About

My commitment  is to raise awareness about the consequences of natural gas drilling and the plight of the communities that live above the Marcellus shale – a plight that echoes the experiences from the gas fields in the western states where the air quality can be worse than Los Angeles’ and where the water is not just toxic, it’s flammable.

Natural gas is not green.  The extraction techniques and corporate practices destroy real property, they destroy lives, and they pollute. The gas companies are lobbying powerhouses that have exempted themselves from the most basic of regulation – exempt from air and water quality laws.  Why, then, aren’t people alarmed? Where is the outcry?  Aquifers and surface waters are being fouled; animals are dying. And all we see are warm, fuzzy television adverts about the wonderfulness of our natural gas-based future.  Where are the environmentalists of America?  Where are the pro-environment politicians? How bad does it have to get before they take notice? Who is holding the line?

We vacationed for the first time in the Endless Mountains about five years ago.  We rented a cottage in Wellsboro for the week and used it as a springboard for discovery and adventuring and quickly fell in love with the region.  We returned so many times that it became economical to buy a property so we could have a camp of our own.  And we did – a tiny little plot on Armenia Mountain in Ward Twp that backs to State Land.  On it we built our little cabin – our vacation retreat from the rat race.  It was a little dream come true.

We tolerated a Summer of Endless Racket in ’09 while they widened the road and constructed the wind farm just up the ridge from us.  January ’10 brought the press releases about the completion of the wind farm  and that it was open for business. “Good!” we thought.  ”Finally, our ridge will be peaceful once again!”

But it wasn’t.  The noise was worse than ever. A rattling, pulsing, mechanical roar that was sometimes punctuated with loud crashes and trucks’ beeping back-up alarms.  Once we satisfied ourselves that it wasn’t the windmills (although creepy and un-naturally big, like something out of the War of the Worlds that would zap you with a death ray if it spotted you, they were SILENT) we went in search of the noise.  And boy, did we find it.

We found it part way up a dirt road that follows the low ridge that parallels ours and runs through the State Forest that abuts our property.  It was a drilling pad run by Fortuna Energy. The rig loomed overhead and the air around it shimmered with heat and noise.  There were trucks and tanks and all manner of equipment everywhere.  The amount of forest that had to be cleared to accommodate that mess was shocking.  A pair of  workers  in a big white truck glared at us as they were pulling out onto the road and it was clear that we were no longer on a public road on public land – we were in the middle of a heavy industrial zone, and the only ones who didn’t have a permit to be there.

I was horrified and felt physically ill.  It was only a mile away from our place as the crow flies and we had been given no notice.  There was no escape from the noise and the menace, no relief. It wasn’t going to go away.  Our paradise was torn from us. We had been sucker punched by the state of Pennsylvania.

I started researching upon our return home from that trip.  The shock and horror continued as the story of gas drilling in the Marcellus shale and on public lands unfolded via news articles, documentaries, and the blogs.  I consider myself lucky:  I don’t live on the front lines 24-7.  I haven’t lost my health or my livelihood.   I’m not on the edge of sanity.  I have, however, lost my property.  It’s still there, but it is not the vacation retreat it used to be.  I can’t sell it.  Even if I could, where else is there to go?  All of PA’s lands are now up for grabs – the private landowners are selling out as fast as you can blink. My only choice now is to roll up my sleeves and join the fight.

NATURAL GAS IS NOT GREEN