Eight of the 10 arrested protestors at the Greenhunter Water waste storage site in Washington County last month were sentenced at the Marietta Municipal Court Tuesday.
The eight protestors, including Patrick Perry and Seth Schlotterbeck of Pomeroy Road in Athens, pleaded no contest to charges of criminal trespassing.
They will each be fined $250 and will receive a 30-day jail sentence, with a one-day jail credit and 29-day suspended year probation, a Marietta Municipal Court spokesperson said.
The protestors will also be on probation for one year, during which they will serve restitution to Greenhuner Water, owing them $2,383 (divided among the eight protestors), no new offenses and have no contact with the facility and property residents, according to the court docket.
The other two of the 10 protestors have not pleaded in court yet; the dates of their hearings have not been determined.
The protest had resulted from Greenhunter requesting permission from the Coast Guard to use a barge to ship about half a million gallons of frack-waste — also known as brine — per load across the Ohio River, which is a source of drinking water for more than five million people in parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to a news release from Appalachia Resist.
The news release also said that Greenhunter’s brine samples have shown signs of radioactive chemicals such as benzene, arsenic and radium.
Greenhunter closed the site as a result of the anti-fracking demonstration.
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