Could It Ever Be Worth It?
By Liam M.
Over the past two years, I have grown to love this part of the world. Coming from a suburb in south-central New Jersey, I understand now why people refer to this as God’s country. When I return home at the end of the month, I will miss looking up at the seemingly infinite blue skies through the massive canopies of evergreen bristles, while cliff swallows and hummingbirds flutter throughout. What makes it worse, however, is the fact that there is a chance that when I come back to visit after college, the area could be stripped of its beauty, destroyed by the rush to harvest – at any cost – the riches of the Marcellus Shale.
A full-scale rat invasion in your basement starts with just one curious little critter scoping out a warm space to spend the night. The Delaware River is currently being scoped out by a vermin of its own – one I would pick rodents over any day.
In late May construction began on a “test-well” three miles uphill from the Delaware River in Equinunk, Pa., a 15-minute drive from FFS. Sited on a hilltop in the middle of a beautiful ancestral dairy farm, the steel tower looks as if it were computer generated by George Lucas for a seventh Star Wars movie.
These test wells use the same blowout preventers that BP used on their off-shore exploratory oil rig which is still blowing crude oil into the gulf’s ecosystem, two months after the explosion.
Although it would take DRBC permission for this well to be transformed into a full-scale “production well,” I find it horrifying that such a location would even be considered as a possible drilling site. It is all downhill to the Delaware River, a nationally designated “wild and scenic” waterway and provider of clean, unfiltered drinking water for over 15 million people in New York City, Southern Pa. and New Jersey.
Earlier this month, a well in Clearfield, Pa. spewed out an extremely conservative estimate of 35,000 gallons of chemically contaminated wastewater 75 feet into the air. This wastewater, which is infused with some of the 500-plus volatile chemicals allowed in fracking fluid, as well as those that lie deep beneath the earth’s surface, rained throughout the delicate Moshannon State Forest for 16 hours before being subdued by a crew flown in from Texas.
Take that well and put it in the place of the test well in Equinunk. Where would all those chemicals have gone? Straight downhill into the river (and all over those dairy cows and their drinking pond).
Have you ever tried backing an elephant out of a room after you’ve brought him in? Well, me either… but I don’t imagine it would be very easy. Such is the situation we are in with this test well. Surely the Newfield Exploration Company, who installed the test well, has intentions larger than an elephant’s general curiosity.
Jason Shoemaker, a geologist with the state environmental regulator’s oil and gas division, said that given the more than $1 million investment, test wells are almost always converted for production.
“Some call them exploration, but they’re going to produce them for sure,” said Shoemaker. “If they get gas out of them, they’re planning on it.”
Letting this well remain is about as dangerous as playing Russian roulette with six bullets in the chamber. When Josh Fox traveled throughout the Midwest making his documentary “Gasland,” the only recurring theme for families whose houses were located near wells was that their water and their way of life was being destroyed.
Gas companies have repeatedly shown their lack of concern for the environment. With them at the reins, I don’t believe that natural gas drilling can be done safely. Regarding the economic side of the issues, Fox stated “You can’t put a price on health or the character of an area.”
A complete moratorium on all forms of drilling in New York and Pennsylvania is our only hope for keeping so much of why we live here–and why we call this God’s country–safe, and not looking like a flattened moonscape.
