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For
Immediate Release October
22, 2012
Concerned
Citizens Gather at Ohio’s First Fracked Park
Coalition to
Protect Ohio’s Parks (CPOP)
Contacts:
John Makley, Mohican Advocates,
419-709-6461, john@mohicanadvocates.org
Nathan
Johnson, Buckeye Forest Council, 614-949-6622, nathan@buckeyeforestcouncil.org
(Hartville,
Ohio) – On Sunday, more than 50 concerned citizens converged at Quail Hollow
State Park to protest the leasing and fracking of the park through a
controversial legal maneuver known as “unitization.” The event, which included
a hike and discussion forum, was led by the green groups Buckeye Forest
Council, Ohio Environmental Council, the Sierra Club of Ohio, and Mohican
Advocates.
Unitization
is a decades-old, almost never-used
Ohio law that allows oil and gas companies to force unwilling property owners
to surrender their land to drilling and fracking. “The Quail Hollow unitization
essentially forced every citizen in Ohio to surrender their land,” said John
Makley of Mohican Advocates.
“The
public had no say in the process,” said Melanie Houston, Director of Environmental
Policy & Environmental Health for the Ohio Environmental Council. The state
legislature opened Ohio’s parks to fracking in the summer of 2011, provided
that any park land at issue go through public comment and a formal review and
nomination process. However,
Chesapeake’s special unitization order allowed the company to avoid the public
input and review process. “The unitization of Quail Hollow shut out the public
from the opportunity to have full knowledge of and comment on this use of their
publicly-owned resource,” Houston stated.
“Ohio’s
unitization law was passed decades ago to resolve disputes between oil and gas
companies and was not intended to be a back door into the public’s parks,” said
Nathan Johnson, Staff Attorney for the Buckeye Forest Council. Until the shale
rush hit, the law was largely forgotten and almost never used. “The oil and gas
industry has rediscovered unitization as a tool to take what it wants from an
unwilling public,” added Johnson.
“Shockingly,
the only legal rationale for unitization is more money for the oil and gas
industry,” said Johnson. Oil and gas companies can legally force unitization if
doing so is deemed “reasonably necessary” to “substantially” increase their
profits.
The Ohio Department of Natural
Resources (ODNR) issued a unitization order on July 10th of this
year that enabled Chesapeake Energy to force-pool a 4-acre portion of the park
along with land held by 23 property owners who refused to sign a lease with the
company.
“The
idea that Chesapeake needed Quail Hollow to substantially increase its profits
is not acceptable – the 4 unitized acres of the park are at the extreme
southeastern-most tip of a 959-acre drilling unit,” said Loraine McCosker, Co-Chair of the Forests and Public Lands
Committee of the Ohio Sierra Club. “ODNR’s
irrational decision makes the agency partly responsible for this betrayal of
the public trust,” added McCosker.
“Our
walk today in the woods of Quail Hollow State Park showed us the beauty that
inspired the idea of setting aside land to serve as reservoirs of Ohio's
natural heritage for all Ohioans to enjoy,” said John Makley of Mohican
Advocates. “The idea of exploiting that land for short-term gain serves only to
fill the pockets of the few at the expense of the many for generations to
come,” added Makley.
The Coalition to Protect Ohio's
Parks (CPOP) envisions an Ohio where our state parks and public forests are
forever kept as places free from industrial development so that they may
continue to serve as reservoirs of biodiversity, natural beauty, and
recreational opportunities.
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