Rader, Environmental Groups, Oil/Gas Drillers Call for State Action on Injection Drilling Waste Brine

Environmental activists, conventional oil and gas producers and at least one member of the Ohio House called on the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) on Tuesday to launch a long-term investigation into the effects of underground migration of waste brine from injection oil and gas wells in Southeast Ohio into conventional oil and gas wells as well as the region’s water supply.

The Buckeye Environmental Network (BEN) released a report earlier this month detailing the impacts on ground wells in Washington County following the beginning of injection well operations in the county by Redbird Development LLC in 2018.

The report, available HERE, explains that, following the beginning of injection drilling in Washington County, conventional vertical oil and gas wells started to become contaminated with the injection wells’ waste brine, increasing the pressure in some conventional wells to unsafe levels and causing other conventional wells to stop producing altogether.

Wilson Energy in Marietta at one point had 171 conventional oil and gas wells operating in the area.

"Today, about 50 of [the wells] don't work,” Wilson Energy owner Bob Wilson said on Tuesday. “I started losing wells, three or four a week. I called ODNR and told them I believe injection water was infiltrating my wells ….They told me that wasn't possible. [And they hung up.] They don’t want to talk about it.”

"They never paid me for the damage. It's business as usual,” Wilson continued. “They keep permitting more wells, and it's still happening. I lost two to three wells in the last couple of weeks."

The BEN report says former Rep. Jay Edwards facilitated a meeting between concerned conventional well owners in the area and the ODNR Division of Oil and Gas Resource Management (DOGRM) in 2019. An ensuing investigation commissioned by DOGRM concluded that brine waste from injection wells was migrating into conventional wells over five miles away.

In response, Redbird modified their operation in the area in 2020 and began injection drilling into a deeper geologic formation.

As detailed in the BEN report, Wilson’s three wells closest to the Redbird site have continued to climb in pressure, increasingly so over the past six to eight months.

"I'm not anti oil and gas,” said Wilson. “I've worked in this industry for 51 years. It's my business. It's all I've ever done. I'm not trying to shut the industry down. But I do think horizontal drillers ought to be responsible for their own waste."

Rep. Tristan Rader (D-Lakewood), who serves on the House Natural Resources Committee, was also present at Tuesday’s event to bring attention to the issue.

"It boggles my mind that we're not listening to the voices of the people who are actually experiencing these problems," Rader said. "It's either willful ignorance or complete incompetence at the state level."

A separate environmental group from the Marietta area, Washington County for Safe Drinking Water, traveled to the Statehouse in March to deliver hundreds of petitions and nine public resolutions to Gov. Mike DeWine documenting concerns about safe drinking water in Southeast Ohio. (See The Hannah Report, 3/5/26.)

BEN organizer Bev Reed told Hannah News that the city of Marietta submitted similar requests to Gov. Mike DeWine and the Legislature in October 2025 seeking a moratorium on injection drilling in several areas of Washington County, which Reed said the Statehouse has not acknowledged whatsoever.

Reed added that in addition to Rader, Rep. Sean Brennan (R-Parma) has also been working with her organization, and both legislators are sensitive to the local issues, even meeting with ODNR to discuss the situation.

"Clearly, we’re at the precipice of an emergency,” said Rader. “Economies are being shut down because of these wells, aquifers are being threatened .… It's been too long that we've made choices that favor Wall Street and billionaires over our local businesses."

Reed said a recent leak involving a Redbird drill “should have been a wake-up call … Instead, Ohio continues permitting injection wells while unanswered questions about brine migration remain. Until the state commits to a long-term investigation and fully understands the threat to our aquifers and drinking water, it is gambling with the future of Southeastern Ohio."

Following their event with Rader on Tuesday, BEN is calling for state action to accomplish the following:

• Immediately suspend injection operations in the area and monitor for changes after injection has ceased.
• Launch a long-term, systemic ODNR investigation into brine waste migration across Southeastern Ohio, not just at Redbird.
• Apply consistent pressure monitoring and reporting standards to every well with a history of migration concerns.
• Test private water wells within at least five miles of any injection well suspected of migration in a long-term, systemic way.

Rader told Hannah News on Wednesday that he’s calling on ODNR to not just investigate injection well companies, but to actively hold them responsible and accountable for both the economic and environmental damage they are clearly creating in the areas where they operate.

“We saw firsthand how many production wells near injection sites are now flooded and useless because of reckless injection practices and the state's failure to regulate,” said Rader. “Some in Columbus say these injection wells are not leaking. I would love to see evidence that this brine waste remains within the target geographic formations and does not threaten local water supplies.”

Rader called the situation a clear case where the lived experience of people in a very rural part of Ohio is not being taken seriously by politicians and regulators in Columbus. He called for action to be taken immediately before the clean-up from what is rapidly becoming an environmental disaster will cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.