Catching Our Eye News Roundup, Sept. 18, 2026

Every morning in the Ohio Capital Journal’s free newsletter, The Eye-Opener, we round up the news and commentary from across Ohio and around the country and world that is catching our attention. We call this feature Catching Our Eye, republished here.

Please subscribe to our free daily newsletter to get all the Ohio news you need to know right to your inbox every weekday morning.

If you already subscribe, please share with your family and friends so they know about the Ohio Capital Journal too: https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/subscribe/

Catching Our Eye

• Farmers, water, and data centers. The Reporting Project’s Alan Miller reports, “Farmers raise concerns about long-term protection of water resources in wake of Ohio Chamber of Commerce study on data-center demand.”

A key finding in an Ohio Chamber of Commerce study of water and electricity resources available for data center growth in central and southwestern Ohio is that those corridors are “broadly well positioned to support additional data center growth from a water-resource perspective through 2030.”

That’s a little more than three years from now. What about water resources 13 years from now? Or 23 years from now?

Some folks involved in agriculture and food production, which add an estimated $124 billion to the economy annually and are the state’s largest industry when combined, are concerned that not enough is being done to include them in discussions about water or to protect Ohio’s water resources far into the future.

• Well, disaster. The Athens County Independent’s Dani Kington reports, “Operator fights to reopen injection wells linked to disaster.”

A fracking waste injection company is fighting to reopen two suspended Noble County wells that the Ohio Department of Natural Resources linked to a 2021 environmental disaster.

The wells were initially suspended by order of the chief of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management in January 2023. The division found the wells were responsible for a 2021 incident in which toxic waste injected into the ground by DeepRock Disposal Solutions burst to the surface via an oil and gas production well two miles away. The incident contaminated Noble County land and waterways, killed hundreds of animals, and cost the state nearly $1.3 million to clean up.

• Starting with love. In Matter News, Jack Shuler writes, “If you start from a place of love, you can’t go wrong: A vigil for an unhoused community member who recently died in Newark served as a call to not look away.”

“You know, the world has a way of overlooking people,” said Pastor Peter Borhauer of First United Methodist Church in downtown Newark, Ohio. “If you don’t fit whatever the expectations are, no one cares.”

He was speaking to a knowing crowd of 50 or so people gathered in the church basement to memorialize a friend named Daisy, a loved one who died on the streets of this small city. The room is filled entirely with church volunteers, outreach workers, and people who are unhoused or have been. The man across from me, “Mm-hmms,” in affirmation.