On Wednesday, September 7th from 12 noon to 2 pm, on Arch Street between Broad and 13th Streets, a major rally called "Shale Gas Outrage" will take place in Philadelphia. The rest of this article underlines why you might want to be there.
My inbox is full of these personal stories about fracking (high-volume gas drilling) impacts, which never seem to get out to the rest of the public. Who knows why the larger newspapers seem to be asleep at the wheel? It’s hard to understand, but you, privileged readers, can say you found out first.
On August 20th, the small-town paper Butler Eagle reported yet another major incident of groundwater contamination from drilling and fracking operations in the Marcellus Shale, impacting at least a dozen families in Connoquenessing Township, in northwestern PA. "Two homeowners from Connoquenessing Woodlands… say their well water smelled horribly, ran black or came from the tap in the form of foam, which they blame on a nearby Rex Energy gas well off Woodlands Road." The Eagle writer, Paula Grubbs, reports that the families "told stories of black, smelly water, foam spewing from every tap and in the toilet bowl, severe diarrhea and vomiting, and purple-stained dishes." At least a dozen families can no longer drink or use their water at all.
The next day, August 21st, Susquehanna County resident Rebecca Roter called to describe a terrible new methane contamination incident in Susquehanna County, not far from where she lives. "I had to cry," the usually levelheaded, data-oriented Rebecca told me, "before I could call DEP." The Protecting Our Waters website will post an update about this incident at protectingourwaters.com.
Last month I interviewed Pat Farnelli of Dimock, PA (where an entire aquifer was contaminated by Cabot Oil and Gas beginning as early as 2008) who described vomiting so strenuously after drinking her once-clear tap water that she had to go on all fours. I also interviewed Carl and Judy Stiles, formerly of Sugar Run, Bradford County, PA where Chesapeake Energy is drilling heavily. They described terrible health symptoms including severe abdominal pain, and said they witnessed foam coming directly from the ground near their former home after Chesapeake began drilling and fracking nearby.
Today someone emailed me the account of Darrell Smitsky, from southwestern PA, near Hickory: "During the fracking of one of the Marcellus wells near Darrell’s house, a next door neighbor reported foam coming up out of the ground in his field. Around the same time, an abandoned well from the early 1900s, located just up the valley from Darrell and his neighbor, started spewing fluids…"
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