Safeguard Our Drinking Water
The League of Women Voters of Geauga stands with the League of Women Voters of the United States in calling for stringent controls to protect the quality of current and potential drinking-water supplies, including protection of watersheds for surface supplies and of recharge areas for groundwater.
For more than 100 years, the City of Akron has endeavored to secure a reliable source of drinking water by channeling upstream rainfall and snowmelt into a series of carefully constructed reservoirs. Rockwell Reservoir in Portage County, along with Geauga’s East Branch and LaDue reservoirs, together supply clean drinking water to nearly 300,000 Akron customers.
Developed by William LaDue, the ambitious public water system called for protection of the upstream waterways that feed into each reservoir. Accordingly, Akron purchased watershed property along the Upper Cuyahoga River and today is the largest land owner in Geauga County.
On its website, Akron boasts of protecting more than 18,000 acres of watershed property. Such mindful stewardship of ecologically critical resources protects both Akron’s drinking water as well as the groundwater that so many people in Geauga rely upon to supply their private wells.
It is against this backdrop that Akron officials propose allowing gas and oil extraction from watershed property buffering the southeast corner of LaDue Reservoir. DP Energy Auburn, LLC seeks to use a horizontal drilling process known as fracking to drill under the city-owned lands. All of the proposed drilling sites are in watersheds. One stretches under LaDue Reservoir.
We remind voters and elected officials who serve them that gas and oil producers enjoy sweeping exemptions from many environmental laws, including the Safe Drinking Water Act. They benefit further from a 2004 Ohio law that grants the state decision-making power for all mining and drilling matters. Local zoning ordinances and land use plans that might restrict a drilling operation can be ignored. Localities cannot protect constituents or even their own development. They simply have no say.
The risk to the Akron water supply is readily apparent. Of equal concern is the risk to Geauga’s groundwater, which supplies drinking water to the vast majority of our households and businesses. Any threat to our shared water supply is an urgent matter of public health to both communities.
We urge residents of Geauga and Akron to voice their concerns to their elected leaders. We ask the City of Akron to reject this short-sighted proposal and to fulfill their duty to safeguard our drinking water.
Shelly Lewis, President
League of Women Voters of Geauga
