I attended the Marietta City Council meeting on July 29. The chamber was full and overflowing with concerned citizens. The topic of the meeting was the intended drilling of several brine injection wells within a couple of miles of the city’s aquifers.

The proponents Deep Rock was represented by a lawyer, a note taker and several “experts.” They were all telling how safe the wells would be. The wells would be deep in solid rock with several casings and cement. They claimed that there would be zero chance of the brine containing over 100 chemicals, some are radioactive, finding its way back up and into the several aquifers in the area that supplies water to the city of Marietta and surrounding communities.

An opinion piece in the Saturday paper claimed that gravity alone would prevent the brine from finding its way up and into the aquifer level. I have news for the writer of that article. The brine is pumped into the wells under several thousand pounds. Cracks in the rock formation and possible seismic activity means that the pressure and the least path of resistance trumps gravity every time.

Several oil well owners were there because the brine has already migrated to some of their wells forcing them by law to shut them down and cap them. There is no profit in a capped well. If those wells were contaminated, what about the hundreds of old abandoned wells that were drilled in the 1930s oil boom in the area? Regulations were not there at the time and when a well quit producing they would run a log down the hole to cap it. Locations of these old wells are not all mapped out and their locations are not known.

Gas from these wells found its way up through the gravel and sand soil that is along the river. It collected under the floors of industrial buildings and rooms inside those buildings smelled of rotten eggs. Cracks in floors could be lit and would continue to burn until it was put out. I know this to be true because I was assigned the job of finding a solution to the problem.

Think about it. If the brine has already found its way into producing wells, what would stop it from finding an abandoned well maybe without a casing, coming up to the sand and gravel soil and going straight into our aquifer supplying water to our city. That is right, nothing!

It is true for now that there has been no contamination of aquifers yet. The proposed injection well location is along the river, the soil is sand and gravel and many abandoned wells are all along this stretch of road passing the proposed well site. And just a few miles from the city’s water source.

The brine is radioactive; it never goes away. Once contaminated the city can never use the aquifer again.

Put all this aside. They are also planning on shipping brine in by rail. Has anyone ever heard of East Palestine, Ohio? They are planning to bring it in by barge as well. Barges never sink! Hundreds of brine trucks pass through the city to the brine unloading station near Mile Run. Those trucks are an accident waiting to happen and last, what happens if there is a failure at that storage facility, it is over top of the aquifer. The danger may be from above.

The brine is being shipped to our area from eastern Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Why don’t they dispose of it near their homes?

The risk to our citizens far outweighs the millions of dollars to be made by the greedy few.

James R. Reed

Lowell