Gas transforms a landscape and way of life

By SANDY LONG

[Editor’s note: The River Reporter traveled to Bradford County, PA last week to observe the natural gas exploration occurring there. We were given a driving tour of areas where gas wells, pipelines and a compressor station are in place or being installed. We saw water storage and withdrawal sites as well as seismic testing activities. Our questions were answered by Michael Lovegreen, Bradford County Conservation District manager; John Sullivan, County Commissioner, Conservation District board member, farmer and leaseholder; and Terry Lutz, a 22-year township supervisor and leaseholder. The photos provided here are representative of the evolving landscape.]

BRADFORD COUNTY, PA — Is life better, or worse, once gas drilling settles into a rural community like Bradford County, PA? That’s a question on the minds of many in the Upper Delaware region, where the imminence of gas drilling seems to intensify daily. The answer depends on who you are, what you stand to gain or lose and what you are able to adapt to, according to the three men listed in the editor’s note above.

Like other areas experiencing natural gas extraction, significant change is underway in Bradford County, change that, more or less, for better or worse, is just beginning to transform an agricultural landscape and lifestyle in ways that are both obvious and subtle.

There’s more money coming to leaseholders, retailers, restaurants, quarries and housing providers. There are more labor-related jobs and more materials, such as stone, being hauled in. There are more trucks on the roads than one can imagine—large tankers transporting fresh and tainted water, sand, chemicals, gravel and mechanical supplies. Their presence snarls passage through town, ups the diesel exhaust and dust in the air and increases noise levels with the ongoing grind of engines and air brakes.

Bradford County Commissioner John Sullivan counted 26 passing his house at night during an hour, and his five-mile commute through town now takes 25 minutes. With an estimated 1,000 truck trips per well, and an average of six wells on one site, that’s 6,000 truck trips. “They’ve locked up every contractor and road crew within several counties for the materials and road repair. That drives up prices for contracting. It’s harder to find rock and the contractors to do stream repair because the gas industry is utilizing them,” said Bradford County Conservation District Manager Mike Lovegreen.

There’s more artificial light than ever before, with drilling rigs operating 24/7 and 365 days per year and wells sometimes flaring for weeks at a time. “You don’t need a nightlight,” quipped Troy Township Supervisor Terry Lutz.

There are more men, and the need to house them. Rents have increased from $600 to roughly $1,800 per month, according to Lovegreen. “We had about a 15 percent surplus in housing. Now it’s at a deficit. It will be interesting to see how this will impact tourism during fishing, hunting and leaf season, since there are no motel rooms now.” To cope, some commute more than 100 miles to their gas jobs and there are plans for building a “Man Camp” in Athens to house and train the “roughnecks” and “roustabouts.”

Lovegreen provided more highlights: approximately 87 percent of the county’s acreage is under lease; there are 500 to 600 miles of pipeline currently; there are 300 more permits in the county now, with approximately 100 wells already drilled and 1,000 more to come. There’s been one rig fatality, three or four accidents and local businesses looking to hire truck drivers can’t compete with industry wages. Two years ago, seismic trucks collected roadside data. Today, seismic equipment is lowered from an $1,800 per hour commercial helicopter into the forests below. There’s no local treatment for the wastewater, much of which is recycled on site, and ultimately gets trucked elsewhere to specialized facilities.

Nor will there be any local access to this gas resource, harvested for use in other places. The county also has some 60 windmills generating transported power along a ridgeline where gas wells pock the landscape below.

The curse and the blessing

Sullivan sees the dilemma. “It’s kind of made the county recession-proof, but it’s created some problems. We’ve had an increase of visitors to our jail. You bring all these men in, you couldn’t expect not to have some crime. Our 911 center said, from a year ago, they’ve had almost 4,000 more calls in a three-month period. We don’t know that it’s all gas-related, but I’m sure it’s had some impact.” Sullivan was startled one day when picking corn on his farm to find a gas employee standing nearby. “I never used to lock my doors,” he said. “Now I do.”

In some cases, more leads to less of other things—affordable housing, security, dark night skies, silence—qualities that often characterize a rural lifestyle.

Yet, two years into the process, it’s still early. The days of landmen prowling for low-deal leases have evolved to seismic testing cables crossing roads and running along fields, neon surveyor ribbons dangling from trees and bushes, clusters of men just visible in the brush installing the charges which will be detonated to collect the 3D seismic data, to the all-around appearance of well pads, holding ponds and staging areas.

Some impacts will be temporary. Others, such as clearcut swaths needed to create the network of gas transmission lines, will become permanent features. The mountain being removed to meet the demand for road and well pad materials won’t return.

Members of the community who haven’t received lease money, estimated at 80 percent, must still adapt to the impacts to their quality of life.

The wrecked and repaired roads will be a chronic cycle one can count on every spring as long as the trucks are in town. Money will flow. But sometime in the future, when the boom fades, those same roads will lead back home to a place transformed.

The view from here

Lutz keeps a list of things he’d like fixed for those times when the gas company comes seeking something new. He’s also learned that getting a road repaired quickly can sometimes require closing it to all traffic, which can cost the industry around $50,000 per day and tends to result in immediate resolution of the issue. It’s part of a negotiating process that is proving to be a way of life in the county.

Lovegreen likens it to an ongoing dance. Early on, local officials met with the gas industry to establish a relationship. They continue the dialogue today. Sometimes it flows, sometimes it’s strained. Overall, it’s important to keep dancing, said Lovegreen, who sits on Chesapeake’s advisory panel.

“We look for opportunities to change things from within, to influence the industry in inches. It doesn’t do any good to throw rocks from outside, because then you have no communication,” he said. “The fairness of it all gets depressing at times, what some industries have to do and this industry doesn’t, but that can lead you to a nervous breakdown. I’m saving up my sick time for that. Right now, we’re trying to work with what we’re dealt.”

Lutz agreed. “They’re a whole lot easier to work with than to work against. Some farmers now have new tractors, they have new buildings, their bills are paid. Right here in this area, I guess things are better. If I was living in town and I didn’t get any royalties, I might have a different point of view. I just keep telling myself it’s going to go away.

“Quality of life—how do you define it? I can stand on my deck and see pipelines that weren’t there. I never used to be able to see windmills. We kind of got a double whammy. The dust is unbelievable. Everything gets dirty. I don’t know whether it’s good dust or bad dust. Hope the wind’s blowing away from your house when they go through. The compressor station has a unique odor, though I haven’t been able to put my finger on it.”

Sullivan added, “Things don’t always go as you plan in farming and I have a policy to make the best I can out of any situation. That’s what we’re trying to do here. I wish we could start over from the leasing process and go forward. With the regulations, you really don’t have much local authority over things.”

How does the future look? “We’re going to see more accidents and injuries as this ramps up,” said Lovegreen. “More lights, more noise, more dust. This is just the beginning.”

Lutz described a scenario he thinks could transpire. “There are the boom years, the production years, the post-production years, the bust, and all the infrastructure built to support the industry now sits there and it’s a ghost town,” he said. Still, when asked “Would you push a button to make it go away?” he shook his head. “It’s not that bad.”