The Official Newspaper of the Diocese of Little Rock
Near Niles, Ohio, John Williams has made the Westwood Lake Park, a mobile home community, a second home of sorts.
The member of St. Stephen Parish in Niles regularly visits residents to keep an eye on a recently drilled well in a farm field just outside of the park. The nearest homes are about 500 feet from the well. A few of the park’s 800 residents have complained about respiratory illnesses, but more were concerned with the loud noise from periodic flaring of the well throughout the fall as operators tested the purity of the natural gas being produced.
Williams, 57, credits the Sisters of the Humility of Mary who taught at the parish school he attended, for his awareness of the environment. “We had good nuns,” he said.
For the past two years, Williams has devoted his life to raising awareness of the fracking process. He converted a 1992 Mercedes 300 to run on vegetable oil, and he has sold many of his possessions, deciding it was time to live as simply as possible so he could continue his mission.
Williams is a regular at meetings of the Niles City Council and the Trumbull County commissioners, carrying folders with information about the natural gas industry and Ohio’s licensing process gleaned from public records. At times he goes door-to-door in the community, looking to talk with anyone who will listen.
His efforts have met with limited success. He and others succeeded in August in getting the City Council to adopt a community bill of rights that essentially banned shale gas and oil drilling. However, it was rescinded within weeks when industry supporters and construction union members lobbied council members, citing the need for jobs in the once heavily industrialized region.
“I feel a responsibility to the planet and to my local city here,” Williams said. “I love Niles.”
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