Contained within a 10-page document
labeled “draft” and “summary,” the Ohio Department of Natural
Resources sought to defuse criticism of hydrofracking even as the
agency was assigned the task of regulating the practice.
The August 26, 2012 memo came to light
after the Sierra Club made a public records request for the
document's release. The memo was released Feb. 14.
Now that the memo is being circulated
within the realm of public domain, the Department's initial talking
stage helps illuminate just how serious the agency has sought to
defend the controversial petroleum extraction processes on certain
state-owned lands.
Yet the memo also spells out that the
defense embraces more than just the Natural Resources Department and
potential conflicts of interest. It also signals that any public
relations bulwark will help shore up Gov. John Kasich's backing of
fracking within Ohio's state parks and state forest systems.
Even so, for those within the
environmental community the memo amounts to a coup that helps them
better articulate that the current Natural Resources Department
upper-layer chain-of-command and the Governor himself are less than
environmentally friendly.
Under the memo's “Communication
Problems to Solve” header the document spells out an enemies list
of sorts to which both the Department and the Kasich Administration
must just as skillfully combat:
“An initiative to proactively open
state park and forest land to horizontal drilling/hydraulic
fracturing will be met with zealous resistance by environmental
activist opponents, who are skilled propagandists. “Neutral
parties in particular – such as ordinary citizens
concerned about their families' health – will be vulnerable by
opponents that the initiative represents dangerous and radical
state policy by Gov. Kasich.”
(Note: Emphasis appear within the
document itself and are not editorially added.)
Further, the document reads how the
“environmental activist opponents” will use their own slick
media-attention ploys to sway both editorial backing as well as
citizen sympathy.
Under the header “Communication
Obstacles and Constraints,” the memo includes several likely
tactics opponents of state park/state forest hydrofracking could be
expected to employ.
Among the points the Natural Resources
Department drew was calling state park/state forest fracking
opponents “vocal adversaries” who will “communicate emotionally
and aggressively to the news media and online to cast this initiative
as “risky and radical.”
Stepping out on the ledge even more the
writer(s) of the Natural Resources' memo even go so far as to state
that opponents will not only attempt to seek redress in the courts
but likewise could be expected to “physically halt the
drilling” as well as attempt to “create public panic about
perceived health risks,” and seek to use “proxies” in the media
in an effort to slant news coverage against us.”
And lastly how the initiative “could
blur public perception of ODNR's regulatory role in oil and
gas.”
Though the memo is old enough that it
anticipated fracking to commence in 2012, the text does stress that
anticipating problems ahead of time and taking a pro-fracking stance
before so-called “important audiences” will help “...build
understanding, foster support, counter opponents' criticism and
minimize public concerns regarding the initiative.”
The memo does bring out its defensive
weaponry, citing how drilling royalties will help both the
department's Parks and Recreation Division and its Forestry Division
with limited environmental risks and no park/forest user
objectionable land-surface scarring.
To help sell the initiative the Natural
Resources Department's memo names a number of business associations
and even one corporation as “allied groups and forums (both current
and potential).”
Among the memo's stated and hoped-for
supporters are several chambers of commerces, the Ohio Oil and Gas
Association, Halliburton, FracFocus as well as four state government
units besides the Natural Resources Department.
Among the latter were Gov. Kacish's
office, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, the Ohio Department
of Health, and JobsOhio of the Ohio Department of Development.
For the moment the Natural Resources
Department appears to believe the memo is a tempest in a teapot and
was noting more than a sort of in-house working document that never
really piloted the first hole, let alone became a full-blown gusher.
“The (Ohio) legislature approved the
leasing of state land for oil and gas mineral extraction in 2011.
This initial draft was a communications plan drafted for the roll out
of the new law in the event our land was subject to leasing,” said
Natural Resources Department spokeswoman Bethany McCorkle.
Ultimately the initiative never
advanced beyond the conceptual stage for the simple reason the
Natural Resources Department's parks and forest lands remain
fracking-free.
Thus the document was strictly used
“for discussion purposes,” McCorkle said.
“Frankly, any agency or business that
would announce a major policy decision without a strategic plan is
setting itself up for failure,” McCorkle said.
Even so, it is the document's
inflammatory “us verses them”rhetoric that includes the
poke-in-the-eye jab “eco-left pressure groups” that would need to
be “marginalized” that has Ohio's environmental community in an
uproar.
“We've often defended the ODNR from
charges it was too industry friendly,” said Jack Shaner, director
of media relations for the Columbus-based Ohio Environmental Council.
“Not today.”
Certainly, adds also the Ohio
Environmental Council's staff attorney, the state ought not to be
“frittering valuable time and taxpayer money on a (Public
Relations) campaign designed to 'neutralize' legitimate concerns”
about conducting fracking activities on state-owned parks and forest
lands.
“The ODNR should be an impartial
watchdog, not an industry cheerleader,” said Nathan Johnson, the
Environmental Council's attorney. “It's shocking to learn the ODNR
laid plans to actively enlist the help of extractive industries to
'marginalize' respected voices for the preservation or our natural
heritage.”
- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
No comments:
Post a Comment