Gas Drilling and the Fracking of a Marriage
by Stephanie C. Hamel
The one
thing that does not abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.
----Harper Lee
What would you do if you were offered a large
sum of money to allow hydro-fracking for natural gas on your recreational
property, a sum significant enough that it could ease your own financial burden
and appease your husband by easing some of his wage-earning stress, in a
geographical area with a long history of mining and at a time when there was
little, if any, public concern over possible environmental damage?
As
described by the author, this “true story, written first in diary form and from
notes taken during telephone conversations, reflects a developing knowledge of
the natural gas industry and the legalities associated with land ownership and
gas leasing.”
Stephanie
Hamel and her husband had bought her family’s “summer camp,” an old farm near
Wellsboro, PA. At the time, she and her husband lived 200 miles away, and
the additional physical and financial demands of the property sometimes seemed
burdensome, especially when she was finishing her PhD thesis and later staying
home to raise their two young sons. Still, they spent long weekends
continuing to slowly repair and renovate the buildings as Stephanie’s father
and brother had done before her.
Late in
August 2008, Stephanie’s peaceful balance tilted. The family’s plan for
an extended end-of-summer visit to the farm had to be cut short when Stephanie
opened some previously-disregarded mail only to discover that her son’s school
was to begin earlier than the previous year. As the day ended, darkness
was slow to descend as bright lights remained focused on a neighbor’s property,
where the clanging noise of well-drilling had begun. She recalled the
ground-shaking, rumbling trucks passing their house the day before, spewing
diesel fumes while transporting large pieces of equipment. The industrial noise
of heavy grinding continued through the night.
The
following day, Stephanie’s husband was called to return to their permanent home
due to an unexpected work need. He called her late that night to tell her
that he had arrived home safely and to share the news that they had received a letter
from a natural gas company offering a five year lease of the farm property with
a $130,000 signing bonus to potentially drill 5,000 feet into the shale
below.
With
degrees in chemistry, pharmaceutical chemistry, and human exposure assessment
and with a deep emotional attachment to the farm, and the added immediacy of
her peaceful haven having been disrupted by a neighboring drilling operation in
full swing, Stephanie’s response was vehemently negative. But she
reluctantly agreed to consult with their local attorney to see about the
potential ramifications. And so the fracking of the marriage begins.
Over the
next nine months, Stephanie speaks with many people within and without the gas
drilling industry and discovers that her decision making becomes even more
complicated by the idea that a drilling company could drill down and then
sideways from a neighboring property to obtain the gas from her property
without her permission or any compensation. So why not just take
the money while it was being offered, her husband argued?
I found
the book to be an interesting read, as this is a very controversial and
divisive issue in our own community. Following Stephanie’s exploration of
her options and the potential impacts on her family and to the environment
helped me to understand views that are different from my own.
Fortunately,
my husband and I are in agreement about this issue, having been approached
several times about signing a gas lease of our own property. We have
experienced the compromise of privacy that occurs with the presence of a
pre-existing natural gas pipeline cutting across our property that hunters and
four-wheelers erroneously consider to be public access.
We have
also experienced the impact of the installation of a construction disposal
site, against the wishes of most of the neighboring land owners, that is one
property away from ours: the influx of tractor trailers on an old dirt road at
all times of the day and night, crawling uphill at a snail’s pace when heavily
loaded and whizzing downhill when empty; then the welcomed widening and paving
of the same road only to realize that it was still not usable for us because of
the regularly occurring flat tires caused by cast-off debris left in the road.
Consequently, we now travel a different bumpy, dirt road to get to
town. But we accept that as a trade-off for the opportunity to live in my
husband’s family home in what was, for many years, a place of predictable quiet
and fresh, hilltop air.
I suspect
that similar direct or collateral impacts pervade the fracking process.
All of these challenges beg bigger questions. Is it acceptable - and acceptable
to whom, and in whose backyard - to allow the harvesting of non-renewable
natural resources with or without monetary compensation to a landowner and with
the risk of potential long-term damage to the greater environment? Is it
acceptable to favor (what appears to me to be) short-term gain over potential
long-term loss? But if the short term gain went directly to me, with the
opportunity for favorable impact to the quality of certain parts of my life,
would I answer these questions differently? I would like to think not,
but I admit to the presence of temptation.
Consider
traveling the journey with Stephanie Hamel and find out what conclusion she
drew and the impact of this fracking experience on her marriage.
Maryalice
K. Little
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