Fracking in Morrow County not likely

By Randa Wagner -

Mor­row County will not likely see a nat­ural gas or oil boom like the one that occurred in the county in the 1960s.

At the August 15 com­mis­sion­ers meet­ing, Olen Jack­son said he and Tom Harden met with [some­one in the indus­try] and said, “I think we’ve been assured now that there will be no deep well (hor­i­zon­tal) frack­ing in Mor­row County. So if any­one was antic­i­pat­ing a large source of rev­enue there like some of the coun­ties have expe­ri­enced, it’s not going to happen.”

“The Chesa­peake (Energy) that bought up all the land in the east­ern coun­ties that peo­ple antic­i­pated [for] Utica shale drilling; they’re not going to be doing that in Mor­row County,” added Tom Whis­ton, “All the geol­ogy shows there’s not enough there to jus­tify it.”

So what hap­pens to all the peo­ple who signed on with a landown­ers association?

“The peo­ple who have signed agree­ments… some­times they’re as good as the oil they find — noth­ing,” Whis­ton said. “The promise and allure of big money is exactly that — a promise. As with all things I would instruct peo­ple to either con­sult an attor­ney or to pru­dently think before they choose to do things.”

“They did three test wells: one in Rich­land, one in Ash­land and one in Knox County to see how far west they were going to come,” Harden reported. “All three of those wells were dry.”

In an arti­cle posted on Ohio.com, Devon Energy Corp. of Okla­homa said they were dis­ap­pointed by ini­tial drilling results in Med­ina and Ash­land coun­ties. The arti­cle cited the two wells are far­ther west than most wells being drilled in Ohio’s Utica shale and are on the north­west edge of its lease holdings.

“Talk to the geol­o­gists and they’ll tell you what the story is,” Whis­ton said. “Any­thing I’ve heard from them indi­cates the notion that Mor­row County is going to have a big wind­fall from Utica shale — it’s not to going to happen.”

“The recorder’s office has had no activ­ity from these things — no leases have been filed,” said Harden.

In a tele­phone inter­view Fri­day, an engi­neer with a Texas firm explained the most rel­e­vant well to Mor­row County is the Ash­land well, because of the way their geo­log­i­cal base is formed and the depth of the rock is closer to the depth in Mor­row County.

“There’s a term ‘on strike’ and that just means we’re more par­al­lel to them and Knox (County) down dip, which puts the Utica deeper in Knox County,” he said. “The way the basin is formed on the north­west­ern fringe, we’re kind of par­al­lel to Ash­land and Med­ina, and Knox is def­i­nitely deeper.”

“They’re drilling a well in Utica, which is prob­a­bly the clos­est one to us,” Whis­ton. “There’s one in Lick­ing County that’s being drilled.

Whis­ton related a story that appeared in the Colum­bus Dis­patch about an ODNR rep­re­sen­ta­tive chang­ing a map to expanded (the for­ma­tion) over into Mar­ion County (with­out autho­riza­tion) and, I think, down into Del­ware County, and he lost his job over. “It’s not an exact sci­ence but his­tory shows that some peo­ple make an awful lot of money and other peo­ple lose all they have.”

Harden said he has been fol­low­ing the activ­ity in east­ern Ohio and they are gain­ing finan­cially from it. They are build­ing a cou­ple of oil pro­cess­ing plants and new houses, and brought in peo­ple from all over the U.S. and dif­fer­ent types of work­ers. There’s a short­age of truck dri­vers. All the motels are full over there and the stores and gas sta­tions are thriv­ing in Car­roll, Tus­carawas and Mahon­ing coun­ties and east­ern Ohio.

A meet­ing of the Landowner’s Asso­ci­a­tion is sched­uled for Sep­tem­ber 20 at 7 p.m. at the Card­ing­ton High School.

In other business”

The fol­low­ing pay-ins were made to Mary M. Holtrey, Mor­row County Auditor:

Pay­ments from: Ket­ter­man res­i­dents for sewer main­te­nance and oper­a­tions por­tion $89.92; Ketterman-City of Galion por­tion $408.64; Johnsville res­i­dents for sewer debt reserve por­tion $17.50; Johnsville sewer main­te­nance and oper­a­tions por­tion $200.00; Johnsville sewer debt retire­ment por­tion $117.50; Edi­son Vil­lage for radio con­tract (January-June 2012) $540.00; Reim­burse­ment from State of Ohio for por­tion of pub­lic defender expenses $7,147.35.

Pay­ment was sat­is­fied on $6,552.00 promis­sory note from Mor­row County’s Com­mu­nity Hous­ing Improve­ment Pro­gram on a mort­gage on a Town­ship Road 187 prop­erty through refi­nanc­ing with U.S. Bank N.A.

Marengo Fab­ri­cated Steel is plan­ning an expan­sion and cre­ation of fif­teen full time jobs; and an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of his­toric prop­er­ties must include a pre­lim­i­nary archae­o­log­i­cal sur­vey, so the com­mis­sion­ers autho­rized Patri­cia Davies, Direc­tor of Oper­a­tions, to adver­tise for Pro­fes­sional Ser­vices for Archae­ol­ogy Con­sul­tant. The Board of Mor­row County Com­mis­sion­ers will receive RFQ’s on August 29, 2012, until 4:00 p.m., which will be held for review by Patri­cia Davies.

The Attor­ney Gen­eral for the State of Ohio is pro­vid­ing finan­cial assis­tance to local gov­ern­ments for the pur­pose of address­ing vacant and aban­doned homes demo­li­tion needs and Mor­row County has been awarded the Mov­ing Ohio For­ward Demo Grant as lead entity.

The Mov­ing Ohio For­ward Demo guide­lines require pro­cure­ment of pro­fes­sional ser­vices, so the com­mis­sion­ers autho­rized Patri­cia Davies, Direc­tor of Oper­a­tions, to adver­tise notice for a Pro­fes­sional Licenses Sur­veyor and Risk Assess­ment and Asbestos Assess­ment Con­trac­tor. The Board of Mor­row County Com­mis­sion­ers will receive RFQ’s on August 29, 2012, until 4:00 p.m., which will be held for review by Patri­cia Davies.

At the request of Patri­cia Davies, a motion was approved to trans­fer from CDBG Pub­lic Rehab Sheriff’s Office to Street Improve­ments Kenny Lane in the amount of $30,200.00. This was grant money ear­marked for paving the sheriff’s depart­ment park­ing lot and the bal­ance of what was left over had to be used.

At the request of Patri­cia Davies, Direc­tor of Oper­a­tions, $111,000.00 was appro­pri­ated from the unap­pro­pri­ated cer­ti­fied monies for the Devel­op­ment Office:Professional Ser­vices Engi­neer­ing for the SR 95/I-71 sewer project.

At the request of Don Wake, Direc­tor of Job & Fam­ily Ser­vices, the fol­low­ing monies were appro­pri­ated from the unap­pro­pri­ated cer­ti­fied monies to the fol­low­ing new account clas­si­fi­ca­tions for MCTC: Prin­ci­pal $2,000.00, Inter­est $1,500.00, Lubri­cants $1,500.00, Tires/Tubes $1,500.00, Vehi­cle Mate­ri­als & Sup­plies $4,000.00, Con­tract Maint. Ser­vices $7,529.56, Mobil­ity Util­i­ties & Phones $1,000.00, Admin Salaries & Wages $7,387.20, Admin PERS $1,034.21, Admin Medicare $147.11, Admin Uni­forms $200.00, Dis­patcher Salaries & Wages $12,214.80, Dis­patcher PERS $1,710.07, Dis­patcher Medicare $ 177.11, Dis­patcher Uni­forms $ 200.00, Dis­patcher Insur­ance $ 1,843.20, Mechanic Salaries & Wages $ 9,388.80, Mechanic PERS $ 1,314.43, Mechanic Medicare $ 136.14, Mechanic Uni­forms $ 450.00, Mechanic Insur­ance $ 1,843.20, Other Salaries & Wages $ 3,000.00, Other PERS $ 420.00, Other Medicare $ 43.50, Other Uni­forms $ 200.00; For a total of $60,739.33.

At the request of Don Wake, Direc­tor Job & Fam­ily Ser­vices, the fol­low­ing trans­fer of funds for Child Sup­port Enforce­ment Agency was approved: From CSEA Pur­chases Ser­vices to CSEA unem­ploy­ment com­pen­sa­tion $8,000.00.

The com­mis­sion­ers approved a request from Pat Davies to adver­tise for bid­ders for the Kenny Lane paving project, with bids to open Sept. 10 at 10 a.m.

Audi­tor Mary Holtrey said the bud­get com­mis­sion (Charles How­land, Dan Green and Mary Holtrey) met and are cer­ti­fy­ing $200,000 extra dol­lars and are hop­ing for a car­ry­over. Sales tax came in and Mor­row County is 7.7% over last year. She said she knows the board of elec­tions needs money and the judges want money but she was sug­gest­ing the com­mis­sion­ers apply the sum to the end of year carryover.

“We have to run Jan­u­ary, Feb­ru­ary and part of March on car­ry­over,” Holtrey said. “I’d like to have at least $500,000 [to carry over].”

“Any­thing less than $500,000 just doesn’t work,” Olen Jack­son said. “We went through that a cou­ple of years ago and we had to bor­row in antic­i­pa­tion of col­lec­tion – that’s not a good state.”

“We appre­ci­ate the bud­get com­mis­sion and the con­ser­v­a­tive fig­ures they give us,” Tom Harden said. “If they give us high fig­ures and we don’t meet that cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, we’re in deep trouble.”

Tom Whis­ton said the com­mis­sion­ers met the day before with the judges and dis­cussed the cour­t­house work and final­iz­ing the courtroom.

“They have made great strides in try­ing to min­i­mize the expenses they have and work­ing with us in coor­di­nat­ing the work,” he said. “We’ll con­tinue to work towards that completion.”

Ref­er­enc­ing efforts to cut costs, Holtrey said she noticed that, for instance, when an employee left the treasurer’s office, they didn’t replace them; the Auditor’s office has gone from eight to five employ­ees; but the judges have been hiring.

“They have got­ten a cou­ple of peo­ple through grants,” Whis­ton explained.

“But I’ve noticed they keep [the employee] after the grants run out,” Holtrey said.

“Over­all, though, their bud­get was reduced,” Whis­ton responded. “The requests they’ve made of us is reduced sig­nif­i­cantly from where it was as well as the cost asso­ci­ated with fur­nish­ing the court­room. Also the court record­ing sys­tem, which we are man­dated to sup­ply, has gone from about $75,000 to $43,000.”

Whis­ton said they will try to main­tain the carry over because, with their pro­jec­tions of next year, ‘it’s not going to get any bet­ter.’ The com­mis­sion­ers will also be look­ing at one of their biggest costs — they esti­mate they will have about a mil­lion dol­lars in insurance.

“We’ll be look­ing at mak­ing some mod­i­fi­ca­tions to allow peo­ple more flex­i­bil­ity in their health care.”

They will also be look­ing at mod­i­fy­ing their smok­ing policy.

Tom Harden announced the State Route 61 bridge over I-71 was now open in both direc­tions and all ramps were open as well. Seed­ing and edge work was con­tin­u­ing, but the road is now open for use. The widen­ing work on I-71 in the south­bound lane continues.

The sewer project is in its sec­ond phase at SR 95 and I-71 and the money to pay the engi­neer­ing firm is through bor­row­ing from another fund. How is that money recouped?

“I think the hope is once that project is com­pleted, and if we get the fund­ing, it will get paid back through either user fees or from the peo­ple that are actu­ally using the sys­tem,” Whis­ton said.

“There are two pri­vate sys­tems already out there,” said Tom Harden. “But they aren’t capa­ble of expand­ing to han­dle new indus­try. This is part of devel­op­ment to draw new indus­try to that inter­change by putting a sewer sys­tem in.”

A res­o­lu­tion to sell unused county prop­erty was tabled.

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Aug 22 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.