September 23, 2020: On Wednesday, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) announced that it has cancelled the three permits that authorize the drilling of new Class III solution mining wells in Monroe County, Ohio. The solution mining wells would have been used to create an underground fracked gas liquids storage cavern, called the Mountaineer Storage Hub, that would have held fracked gas liquids for easy use by petrochemical manufacturers. Last month, Sierra Club and partners filed a lawsuit in the Ohio Tenth District Court of Appeals against the ODNR for issuing permits to construct these wells without public notice, the issuance of draft permits, or a public comment period, in violation of their own regulations.
After the lawsuit was filed, David Hooker, President & CEO of Powhatan Salt Company (Mountaineer NGL Storage) asked for the permits to be cancelled, directly citing the mandamus action. He stated: “The filing of the mandamus action has cast uncertainty over ODNR’s issuance of those permits which we believe can most effectively and expeditiously be resolved by our request that ODNR cancel the three permits without prejudice to its consideration of new permit applications for the three wells.” Powhatan Salt Company will now have to go through public notice, comment, draft permitting, and fact sheet preparation in order to receive the permits, reflecting the demands of a coalition of clean water advocates. Sierra Club plans to actively engage its volunteers during the public comment process to stop this facility from being built.
Sierra Club, along with our partners (including Concerned Ohio River Residents, FreshWater Accountability Project, Buckeye Environmental Network, and Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition) were represented by Earthjustice in this lawsuit.