Why is toxic wastewater bubbling up from underneath this Ohio city?

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2:02Now stick around for today's show. WVUR Podcasts. Boston. This is OnPoint. I'm Megna Tacharabardi. Bob Wilson has spent almost his entire life working in oil and gas fields in Washington County, Ohio. I'm 67 years old. I've been in the oil and gas business for 51 years. Bob runs about 170 wells with his wife and son. And after more than five decades, he knows that it's normal for oil and gas wells to sometimes, quote, water out. That means when water leaks through the surrounding rock and interferes with drilling. But about seven years ago, Bob began noticing something strange. I've seen wells fill up with water before, but normally it's just dead water. You don't get anything.

3:05But these wells, they just act different than anything I've ever seen. I noticed if I pumped them real hard and shut the casing off, they would pressure up and pump off. So that told me that the water was coming from the perforations and the well. But to manage the out and back up and let the pressure off, the water's right back again. Basically, every time Bob pumped out the water, more would return at high pressure. I've got several wells that flow water to surface. You open any valve you want to, you can't open a stick it on a sink or no gas, no oil, in this water, a potion of water. And the water itself was salty and Bob says it smelled terrible. If you catch it in like a plastic jug or something, it'll kind of turn a little bit orange looking. You can still see through it, but it's not clear like tap water. So Bob started looking for where the water was coming from. Turns out just up the road from some of his leases, there's an injection well.

4:06These are structures that are created to deal with wastewater generated by the oil and gas extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking. In order to get oil and gas out of the ground, water, sand and chemicals are pumped underground at high pressure to crack, deeply buried rock and release the fossil fuels. Some of that liquid eventually returns to the surface and it's highly toxic. More than 90% of the time, the best solution is to get rid of the contaminated water by injecting it back into the ground thousands of feet deep. The EPA says more than two billion gallons of oil and gas-related wastewater gets pumped into injection wells every day. Ohio is home to more than 200 of these wells. The idea is, once the fluid is way back down there, it's supposed to stay deep underground, but in Bob's case, that wasn't happening.

5:07You know, I've been through four wells a week and go down, so I call the ODNR, and I told him that I believe that the disposal wells were flooding my production wells out. And they didn't want to talk about it. They said, can't happen, it's not possible, click. I mean, it wouldn't even discuss it. So next week, I'd be down to four more wells, and I call back and say, same story, they didn't want to talk to me. ODNR is the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the state agency responsible for regulating oil gas and injection wells. And I want to make something very clear right here. Bob's own wells aren't fracking wells. They're conventionally drilled wells, completely different technique, and that one that uses far less wastewater. The fracking was happening elsewhere, and the injection wells from the fracking process are what were contaminating his own wells. So Bob kept calling. He spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to repair his affected wells. Eventually, state inspectors collected some samples of the water.

6:12And in 2020, the agency confirmed what Bob had been saying all along. It was like a 43-page letter, and it had test results and stuff in there. And they confirmed that it was, even though it couldn't happen, they confirmed that it was disposal water. And just so you know, these disposal companies were injecting water at 4,000 foot down to 6,000 foot. And it migrated up to my wells that are 1,800 to 2,000 foot deep. Today, Bob says 50 of his 170 oil and gas wells are completely flooded with this contaminated fracking water. And because of what's happening, Bob's income is 1 third of what it was just 7 years ago because he's lost so much production. We work all months long, and I still don't mind working, but at the end of the month, you all feel like you're a little bit better off, and you was at the start of it. If you thought that way anymore, we're going backwards and it's seem like you're just spending your wills, you know what I mean? We're not gaining anything.

7:13And the consequences extend beyond Bob's business. He is the main natural gas supplier for about 250 rural households in southeast Ohio. And he's not sure he can serve them anymore. Last winter in February was really, really cold, and we just run out of gas. We didn't have enough. And people call, you know, raising devil's e, you know, where out of gas coming to do something. Well, you know, when you're out of gas, you're out of gas. And there are somebody say, well, turn on some more gas. Well, it's in its wide open. We don't have any more gas. And I can tell you, I've got landowners that I have wells on that had free gas to their homes from their property, you know, wealth that I own for 60 years. And because of this problem, they don't have any more. And like said, there was no other alternative gas source in this area. So these are got to convert to propane. If that's possible or go electric and you know, if you go electric, you know, change, you know, furnaces, water tanks and all that stuff. So I feel bad for all these people, but I didn't call this.

8:17Well, at least three other conventional oil and gas operators have also reported flooded wells in the past couple of years. And there are broader concerns about why this wastewater can travel as far as it does underground, where it's going and whether it could eventually threaten drinking water in the area. Now we reached out to a company that operates some of these injection wells in Washington County, Ohio, deep rock disposal solutions is one of them. And their attorney Laura Goins sent us a lengthy statement, which includes this that on July 2nd, deep rock, voluntarily paused operations at one of their wells in Washington County, Ohio. This was following a request from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. The statement says quote operations remain paused in accordance with deep rocks, voluntary cooperation. This measure was taken solely out of an abundance of caution and out of a desire to fully cooperate with state regulators to best protect the local community and the environment. Now, Marietta Ohio is the largest city in Washington County, Ohio. It's home to over 13,000 people and Marietta is now at the center of a growing national debate over these injection wells.

9:28What happens when wastewater created by America's fracking boom simply does not stay where it's supposed to. So let's start with David Jeffrey. He's a geology professor at Marietta College who's been studying what's happening underground in this part of Ohio. He's also a former geologist with BP and he joins us from Marietta, Ohio, Professor Jeffrey, welcome to on point. Hi, thanks for having me, Megna. Okay, so I understand that fracking wastewater 90% of the time, the best option to dispose of it are these injection wells. And why is that? Well, absolutely, that it's usually a very safe process to do it if the geology is studied correctly in the oil industry. We do a subsurface analysis in which we try to understand great lengths, the reservoir. We're going to be pumping the material into. We're going to be trying to study the trap system that's going to be holding the material and then make sure that there's some sort of a seal. And that's sort of a geological subsurface analysis is one of the things that all major oil companies base their economics for all of their wells on. They need to be sure because it's a very risky endeavor.

10:39Places that are would be good areas to inject these types of toxic fluids, in my opinion, would be places like already depleted oil and gas fields where we have a pretty good understanding of what the reservoir rock is, what the porosity and permeability is. We have good understandings of what the structural orientations of the layers are and then we have a good understanding of what the seal is of the system there that's going on. So we try to understand that, well, if we're trying to get the fluid out of the ground that we can be sure that it's down there. And if we're putting fluids into the ground, make sure that it can stay there and be able to demonstrate that. To put it more simply and correct me if I'm wrong, Professor Jeffrey, but the idea with these injection wells is that you find sites where you can inject fracking wastewater as we heard from Bob, you know, four to 6,000 feet, some more than a mile underground. And by virtue, not just of the depth, but the kind of rock and soil that the wastewater is being injected into and the pressures that it's subjected to, it's supposed to stay down there.

11:45Absolutely. And like I was mentioning before, the requirements for any sort of fluid accumulation in the subsurface are the reservoir, the trap and the seal. And when we look at the rocks that are around here, it looks like the reservoir rocks are fairly impermeable and not very not not very porous. And they don't we don't have a really good trap to find. And it looks like the seal has been breached by natural fractures in this region. This podcast is supported by Anthropic, the public benefit corporation behind Claude. Everyone's got a hard question about AI, your job, your kids, where it's going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at Claude.ai slash Spotify and keep thinking, that's Claude.ai slash Spotify.

12:52In business, the best days are when priorities stay on track. The Hartford helps mid-size and large companies manage key exposures with insurance and proactive risk solutions. So focus can stay where it belongs. Visit the Hartford.com slash risk mitigation to learn more. With summer coming to an end, you're going to be spending more time indoors. Get your home ready and save up to 50% off custom window treatments during the Labor Day mega sale at Blinds.com. From room darkening to light filtering shades, finding the perfect fit is easy. Get free samples, expert design help, and professional measure and install services. Or DIY with confidence and support every step of the way. Shop up to 50% off site-wide plus huge savings on door busters. Right now during the Labor Day mega sale at Blinds.com. You wrote in the Ohio Capitol Journal something very interesting. You said that tests indicate that something is fracking the wastewater. What exactly does that mean?

13:53When you pump things down at high pressures, you might actually unintentionally frack the subsurface. So initially that was one of my thoughts that perhaps the stuff was escaping because we were inducing fractures into that area. But now I've sort of changed my opinion a little bit. And I think the main avenue are basically natural fractures. There might be some fracture stimulation unintentionally going on down there by the injection wells. But I think the main piece of data that sort of put me over to supporting Bob and his folks is basically those pressures of those wells. I'm looking at a graph here that has well pressures from tubing and casing pressures that in the 2023 were down at 20 or 50 PSI. And over the last two years up until the end of this data in April or so, those have risen to 340 PSI. So the 20 to 50 is sort of the normal depleted well pressure for some of these Berea wells.

14:56And they've been producing 80 years, which is kind of incredible for a little 8-foot thick layer of sandstone. And in this case, I bet that this is indicating to us that there's a really big connectivity between the Berea and this injection issue is showing us that we have maybe a gas resource here that is not just the Berea sandstone, but it's connected through the Ohio and Shagrin Shale all the way down into some of these deeper formation. So I get that that we have not just the composition of the layers of rock, but also these rising pressures that are pushing this wastewater closer to the surface than was ever intended. And to your point, there's this Berea layer where also the wastewater can sort of travel sort of horizontally along the surface. So or like just under the surface, it is one thing. It's bad enough for Bob for his wells to go offline because of this injection will water getting into his wells, but you've also mentioned that there could potentially be concerns over drinking water sources in Marietta. Why?

16:03We already know that the fluids are coming up through the vast Ohio Shale. It's a super thick. Initially, I would have thought I was a daughter too. I thought, well, that stuff probably isn't going to be coming up through the Ohio Shale 3000 or more feet. But if there are fractures going all the way up through that Ohio Shale, I don't think anybody can say, oh, it's just going to stop there then. I think it's likely, especially if they're seeing pressures within these wells at 350 to 370 PSI that is coming up to the surface. And we have a number of unverified examples of fluids strangely popping up at the surface into a place called Lake Vito. I've even seen some frothy fluids coming out of an outcrop that's not too far from one of the injection wells. And there may be some new data that's coming up. I don't know if Susan has something to say about that as well. But our aquifers as the fluids in the Berea sandstone move farther and farther afield, they've gone as far as 5 miles from the injection well. They get closer and closer to the local aquifers, which are basically the gravelly sands that are underneath the muskingum and the Ohio rivers.

17:09So putting this in lay person's terms, the same forces and natural fractures that are pushing the injection well wastewater into places like Bob's own oil and gas wells could push them along natural fractures towards aquifers that are used for drinking water in Marietta. That's kind of the simple way to put it. Yeah. And the aquifers pull pretty hard too on lowering pressure. So there are another low pressure sink in the area. Okay. So you mentioned Susan. And I'd like to introduce her into the conversation now Susan vessels. She's president of the Marietta City Council and a lifelong Republican as well. And she joins us also from Marietta, Ohio. Susan vessels welcome to on point. Hi, Magnet. Thanks for having me. Okay. So first of all, tell us not only has an elected official, but as a resident of Marietta, when did you first become aware that there may be an issue with the the wastewater from these injection wells, an issue with what's happening in Marietta? I was not aware of any dangers associated with oil field waste disposal until late spring and summer of 2025.

18:21Through the efforts of Buck Island Environmental Network, there was a first meeting with Warren water officials. I believe it was in May of 25. And I actually had a counselor, Aaron O'Neill attend that meeting and she reported back to me, Susan, there's an incredible interest in this. There were a few hundred people, I guess, at the Warren High School at that meeting. I just filed that away in my mind, but didn't really begin thinking about this until a environmental and de Arnold, who later was a founding member of Washington County for Safe Drinking Water, came to a water committee meeting in early July. And they said, you should know that just outside your city limits, there are currently four injection wells that are permitted to inject 5,000 barrels a day each. So you currently have permitted 20,000 42 gallon barrels of oil field waste a day just outside of your city limits.

19:29And then they informed us after that there were at that time in early July of 2025, two pending permits for additional waste water injection wells just outside the city limits. Have tests revealed thus far any indication that some of this wastewater is getting into the drinking water aquifers for Marietta? Currently, we do not have any information showing that it is in our aquifers. There was a once every 10 years, there's a requirement that a nuclear test is done on the aquifers and our aquifer did pass that last June of 2025. But the concern is that this waste is making it from the injection zone to the surface. It's made it to the surface in nearby Vito Lake, which is about 9 miles west of Marietta.

20:30After studying this, sort of think of it as a Ken to a game of Russian roulette for this community with our geology. If it can make it up in certain areas, it was just a matter of time with the volumes and the amount of waste is being ejected that our aquifers are placed at unnecessary risk. Okay, so I understand that the city of Marietta in order to try to not have to play this game of Russian roulette anymore has tried some legislative action, including passing a moratorium on injection wells. Can you tell me more about that Susan? Yes, well, after we initially learned about this, you know, in early July, I thought we're going to do a committee of the whole. That's a meeting where every member of council is required to attend. And the purpose of that was to educate the council on injection wells, because last summer, we really didn't understand anything.

21:34But that meeting we invited petroleum engineers representatives from the injection well companies, politicians, licensed geologists, and we had a three hour meeting and we learned a lot. And the reason why that was extremely important was because I mentioned earlier that there were two pending permits. A third permit application was filed just prior to that meeting in the end of July. And the council motioned that we respond within the 15 day time limit with a common objection letter to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. So once we learned about the risk that we're being placed under, there was a counselor Mike skills thought we should do a moratorium resolution because ultimately the council doesn't have any power to stop this or to protect the city other than to request that the state legislature and the governor ask for new rules.

22:37Susan, can I just jump in on that point because I think it's it's really important. So even if a moratorium was passed, which I think it was in Marietta, it was enforcing it is a totally different issue. And so actually on that point, we spoke with Jessica Archer, who is president of the advocacy group Washington County for safe drinking water. And she says, and as I'm sure you're familiar with Susan that now Marietta is trying to get a lot more support from the state level. At the local level, we don't have the authority to enforce this moratorium has to be enforced by the governor and by the legislature. And we have not been getting any traction up there. So one of the things that our group did was we got nine of the local water authorities together. And they each passed their own moratorium. So now we've got the city moratorium, the nine local water authorities. Those were all delivered to Columbus as well. So if you received any support from the Ohio State legislature or the governor's office. The first moratorium resolution was a city's resolution that was passed last October second mayor Schlicker and I delivered that physically to the governor's office last October 24th.

23:46And also delivered cover letters with QR codes linking to that particular resolution for each of the 99 state representatives and the 33 state senators and physically also delivered it to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. And so the months that followed the governor's office did not so much as acknowledge receipt even with the letter saying thank you for for dropping this off. There was little or essentially no movement from the state legislature or the state Senate. That's really what motivated working toward getting the other entities in the county with authority over water to produce their own moratorium resolutions because if the city's doesn't hold any weight in Columbus, maybe the city plus another eight entities with the authority. Mr. Jeffrey, I was very taken with how Susan described like that. Marietta does not want to keep having to play Russian roulette with the addition of more injection wells when there's already a known problem with transport subsurface transport of this waste water.

24:56I'm wondering professor that even if both city and county or possibly even state level moratorium were put in place and enforced that wouldn't necessarily stop the problem that's already happening with this wastewater moving. That's right. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, it's already there and it's under fairly high pressure and it's it's moving away. In fact, when they did stop the injection just a few weeks ago, Bob Wilson actually told me that as soon as they stopped the injection, you could see the pressure suddenly start to drop off again. So giving us an indication that there is a direct connection. This podcast is supported by Anthropic, the public benefit corporation behind Claude. Everyone's got a hard question about AI, your job, your kids, where it's going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way because there's hope in hard questions.

26:02Ask yours at Claude.ai slash Spotify and keep thinking that's Claude.ai slash Spotify. In business, the best days are when priorities stay on track. The Hartford helps midsize and large companies manage key exposures with insurance and proactive risk solutions. So focus can stay where it belongs. Visit the Hartford.com slash risk mitigation to learn more. With summer coming to an end, you're going to be spending more time indoors. Get your home ready and save up to 50% off custom window treatments during the Labor Day mega sale at Blinds.com from room darkening to light filtering shades, finding the perfect fit is easy. Get free samples, expert design help, and professional measure and install services or DIY with confidence and support every step of the way. Shop up to 50% off site wide plus huge savings on door busters right now during the Labor Day mega sale at Blinds.com.

27:03I just want to read a little bit more of a statement that we received from one of these injection well companies. It's deep rock disposal solutions and we received a statement from Laura Goins and attorney with the company. Goins says that their preliminary findings, they say they retained a third party as set of experts to investigate what they call the allegations of this Brian migration and the deep rock disposal solution statements says quote the preliminary findings by independent hydrogeologic and engineering analyses indicate that Brian from deep rocks, well injection wells have not migrated outside their intended injection form. Furthermore data provided by ODN are suggests that Brian presents in nearby wells is more likely attributable to the issues with well construction and mechanical integrity in those wells. How do you respond to that professor Jeffries? Well, as I was saying before the initial shutdown of those wells, we could see the immediate response in the producing Berea wells.

28:10So those gas wells that have been sort of flooded out those pressures started to go down and of course that stuff is spreading is the pressures going down isn't necessarily a good thing. It means that that fluid is spreading outward. And if you map out the direction of the wells that it's impacting if they go sort of in a northeast southwest direction, which is consistent with the major fracture orientation that would be the open fractures in this region. In fact, if you look at maps of where they're drilling horizontal wells to the northeast of here, they're perpendicular to that. So the geology of the area, those oil companies are trying to take advantage of that. I think the root of all of this problem, I haven't seen any of the data from the third party investigators or anything, but when you look at the permits for these initial wells, I haven't seen much in the way of any subsurface analysis associated with those. So we've been trying to get the ODNR to show us if there was some sort of subsurface evaluation that got into the nitty gritty of what the geology was, the shape of the terrain down there.

29:14What is the porosity range? What are the environments of deposition? How compartmentalized it is? And I'm a professor. I'm so sorry, but I'm going on. I just want to put you, I'm hearing you correctly, that for these new wells that have been recently permitted, even though there's already existing concern over what's happening with the injection wells that are already in the ground, you're saying that you haven't seen evidence that there's been adequate subsurface exploration for where the new wells are proposed to go. Some of the standard things that go on in the oil and gas industry in which you would be trying to take to your boss and saying, well, I think there's a prospect here, and these are the facts of the area, and you do an evaluation to show sort of how big of an area is it if you are injecting how far with that spread out and what direction. And then I don't, I would just, none of that's apparent on the permits that I've seen. I would believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, but this should be a requirement from, I guess, is it ODNR that's providing the permits?

30:21That's the whole business, I think, and the most of the geology that I've seen is very sort of, you know, they're looking at some of the aquifers at the surface, but the subsurface analysis is not there. I should say we reached out to state level officials, didn't hear back from any of them, but Susan Vessel's, I want to just get your quick response to what Professor Jeffrey just said. Deeprock said that, you know, they don't have any evidence of their wells migrating in this vicinity. One of the items that I had in the city's common objection letter focused on the American growers well, which belongs to Deeprock. Last summer, a lies technical group did testing of two berets of wells and the vicinity of that Deeprock American growers injection well. And the beret well that was 900 approximately 900 feet away came up positive for a frack fluid stabilization chemicals, PFH, XA and PFH, PA.

31:23That frack fluid stabilization chemical was not found in a beret well that a lies technical group tested that was 1.9 miles away. The interesting thing is those frack fluid stabilization chemicals are also found across the Ohio River. Those same chemicals are found in the drinking water and Williams town west Virginia. So why is there frack fluid stabilization chemicals in the drinking water in West Virginia? OD&R has said and the response to the city's comment letter that it must have come through the air. Well, if it comes through the air, then why is it not in the beret well that's two miles away from the injection, but it is in the beret well that's 900 feet away and the aquifer that is 5,000 feet away. Interesting. I want to actually just make something clear for all listeners because the oil and gas industry is obviously hugely important in Ohio and surrounding states.

32:24And I don't want folks to come away with the wrong impression about both of your views on the oil and gas industry as a whole. I mean, Susan Vessels, do you support fracking or oil and gas extraction in Ohio, right? Well, I like electricity. I like to be able to heat my home as do other people. But under the current rules, it's not being done safely. The current rules allow the placement of these injection wells outside of any city in order to do or do diligence here. We reached out to the Ohio Oil and Gas Association group. It's an industry group and there we spoke with Mike Chadsie. At the end of the day, if we got away from injection, that would slow down and arguably stop the Appalachian Basin of producing crude oil natural gas. Which matters because if you put Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia and I'm not suggesting this, but if we became our own country, we would be the third largest natural gas producer in the world.

33:25And by the way, that industry has also been booming because natural gas production in Appalachia has more than quadrupled since 2012. So obviously there's an equivalent growing need to get rid of that fracking wastewater and Chadsie says there aren't many solutions other than injecting it locally. What would be the other solutions? So one of them would be more trucking, trucking it out west down south. And so that's more time on the road, more truck traffic, more transportation costs fuel consumption and things of that nature. Chadsie also told us that he has heard that Ohio has been characterized as a dumping ground for fracking wastewater. He and his group disagree. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources says roughly a third of the wastewater injected in the state comes from Pennsylvania and West Virginia. A third meaning two thirds come from in state fracking. I've also heard that injections are not regulated. They are very stringently and they should be. We often hear that DNR is not paying attention or engaged. They do inspections. They do water testing regularly.

34:30Okay, so that obviously brings us back to the deep concerns of Marietta Ohio residents. Chadsie and his group says the respond from state regulators in their view. The interview has been adequate. And if there's more evidence that Marietta's drinking water is being threatened, he says there are several ways to respond. There's something called monitoring wells that can be drilled. You know, if let's say there's a 10 year flow pan between an injection well and aquifer. And so the idea is you can put in a monitoring well to see if there's been any impacts. And then you can also do what's called an interceptor well where you can pump that water out. You can also stop injecting. You can remove water and put it someplace else. And so there are multiple remedies. You know, should there be a need for that down the road. But right now we're all just waiting to see what if anything the DNR says on this issue and what that path forward is. Professor Jeffrey Mike also said that his associations message to people in Marietta or Washington County, Ohio is that he says injection wells are safe.

35:36There's no impact to drinking water. They're confident about that. I mean, you're response. Well, I think he's correct in most of what he said, but I think the evidence here that we have with those rising pressures and those fluids at the surface. It's not staying in the formation. 5,000, 4,500 feet underground. And when it's not staying there, then that's a problem. Your injection project is a failure there. Can I just ask a quick question, like actually an engineering question, when these the existing injection wells were first drilled and created, was there any evidence that or or adequate exploration that showed that these the natural fractures could actually transport the water far beyond their intended location. Did we know I don't think we knew it as well then I think we discovered it through this process. So I mean, it actually opens up quite an interesting conversation about how this oil and gas system works here. And in fact, it might actually indicate there's a huge giant gas accumulation that we are also injecting fluids into the middle of and potentially hurting the porosity and permeability system.

36:45Yeah, I just wanted to ask because I suppose a lot of people wondering, well, did they know what they're doing their first explorations? And if so, why did the injection wells go in? If we didn't, that's one thing. But now we have evidence that this Brian is being transported. And so Susan, I wanted to go back to you in terms of just clearly what do you want to have happen now? You've talked about the concern and the moratorium you'd like to be enforced over new wells. But as Professor Jeffrey said, there seems to be evidence already that the existing injection wells when the one that you had mentioned, they stop pumping wastewater into it. It also helps too. I mean, do you want something done with the existing wells, Susan? Yes, the moratorium resolutions, all nine of them asked to stop all current injection of waste within six miles of our aquifers. I think that that's an extremely easy ask. Perhaps it should be farther. The six miles was chosen because of the Redbird study showing that waste was migrating horizontally, 5.43 miles and to the surface in the western part of the county.

37:58So, you know, our aquifers, the, the, the, there are three aquifers plus Williams, town, west, or Virginia are all located between 1.3 and 1.8 miles from these four existing injection wells. So, you know, I think ultimately this is not safe and that in order for the oil and gas industry to continue to behave responsibly as to communities, they need a new rule that simply states do not inject close to public drinking water aquifers. So, I'd like, I think that we've asked that all injection halt. And then, I'd like to thank all of you for joining us. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for joining us.

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