March 19th, 2025 – The Harrison County Board of Commissioners announced plans to reverse a recent resolution permitting the use of oil and gas waste “brine” for winter road treatment, according to a WTOV9 report.
Commissioner Dustin Corder noted: “We’re working on rescinding that resolution. We agree with some of the research that we’ve done and some of the people who have reached out to us it’s probably best we go with the other counties and decline those things as well.”
The decision followed outreach from environmental justice advocates, who raised concerns about the dangers of spreading the toxic, radioactive waste product.
“I was happy that someone finally read the facts and data and made a decision based on that for a change” said Dr Randi Pokladnik, a resident of Harrison County and long-time environmental justice activist, who wrote a letter to the Commissioners on March 7 in response to the resolution. Just a day earlier, Pokladnik joined about 100 Ohioans at the Ohio Statehouse for a Symposium organized by Buckeye Environmental Network, where activists and experts shared data and stories about oil and gas waste in Ohio. At the event, Pokladnik spoke to the press about how her own community has already been impacted by the gas industry.
Jenny Morgan of Westerville, a contract researcher for Buckeye Environmental Network and author of The Daily Accident Report, followed up with a letter referencing data about industry incidents from ODNR’s own records, and Buckeye Environmental Network Oil and Gas Waste organizer Anton Krieger sent a copy of a packet of educational information about the dangers of spreading oil and gas waste that he had prepared for Ohio legislators following the Statehouse Symposium.
“This isn’t BEN’s first success at the local level and it certainly won’t be the last! When elected officials find out they’re spreading high levels of radium 226 and 228 on their roads they end up making the switch to nonradioactive products,” Krieger said.
In October of last year, Guernsey County Commissioners voted unanimously to deny the use of oil and gas waste brine as a dust suppressant on local roads, as reported in The Daily Jeffersonian, after Buckeye Environmental Network and partners shared information. “Brine is a pollutant,” said Commissioner Jack Marlin. “We made up our minds that we were totally against that.”
