LAKE TWP.: An Ohio company has won state approval to drill for natural gas near a closed Superfund site.The decision angers a local environmental activist.On Oct. 31, Ohio Valley Energy of Austintown got the go-ahead from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to drill on 40.15 acres of leased land 710 feet west of the old Industrial Excess Landfill, said Tom Tugend of the state’s Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management.The former dump at 12646 Cleveland Ave. NW took in toxic waste from Akron-area rubber companies from 1966 to 1980.Ohio Valley Energy intends to drill a vertical shaft about 5,000 feet deep, then a horizontal shaft to the south and slightly east, where it will use hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to reach the natural gas in the Clinton sandstone formation, Tugend said.Under state law, the company needed at least 40 acres to be able to drill. There is no appeal process for the permit, he said.Ohio Valley Energy is confident the site can be developed safely, spokesman Ben Funderburg said.He said drilling probably will begin early next year.The drilling site is 699 feet west of Cleveland Avenue and the well itself won’t pass under the dump.Tugend said his agency is “fully aware of IEL” and understands local concerns, “but we don’t believe that this well will be a problem.”The Natural Resources Department approved drilling after the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency said it had no concerns about the proximity of the well to the Superfund site, he said.Not everyone shares that optimism.Drilling near the landfill is “sheer insanity ... and just boggles the mind,” said Chris Borello, a longtime leader of the group Concerned Citizens of Lake Township and a fracking opponent in Stark County.The site is within the flow pattern of the contaminated aquifer that lies under the 30-acre dump, she said, and potentially explosive methane gas from the landfill could pose an additional threat.Borello called state approval “very disturbing” with the long history of the site and the fact that contamination was never cleaned up.Contamination has been allowed to reduce naturally over time.Local residents are “kind of in a state of shock ... and feel that state agencies have let them down,” Borello said.Tugend conferred in mid-
October with EPA staffer Larry Antonelli, who has been involved in the Superfund site for years, EPA spokesman Mike Settles said. Antonelli told Tugend his agency had “no objections” to the drilling and the EPA doesn’t expect the landfill “to influence or impact the drilling,” Settles said.Under state law, the EPA could have blocked drilling within 300 feet of buried waste, but the distance is far greater than that, he said.The EPA acknowledges contamination remains in the shallow aquifer 25 to 40 feet under the old dump, but there is no evidence of that contamination extending to the west toward the drilling site, Settles said.The concrete-and-steel casing required in the new well will separate the aquifer from the drilling operations, Tugend said.Methane levels at the dump have been dropping and a collection-and-incineration system at the site has been shut down since 2005, he said.Settles said there appears to be “very little risk” from methane at the old dump.Wells have been drilled to the north, south and east of the dump and there has been no evidence of migrating methane being a problem, Tugend said.The EPA felt it had “no grounds to object to the siting of this well,” Settles said.Borello said she is troubled that Ohio Valley Energy was involved in an incident in December 2007 in Geauga County. A casing failure at a well resulted in methane gas migrating through aquifers and into water wells.One house exploded and 19 others were evacuated in Bainbridge Township.Funderburg said the situation in Geauga County was caused by a construction error and was a totally different circumstance.Ohio Valley Energy, founded in 1986, has developed more than 1,000 wells, according to the company’s website. It owns and operates 250 and owns an interest in an additional 350 in Ohio and Pennsylvania.The U.S. EPA maintains oversight of the Industrial Excess Landfill, a one-time sand-and-gravel pit, and the groundwater. The landfill, added to the federal Superfund site in 1984, was frequently in the headlines in the late 1980s and early 1990s.In 2005, Goodyear, Bridgestone-Firestone, GenCorp and B.F. Goodrich, the companies held liable for the pollution, agreed to implement the final $7 million site plan. They would repay $17.9 million to the federal government and $875,000 to Ohio.The dump took in 780,000 tons of solid waste and an estimated 1 million gallons of liquids.Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3745 or bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com.