When Government Oversight Fails Appalachia

Two very different crises reveal the same failure: authorities had the power to act but failed those they were meant to protect.

The Mid-Ohio Valley has made news twice in the last few months for disturbing reasons. In late June, details of the “House of Horrors” involving child-marriage victim Elizabeth Siders emerged from Vinton County, Ohio. More recently, The New York Times reported that radioactive wastewater from fracking was “bubbling up out of the ground” near Marietta, Ohio. These crises might seem unrelated, but they stem from strikingly similar causes: government authorities had the power to act and failed to do so. Why are the people of Appalachia so routinely neglected by the governments meant to protect them?

In Elizabeth Siders’s case, government failure was written into law. Elizabeth Russell was fifteen and pregnant in 2008 when she was taken across state lines to West Virginia to seek permission to marry Gary Siders, the 18-year-old who had impregnated her. At the time, West Virginia law allowed an 18-year-old to marry a child under 16 with parental or guardian consent if a judge determined the marriage was in the minor’s best interest.

Yet state law did not consider children under 16 capable of consenting to sex. Nor could a minor independently petition for divorce; Elizabeth would have needed a next friend to do so. The law allowed her to enter a marriage while denying her the legal capacity to consent to sex or to leave that marriage on her own. In practice, the law left Elizabeth with few options but to marry the man who had had sex with her when she was legally incapable of consenting.

Stereotypes about teen pregnancy and child marriage in Appalachia are not entirely unfounded. But Elizabeth Siders’ experience—and the abuse and neglect suffered by her 16 children— shows the devastating human cost of laws that leave children vulnerable to abuse. West Virginia lawmakers later considered raising the minimum age of marriage to 18 without exceptions, but opponents defeated the bill, some arguing that child marriage is a part of Appalachian culture. As a proud Appalachian, I reject that characterization. Child marriage is not Appalachian culture, and no appeal to tradition justifies leaving children in these states vulnerable to abuse.

The failure of government oversight extends beyond child marriage. Ohio has become a destination for fracking wastewater, much of it containing heavy metals and radioactive material linked to cancer and other illnesses. Fracking uses proprietary chemical liquids to fracture rock deep underground to release oil and natural gas, generating large quantities of this toxic wastewater in the process. Pennsylvania and West Virginia produce much of it but have relatively few injection wells. Ohio, which has more than 200 and regulates them under authority granted by the federal government, accepts much of its neighbors’ waste. The result: Ohioans bear the risk.

The warning signs came early. In 2019, just one year after the Redbird #4 injection well opened in Marietta, Ohio, evidence emerged that fracking brine had seeped into conventional oil wells. Seven years later, the brine has reached the surface and threatens drinking water in the area. Authorities have known about the problem for years. Yet instead of stopping it, the state has made it harder for Ohioans to seek justice in court. Local communities and governments are left fighting the state and federal authorities that ought to be protecting their interests.

Appalachians are known for their self-sufficiency and loyalty to their local communities. That mindset can make them especially likely to look at situations like these and conclude that, if the government is going to wreak havoc on their communities, less government is better than more government. But it is not necessarily the case that these communities need less government. What they certainly need is better government.

Regulators could have acted when Appalachians first discovered bubbling brine in 2019. West Virginia judges could have protected Elizabeth from the marriage that trapped her and left her and her 16 children to suffer years of abuse and neglect. Ohio’s Job and Family Services could have intervened during Elizabeth’s repeated pregnancies as a minor, particularly when she gave birth in hospitals. But government has repeatedly failed those without the money or political influence to make their interests impossible to ignore.

Elizabeth Siders and her children deserved better. So do the Ohioans living with the consequences of contaminated fracking wastewater. Neither should be collateral damage of a government that assumes the authority to regulate but fails to exercise that authority responsibly. When the government regulates marriage or injection wells, it assumes a duty to prevent harm. In Appalachia, too often, the vulnerable and overlooked and have paid the price when it does not.