Gas drilling opponents hold mass meeting

‘Royalty checks versus the beauty of your land’

By TOM KANE

CALLICOON, NY — Over 400 people sat in silent amazement as a 26-minute amateur film showed some of the excesses of gas drilling currently going on in a township in western Pennsylvania. The meeting was held at the Delaware Youth Center in Callicoon on Saturday, May 3 and was organized by the Damascus Citizens, a Pennsylvania-based group that opposes gas drilling. Members of the Damascus group traveled to western Pennsylvania to make the film.

Four landowners in the town of Hickory, PA were featured, along with shots of contaminated streams, torn up landscapes and an armada of huge trucks and rigs that were being used on the gas drilling operations. In an interview, one woman recounted how noisy the operations were and how long the noise lasted. “Trucks come in at all hours of the day and night, 3:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m.,” she said. “One well exploded and was on fire for over a week.”

One farmer, whose experiences were especially grievous, said things got so bad on his farm from the contamination to his stream, pond and drinking water, caused by drilling, that the company offered to buy his farm and exchange it for another. “I don’t want to leave my land,” he said.

Another testimonial came from the Mount Pleasant Township code enforcement officer, who pointed out sites where the drilling operations did not work so well, at the same time referring to drilling operations that had experienced no problems. With their names withheld for reasons of privacy and security, each landowner’s horror stories were recounted, with each clearly stating that they were sorry that they had signed on, despite the money.

“It’s a trade-off,” one farmer said. “Royalty checks versus the beauty of your land. A lot of people aren’t making much money. They’re sorry they did it. Some who are making big money don’t care if their land is ruined or not. The land is being raped; it will never be the same.”

Barbara Arrindell, founder of the group, recounted a list of noxious chemicals that experts say are used in other parts of the country in a process of drilling called fracking. Fracking is a deep well drilling operation, going down over 8,000 feet, which smashes the rock formations that contain the gas. “The chemicals used are toxic and can also release harmful gases into the air, which include benezene, toluene, ethyl benzene and xylene,” Arrindell said, quoting Dr. Theo Colborn, the president of TEDX of Pannia, CO, and an endocrine disruption expert who specializes in the health effects caused by oil and gas projects.

Colborn was among a group of specialists who testified before a hearing that was conducted on gas drilling companies in October of 2007 by Congressman Henry Waxman, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. At the hearing, Colborn testified that “the need for full disclosure (of fluid contents) is becoming more evident. If it had not been for several accidents or spills, where local citizens took it upon themselves to find the names of products that were involved, we would never have learned as much as we have. We know for certain that a great deal more than water and sand are being used to drill a gas well.”

Arrindell told the audience that the Energy Policy Act of 2005 exempts the gas companies from the requirements of five of the principal laws protecting the environment, specifically stating that the fluids used in the drilling process are proprietary and can be kept secret by the companies.

The Damascus group has plans to pursue all avenues to stop the drilling, which include the use of moratoriums and other legal actions in the courts. It announced at the meeting that the group had enlisted the services of Richard Lippes, a renowned environmental attorney who was instrumental in winning a $129 million lawsuit for residents of the Love Canal section of Niagara Falls, NY, against Occidental Petroleum.