Part of the Series
Gas Rush: Fracking in Depth
Tish O’Dell, co-founder of Mothers Against Drilling in Our Neighborhoods. (Photo: Andrew Spear)Truthout combats corporatization by bringing you trustworthy news: click here to join the effort.
The oil and gas boom is known for turning rural neighborhoods upside down as massive drilling rigs arrive, bringing new wealth, industrial development, environmental problems and media controversy with them. Broadview Heights, Ohio, however, isn’t the typical farming community that is so often associated with oil and gas drilling.
Nestled in the southern end of Cleveland’s considerable sprawl, much of Broadview Heights is distinctly suburban, especially Michelle Aini’s neighborhood. Aini lives in bright development with trees so small that they can only be a decade or so old. The relatively new houses on her block are all tall, boxy, strikingly similar and well kept, carrying the trademarks the upper-middle class’s Midwestern American dream.
About 79 gas wells have been drilled in Broadview Heights since 2005, including one well about 600 feet from Aini’s house. Last year a gas leak at the well had Michelle fearing for the safety of her family. Trees hide the well from view.
“The trees are our saving grace right now,” Aini explains in her driveway after sending her six-year-old son off with a babysitter. When the well was fracked and drill rig was in the air, she would later explain, she felt like she was “living in Texas.”
In 2004, the Ohio legislature took the right of local municipalities to regulate the permitting, spacing and location of oil and gas wells. As a result, the gas rush has brought small, conventional fracking operations and wells into neighborhoods.
Under Ohio law at the time the well near her home was drilling, only those living within 500 feet of a well had to be notified about the drilling, Aini said. Her neighbor received a notification letter last summer, but her the Aini and her husband did not.
The gas wells have Aini and her ally Tish O’Dell up in arms. Together they founded the group Mothers Against Drilling in Our Neighborhoods. The two women are working to put a “homeowners bill of rights” on the local ballot and put a stop to future drilling.
A drilling company that sells a purified brine solution produced during drilling as a road deicer has sued Aini and O’Dell for defamation after the woman raised concerns that toxic fracking fluid was being poured on local roads.
The gas wells have caused conflict between neighbors, including in Aini’s neck of the woods, where several other families co-own the well slowly churning out oil and gas from below the properties behind Aini’s home.
Brian Dunlap, a co-owner of the well behind Aini’s house, is a local firefighter who is happy to be getting free gas and some extra cash from the well. He said he does not feel the well is a threat to his family, and just like Aini was never notified or asked if she wanted to live near a gas well, no one ever asked his family if they wanted to see the subdivision the Aini’s live in go up nearby.
“Its only controversial for people [who] are not getting the royalties,” Dunlap said. “I have never met a person getting royalties who has a problem with anything.”
Dunlap said he has also been approached by a big fracking firm about drilling a much unconventional and much more lucrative well near or on his family’s rural farmland in another area, but has not signed a lease because he wants assurance that the neighborhoods water wells will not be compromised.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.