Ohio has become a state of easy virtue for readily allowing “fracking waste” – the hazardous byproducts of the high-pressure slurries injected to extract oil and natural gas from shale far below Earth’s surface – to be pumped so compliantly into Ohio land. Much of the waste now being disposed of in Ohio’s deep-injection wells doesn’t even originate in the state. Yet it has the potential to cause earthquakes or -- of far greater concern -- to migrate into Ohioans’ drinking water.

Ohio has become a prime regional repository of fracking waste originating throughout local oil-shale country, which includes eastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania and parts of West Virginia.

Part of the reason, no question, is eastern and southeast Ohio’s waste-disposal-friendly geology. As cleveland.com’s Peter Kro

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