But with several oil and gas wells on land behind her property, she says potential buyers want no part of it. The closest well is 89 feet from her property line.
An oil and gas company cleared woods to drill a well behind the house in 2008. The next year brought two more wells. The family moved out during the drilling of the second well.
While there is much debate over whether oil and gas well drilling poses health risks, Fowler said her family experienced vomiting and headaches during the process.
They moved into an apartment, and a year later they left the area for good.
She was a design engineer at Ford. Her husband was an information technology director at Progressive Insurance. They moved to Portland, Ore.
"It's just been a brutal financial strain for us," Fowler said in an interview.
"You couldn't pay me to live in Ohio again," she said. "It was our dream home. Now it's a lovely home right on top of an industrial site. We feel like refugees from our city and our state."
Many Ohioans are just waking up to the fracking boom. Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a method of extracting natural gas hidden deep within shale formations. The boom is expected to create thousands of jobs and add billions to the state's economy.
Broadview Heights has had a head start on many communities when it comes to drilling. The suburb south of Cleveland has become home to more than 80 oil and gas wells -- by far the most in Cuyahoga County -- since a 2004 state law opened the floodgates to urban drilling. Broadview Heights also stands as an example of how drilling where people live can riddle a community with contention.
Tensions between residents and city officials, oil and gas well drillers and regulators have been roiling for several years, as bobbing pump jacks and oil storage tanks have taken up space in wooded lots and manicured neighborhoods.
Tish O'Dell is working to get a bill of rights passed that would protect future homeowners in Broadview Heights. Many residents are moving out because of the problems that fracking has caused in their health and finances. Cuyahoga County has been a hotbed of urban drilling since the state legislature passed a measure called House Bill 278. The law gave the Ohio Department of Natural Resources sole authority to regulate oil and gas wells, stripping local governments of any authority over placement or permitting of wells.
Nearly 400 new wells have been permitted in the county since passage of the state law, according data provided by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. The wells here don't involve horizontal drilling -- a larger-scale operation that has fueled the fracking boom. Horizontal drilling requires large rigs and lots of acreage to drill thousands of feet down, and then bore horizontal shafts extending up to nearly two miles.
While the fracking debate is often associated with horizonal drilling in non-urban areas, the proliferation of urban wells in Cuyahoga have raised similar concerns over health and environmental effects.
In Broadview Heights, O'Dell is among a small group of activists who have pressed city officials to take a stand.
The City Council is considering a so-called citizens bill of rights to halt drilling in residential areas and prohibit fracking in the city until the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency rules on the safety of the practice.
But its chances of success are dubious. Vince Ruffa, the city law director, warned the council in May that the city is setting itself up to be sued.
"We don't have any authority to pass legislation to regulate drilling," he told the council.
The council in recent years passed two other measures calling for state curbs on residential drilling. But critics say city government has also been part of the problem.
Broadview Heights, like other suburbs, saw a new source of a revenue in oil and gas well leases on city property. Since House Bill 278, Broadview Heights has signed leases for 15 wells on city-owned land, which generated $163,000 in revenue for the suburb last year.
City leaders also came under criticism for granting a 13-acre right-of-way that allowed Cutter Oil Co. to drill on the property behind Susan Fowler's house. In addition, some residents were miffed that former council President Helen Dunlap signed a private oil and gas well lease in 2010, after she and council had called for a state moratorium on drilling in heavily populated areas.
Dunlap, who is now the City Council clerk, declined to comment on the deal, saying she would have to check the dates of the council action and her lease with Cutter Oil. She said the well is on a neighbor's property, and that she and her husband could possibly have been forced to participate anyway, under a mandatory pooling law.
The law says drillers can compel a landowner to lease mineral rights in order to achieve necessary acreage for a well, if enough neighbors want it. Twenty acres are required for the type of wells in Broadview Heights.
"We were right in the middle of the 20 acres they (Cutter) were putting together," Dunlap said.
Mayor Sam Alai says the city has fought Columbus on behalf his residents, including challenging mandatory pooling. The mayor said he finds it absurd that a city can require building permits for home improvements, but has no say on the placement of gas and oil wells.
"What do you do?" Alai said. "They want to drill, drill, drill. I wish they would change the regulations for urban areas."
Alai said he's concerned about the safety of having wells in residential neighborhoods, though he said the few accidents that have occurred were minor.
The EPA is working on this watershed restoration project, right next to fracking wells in Broadview Heights."There's no monitoring of any of these wells that are hundreds of feet from our homes," said Michelle Aini, who lives near the Broadview Heights well that spewed gas in 2011.
As part of the citizens' group with O'Dell, Aini has battled to halt drilling near houses and schools. The group cites harmful health effects from chemicals and gases.
The question of whether fracking -- which uses high-pressure water, sand and chemicals --is harmful to health and the environment is a controversial one. The Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, said in April it will study whether fracking poses health risks.
The Ohio Oil and Gas Association, which represents the industry, did not respond to interview requests for this story.
O'Dell and Aini are regulars at City Council meetings, and they were also sued this year by a Brecksville energy company that claims the women made false statements that the company uses fracking water in its road deicer.
Despite the critics, Mayor Alai, who beat back an election challenge from O'Dell last year, says drilling would not have proliferated if residents didn't want it.
"You have all these residents cashing in on the gas and oil under their feet," he said. "You have hundreds if not thousands of people involved in gas wells in the city. You have a lot more residents involved with gas wells than against it."
One Broadview Road resident who signed on for a well and storage tank behind his brick ranch said some people complain about drilling because they aren't making as much as they anticipated. The man spoke with The Plain Dealer, but did not want to disclose his name because of tensions over wells in the city.
He and his neighbors pulled in $400 to $500 a month when the well started production a few years ago, but the amount has fallen, he said.
"I got what I wanted," he said. "I didn't sign up for the money, I did it for the free gas. I haven't had a gas bill in three years."
In some cases, the lure of royalty checks has frayed relationships between neighbors.
Louis Chodkiewicz said he had a falling out with his Wyatt Road neighbor, after being forced into a pool in 2007. He appealed to the state and lost. Wells have been drilled on three sides of his 720-foot-long property, which is filled with fruit and maple trees and rows of berry bushes.
"You don't know who your neighbor is any more," said Chodkiewicz, a real estate broker. "They tell you they're against it and the next thing you know they signed. I don't think it should be in a residential area. I don't want the money."
The scenario seems certain to play out in other areas, as companies are rushing in to acquire leases. Anti-fracking citizen groups are coalescing in areas such as Portage and Medina counties. Some 300 people showed up at a fracking forum in Medina Township earlier this year.
In Medina County, leases have been signed for more than 600 land parcels, according to the county auditor's office. Auditor Michael Kovack said he believes most were signed in the past year.
Hinckley Township Trustee Martha Catherwood says residents have been deluged with lease solicitations. Meanwhile, Hinckley is among five townships in Medina County where trustees have voted to ban drilling on township-owned property.
Catherwood said the biggest fear among residents is that fracking will taint their well water.
"We've had to tell them there's not much we can do" to control drilling. "You know what? That's just so lame," Catherwood said.
"Your neighbor has no say about it if you decide to do it. There's something fundamentally wrong with that."
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