West Virginia has 50+, Ohio has 250+. For this reason, Ohio receives much of the waste from Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and New York. One major problem with injection wells in Ohio is that our formations are “holier than swiss cheese” (Dr. Julie Weatherington-Rice). Ohio has had multiple Class II Injection Wells suspended as a result of leaking waste into oil production wells and possibly drinking water wells.

Media Contact: Anton Krieger, [email protected],