Ohio House Natural Resources Committee - 3-18-2026

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

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Rep Moore?

Rep Rader?

Rep Salvo?

Rep Sindenburg?

Rep Workman?

Okay. With a quorum present, we will proceed as a full committee this morning. Our first order of business is to approve the minutes from the previous meeting. Please take a moment to review the minutes located on your iPads. Are there any objections or corrections to the minutes? Seeing none, the minutes are approved. Our next order of business is to call up House Bill 603 for its second hearing. Today we will be hearing proponent testimony on House Bill 603. I would like to invite Jim Crandall of the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District to provide proponent testimony. Good morning, Jim. Welcome to committee.

Are there any questions from the committee? Representative Salvo.

Through Chairman Blaisdell and to Representative Salvo, no, this is not unique just to MWCD. All conservancy districts in Ohio would benefit from this as well.

Yes, Chairwoman Blaisdell. We have had several instances. Probably the most notable would be large vendors like Airbnb and VRBO. We have several cabin amenities that we want to list on those platforms, and those vendors are not willing to either strike out the language or accept our alternate language that we've proposed.

Thank you.

Good morning. Good morning. Thank you. Chairwoman Rob Blaisdell, Vice Chair Fisher, Ranking Minority Member Rogers, and fellow committee members, the County Engineers Association of Ohio, CEAO, respectfully submits this testimony in opposition to substitute Senate Bill 219 as currently drafted. My name is Roger Wright, I'm the Washington County Engineer and the second vice president of CEAO. CEAO represents county engineers across Ohio who are charged by law with the design, construction, maintenance of county roads and bridges, the very infrastructure most directly impacted by oil and gas development. While CEAO supports responsible energy development and recognizes the economic value shale production brings to Ohio communities, the association cannot support legislation that allows overweight vehicles to operate on public roads without adequate oversight, bonding, or local coordination. As currently drafted, Substitute Senate Bill 219 undermines the safety framework that Ohio County engineers, local governments, and ODOT have carefully built since 2011. CAO must be unequivocal on this foundational point. No overweight vehicle should be permitted to travel on public roads without a permit. This is not a position rooted in opposition to energy development. It is a position rooted in law, engineering, and the protection of public safety. Ohio's overweight vehicle permit process under revised code 451334 exists for a reason. Roads and bridges are designed and built to specific load ratings. Overweight vehicles accelerate structural deterioration, increase the risk of payment failure, reduce the load-bearing capacity of bridges, and create conditions that endanger all road users, including school buses, emergency vehicles, farm equipment, and the general public. The current rumor process requires the haul routes be identified in advance, road and bridge conditions be assessed with deficient bridge structures identified and that any necessary precautions be put in place before damage occurs. Bypassing that process, for any reason, is a direct threat to public safety. Substitute Senate Bill 219 at lines 2363 to 2400 created a three-pathway system for overweight vehicle operations. A standard vehicle overweight permit, as in Revised Code 451334. A road maintenance agreement, or RUMA, issued under Revised Code 150906A11B, or the affidavit pathway, which the operator declares that good faith efforts to negotiate a RUMA have failed, and all permitting under 451334 is not required. CAO does not oppose the first two pathways. CAO opposes the affidavit pathway as currently structured because it lacks the safety safeguards necessary to protect the public and the infrastructure they depend on. The $30,000 per mile bond is dangerously insufficient. The most consequential safety deficiency in Senate Bill 219 is the bond amount attached to the affidavit pathway. The bill permits the county engineer to acquire a bond of up to $30,000 per mile. It is our understanding the figure was chosen without engineering analysis or cost-based justification. The data demonstrates how far this number falls short of actual need. Ohio counties with direct documented experience managing shale road damage have established bond requirements that are 5 to 13 times higher than the bill proposed figure Rural local roads bond amounts typically are 150 to 300 per mile Gravel, chip and seal type roads. Major collector arterial segments, 300,000 to 500,000 per mile. Asphalt type roads, two lane. High traffic or structurally vulnerable segments, 500,000 per mile. A roadway with a concrete base and things of that nature. These ranges reflect typical county experience with shale related road damage and the high repair costs demonstrated in counties like Guernsey, Belmont and Carroll. They illustrate the actual cost of repairing and rebuilding roads subjected to heavy truck traffic associated with shale drilling. Each horizontal well site can generate up to 3,000 additional truck loads over its lifetime hauling water, sand, chemicals, heavy equipment and wastewater. That volume of overweight truck traffic causes damage that exceeds the annual road budgets of most of the affected counties. As an example, Carroll County, the most heavily drilled county in the Utica Shale region, had an entire annual road revenue of approximately $3.9 million. Yet Ruma-funded road repairs from oil and gas operators in the surrounding region exceeded $12 million in a single peak year. A $30,000 per mile bond would provide only a small fraction of the coverage needed to restore a road damaged by this type of traffic. by enshrining this number in statute, Senate Bill 219 would cap the protection county engineers can require, limiting bond amounts to a figure that bears no relationship to actual repair costs, and leaving taxpayers to make up the difference. The affidavit pathway bypasses critical local safety review. We do not oppose energy development, but we cannot support a permitting framework that inadequately protects public safety and infrastructure. The affidavit pathway, as currently drafted, lacks necessary safeguards. The affidavit pathway must include the safety, coordination, financial, and funding provisions described above and should require mandatory ODNR county engineer coordination. Through the affidavit pathway, before ODNR issues a permit, based on the affidavit, ODNR must be required to coordinate with a county engineer to review the proposed well location and hall routes, verify that good faith efforts were generally made, and identify any public safety or infrastructure concerns. This mirrors the review that occurs in a properly negotiated RUMA with the county and ensures that local knowledge informs state permitting decisions. ODOT involvement when concerns are raised. If the county engineer identifies safety or infrastructure concerns, ODNR must then coordinate with ODOT to evaluate whether the permit based on an affidavit should be issued and under what conditions. Ohio is a home rural state with no single agency having jurisdiction over all roads. This coordination requirement ensures that no gap in authority becomes a gap in protection. Licensed Professional Engineer Stamp Traffic and Road Plan. The operator must submit to ODNR a plan stamped by a licensed professional engineer documenting planned activities, anticipated vehicle traffic types and volumes, haul routes, and any proposed road improvements. Without this requirement, the affidavit pathway requires nothing from the operator, except there is a statement stating that good faith effort negotiations failed. Pre-permit completion of required road repairs. ODNR and ODOT should jointly determine any necessary road or infrastructure repairs, and those repairs must be completed before the permit based on an affidavit is issued. This shifts the framework from reactive, repair after damage, to proactive, strengthened before damage, which is the standard of protection that Ohioans living along these hall routes deserve. Additionally, Senate Bill 219 introduces a new three-year term limit on RUMAs, renewable and three-year increments. While the intent may be to ensure agreements remain current, this provision introduces an operational risk. Multi-year drilling programs may extend beyond a single RUMA term, creating gaps in coverage during renewable negotiations. CEO recommends that agreements be subject to annual review rather than a three-year hard cap. Annual review allows terms to be updated as conditions change while ensuring continuous protection of roads in question. Revenue provisions should reflect road impacts. Sub-Senate Bill 219 makes two revenue allocation decisions that misalign funding with actual road impacts of the oil and gas industry. Federal mineral royalties. The bill limits the use of federal mineral royalties distributed to counties to three categories. Planning, construction, and maintenance of public facilities, and public services. CEO recommends adding a fourth category, a direct allocation to the county's motor vehicle and gas tax fund to support public road and bridge improvements. Road and bridge repair costs are among the most significant local expenses generated by activity in this industry. Royalty revenue derived from that activity should be eligible to offset those costs. A designated percentage of federal mineral royalties should go to the county motor vehicle and gas tax fund. Finally, Injection Well Revenue, lines 1851-1856 The bill directs injection well revenues to the county's general fund in which the injection well is located. CEO recommends restructuring this allocation, allowing for a designated percentage to go to the county's murder vehicle and gas tax fund, as well as the township where the injection well is located. Injection well operations generate substantial heavy truck traffic on local roads. the communities that bear that impact should receive funding dedicated to addressing that impact. However, the agencies directly responsible for local road and bridge repair should receive funding. Thank you for the opportunity to present testimony, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Representative Rader. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate that. These gaps between the bonding amount and the amount that the public has to pay for the repair of roads, as well as some of the other things, would you, in your estimation, consider that to be a subsidy to the oil and gas industry from local governments?

One quick follow On the public safety front you mentioned that in the beginning of your testimony Without the proper designation of these vehicles without sort of the county being made whole through this process these different entities that have to pay the different taxpayer, what safety concerns? Can you kind of get into a little bit more of the safety concerns here that if we don't correct this might present themselves later on?

Any further questions from the committee? Seeing none, thank you for your testimony today.

I would now like to invite Eric Hilty, Jefferson County Engineer, to provide testimony.

Thank you. Chair, Vice Chair, Ranking Members, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I serve as the Jefferson County Engineer, the official statutory responsibility for the maintenance inspection and safety of every county road and bridge in one of Ohio's most active energy corridors. Jefferson County produces roughly 109.5 million cubic feet of natural gas per quarter, ranking us the state's second-largest gas-producing county. The development has brought real opportunity. It has also taught us a hard lesson. Energy growth and infrastructure integrity are mutually dependent. When one is weakened, the other pays the price. Senate Bill 219, as drafted, disturbs that balance in three specific ways. The affidavit pathway, the $30,000 bond cap, and the undermining of Frost Law protections. of these are minor technical adjustments. Each one transfers known, foreseeable risk from operators onto county governments and taxpayers. First, the overweight vehicle must have permits. This is non-negotiable. The permit requirement under RC 4513.34 is not red tape. It is the process through which we identify haul routes and advance, evaluate roads, bridge capacity against proposed loads, and put protections in place before something fails, not after. Jefferson County averages one commercial vehicle crash every two days and our highway patrol has directly linked a significant share of that traffic to oil and gas activity Every overweight truck moving without a permit without a route review and without a bridge evaluation is a foreseeable and preventable risk The affidavit pathway in Senate Bill 219 replaces that process with an unverified declaration. It asks local officials to accept assurances in place of the enforceable obligations that have been built into the permitting and RUMA framework over the past decade. This is not a reform. This is an off-ramp from accountability. Second, we know exactly what happens without enforceable RUMAs. The region has 26 active producers. In a single commissioner meeting, we executed five road use maintenance agreements, including one covering 27 miles of county road. Those RUMAs work because they align interests. Operators get predictable access. Counties get enforceable route plans, bridge protections, and clearly assigned liability. Before Senate Bill 315, operators held state permits with no meaningful local road use obligation. More than 50 township boards in and around Jefferson County passed weight limit resolutions in frustration. Those resolutions had no leverage. Operations proceeded. Communities paid the damage. Senate Bill 315 fixed that by trying to tie state permits to either a negotiated RUMA or a documented good-faith effort to secure one. Senate Bill 219's affidavit pathway reopens that gap. This is not a new idea we are being asked to try. It is a failed model we already lived through. Third, the $30,000 bond cap has no engineering basis. Full reconstruction of county road damage by heavy haul traffic, base repair, surface, shoulders, drainage, routinely runs between $300,000 and $400,000 per mile in eastern Ohio Shale counties. Senate Bill 219 caps that bond at $30,000 per mile, set without any engineering or cost analysis. On a five-mile haul route, the maximum bond is $150,000. enough to resurface roughly one half mile of roadway. The rest of the bill lands on the county road fund. That is not a safety net. It is a cost-shifting mechanism that moves liability from the entity creating the damage to the taxpayers who had no say in it. Fourth, the Frost Law is our best tool. Ohio's Frost Law, under RC 5577.07, authorizes county to reduce up to a maximum of 50% of illegal load during periods of thaw and excessive moisture. This is the single most effective protection county engineers and townships have during the February through April freeze-thaw cycle when road subgrades are saturated and at maximum vulnerability. Heavy haul traffic on frost weakened subgrade does not just accelerate where, it destroys the base, requiring full reconstruction rather than resurfacing. This is not an Ohio quirk. Frost laws are standard practice across the northern United States, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Vermont Washington Wisconsin and Wyoming all maintain formal seasonal weight restriction programs Michigan suspends overweight permits entirely during frost period Under the negotiated RUMA, frost law compliance is explicit. Operators acknowledge posting requirements, observe reduced weight limits during the thaw window, and accept liability for violations. Under the affidavit pathway, none of that is required. You would have the heaviest trucks in Ohio's energy sector moving on the most vulnerable roads at the most vulnerable time of the year with no enforceable seasonal restriction and a bond that cannot cover the damage. The path forward. Jefferson County supports reasonable energy development. We have proved it through the years of executed RUMAs, including one of the largest in the state. but responsible development requires a framework that is enforceable, not aspirational. The minimum conditions for that framework are clear. No affidavit shortcut around the permit and route review process, continued linkage between ODNR permits and genuine room of negotiations, bond levels based on actual reconstruction costs, and non-waivable frost law protections, unless determined engineeringly appropriate for the structure, the vehicle is traveling on, no matter the size or weight. Those conditions do not stop development. They are what make it sustainable. Without them, Senate Bill 219 does not balance competing interests. It simply decides that the county and taxpayer absorb the cost while operators capture the benefit. Thank you. I'd be pleased to answer any questions.

Ranking Member Rogers. Thank you, Chair. To the witness, thank you for your testimony this morning. I know we're going to hear a lot today about the rumors and about where people are in opposition. What is your biggest concern? You've kind of laid it out, but if you can just lay it out just in a paragraph or three sentences. What is your biggest concern about this bill?

Thank you, Chair. Can you share, if this were to pass, this would impact all 88 counties across the state of Ohio, can you share what you think would be the best solution or how to improve this bill as currently written?

Okay. Any further questions from the committee? Representative Holmes.

Through the chair to Representative Holmes, we do have in Jefferson County 240 bridges, and some of those bridges we are statutorily required through the federal government for inspection and then through the state government as well, inspection and load rating. Our bridge structures are not all of Ohio legal load. Some are posted and reduced. And if a bridge structure is of Ohio legal load, that still does not mean it can carry any overloaded truck that goes across it. So that's where the county engineer's oversight of those bridge structures is important to make sure that they are able to withstand the traffic without damage. And there are commonly measures that we would even put in place to reduce traffic on certain bridges or reroute in other means. Follow?

Thank you, Chair. Thank you so much for your testimony. It is much appreciated. I do have some questions that I want to further clarify related to the royalty clearing fund. It looks to me like this fund is basically these funds are handed down from the federal government to the state directly to the county. And then the county commissioners are permitted to reappropriate those funds as they deem fit. Do you see that this may be an avenue to help cover some of that infrastructure impact?

Okay.

Thank you, Chair. And maybe just paint the picture a little better for me and educate me on this. Currently, RUMA agreements, how often in those negotiations do you not reach an actual agreement?

All right.

Thank you.

Chairwoman, Vice Chair, ranking member, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Terry Lively, I'm the Belmont County Engineer. Belmont County sits at the epicenter of the oil and gas industry's fracking efforts. We've produced more natural gas than any other county in Ohio and rank, I believe, 34 nationally. We've had a lot of oil and gas activity, as you can imagine, since this all began some 12, 14 years ago. We have a relatively small county my entire budget is six and a half million dollars that's not road budget that's the entire budget that's wages fuel salt everything comes out of that six and a half million so we don't have a lot to work with with all the activity that we have in our county we are constantly negotiating room of agreements. And ever since this began, our bond rates have been $400,000 per mile on asphalt roads, $200,000 a mile on chip seal roads, and $100,000 per mile on gravel roads. Honestly, those numbers probably should be adjusted for inflation because we haven't adjusted them since we implemented them. However, that's what we currently use, and quite honestly they had very little pushback from the oil and gas industry on those numbers because they understand how expensive it is to construct a road For example we had a Ruma here recently where Ascent needed to use one of our roads and as part of that, they had to replace a bridge and line a major culvert. There was only .42 miles of road that they had to upgrade. However, they had over a million dollars in the bridge replacement and the culvert upgrade and that little bit of pavement. So as you can see, a million dollars, if it had to come out of my budget, would just be devastating. So these Ruma agreements are vitally important for us. Without them, we simply couldn't keep up with the damages to our roads. So it's important that we have the flexibility and, frankly, the ability to work with oil and gas producers to come up with something that makes sense. We require engineering studies be done on the road to see what's there and what it can handle. And then we'll sit down and try to work out something reasonable. It doesn't always work out, but most of the time it does. and we have been very successful in getting some improvements done and we've been able to facilitate their activities. We are certainly not against oil and gas activities in our county. We want to work with them. Sometimes we disagree on what improvements are necessary and that happens, but we have worked through it. In regards to the Senate Bill 219, the $30,000 per mile, I can't even imagine where that number came from. It doesn't make any sense at all. You can't rebuild a driveway for $30,000, let alone a mile of county road. I can't explain where that number came from, but I can tell you it's not based on any sort of reality. So rather than repeat a lot of the statistics that my colleagues have already given you, I would like to wrap this up and say that RUMA agreements are critical for what we do. and being able to negotiate reasonable bond amounts and improvements is critical to us. We simply cannot afford to chase these companies around and fix their damages. We don't have the resources. So we want to work with them. We want to be good partners with them. But Senate Bill 219 would effectively gut that ability. So thank you for your attention. I'll be pleased to answer any questions you have.

I came to Belmont County in 2014. They were already in place at that time. I don't think they had been there long, so probably 2013, somewhere around then.

Under the proposed legislation, it would fall to the county engineer anything over that $30,000 cap. And like I said, we certainly don't have that kind of money to, you know, I can't drop a million dollars on a half mile of road. So it would be a tremendous burden to the taxpayers.

Well, I think there's some confusion on that royalty. That's only for federal payments. that would not apply to Belmont County. We do not have any federal lands in Belmont County. So it would be very few counties, I think maybe Monroe and another county perhaps that would benefit from that.

Thank you.

morning chair Rob Lizdale vice chair Fisher ranking minority member Rogers and members of the committee thank you for the opportunity to appear and speak today my name is Amy's wick I'm a licensed professional engineer and professional surveyor and I serve as the Monroe County engineer and I've been in that position for 10 years now. Monroe County, although the second least populated county in the state, is not a bystander in Ohio's shale industry. Since 2013 when oil and shale activity ramped up in Monroe County, we have worked with over 20 different operators and successfully negotiated over 250 RUMAs causing Monroe County to fall among Ohio's top four gas-producing counties. The operators driving that activity are moving their oversized equipment water, chemicals, and waste across the same narrow winding roads that Monroe County residents use to get to work, to school, and to the hospital. Monroe County has invested more than $41 million in road improvements since 2013, funded not by taxpayers, but by oil and gas operators through road use maintenance agreements. That investment paved roads that had been gravel for decades. It lengthened culverts and widened roads to accommodate large truck traffic. It strengthened road bases and sub bases that were never designed for greater than 80,000 pound loads. That outcome did not happen by goodwill alone. It happened because operators were held to an enforceable standard. Senate Bill 219, as drafted, removes the teeth from that standard at exactly the moment when a new generation of operators is resuming activity in Monroe County. As Monroe County engineer, I oppose any provision of this bill that allows overweight vehicles to travel on public roads without a permit. The permit process is not an obstacle to development. It is the mechanism by which a licensed engineer evaluates whether a road and its structures can safely carry a proposed load before that load arrives. Bypassing this process is not only dangerous for the residents of Monroe County, but will ultimately result in roads failing under heavy traffic and travel for all road users, including oil and shale traffic, to come to a screeching halt. Monroe County is not flat and the terrain changes everything. Monroe County is often called the Switzerland of Ohio, defined by steep hillside routes, narrow two-lane collectors with no shoulders, significant embankment grades, and a beautiful, rugged terrain. These are not conditions that tolerate heavy haul traffic the way a flat interstate corridor does. In Monroe County, a road failure is not a pothole, although we do have those. It is an embankment slip. It is a road shoulder that collapses under a loaded tanker at 2 a.m. It is a hillside road that closes for six weeks while a contractor excavates, regrades, and rebuilds at a cost of $400,000 to $600,000 per mile. Senate Bill 219 proposes a one-size-fits-all bond cap of $30,000 per mile for operators who bypass the RUMA process through the ODNR affidavit pathway. In Monroe County, $30,000 does not repair a culvert. It does not stabilize a failed road base. It covers, at best, a few hundred feet of asphalt surface patching on a road whose base has been compromised by repeated overloading. The remaining cost falls on the Monroe County Road and Bridge Fund and on the taxpayers who fund it, a burden that Armada's $5.6 million annual budget cannot absorb. The Frost Law. It is engineering, not negotiation. Among the provisions of Senate Bill 219 that raise the most serious technical concern for my county is the treatment of seasonal weight restrictions. Under revised code 5577.07, ODOT and local authorities hold the authority to temporarily reduce allowable axle loads on roads weakened by thawing conditions. This is the Frost Law Monroe County applies every winter because our terrain demands it. Senate Bill 219 proposes that operators be exempt from seasonal weight restrictions. As the Monroe County engineer, I cannot support that exemption as written. The bill contains no requirement that a licensed professional engineer or the county engineer review and approve that assessment before the exemption applies. Under this proposed language, an operator could apply a thin surface treatment, declare improvements complete, and then operate overweight trucks during peak thaw season on a Monroe County hillside road with no legal mechanism for the county engineer to intervene. That is not a streamlined regulation. That is an engineering hazard. The affidavit pathway replaces engineering with paperwork. The ODNR Affidavit Pathway in Senate Bill 219 allows an operator to bypass a negotiated rumor by filing a declaration that good faith efforts to reach an agreement failed. What follows is a permit, a $30,000 per mile bond ceiling, and operations on public roads without a haul route assessment, without a bridge evaluation, without an engineering baseline survey. Monroe County's hills, embankments, and posted bridges cannot be evaluated by affidavit. The base and the underlying structure of a roadway cannot be observed from the surface. A culvert that is 80% of its design capacity looks identical to one at 50% of its capacity from above. The pre-drilling engineering assessment that a room it currently requires, conducted by a licensed professional engineer, the engineer, reviewed by the county engineer, and completed before the first truck arrives, is the only reliable mechanism for identifying those conditions before they become failures. Removing that requirement in favor of an ODNR affidavit not even presided over by a professional engineer and a nominal bond that does not reduce regulatory burden It transfers engineering risk from the operator to the county and its residents When a road or bridge fails at 6 a.m. due to an oversized load and a Monroe County school bus cannot reach its route, the affidavit that enabled that truck to operate will not repair the road. The county will. I am not asking this committee to stop energy development. Monroe County has welcomed more than $41 million in industry-funded road repairs because the Ruma framework required operators to be partners in infrastructure preservation, not just users of it. The framework produced a documented, verifiable record of roads left better than they were found. However, I am respectfully asking committee members to amend Senate Bill 219. Preserve full frost law authority for county engineers and require a licensed PE certification reviewed and approved by a county engineer before any seasonal weight exemption applies to an operator Raise bond cap to a figure that reflects actual pavement and structural replacement costs consistent with the $150,000 to $400,000 per mile range that experienced shale counties have independently established Require a licensed professional engineer stamped haul route plan submitted and reviewed by the county engineer before any affidavit-based permit is issued. Monroe County has proven that responsible energy development and infrastructure preservation are not opposing goals. More than 12 years and 250 successful RUMAs with no history of an operator being denied opportunity to drill are evidence of that. Do not be alarmed if you hear the information about it. Or if it is detected by state-wide emergency notifications in town. Senate Bill 219, as drafted, does not build on that record. It dismantles the framework that made it possible. Thank you, and I welcome any questions.

Good morning, Chairman Rob Blaisdell, Vice Chair Fisher, Ranking Member Rogers, members of the committee. Good morning and thank you for allowing me to testify this morning. My name is Doug Cade. I'm the Hancock County Engineer and I'm the President of the County Engineers Association of Ohio. Currently, the CEAO is in opposition to the substitute Senate Bill 219 as drafted. The CEAO is not opposed to the bill's overall goals as we are asking for targeted amendments that works for both the energy development and the taxpayers who rely on our local roads. We support the core purposes of 219, cleaning up orphaned wells, modernizing horizontal drilling regulations, and addressing federal mineral royalty distribution. Our concern is with the narrower set of provisions that were not fully vetted before the Senate vote, specifically the bond amount, safeguards in the affidavit pathway, the structure of the road use maintenance agreements and revenue allocation If those are not calibrated correctly very real cost will move from the private operators onto the public agencies and public budgets First on the statement that nothing has changed because the affidavit pathway existed since 2012, what has changed is that the codification of the $30,000 per mile bond cap did not exist in the prior law. Before Senate Bill 219, there was no statutory ceiling on what the county engineer could require as financial assurance. Counties negotiating protections based on the actual engineering costs, for instance, Guernsey County, they're at $300,000 per mile. Belmont County, as you heard before, at $400,000 per mile. Senate Bill 219 writes the $30,000 per mile into the revised code, effectively converting a floor into a ceiling and stripping county engineers of existing authority to require adequate financial assurance. Under current law in Revised Code 451334, preserves local authority to regulate overweight vehicles and nothing in pre-Senate Bill 219 law prevented the county engineer from requiring a higher bond amount. 219 creates this limitation for the first time. To put this in perspective, Carroll County's entire annual road revenue is about $3.9 million. While the industrial road repair investments in the Utica Shale region exceeded $12 million, dollars in a single peak year, a $30,000 per mile bond set without engineering or cost-based analysis would cover only a fraction of one mile of actual reconstruction, leaving the taxpayers to absorb the remainder. Second, there is a suggestion that ODNR has sole and exclusive authority and that the county engineers are overstepping. Revised Code 1509.02, as amended in Senate Bill 219, explicitly states that nothing in this section affects the authority granted to the Director of Transportation and the local authorities in Section 723.01 and 445.13.34 of the revised code. In other words, the General Assembly chose to preserve the local road authority. the CAO is not seeking to regulate oil and gas drilling. We are seeking to regulate what happens on public roads, which is precisely the authority what the legislature protected in Section 723.01 and 4513.34. The Ohio Supreme Court's decision in the Staten Morrison v. Beck Energy Corp. in 2015 affirmed ODNR's exclusive authority over oil and gas operations, not over public road safety. The preemption analysis in that case addressing zoning and land use, not the overweighting vehicles permitting authority that the legislature itself preserved in 45-13-34. Additionally, a high attorney general opinion from 2012, number 29, confirmed the county engineers and local officials have the authority to enter into and enforce road use maintenance agreements with oil and gas operators The legal position of the Attorney General Office articulated that after the preemption landscape was well established and which has never been overturned the CEO is not seeking to veto over whether the well is drilled We are seeking to review what happens on the county road before overweight vehicles use it and the coordination by ODNR with the county engineers before permits are issued. consistent with the cooperative agreements ODNR may enter into in 1509.02. Third, on the concern that the higher bond requirements are anti-competitive and hurt small operators, the bond amounts that we cite, which are between $150,000 and $400,000 per mile, are not numbers that the CEAO invented. These are amounts that Ohio counties with the most direct experience of shale road damage have independently determined to reflect actual costs. These are market-driven, engineer-justified figures, not arbitrary barriers. A $30,000 bond does not protect small operators. It protects them from accountability for the full cost of the damage. The public that uses these roads, such as farmers, school bus drivers, emergency responders, and residents, will bear the difference between the cost of the repairs and what the bond can cover. That cost-shifting is the real unfairness. The CAO is proposing a tiered bond structure based on the financial affairs and actual risk, paired with the pre-project improvements agreed to in Aruma. When those improvements are in place, the need for a very low statutory bond cap or reliance on seasonal frost laws is reduced. This approach provides predictability for operators while protecting the long-term condition of public infrastructure. We also know that from other states, what happens when protections are weak? In Pennsylvania, where comparable bonding or road use agreements are not required, documented road damage from unconventional oil and gas waste transport alone cost between $3 million and $18 million in 2010 through 2013, with no legal mechanism to recover these costs from operators. Most small and large operators benefit from the gap at the taxpayer expense. That is an outcome Ohio should avoid. Finally, we've heard from the industry that already invested $302 million dollars voluntarily and that this demonstrates that additional protections are unnecessary. In reality that $302 million dollars was the direct results of enforceable rumors, obligations that were negotiated between the county engineers and the operators under the existing framework created by Senate Bill 315 in 2012. The positive outcomes being cited as proof that the framework is unnecessary are in fact proof that the framework works. We can and it will not sustain those outcomes. It will end them. An Ohio University study found that most of all interviewees stated that county roads under the purview of a rumor were left in better condition than before the industry arrived. That conclusion was tied up specifically to the existence of rumor requirements, not to the industry goodwill absent those requirements. We do not remove traffic lights because most drivers will probably stop at an intersection. The signal is what makes the behavior reliable. In the same way, RUMAs and meaningful bond levels are the signal that makes responsible road use reliable in this context. The CEAO wants to be constructive partners in this process. We are asking the House to restore a workable bond structure, preserve the effectiveness of rumors maintain the local road authority already recognized in 7-2301 and 45-13-34. And we believe there is a reasonable middle path that supports energy development, protects taxpayers, and keeps our roads safe for the traveling public. I do thank you for the opportunity to provide this testimony. I do want to address something that Representative Rader stated with regards to the royalty payments, currently those federal royalty payments go to the county commissioners. That does not mean that they trickle down to the county engineer or to the townships. They have that ability, but I can tell you that nearly most of our counties get zero general fund dollars. So I wanted to clarify that for you. So that would be solely up to the county commissioners. We're asking to make sure that that is distributed to the motor vehicle gas tax fund. So with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions that you have, and I do thank you for the opportunity to testify today.

I do not off the top of my head. Or can we provide that information? Yeah. Okay.

I know Hancock County does not.

Representative Salvo. Thank you, Chairwoman, and thank you for your testimony.

Just a question. How long does it take to negotiate a good RUMA approximately? Because I'm just wondering, is this about expediting permitting process, just to get a better understanding? Sure. Through the chair to the representative.

Any other questions for the witness? All right. Thank you for being here.

I would now like to invite Evan Calicote, the Director of State Policy with the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation,

Okay, thank you. Questions for Mr. Calico? No questions today. Thank you for being here. We appreciate it. I would now like to invite Kyle Brooks from the Ohio Township Association to provide testimony.

answer any questions. Thank you Mr. Brooks. Any questions for the witness? No, seeing none. I thank you for your time this morning. Moving right along, I would now like to invite Jenny Morgan to provide opponent testimony. Is Jenny here in the

Thank you for your testimony today. Are there any questions for the witness? Probably not. Representative Moore.

Oh, yeah. Okay.

Good morning. Representative Ross Blasdell, Representative Fisher, and Ranking Member Holmes. My name is Patricia Moraita. I'm a Columbus resident, and I'm a retired pharmacist. I grew up on a farm in northwest Ohio, and I spent a lot of my childhood outdoors. My family did a lot of camping and we enjoyed visiting Ohio parks and nature preserves I graduated from the Ohio State University and I lived almost all my 84 years in the state of Ohio My husband and I and our two Boy Scout sons did a lot of hiking, camping, canoeing, and cycling around the state, and particularly in Ohio's parks, which were at the time certainly not as good as Michigan's parks. But since I was a child, Ohio has built its turnpike and all its freeways and many new roads. I was a teenager when they were building the turnpike. Cities have grown from small to gigantic. This has unfortunately left Ohio's parks as some of the only places left for visitors that are not encroached upon by roads and development and so forth. So where Ohioans and tourists can go to get a peek at and commune with the natural world is really important. and in 2026 especially as Jenny pointed out families can take their kids away from the world of electronics and I'm a person who greatly values the intricacies of the natural world and our dependence on it and I want to stress our dependence on the natural world we just don't exist in a bubble where things just come at us by corporations I am dismayed by its mindless destruction. This has been brought to Ohio by increasingly powerful corporations. These are entities on paper that don't have a conscience. It continues to be allowed, unfortunately, by legislators who are indeed endowed with consciences. Is nothing sacred? Ohio's Senate Bill 219 would allow fracking inside Ohio's parks. Senate Bill 19 would stop the Ohio Department of Natural Resources from regulating injection wells, and there are plenty of injection wells right around here in Columbus. PFAS, polyfluoroalkyl substances, these are called forever chemicals, and it's not a pleasant word to think about forever. They stay for seven years in our bodies. Once I ingest today in my body, half of that will be gone in seven years. That's how living organisms retain these chemicals. And these are used in fracking, along with 600-plus other chemicals, many of which are toxic and carcinogenic. So PFAS, not only being carcinogenic, they're also endocrine disruptors, dangerous to the health of people and animals. Legislators should know that PFAS are already in the bloodstreams of their grandchildren and their children, and not just in those of my family. They're in all of our bloodstreams right now. And what about Ohio's tourist industry? The tourist industry, that's the industry that attracts the mom and pops. That's what makes people proud of their towns. And this is what Ohio really needs to think about when you're talking about our parks. Environmental destruction will last for hundreds, if not thousands of years, for a temporary fix of fossil fuels. And I mean fix. As a health professional, I'm opposed to what's going on with the deep well hydrologic fracturing. This is also called extreme energy because natural gas no longer comes from ordinary straight down more shallow drilled wells President Obama oversaw the development of this extreme energy drilling down over a mile, or even several miles, using the then newly invented remote drill head, and adding the 600 plus chemicals, many of which are toxic and carcinogenic, and that goes in, that makes the fracking fluid slippery. That's why they're put in there. Rather than making sure the chemicals are safe before allowing them to be manufactured and released into the environment, it has been left to the public to prove our ill effects after the fat, which as you can understand is very difficult to do, to prove what has caused my high blood pressure, for instance. Fracking leaves half of these chemicals underground and fluid. The other half of the fluid comes back up with the gas and is then disposed of in the injection wells, which, as I noted before, are right here in Columbus. The earth is constantly moving and changing. Already, some of this is returning to the surface through leaks and accidents, and much is sure to follow. This bill also prohibits the state from requiring fair market values for public land leases. What is that about? Who has written these laws? Instead of conservation and efficiency, corporations backed by elected officials are desperately trying to extract more fossil fuels that are increasingly harder to get and have a much higher energy return on energy invested. And, of course, a lot of economics talks about E-R-O-E-I, energy return on energy investment. In other words, by the time you have to expend as much energy to get something out of the ground as you get from burning it, there's probably not much more point in trying to get it out of the ground. So the last thing I will say, fracking uses vast amounts of water, competing with farmers' towns and even dewatering lakes. And so I cringe to think of so many of the parks I love being turned into noisy industrial zones. And I thank you all for your attention today.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Chair Rob Blasdell, Vice Chair Fisher, Ranking Member Rogers, and members of the House Natural Resources Committee. Good morning. I know it's been a long morning so far, but thank you for the opportunity to testify regarding Senate Bill 219. My name's Kathy Becker. I'm the board president of Save Ohio Parks. We're a citizens group concerned about oil and gas extraction from Ohio state parks, wildlife areas, and public lands. Save Ohio Parks is strongly against Senate Bill 219 for four reasons. First, it drastically speeds up the process of leasing Ohio state parks and public lands for fracking. It contains multiple provisions previously vetoed by Governor DeWine. It curtails the ability of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to regulate fracking, and there are other provisions not in the best interest of state and local communities. So first on speeding up fracking of Ohio's state parks and public lands. If passed Senate Bill 219 would give the Oil and Gas Land Management Commission only 90 days to decide on a nomination to frack public lands Currently they have 180 days I just note that just this past month we gotten eight nominations to frack public lands thousands, hundreds, and thousands of acres each. I have never seen so many nominations and so much land all nominated all at once. I'm not sure what's going on there, but there is a lot. and just 90 days is not enough time. So it would also require the commission to put approved denominations out for bid immediately. Currently, they do this at the next quarter. It would require the commission to select the highest and best bid. That's the legal language here. Within 60 days, there's currently not a deadline, and it would require the state agency that manages the land to execute a lease within 30 days, and there's currently not a deadline there either. So, for example, the public is given 45 days to submit written comments on a nomination, and often the commission doesn't post these nominations right away. So right there, you're really butting up against a 90-day time frame for that first deadline of deciding on a nomination. Also, the leases to frack public land are more complex than a standard lease. ODNR, for example, has several pages of addendums because they're trying to protect our parks and wildlife areas as best they can through these addendums. And so that takes time to execute a lease like that. To do that within 30 days is too quickly. Other agencies also have their own addendums. And then there's a set of provisions previously vetoed by Governor DeWine. A lot of these were inserted into the state budget bill last year when that was moving through the state house. And with the state budget bill, DeWine can, or the governor, can veto, they can line item veto, but you can't do it on a bill like this. So if this goes as written to the governor, it's possible he could just veto the whole thing. So some of these provisions are things like prohibiting ODNR from charging an oil and gas company more than the cost specifically already outlined in the lease. So we're wondering, you know, what would happen if there is an incident or accident, which, as you've heard, is every 1.5 days, according to the past records of the last since, I think, 2008 to 2023. That's the average. And so if they need to clean up an accident or incident, and some of those are quite serious, could the state charge them to do that? Also giving an oil and gas company the option to extend a lease. These are not the original lease, which have now been moved from three to five years, but this would have an extended lease, a lease renewal go to five years. And then also allowing an oil and gas to have surface use of the land, which means they could frack inside our parks. People could be, say, hiking in Salt Fork State Park, around a corner, and there's a frack pad because it's inside the park. That's the surface use. Currently, when DeWine signed House Bill 507, which actually mandated for a while fracking of our state parks and public lands, he set a rule of no surface use. But when he leaves office, that could and would go away if this stays in the bill. Also giving an oil and gas company that has a leak to frack public lands up to 60 days to pay any advance royalty or bonuses. That time is currently 10 days. And suspending the time limit on oil and gas leases for public land if they go through a NEPA process. So currently, Leesville and Zepernik are going through a NEPA process, and that counts against the time, like the, I guess the five-year time frame, and they want to suspend while it goes through the NEPA process. So these are the kinds of things that DeWine vetoed when they were in the budget bill, and here they are back again in 2019. This would also curtail the ability of state and local agencies to regulate oil and gas operations. For example, the chief of the Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management, if an oil and gas company asked for expedited review of a permit, the chief could not say no. and that would happen for at least for 10 permits per year per company. So a lot of permits would automatically be expedited. And then the other things I have here have to do with the road use and heavy hauling agreements, which previous witnesses have covered much better than I could. And then finally there's other provisions not in the public interest, and here I'm going to just talk about one. When it was in the Senate Energy Committee, an amendment got inserted that requires, that would require ODNR, in their orphan well plugging program, they have to create a matrix for which wells should be prioritized. And as we know, there's at least 20,000 orphan wells in Ohio. They can plug a few hundred per year. So you have to prioritize. And about 10% of orphan wells, this is from academic research that shows about 10% of orphan wells are responsible for most of the pollution. and probably most of the danger. And the law requires ODNR to, I guess, elevate human health and safety, that that would be their primary consideration. But this amendment in House Bill 219 requires them to prioritize first orphan wells that happen to be located next to injection wells, the injection wells that contain frack waste. Now, this could be because a couple of years ago there was a major accident where an injection well, the fluid, the frack waste fluid, was migrating out of the injection well into a nearby orphan well, and it spewed out 360,000 gallons of this. ODNR had to clean it up at a cost of $1.3 million. So, you know, while we don't want that to happen, even if we kept this provision in 219, that wouldn't stop frack waste from migrating, say, into a nearby production well or possibly drinking water wells. It wouldn't address that at all. The problem here is the frack waste migrating out of injection wells in the first place. And the orphan wells need to be regulated. These are two separate things, orphan wells versus injection wells. And so if we're worried about frack waste migrating out of injection wells, the thing to do is to address that. With orphan wells, those need to be prioritized for plugging based on how polluting they are, how dangerous they are, you know, a risk to human health and safety. And so we think that that provision should be changed. But again, most of our opposition to Senate Bill 219 is about how it would speed up fracking of our state parks and that a lot of these provisions, also having to do with public land, were previously vetoed by Governor DeWine. And I'm happy to take any questions if you have any.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Catherine. for being able to see you again. Quick question, well, obviously this is a bill written by the oil and gas industry to benefit, solely the oil and gas industry. There's no question there, but in terms of the shot clocks that you mentioned, what public benefit is there to shortening up 180 days to 90 days? What possible public benefit could there be in doing that I mean we don see any public benefit We see you know in fact it would harm public interest in our opinion

Ranking Member Rogers.

We are against drilling fracking of public lands. These spaces were set aside, meant to be protected in perpetuity for our children and grandchildren and present and future generations. Public land is maybe 3% of land in Ohio. There's plenty else to frack, and they have been fracking plenty else. It seems that they're going after public lands because these are large tracts of land that have not yet been fracked. And so that's just very tempting for them to go after that. But we don't think public land should, we think it should be protected and not be fracked. And as far as I know, Ohio is the only state that allows fracking of its state parks.

Thank you for that. And are you against fracking at all?

One follow-up.

Well, there's plenty of countries in the world and even some states that significantly power their homes and their cars and their lives with renewable energy, with solar, with wind, hydrothermal. Geothermal hasn't even hardly started to be explored yet. In California, for example, demand for gas fell 40% in the past two years because everyone has solar and they have batteries. So in the daytime, they use energy from their solar panels, and at night, they draw from their battery power. So it can be done even in the United States. Even the top five states for renewable energy are red states. Republican states like Texas and Oklahoma and Iowa have a lot of renewable energy. So at least significant amounts of our power could be coming from renewables. It's just that in Ohio, our state laws have significantly squashed solar and wind. And I could go into that, too, but there have been several state laws passed about that.

Thank you. Before I get started, one of my colleagues looked at my testimony and thought it looked more like an interested party, so I changed a couple of paragraphs, and if I can approach, I'll give you my revised. Chairman Blaisdell, Vice Chair Fisher, Ranking Member Rogers, and members of the Ohio House Natural Resources Committee, thank you for allowing me to testify today. My name is William Lowers. I'm an old Navy veteran and I run a small product safety consulting business in a semi-retired status. I hold associate and bachelor's degree in public administration from Franklin University here in Columbus and I've done graduate work in city and regional planning at Ohio State. I'm strongly opposed to SB 219 for the following reasons. And I should let you know that I just found out about this legislation last week. So it's a massive document. It covers a lot of ground on subjects that I don't know anything about, like oil leases. and given that that's the case, I didn't have enough time to actually read the entire bill, understand everything in it, look at all the amended documents, all the amended laws, and I'm just going to narrow my focus down to the orphaned wells for the most part. The first oil and gas wells were drilled in Ohio in 1886, and since the first well was drilled here, more than 270,000 wells have been drilled in our state. From my own reading and research, I believe it is fair to say that as much as a third of all the wells drilled in America, Canada, and around the world can fit into the category of an orphaned well. They produce for 20, 30, 50 years, and all of a sudden they run out. They're not producing. They're just abandoned, and nobody knows who did them when they were built. Whoever made them were dead, maybe. Or disappeared. And no one's around to be financially responsible for taking corrective actions, which is capping of the wells. I also read a report that indicates that a newly fractured well can leak gas into an already orphaned well I read reports that indicated that a newly fractured well can leak gas into an already orphaned well I read reports that indicated that a newly fractured excuse me we know that in America there are 120,000 orphaned wells and we have about 20,000 in Ohio that are uncapped so that's a problem. One report that I've read indicates between now and 2035, only nine years from now, we expect to spend over $600 million to cap orphan wells in Ohio. So I can't say we're doing nothing about it. That's a lot of money and a lot of effort that's being addressed to this problem. And because we're spending over half a billion dollars, I'm not sure that this legislation protects the existing program, but I hope it does. As a general principle, I oppose drilling for oil and gas in our state park system, which threatens the natural heritage of our state that we'll leave to our children and grandchildren. This legislation appears to create a process that will fast-track potentially hundreds of well permits in our state park system when common sense would dictate caution, a more measured process. I recommend that the General Assembly and our Governor also approach this threat to our heritage with caution and perhaps step back from fracking our park system, which can sustain untold damage and or unrecoverable harm. Maybe some of our legislative efforts should be directed to preventing the orphaning of wells, and some of the provisions I have seen in this bill make a lot of sense, like requiring financial responsibility if a well changes hands or at the outset prior to the drilling of a well. This is a step in the right direction. I would like this or other legislation to be directed more to prevention activities. And maybe we can start, maybe we can spend some time requiring in law that state-of-the-art drilling standards be used from the start in the drilling of our wells. The American Petroleum Institute has for many years developed consensus standards that cover safe drilling practice, including safe drilling practices in the fracking business. Four I've located are relevant to the following. API RP100-1 addresses well integrity and fracture containment. and lining and cementing between the drill and the outer by filling it with a very specialized cement, which prevents, to a great degree, contamination of the water tables. API RP100-2 focuses on environmental aspects of exploration and production. There's a new standard, API standard F16FI 2026. This is a new standard for a frac iron, or the high-pressure piping and hoses that they researched and they're requiring improved metallurgy in the lining of the wells themselves. I RP 54, which covers occupational safety for oil well and gas well servicing. I say this from my experience in the electrical standards business. I'm on several committees that write standards for explosive atmospheres, making the workplace safer by improving technologies used in that safety function. These standards, the ones I just mentioned, are developed as a means of risk management for the resource extraction business. And much of the effort is to prevent environmental problems at the wellhead and transportation and prevention of worker injuries and accident prevention. Just because the API does lobbying they not generally evil people A lot of people lobby for a lot of reasons and they certainly have their economic interests and their risk management at hand when they develop these standards and they've developed over 800 since in the past 100 years. So they're good at what they do. I know quite a few people who are members of the API and are involved in those standards development. So we can say most of them are very highly qualified professionals. The API is not necessarily the only organization that develops drilling standards, but they're the only ones that I'm aware of in the United States. I'm not sure where we stand with our laws in Ohio that require drillers to use you know to use standards to verify that they drilling in appropriately and meeting the requirements of these standards and I not sure there any enforcement mechanism in our laws And I think that would be something that the General Assembly should maybe take a look at and see if they can improve that aspect of the fracking business. I think, you know, we're fracking business, I think, generated $5 billion in revenue last year in Ohio. I don't think it's going to go away. but I think we can do it a little bit better. In conclusion, I'm asking that the General Assembly to consider the small amount of land in our heritage state park system to the vast amount of land that is not in our state park systems and step back from the abyss that hydraulic fracturing of the park system can reach to our progeny. Second, please consider that this legislation can fast track permitting for hundreds of wells, both inside and outside the park system and perhaps thinking through the impact of our land infrastructure road school systems or something that needs to be a bit more needs a bit more thought and consideration. And third, the General Assembly needs to conduct a comprehensive review of drilling standards and implement a requirement for state-of-the-art drilling standards and an enforcement method that is in place on day one of any drilling project. Thank you. If you have any questions for me, I'd be happy to try to answer them.