BOWLING GREEN, OH (Toledo News Now) - A group in Bowling Green is hoping to put a charter amendment on the November ballot to ban fracking within city limits.
Protect Bowling Green is collecting signatures to get the amendment on the ballot.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, involves injecting water, sand and gas into the ground at a high pressure to fracture shale rocks and release natural gas.
"Fracking causes a lot of environmental and human health-related problems that we don't want to see happen here," said Lisa Kochheiser, with Protect Bowling Green.
A meeting was held Thursday to discuss the issue. Retired BGSU geology professor Dr. Bob Vincent says fracking in the area could be dangerous because the shale is too thin and shallow.
"The percentages are pretty high that a fair bit of their product would escape into the atmosphere, or into groundwater," Vincent said.
The former professor says he is not opposed to fracking, but that doing it in Bowling Green could be a disaster waiting to happen.
Kochheiser says she'd like to see renewable energy resources such as wind and solar energy being researched and promoted instead of fracking.
