* Ohio - Increase in fracking trucks has drawbacks
-- The warning signs and convoys of semi trucks have become part of the landscape in eastern Ohio’s shale country, where a drilling surge has brought more big rigs to rural roads... The orange placards and the trucks they portend might be the clearest sign yet of the dual role locals say the region’s oil and gas industry has assumed as both economic engine and potential danger for drivers sharing winding two-lane roads with 18-wheelers... Those trucks haul stone, heavy equipment used to build well pads, drilling rigs and other materials. And tanker trucks are transporting water needed in the hydraulic fracturing process and the fracking wastewater that flows back up from the wells... Among the bad: a recent uptick in the number of crashes involving semi trucks in eastern Ohio counties and faster wear-and-tear onset because of the heavier traffic on roads... Some routes near processing facilities already have seen as many as 500 additional trucks a day, according to ODOT. For example, an additional 100 to 500 trucks a day were seen on Rt. 43 in Carroll County in 2013, the latest data available, compared with three years earlier... In its eight-county eastern Ohio district, ODOT has increased spending on pavement and guardrail maintenance in each of the past three years. Truck tires rolling over the edges of narrow roads, for example, are wearing out those edges faster... Upgrading from gravel or chip-seal to fully paved road surfaces is important to move truck traffic, but that leaves cash-strapped townships and counties with a more-expensive asset to maintain when the drilling is done...
(Photo: Truck traffic of wastewater tankers from gas drilling) -- Cadiz, OH, USA - The Columbus Dispatch, by Rick Rouan -March 29, 2015Labels: trucking industry news USA
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