News

WESTMINSTER, Ohio (AP) - Officials in six northwest Ohio counties are planning a $1 million project to clear logjams and leaning trees from a 76-mile stretch of the Auglaize River.

They tell The Lima News that goals are to reduce flooding, encourage recreation and create a maintenance fund for the waterway.

The stretch involved collects water from an area of about 216,000 acres and about 12,000 property owners. Funding will come from assessments of $1 to $10 per acre on those property owners in Allen, Auglaize, Mercer, Putnam, Shelby and Van Wert counties.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - The board tasked with redrawing Ohio's legislative lines kicks off a week of public hearings Monday with trips to Lima and Toledo.

The Ohio Apportionment Board redraws the state's legislative districts every 10 years to reflect changes in population after each decennial census. A spokesman for the House speaker says the board wants to hear from the public about what works and what doesn't with the current districts.

CANTON, Ohio (AP) - An energy company tapping a major natural gas deposit in eastern Ohio has opened an office in Canton and expects to create more than 70 jobs.

The (Canton) Repository reports today *Friday* that Chesapeake Energy will use the office as an interim operations base until it finds a permanent field office for drilling in the Utica shale formation. Last month Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy said it believes the 1.25 million acres it has leased above the Utica Shale formation in eastern Ohio is worth 15 to 20 billion dollars.  

The August 2011 installment of SOCHE TALKS featuring Dr. Rusty Bladwin, from the Air Force Institute of Technology on Cyber Security.

The SOCHE Talks are a collaboration with the Southwest Ohio Council for Higher Education. In this monthly series we’ll hear from faculty and staff from areas colleges and universities on a wide variety of subjects. It's an effort to bring Miami Valley research and thinking into the public arena – a way to enlighten the world with local knowledge.

There have been a lot of discussions that seem to be happening behind the scenes about how to get this resolved before this goes to the ballot to voters in about 80 or so days, in a little over 2 months. There was some talk about how some republican leaders were trying to get union leaders to deal with this.