Drilling problematic for residents
On Aug. 14, a white, four-door pickup, without a company name on its doors, and with a Texas Truck registration plate ADS-2369 was parked on private land of a person not at home at that time. Upon inquiry the occupants declared themselves to be surveying plots of land as preparation for determining the availability of natural gas.
On Aug. 16, the same truck returned with the occupants continuing their surveys following trees decorated with ribbons along Martin Road in Henry Clay Township. Christmas in August this is not.
Martin Road runs north off Route 40. The first mile of it is paved, the rest is not. The land is divided largely into 10-plus acre strips leading off the road. Most of the people along it are dependent upon wells for water. There is a limited municipal water system that is dependent upon wells further down the road.
In illustration of the old maxim that business owners will probably sell you the rope with which to hang them, there are reports that tanker trucks are drawing water from that limited system. Thus if this search is fruitful residents are confronted with heavy trucks and equipment moving over a dirt road and shaking the wells in close proximity to the roadway.
Henry Clay Township, like the state of Pennsylvania, has no laws drawn up with natural gas drilling in mind. What restrictions exist in zoning regulations and surface or sub-surface mining may or may not be applicable. It is important to remember that many of the townships, including Henry Clay, took themselves out of the Fayette County zoning regulations substituting their own regulations. Thus the recent court decision based upon county zoning may or may not apply.
It is hard to foresee anything but a decade of controversy if this process is permitted to continue. It is accurate to say that the industry has never admitted that their activities have had any effect upon water sources, not that those activities have had no effect. Not proven is standard industry response to water problems.
Thus, the individual residents are left with meeting the legal burden of proof in the matter of causation. We can expect a decade in which plaintiffs try to prove a legal cause-effect relationship between the companies’ activities and everything from car wheel alignment to stillborn babies.
On Martin Road we wonder why the burden is on the individual property owner. Pennsylvania has a better record than some other states in the regulation of mining activities even though there have been examples of land restoration that has had to be done at taxpayer expense.
Our legislators are in their summer slumber but the companies are not. It is interesting that an industry which operates across many state lines is calling state regulations adequate when there are no state regulations written with gas drilling in mind.
Traditionally such industries have called for federal regulation to avoid a patchwork of perhaps contradictory state regulations. Yet this industry, with the exception of seeking and being granted federal exemption from clean stream regulations, has argued loudly for existing state regulations when there are none presently.
What do they know about their activities that required them to seek such exemption?
If a mountain community with an unpaved road and little regulatory enforcement mechanisms can be targeted for natural gas development by this industry one suspects it can happen anywhere. Beware the white Texas registered pickup. Your road or street may be next.
Robert C. Cowles is a resident of Markleysburg.