No to ‘fracking’ doesn’t mean no, Landowner refusal can’t stop drilling

No to ‘fracking’ doesn’t mean no, Landowner refusal can’t stop drilling by Spencer Hunt, July 29, 2012, The Columbus Dispatch
Steve Neeley estimates that he has spent more than $500,000 over the past 12 years to build a country estate in southern Portage County. When a Chesapeake Energy land man approached him months ago with an offer to lease the Utica shale mineral rights beneath his meticulously landscaped 9.5-acre property in eastern Ohio, Neeley declined. That’s when, Neeley says, the land man told him, “We’ll just take it.” … Ohio’s law lets a drilling company add unwilling landowners’ properties to drilling units as long as the company has leased at least 65 percent of the unit’s acreage. … The payments and assurances mean little to Neeley and others who fear that their well water will be polluted.