The eastern Ohio city of Steubenville accepted a $1.1 million bid to lease about 157 acres of its own land for fracking during Tuesday’s city council meeting. 

Steubenville City Council voted to lease 19 parcels to Oklahoma-based Ascent Resources – Utica, said Steubenville resident Greg Burrier, who was at the city council meeting. One council member voted against it. 

“I’m extremely disappointed,” he said. “I feel like I got the rug pulled out from underneath my feet.”

The money will be put in the city’s general fund, but the city has yet to decide what it will be spent on, Burrier said. 

The Ohio Capital Journal sent questions to Steubenville Mayor Ralph Petrella but he did not respond. 

This is the first time Save Ohio Parks has heard of an Ohio city seeking bids to frack its own public land. Fracking is the process of injecting liquid into the ground at a high pressure to extract oil or gas.

“Given that the state is doing this, it’s probably not surprising that a city would think that’s the way to make money too,” said Save Ohio Parks Board President Cathy Cowan Becker. 

“The state is very, I guess, determined to lease out its state public lands for fracking, it’s probably not a surprise that some cities are looking at that as well.” 

Nearly 100 of those acres is under Beatty Park, which is next to Union Cemetery-Beatty Park — a site listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

“It’s got a nice tree canopy,” said Burrier, who has fond memories growing up of going to Beatty Park. 

“It’s in a hollow, and it’s got shale formations, limestone formations, and sandstone formations on each side.”

Burrier lives close to Jim Woods Park, which will also be fracked. The roughly 20-acre park is next to an elementary school.

“They’re not going to frack underneath the elementary school, but where they’re fracking borders the elementary school, which I think is ridiculous,” he said. 

Steubenville passed an ordinance in October authorizing leasing public lands for fracking. The city originally tried to bid out four parcels in December, but received no bids. 

The city tried again earlier this year with the 19 parcels and received two bids from Texas-based Pike Petroleum for $249,000 and the winning bid from Ascent Resources – Utica. 

Becker hopes other Ohio cities do not try to lease their own land for mineral rights. 

“If they see dollar signs, cities are always strapped for money and since the state is doing it, this is where their minds go for how to raise some money,” she said. 

There were approximately 2,000 incidents associated with oil and gas wells in Ohio from 2015-2023, according to FracTracker Alliance, a nonprofit that collects data on fracking pipelines. 

There were 19 incidents in Jefferson County, where Steubenville is located. 

There’s evidence that shows increased exposure to fracking impacts health, in particular children’s health, including low birth weight, preterm births, congenital anomalies, and asthma, according to Yale School of Medicine. 

Fracking will cause air pollution, noise pollution, and light pollution, Becker said. 

“It will affect the park, just like it will affect and is affecting the state parks,” she said. 

The Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission recently approved bids to frack more than 15,000 acres of Ohio’s public land — including nearly 13,000 acres in Egypt Valley Wildlife Area, which is about an hour from Steubenville. 

Becker is concerned about the massive amount of water use that comes with fracking as well as the frack waste. 

“The toxic chemicals that go in, the radioactive stuff that comes out, and that’s going to have to be injected somewhere,” she said. 

“The truck traffic, each well is literally thousands of truck trips because every bit of that water and chemicals and sand has to be trucked in, and then all of that waste, truck load by truck load, has to be taken out.”

Becker and Burrier both question if the roads in Steubenville are ready to handle the increased truck traffic. 

“The street (near my house) is just crumbling,” Burrier said. “They got to fix it every six, seven months and then it crumbles back again.” 

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This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.