HomeMy WebLinkAbout20111365.tiff The Fracturing of Pennsylvania
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NEW YORK TIMES(m part) _.
Published: November 17, 2011
Amwell Township is a 44-square-mile plot of steep ravines and grassy pasturelands
planted with alfalfa,trefoil and timothy in the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania.
It's home to some 4,000 people, most of whom live in villages named Amity,Lone
Pine and Prosperity.
From other vantages, it looks like an American natural-gas field,home to to gas
wells, a compressor station —which feeds fresh gas into pipelines leading to homes
hundreds of miles away—and what was, until late this summer, an open five-acre
water-impoundment chemical pond. Trucks rev engines over fresh earth. Backhoes
grind stubborn stones. Pipeline snakes beneath clear-cut hillsides.
The township sits atop the Marcellus Shale Deposit,one of the largest fields of
natural gas in the world, a formation that stretches beneath 575 miles of West
Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York. Shale gas, even its fiercest critics
concede, presents an opportunity for the United States to be less dependent on
foreign oil.According to Wood Mackenzie, an energy-consulting firm,the Marcellus
formation will supply 6 percent of America's gas this year,a figure expected to more
than double by 2020.
About five years ago,leases began to appear in the mailboxes of residents of Amwell
Township from Range Resources,a Texas-based oil company seeking to harvest gas
through hydraulic fracturing. "Fracking,"as it is known,is a process of natural-gas
drilling that involves pumping vast quantities of water, sand and chemicals
thousands of feet into the earth to crack the deep shale deposits and free bubbles of
gas from the ancient,porous rock. Harvesting this gas promises either to provide
Americans with a clean domestic energy source or to despoil rural areas and poison
our air and drinking water,depending on whom you ask
On Nov. 21,the Delaware River Basin Commission,which involves four states—
Pennsylvania,New Jersey,New York and Delaware—will vote on rules governing
fracking in the river's watershed,which supplies some 15 million people with
drinking water.The states most affected will be New York and Pennsylvania,which
sit on the Marcellus Shale,where the gas is closest to the surface.
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In Amwell Township,your opinion of fracking tends to correspond with
how much money you're making and with how close you live to the gas
wells, chemical ponds,pipelines and compressor stations springing up in the area.
Many of those who live nearby fear that a leak in the plastic liner of a chemical pond
could drip into a watershed or that a truck spill could send carcinogens into a field of
beef cattle. (According to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection,
65 Marcellus wells drilled this year have been cited for faulty cement casings,which
could result in leaks.)But for many other residents,including Haney's neighbors,the
risks seem small, and the benefits —clean fuel,economic development—far
outweigh them.
This summer,Gov.Andrew Cuomo of New York moved to lift the state's yearlong
moratorium on fracking against vocal opposition from environmentalists and many
local residents. Following a series of hearings this month,New York will decide
whether to allow fracking early next year. In the meantime, New Yorkers are looking
to Pennsylvania,the first neighbor to welcome fracking, as a model.
There are more than 4,000 Marcellus wells in Pennsylvania,with projections ranging
from 2,500 new wells a year to a total of more than ioo,000 over the next few
decades;458 of those wells are in Washington County and 6o are in Amwell
Township,to which fracking has given an injection of new income and business; it
has also spurred one of the first E.P.A. investigations into fracking's effects on rivers,
streams,drinking water and human health.
Just before Christmas in 2008, a handful of neighbors granted Range Resources the
right to drill thousands of feet below their homes and up to two miles in any
direction. Signing leases here is nothing new. For the past 20o years,one industry
after another has extracted minerals from the land. In the i800s, it was coal; in the
19oos it was glass, coke and steel and industrial mining. "Sooner or later, somebody
wants to go around, under or through you,"one farmer and gun-shop proprietor told
me. "You make your best deal and you talk to a lawyer.At least these companies pay
something up front." THE LEAGUE
OF WOMEN VOTERS
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