ATHENS: Around 50 environmental activists hailing from multiple Ohio counties rallied at the U.S. Forest Service’s Athens District Headquarters Thursday afternoon to protest the scheduled auction of oil-and-gas leases on the Wayne National Forest on the same day.
At their “Care for the Land, Serve the People” rally, protesters from Keep Wayne Wild, the Athens County Fracking Action Network and other environmental groups urged the U.S. Forest Service “to protect the Wayne National Forest from invasive and unnecessary gas development on the day of the (federal) Bureau of Land Management’s fourth online auction of parcels in the WNF to oil-and-gas companies.”
The online auction took place in spite of the protest. According to a news release issued by the BLM on Friday, the agency’s Eastern States quarterly oil and gas lease sale resulted in competitive bids for more than 1,184 available acres in Ohio and Louisiana, bringing in around $1.015 million. Of those acres, 350 were offered in the Wayne’s Marietta Unit, all in Monroe County north of Marietta. The Marietta Unit sale netted $944,000 of the total, which according to the BLM will be split between the state of Ohio and the federal government. Much of the Ohio portion ends up going to counties under the Payment in Lieu of Taxes program that compensates counties that lose property tax revenue as a result of federal land ownership within the county. The money is supposed to be used for local schools and roads.
A big part of those payments in counties with substantial oil-and-gas drilling activities comes from revenue derived from mineral extraction, including oil and gas. Opponents decry the environmental degradation resulting from oil and gas drilling/fracking, storage and transmission on public lands, including pollution to streams and rivers, wildlife and vegetation, among other adverse effects. They also cite the negative impacts that fossil fuel extraction and burning have on climate change.
In a news release issued last week before the protest at the Wayne Headquarters southeast of Nelsonville, opponents predicted that gas from fracking wells in the Wayne National Forest “is planned to flow through Energy Transfer Partners’ Rover Pipeline, which has already been cited for numerous violations during its construction and is now being sued by the state of Ohio for its refusal to pay fines.”
Activists brought what they called a “Climate Legacy Time Capsule” to Thursday’s rally at the Wayne HQ. Attendees had been encouraged to “bring an object representing what they fear losing to climate change or a letter to future generations,” according to the release.
An organizer with one of the protesting groups, Keep Wayne Wild, Matt Meyers explained the purpose of the time capsule in the news release. “The time capsule begins its journey to a rally against the fracking of the Wayne, the first of many destinations, before its burial in late spring at a home getting forcibly fracked in Belmont County,” said Meyers, who also is involved with the Ohio Student Climate Resistance. In the release, Becca Pollard, a co-founder of Keep Wayne Wild, reinforced the point about fracking and climate change.
“In the year since federal agencies began auctioning off the Wayne for fracking, we have seen an increase in climate disasters, both globally and on this continent,” she said. “We have seen gas- and oil-related accidents threaten the health and safety of communities, natural resources and wildlife across the planet. Surely, if decision makers were unsure a year ago, they can see now that this is not in the public interest.” Supporters of the leasing public lands for drilling, including the BLM, say the auction of leases for the Wayne National Forest and elsewhere are “in keeping with the Administration’s goal of promoting America’s energy independence.” In a line right out of President Trump’s playbook, the BLM release added, “Oil and gas leases support domestic energy production, making America great through energy independence.”Energy In Depth Ohio, an oil and gas industry-funded outreach group, published a blog on Thursday, responding to the aforementioned Keep Wayne Wild led rally the same day at the Wayne National Forest’s Athens District HQ near Nelsonville.
“Today was a great example of how (the online leasing/auction process) plays out, as fringe Ohio environmental activists put out a press release to encourage attendees… to bring a time capsule to the Wayne National Forest office to ‘submit letters or objects representing what they fear will be lost to climate change’ during today’s online public auction.
