"The state is a major importer of fracking wastewater, which gets pumped underground but doesn’t always stay there. The city of Marietta is fighting back."
"In historic Marietta, Ohio, riverboats churn past shores once surveyed by George Washington. Trolleys bump along brick roads that pass between Victorian homes and 2,000-year-old Adena and Hopewell burial mounds. Its cemeteries hold more Revolutionary War officers than anywhere else in the nation.
And there is something else buried deep beneath Marietta: Hundreds of millions of gallons of radioactive fracking wastewater.
For years, it has arrived in a caravan of tanker trucks that come night and day to deposit the toxic brine in injection wells that pump it thousands of feet underground, where it is supposed to stay forever.
But the brine is spurting to the surface, and locals fear it could soon contaminate the drinking water source for 32,000 people. “It would destroy the city,” said Susan Vessels, president of the Marietta City Council. “Once the damage is done, it cannot be undone.”"
Quinn Glabicki reports for the New York Times July 29, 2026, with photographs by Maddie McGarvey.
