Information is power

Possibly the most persistent recurring theme in our conversations last week with officials from Bradford County, PA, a hotbed of natural gas drilling activity (see page 1), was the importance of communication. Repeatedly, they would mention one problem or another that had arisen and then been resolved via communication with the gas drilling companies. The importance of having individual, personal contacts with those companies was key.

The other point that was notable was that in all cases except those involving roads, the counterparty to the drilling companies was the individual property owner. With regard to one issue after another, the officials emphasized the extent to which local municipalities and agencies are virtually powerless with regard to drilling activity. If there is to be any mitigating influence, it must be through the individual lease or lessee.

The importance of information was also apparent in our conversations, having a crucial influence on the effectiveness of leases signed and therefore on the quality of life for the lessee. One property owner leased his large farm, expecting to see wells drilled off somewhere in the woods, only to find out that the drilling company had decided that the best place to put its first well was 300 feet from his front door. Only then did he refer back to his lease to check the language. Sure enough, 300 feet from the house (the state minimum) was allowed. (Incidentally, we suspect that this is just the kind of fine print that the property owners’ associations in our own area have taken care to pay better attention to; certainly, from that point of view this area is better prepared for the advent of gas drilling than Bradford was.)

So, not surprisingly, information is power, and communication—or its opposite, the withholding of information—are ways of wielding it. But here’s the hitch: despite the fact that, by the estimates of the officials we spoke to, 85 to 90 percent of Bradford County land has been leased, lessors account for only 20 percent of the population (again by their estimates); the rest either don’t have enough land to lease or don’t want to.

That means that the vast majority of Bradford County citizens have to rely on the actions of the major landholders, and how they deal with the gas drilling companies. If the individual landowners who have leased their land are savvy, public-spirited and signed good leases, the degradation of air and water quality, noise and light pollution and habitat destruction will be at least partially mitigated. If not, the 80 percent have to suffer without any sort of compensation or opportunity for input.

In what kind of society does the wellbeing of the majority of the population depend on the private decisions of the major landholders? It sure isn’t a democracy. In fact, it sounds an awful lot like medieval feudalism.

In his letter in our April 22 issue, Mike Uretsky said that the Northern Wayne Property Owners Association is involved in activities such as pushing for responsible regulations and oversight and working with environmental, planning and zoning officials, but that it does these things out of the limelight, “since it feels that effective collaboration is best achieved away from public shouting matches.”

The reluctance to get involved in the vitriolic exchanges that can become part of any community discussion about matters of such magnitude is understandable. But again, we are left with a picture of a privileged group of landed individuals making decisions for the rest of us without our knowing what they are and without having any influence over how they shape our lives.

In this game, information is power, and communication is one way of wielding it. So is withholding it. At the moment, some stakeholders—the people who live here but don’t own enough land to lease or don’t want to lease—are being kept at a heavy disadvantage in that regard. Some ways have to be found to level the playing field.

One thing that became clear in our survey of the Bradford countryside, still in the very early stages of development, is the tremendous and all-enveloping impact the incursion of this industrial activity into our rural area will have. Change of this magnitude ought not to be inflicted on a majority of the population without their at least being given access to information and a point of entry into the conversation. We challenge all the many groups who hold the information—and the power—with regard to natural gas drilling, from the drilling companies themselves and their contractors, to property owners’ associations, the county task forces, cooperative extensions and regulatory agencies, to reach out and create some sort of representation for the 80 percent or so who have been left out so far. Surely they should have some input into the conversation that is shaping the future of the entire community.

Dr. Punnybone