CADIZ — Enforcement of a tax will help generate a little extra money for Harrison County, according to the county treasurer.

At a recent commission meeting, Treasurer Vicki Sefsick said her office was ready to being collecting an ad valorum tax from gas and oil companies in Harrison County. Sefsick said the county works with the state of Ohio to help determine the tax.

“It is a tax that is collected from the companies that are producing the gas,” she said. “They issue their report to the state, and then we get our figures from the state.”

County Auditor Patrick Moore said the tax is not a new one, as the county has been charging a property tax to oil wells for a century. Moore said that the interest in the tax comes from the increase in drilling activity in recent years, as well as the changes in how the tax is applied. Moore said that before, the companies were only taxed at the well heads, while now the taxes are dependent on the district the wells are in, including where the horizontal wells extend to. Moore said that in 2001 the mineral evaluation for the county was approximately $4 million, while in tax year 2016 the figure has gone up to $225 million.

“That increase is just based on the sheer amount of production of the gas and oil wells in the county,”Moore said. “This isn’t a new tax, it’s been around for around 100 years. The difference is in how much the wells are producing between now and then.”

Last year, the ad valorum tax brought in an additional $6 million to the county, and Moore estimates that this year the tax will bring in nearly twice as much money. He said the money will be spread throughout the county, with approximately 60 percent going to the public schools. The rest of the money will be dispersed through the county general fund and to other offices such as the sheriff’s office and other departments.

Moore said the money will be distributed by early April. Anyone seeking more information about the tax can contact the treasurer’s office at 740-942-8864 or the auditor’s office at 740-942-8861.