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Dan McKenzie
Injection wells have been a hot topic in Marietta lately. Fear-mongering, misinformation, and straight-up lies have been vomited by environmental activist groups such as Earthjustice and Buckeye Environmental Network (BEN). They want you to believe that they are protecting the water, but deep down, they know that injection wells are too far away from drinking water supplies to pose any risk of contamination. The truth is, these environmental activists despise the mining industry, and they see injection wells as an opportunity to take down the whole operation.
They have targeted the least understood and least glamorous aspect of the mining industry, like predators hunting in packs and waiting for the weakest deer to stray from the herd. They have pounced on injection well companies to attempt to fracture the whole industry. They are spouting lies to spread fear, not facts.
A coalition of environmental groups, including BEN, recently attempted -- and failed -- to do the same in Washington County. They set their sights on the Energy Chairman of the Ohio Senate, falsely accusing him of using his position to advance personal interests, all the while ignoring the fact that his expertise in the industry helps the Ohio Senate regulate it properly and keep Ohio progressing.
So who is Earthjustice? They call themselves the nation's leading environmental law organization. They're not some small group of activists either. According to their own financials, they have $315 million in total assets. In 2025 alone, they received over $145 million in contributions. They are a big machine -- a big machine with exorbitant resources. My favorite part is that they posture themselves as being transparent because they display their financial statements, even though ... they're required to.
So why is this massive activist organization getting its nose into a couple of injection wells in Marietta? Because one of the fundamentals of environmental activism is opposing mining. And they're willing to bend the truth to advance their agenda.
Want to know about these environmental warriors' recent escapades? Well, they love to gloat about slowing the progress of the Trump administration by suing it repeatedly. In June 2025, Earthjustice filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration and the U.S. EPA over coal-fired power plants. They also sued the administration for terminating wasteful $3 billion EPA grant programs designed for environmental justice. And they filed a major lawsuit with other environmental groups against the administration's planned offshore oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico. During Trump's first term, Earthjustice filed well over 200 environmental lawsuits against the administration. Their only goal is to disrupt our primary industries.
So what about the Buckeye Environmental Network? Who is this group enjoying the piggyback from Earthjustice? BEN is an Ohio-based environmental activism group. On their website, they claim to mobilize activists with tools and support. At least they aren't hiding the fact that they are activists. Their website also says, "We foster public pressure on government and corporations." So, in other words, "when we don't get our way, we get noisy." BEN's mission is to find people who will get angry about something they haven't researched and can be so easily riled up to berate council members in the name of environmental justice. All while ignoring the facts that these wells have never failed in Ohio and are two miles away from drinking water. And two miles might as well be 100 miles; it has the same inability to impact the drinking water supply.
Recently, at the Marietta City Council, these activists and their goons have hijacked meetings to raise the tempo. The loud minority has an inability for discourse and nuance. It is all about screaming and dominating. Because that's all they can do. Their "facts" are non-scientific. Their demands aren't grounded in reality. And their lawsuit is baseless. All they have left is screaming, and I can tell you they're good at that. Just don't try to make any logic out of it, because you won't find it.
Earthjustice and BEN don't want justice; they want anarchy. They want to stop progress. They want to halt the economy and jobs. They want hard-working Americans to bow to their unrealistic and uninformed demands. Marietta locals can't let these environmentalists cripple the mining industry and permanently damage the economy. Noisy activists don't get to make change here. Sound logic and research do.
Dan McKenzie is research director for Accountability Project Institute.