Redneck Press with Fried Chicken and Coffee

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVNgwMGEObE&feature=player_embedded]

This series of videos taken in Col­orado tells me it's not just coal, either. In North­ern Appalachia now (where I grew up) there has been a boom–maybe even a mega-boom–in nat­ural gas drilling of the Mar­cel­lus Shale area, and par­tic­u­larly in my two home coun­ties, Brad­ford and Tioga in Penn­syl­va­nia.  From what I under­stand, most home and land pur­chases gen­er­ally don't have an agree­ment about min­eral rights. They're sold sep­a­rately, so many of the folks liv­ing there are get­ting wells drilled on their prop­erty whether they like it or not, and those who are savvy enough to know this are buy­ing their min­eral rights back and then, in a heinous lack of fore­thought, sell­ing them to the gas com­pa­nies. It's hard to argue when you have money in large sums just wait­ing for a sig­na­ture, but what about the drink­ing water and other envi­ron­men­tal impact?

The hydro-fracturing process these gas com­pa­nies are using drills down to 8000 feet or so using water and assorted chem­i­cals whose impact on the sur­round­ing ground­wa­ter is largely unknown. Since the com­pa­nies don't have to observe the Clean Water act–why is that, again?–they sim­ply don't.

And look at the sheer num­ber of drilling per­mits issued here:

http://​php​.press​con​nects​.com/​p​a​w​e​l​l​s​/​p​a​w​e​l​l​s​.​php

This is a screen­shot of that map. That big pur­ple clus­ter in the middle-left are the well per­mits issued for my home ter­ri­tory. Hell, the water we got from our well sucked grow­ing up any­way. It bub­bled fero­ciously, tasted like shit, and turned my clothes all kinds of funky col­ors. What's a few more toxic chem­i­cals whose effects no one knows?

I'm one of the Appalachian brain-drain kids. I left my home for grad school and the city, prob­a­bly for­ever, so I don't have a stake in this except that I spent the first 21 years of my life there, and 95% of my fam­ily live within fifty miles or less of these two coun­ties, and my pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the place has fed my writ­ing life for twenty-odd years now. Noth­ing big. :-/

But I'm at a loss for what to do and how to help. I have to think more about this, so for­give me the scat­ter­shot approach, and watch the series of videos, and imag­ine it hap­pen­ing in a place you love.