Family Farmers Sponsor Public Meeting on Fracking in NE Ohio

COLEBROOK – Leadership of the Ashtabula, Geauga and Lake Counties Farmers Union and the Trumbull County Farmers Union will hold an information sharing meeting tonight on the subject What Fracking Will Mean to Us.

The meeting will be held at the Colebrook Community Center at the corner of SR 322 and SR 46 in Ashtabula County from 7 to 9 p.m. There will be a question and answer period. The event is free and open to the public.

Fracking is short for hydraulic fracturing – a drilling method employed to extract natural gas or oil from wells in hard rock strata thousands of feet below the ground. Fracking will be used during the drilling of the Marcellus and Utica shales in Eastern Ohio for natural gas extraction.

Joe Logan, Trumbull County Farmers Union president and director of agricultural issues for the Ohio Environmental Council will discuss possible impacts of fracking on agriculture and natural resources with a focus on fresh water supplies.

Vanessa Pesec, president of the Network for Oil and Gas Accountability and Protection (NEOGAP), will present a detailed lecture on what fracking will mean to us as individuals, landholders and communities. Pesec will also talk about what landholders should look for in a fair lease should they decide to lease their mineral rights.