More than a dozen Athens County residents got some face time with state Rep. Debbie Phillips on Friday to air out their concerns, chief among them the state regulations on injection wells.
Phillips, D-Athens, started by asking each of the 16 attendees to introduce and to express themselves. Early during the event, a prevalent concern among those at the meeting was environmental issues and EPA regulation, primarily in terms of the use of injections wells for out-of-state waste from hydraulic fracturing.
“I’m here to support environmental issues (and) strong EPA laws being enforced,” said Suzanne Howell, an Athens resident. “I’d like to know if there is money in the budget for regulators to make sure that the rules are being followed.”
Phillips said she’s worked with other legislators to ask the inspector general to look into whether government officials are having an improper influence on regulators. She said there is much more political pressure on these groups to be compliant to public officers.
“I think that this is important for public safety and accountability. It creates uncertainty all around, and we need to sort out what’s going on in these agencies,” Phillips said. “We’ll keep asking questions and pushing for regulators to do their job.”
She predicted that it could take more than a year for the inspector general to release his final report.
The meeting, held at Athens Public Library, 30 Home St., was the first in a series of four round table discussions Phillips is to host, one in each of the four counties she represents.
“I love these opportunities to be able to stay in touch with what’s on your mind and what your priorities are,” Phillips said. She highlighted her new plan to increase the number of safety drills in schools, which passed the House last week.
The plan is an attempt to better prepare schools to defend themselves against potential threats and will increase the number of safety drills in public schools from three to nine. It will also reduce the number of fire drills in a year from nine to six, except for schools that do not have smoke detectors or overhead sprinkler systems.
Phillips also gave an overview of the new budget correction plan. She said that there is new money in the state budget to fill in orphan wells, which are abandoned injection wells that could become contaminated when new wells are drilled for natural gas.
She also said that there will be new funds for future maintenance projects at Ohio University and Hocking College, as well as renovation projects at The Dairy Barn and Stuart’s Opera House.
“I think that the way the session is run is very helpful, for her to go through some of the things that she’s doing and then open it up so people can talk about anything,” said John Howell, emeritus associate professor of physiology at Ohio University’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine. “I think that’s a really healthy way for representatives to truly represent the people who ordered her in.”
Phillips will hold two more roundtable discussions, one at 10 a.m. Monday in Meigs County and another at 12:30 p.m. in Washington County.
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wp198712@ohiou.edu
