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Page added on February 16, 2014
Families who say their lives and communities have been destroyed by the industry
A group of photographers have spent the last several years documenting the effects of the natural gas industry on several rural communities in the Appalachian Mountains that have an abundance of natural gas deep below the surface of the earth.
The team of photographers – Noah Addis, Nina Berman, Brian Cohen, Scott Goldsmith, Lynn Johnson and Martha Rial – focus primarily on hydraulic-fracturing, a controversial method of extracting gas from below the earth’s surface by breaking rocks deep underground and creating small fractures from which it is possible to extract the gas.
The project is called The Marcellus Shale Documentary. It began in 2011 and is named for the Marcellus Formation – a large mass of sedimentary rock underneath the Appalachian Mountains that stretches hundreds of miles from West Virginia through Pennsylvania into New York.
Hydraulic-fracturing – or fracking – has drawn criticism from environmental groups who worry about the impact it is having on the the planet. One of the big concerns is the risk of potentially contaminating ground water in locations near fracking sites.
Fracking the Marcellus Formation has changed the landscape of the rural towns where it occurs and has profound effects on the residents of these towns.
The Marcellus Shale Documentary project documents offers a stunning look at how these fracking operations have impacted the communities, and offer a glimpse of how they have changed communities for better and worse.
+15Fracking: Hydraulic-fracturing involves creating cracks in sedimentary rock formations to extract natural gas from deep below the earth’s surface
+15Controversy: Environmentalists worry about the impact fracking is having on the planet
+15Gross: Residents in towns where fracking occurs have reported that the gas-extraction method has contaminated the water
+15Contaminated: Fracking has led to the contamination of ground water in towns in Pennsylvania and elsewhere
+15Wells: Fracking has forced people to abandon wells they’ve always used for fresh water and rely on water shipped in by the energy companies
+15Landscape: Large pipelines are required to move the natural gas and building them has changed the landscape of entire towns
+15Illness: Carol Jean Moton says she’s had several skin and bone issues since the first fracking well was drilled near her home in 2006
+15Benefits: Bob Miller leased land to the gas companies for drilling, which has allowed him to keep his farm running
+15Construction: The rock under the Appalachian Mountains is rich with natural gas and new wells are constantly being built
+15Dirty: Kim McEvoy shows off a jar of murky water that the DEP has deemed safe to drink
+15Sad: John Denny cries after his clean water supply is taken and he is forced to rely on the ‘orange and brown’ water that comes from the tap
+15Takeover: Barbara Clifford’s farm has been in her family for four generations and is now threatened by gas companies drilling wells in the area
+15Politics: Lobbyists for the gas company and environmental activists are often seen at the state capital in Harrisburg to support or condemn fracking
+15Hard to miss: This giant flame comes from a gas drilling well in Northeast Pennsylvania
+15Community: Janet McIntyre delivers water to neighbors after they were unable to use the water from their well due to fracking
12 Comments on "Families who say their lives and communities have been destroyed by the industry"
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sun, 16th Feb 2014 2:22 pm
Trade offs? Take your pill now or later. Don’t think you can have your cake and eat it. If you figure a way to do this let me know and I will join your revolution.
Nony on Sun, 16th Feb 2014 2:32 pm
1. It doesn’t get into the water. Those groundwaters were already messed up. The well has a casing and the fracked lateral is thousands of feet below the water table.
2. Jobs.
rockman on Sun, 16th Feb 2014 5:05 pm
There certainly been cases in PA when oil/NG drilling has caused problems. But I’ve seen very little documented cases compared to the hype. Very emotional pictures for sure…that’s the point. Wonder why they didn’t show pictures of NG being flamed from the tens of thousand PA water wells that were contaminated naturally occurring NG? An obvious answer.
Along those lines one landowner is in the process of loosing his financial ass in a lawsuit brought by an oil company. He made a film showing NG flaming from a garden hose and used that as the basis for suing the oil company that drilled nearby. But he got busted. Turns out the NG was coming from a vent line from his water well that existed years before the first well was frac’d in the area. Many of the water wells in the region produced NG for many decades. Faced with perjury charges his co-conspirators rolled over on the landowner. What’s unusual most companies don’t countersue. They just let the frauds slip away.
But there is one very well documented problem caused by oil patch activity in PA: road damage. Curious they didn’t offer pictures of that obvious problem. We’ve also been tearing up roads in Texas thanks to the Eagle Ford boom. No problem: just take a small portion of the production taxes collected and fix the roads. Small problem for PA: while Texas has collected $billions over the years from such taxes the folks in PA have collected exactly $zero. Even today with the boom PA still collects no production taxes.
And there’s huge disconnect: why? Will it kill the drilling boom? Hasn’t in Texas. A couple of years ago I calculated that if PA collected the same severance tax rate as Texas they would have taken in $240 million just that year. That would repair a lot of pot holes as well as hire a lot of field inspectors to keep an eye on the oil patch. And La. Production tax rates are even higher: the state takes 1 out of ever 8 bbls of oil produced…right off the top.
GregT on Sun, 16th Feb 2014 8:00 pm
“1. It doesn’t get into the water. Those groundwaters were already messed up. The well has a casing and the fracked lateral is thousands of feet below the water table.”
Some of it does get into groundwater. All of it is destroying our climate and the natural environment. Which without, we will not survive.
“2. Jobs.”
Jobs are great. Helps pay off the debt to our economic and financial systems. Gotta keep the 1% happy. Not doing anything to mitigate the effects on our future water and food supplies though. Not exactly an intelligent choice.
rockman on Sun, 16th Feb 2014 9:31 pm
Greg – Yes…some methane gets into the ground water from oil patch activity but the vast majority is naturally occurring. And oil patch activity can certainly be disruptive to the daily lives of folks.
And yes burning fossil fuels is putting GHG into the atmosphere. But that’s not the subject of this thread. A worthy subject for sure…in the proper thread.
DC on Sun, 16th Feb 2014 10:03 pm
Yea, I know rm, its always the same. A few(like a couple) of people might be adversely affected in some tiny, inconsequential way by the frakers barbaric ‘technology’. However, that tiny minority of people always resort emotional manipulative imagery and language to describe what has been happening to them. Naturally of course, they never use logic or rational arguments to describe their plight, correct?
If you follow the path of the frakers in the Us, one thing does tend to stand out. Many of the states and regions in the uS where frakers are the most active currently, could easily be described as poor and remote from the larger society. IoW, they (mostly) live in states or regions that are politically and economically weak or irrelevant. N.Dakota, rural Pennsylvania are good examples.Whole regions are declared out-of-sight,out of mind. Just like the people that happen to get in the way. The frakers have however bumped up against the mindless middle-class in amerika from time to time. The still ‘well-off’ in amerika are slowly starting to get a taste of how the oil govt of the Us treats its own poor and marginalized people AND has been treating the peoples of the world(less the cruise missiles and smart bombs).
While rm here is certainly more polite than most, the prevailing attitude is mostly one of casual dismissal. A more erudite form of fu*k the poor-they dont know what they are talking about anyhow. Now that fraking is starting to move into amerikas schoolyards and sawdust suburbs, I think it will become harder for the oil cartel to maintain the dismissive attitude they have long held.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sun, 16th Feb 2014 10:19 pm
@rock – controversy is the nature of big energy but so are trade offs. Our problem as society is we don’t believe we have serious trade offs. This is because we believe like economist that we can use the economic tools of substitutions and markets to solve our problems. It has not sunk in that we live in a finite world. It won’t sink in until the system breaks down then and only then will we as a collective people realize what trade offs really mean.
bobinget on Sun, 16th Feb 2014 11:45 pm
My 300 ft water well in Southern Oregon over the years has produced methane along with other unpleasant looking and tasting minerals. Who knew it was Oklahoma or Colorado oil wells making all our white clothes turn yellow?
In days before interstate highways we all experienced
colorful water even in roadside diners. Blame country water for the success of Coke, Pepsi and RC, our nations first propriety fracking fluids.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Mon, 17th Feb 2014 2:04 am
Yeap, pre-modern society drank wine and beer for that reason.
Kenz300 on Mon, 17th Feb 2014 2:06 am
Wind, solar, wave energy, geothermal and second generation biofuels made from algae, cellulose and waste are safer, cleaner and cheaper energy sources than fracking for NG.
GregT on Mon, 17th Feb 2014 4:14 am
rockman,
“And yes burning fossil fuels is putting GHG into the atmosphere. But that’s not the subject of this thread. A worthy subject for sure…in the proper thread.”
The thread is about lives and communities being destroyed by the natural gas industry.
Continuing to burn nat gas produced by THAT industry will destroy communities and lives for a very long time into the future. The effects are far more reaching than local health, and water concerns. IMHO, the issue is being downplayed. Nothing more than a distraction.
meld on Tue, 18th Feb 2014 11:30 am
I can’t see a reason people would go to so much trouble to document these events unless they were of great importance to them and their communities. I can see what the gain for the company is from covering this up , but what is the gain for the activists by fabricating this?
I guess It’s hard to know unless you’re there. In a few years time the county next to mine (flintshire) will be up for fracking and so I’ll be able to observe and document what is going on myself. No better evidence than personal observation IMHO