Ohio Hoping To Learn From Pennsylvania's Fracking Mistakes

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

September 12, 2011 | 2:54 PM

Our neighbor to the west, Ohio, is ramping up hydraulic fracturing. As the Buckeye State figures out its rules and regulations, its leaders are viewing Pennsylvania as a model. That’s not necessarily flattering, according to this Plain Dealer article.

Environmental concerns related to horizontal fracking have cropped up in different states, particularly in Pennsylvania, where several groups of residents are suing, claming their water wells were contaminated by the process.
In one instance, Pennsylvania environmental regulators have sided with residents, ordering one energy company to provide potable water and gas mitigation to citizens in Dimock whose wells were damaged by drilling.
Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said Ohio can learn from the mistakes in regulation made in Pennsylvania and other states.
“We wouldn’t move forward if we didn’t think this could be done safely and responsibly,” he said. “We have the benefit of getting right what others have gotten wrong.”