Save Ohio Parks: Public comments needed to stop fracking 8,749 acres at Salt Fork, Egypt Valley

Comments needed by March 7 for 6,639 acres in Egypt Valley Wildlife Area; March 15 for 513 acres under Salt Fork State Park and 1,596 more acres of Egypt Valley

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Feb. 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Ohioans who love their state parks and public lands need to tell the Oil and Gas Land Management Commission (OGLMC) to stop fracking them.

Over 8236 acres of Egypt Valley Wildlife Area's 18,000 acres in Belmont County may be handed over for fracking at the commission's next meeting, along with an additional 513 acres of Salt Fork State Park.

A total of 11,603 acres of Ohio state parks and wildlife areas have been approved for fracking by the commission since 2023, as well as 25 rights-of-way on Ohio Department of Transportation land and 6.9 acres at Noble Correctional Institution.

If approved, the latest round of fracking nominations would come close to doubling the acreage of public lands the state had already approved over the past three years.

Save Ohio Parks asks the public to tell the commission to deny fracking under Egypt Valley Wildlife Area and Salt Fork State Park.

The deadline to submit comments for Egypt Valley nominations 26-DNR-0001 and 26-DNR-0002 is March 7. Comments on an additional two nominations of land in Egypt Valley, 26-DNR-0004 and 26-DNR-0005, are due March 15.

The wildlife area is popular for hiking, fishing, and hunting. Its land was strip-mined for decades, but reclaimed through years of rehabilitation beginning in the 1990s.

Salt Fork State Park in Guernsey County is Ohio's largest and arguably most beautiful park at 20,000 acres. It was the first state park to be approved for fracking in 2023, despite large citizen protests at OGLMC meetings.

Salt Fork is popular for camping, swimming, fishing, hunting, hiking, and horseback riding. Comment deadline for the 26-DNR-0003 Salt Fork parcel is March 15.

"Everyone who cares about keeping our pristine natural lands from being industrialized and wants to protect our health, our clean air, water and biodiversity in Ohio has a responsibility to act now and tell the OGLMC to say NO to fracking these beautiful, unspoiled land," said Rebecca Malik, board member at Save Ohio Parks. "Ohio's public lands were set aside beginning in 1949 the pleasure and leisure of the people of Ohio for all time. They are not owned by one governor or a supermajority political party seeking to monetize and destroy them with the help of the gas and oil industry."

Arguments against fracking Ohio are many, as well as serious. Ninety-eight percent of citizen comments filed with the commission regarding fracking nominations are consistently opposed to fracking Ohio public lands.

Fracking is dangerous. Research by Save Ohio Parks' Jenny Morgan and Fractracker Alliance documented and mapped 1,900 gas and oil "incidents" since 2015. This amounts to an accident or incident every 1.5 days.

An explosion and massive fire at the Groh well pad six miles from Salt Fork State Park in January 2025 forced the overnight evacuation of an entire township and spurred the formation of a statewide environmental organization coalition calling for Republican Gov. Mike DeWine to declare a moratorium on fracking under state parks and public lands. His office has ignored the group.

Gas and oil waste management and storage in Ohio is notably poor. In November 2025, coalition member Buckeye Environmental Network sued the ODNR for using old, lax rules to permit two Class II injection wells in Washington County. The county already has 17 wells—among the most in the state.

Washington County for Safe Drinking Water, a Marietta-based citizen group concerned about groundwater contamination from migrating oil and gas wastewater brine, has asked DeWine for a moratorium on injection well approvals. That request has also been ignored.

Fracking converts Ohio's fresh water into toxic, radioactive waste. Research by Save Ohio Parks found that fracking approved through January 12, 2026, would use at least 1.9 billion gallons of fresh water taken from Ohio lakes and streams, converting it into toxic radioactive waste that must be stored in underground injection wells forever.

The five current nominations in Salt Fork and Egypt Valley would greatly add to the amount of fresh water taken from Ohio's water cycle forever.

Lea Harper is director of Freshwater Accountability Project, which has advocated for fresh water and spoken out on the dangers of fracking since 2012.

"Gas and oil waste brine is shot into injection wells with no monitoring wells surrounding them to detect migration of toxic materials," said Harper. "It deeply saddens me to see the fracking industry taking billions of gallons of water from our lakes and streams each year. That water is destroyed by a single boom-bust industry and forced underground forever, never to sparkle in the sun again. Can we afford to lose that much of our precious freshwater? I don't think so, but few in Ohio government seem to care."

Each of the 67 nominations so far for state parks, wildlife areas, Ohio Department of Transportation rights-of-way, and Department of Corrections land are listed on the Save Ohio Parks website. Click on each nomination to learn more and find out how to file a comment on the five open nominations of Egypt Valley Wildlife Area and Salt Fork State Park.

Save Ohio Parks is a statewide nonprofit made of volunteers dedicated to educating the public about methane gas (natural gas) fracking's dangers to human health, the environment and our public lands, in conjunction with Ohio's lax gas and oil waste management and storage practices.

Contact: Melinda Zemper
Email: [email protected] 
Phone: (513) 706-3737

SOURCE Save Ohio Parks