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Northeast Ohio faction fights uphill battle over oil and gas well drilling laws

A faction of Northeast Ohio residents and lawmakers fighting for stricter regulations on oil and gas well drilling are getting outmuscled in the Ohio Senate and are turning their attention to the House.

The state's powerful oil and gas industry, Gov. Ted Strickland's administration and lawmakers from outside greater Cleveland have teamed up to produce a set of rules its critics say don't do enough to protect homeowners living near wells.

The legislation, known as Senate Bill 165 and sponsored by New Richmond Republican Sen. Tom Niehaus, revises Ohio's oil and gas drilling laws. It was penned by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources with input from the state's oil and gas industry.

It passed the Senate's Environment and Natural Resources Committee Wednesday by a 7-2 vote. The only votes against the legislation in committee were cast by Sen. Tim Grendell, a Chesterland Republican and Sen. Dale Miller, a Cleveland Democrat.

The full Senate is expected to vote on the bill this week and it is expected to pass by a wide margin. Then, the measure will move to the House of Representatives where it's unclear how it will do.

A group of Cleveland-area residents, known as the Northeast Ohio Gas Accountability Project (NEOGAP), have pushed for stronger protections for homeowners and more local control. Many members of NEOGAP got involved because of issues with wells drilled near their homes.

The most dangerous incident happened in 2007. A Bainbridge Township house exploded when an underground pocket of methane was punctured by drilling being done by Ohio Valley Energy. Gas seeped into more than a dozen water wells and has left homeowners there with no permanent water supply.

The legislation being moved keeps the responsibility for enforcing oil and gas regulations in the hands of ODNR officials. It requires well drillers to have $5 million insurance in case of an accident -- a five-fold increase over current law -- and establishes a setback of 150 feet as the distance that oil and gas wells must be from residential homes. The measure also places limits on mandatory pooling -- a practice that allows oil and gas companies to drill on a 20-acre plot if most of the affected landowners agree, even if some object to the idea.

That's a far cry from what NEOGAP hopes to extract from Columbus. The group backed a dueling bill that includes a 1,000 foot setback for residential homes, requires air monitoring and bans open waste pits within 2,500 feet of water. The bill also includes an outright ban on mandatory pooling.

The proposal hasn't drawn much interest from other lawmakers.

Grendell, who is the sponsor of the NEOGAP bill, said lawmakers outside of Northeast Ohio don't have oil and gas wells in residential neighborhoods in their districts and haven't shown much interest in taking on the oil and gas industry.

"Nobody here seems to want to look beyond what they can get away with for the oil and gas industry," Grendell said. "We maybe have moved it two steps, but we should have moved it six or seven steps."

Niehaus, whose district lies along the Kentucky border, disagrees. He said some of the group's objections have been incorporated into the bill such as increasing the setback distance from 100 to 150 feet.

"We've addressed a number of their concerns," he said. "We have heard the concerns of those residents clearly."

Niehaus said many of the provisions that the residents want simply aren't realistic. The 1,000 foot setback, for example, would be a "de facto ban on drilling" in residential neighborhoods. He cited the increased insurance requirements and limits on mandatory pooling as a pair of provisions that should reassure residents that safeguards are increasing in the bill.

Ken Messinger-Rapport, the law director for NEOGAP, said the fundamental issue is that local control needs to be restored to the process instead of leaving the approval of oil and gas wells in the hands of ODNR officials. Legislation sponsored by Niehaus in 2004 shifted the enforcement of oil and gas drilling regulations from local control to ODNR.

"People want to have a say about oil and gas wells, which is an industrial activity, going into their residential neighborhoods," Messinger-Rapport said.

With the full Senate expected to pass the measure in a floor vote next week, NEOGAP is turning their lobbying efforts to House Speaker Armond Budish, a Beachwood Democrat, as well as Gov. Ted Strickland's office.

But Messinger-Rapport said it's been tough to get Budish's ear on the issue.

"Honestly, we don't know where we stand with Speaker Budish," he said.

Keary McCarthy, a Budish spokesman, didn't give much insight this week on exactly where his boss stands on this hot-button issue.

"He wants to take the issue seriously and see that it gets full and thorough hearings in the House," he said.