HALLSTEAD, Pa. — On our small summertime farm, about eight miles south of the New York state line, my wife and I are smack-dab in the middle of hydraulic fracturing country. The fracking news from just north of us catches our attention every day. So do the trucks, noise and disruption it brings.
Comparing the deliberate pace in New York to the quicker approvals that led to wholesale drilling in Pennsylvania gives me hope that the right decisions will be made, spurred by the wide range of environmental questions as well as the potential for serious income. This is no time to act in haste.
Our farm is 19 miles from Dimock, the epicenter of drilling in the county and the town featured in "Gasland," the HBO documentary. A memorable scene comes when one homeowner turns on a faucet and ignites the methane flowing out along with the water. The area has been full of methane for decades, though, and my wife remembers stories of flaming faucets from well before fracking began.
Four years ago, we signed a lease on our property to allow drilling. Everyone around us was on board, so it would have been foolish not to, since there's no escaping the widespread effects on life in an area riddled with wells and active drilling operations.
New Yorkers would be well advised to consider that disruption as they debate fracking.
Fracking uses huge amounts of water, most of it hauled by truck, that is laced with chemicals and sand and injected under very high pressure into shale formations to fracture the rock and release the gas. Some of the used fracking fluid is returned to the ground, into very deep and supposedly leakproof wells. Some is treated in plants to remove the dangerous stuff. Early on, some was dumped into the Susquehanna River and its tributaries.
In Susquehanna County, drilling has changed almost everything. New York will be well advised to pay attention to quality of life as much as to pollution.
Susquehanna's roads, many of them dirt, are pummeled daily by the noisy fleets of water trucks and show the wear. It is hard to chat with a friend on a street corner in Montrose, the county seat, because of the trucks. I counted 38 in 30 minutes one day last summer passing under the lone traffic signal in town.
Housing in the county has been swamped by drill crews from out of town, making affordable housing for the locals hard to find. Unsightly mobile home parks have sprung up. Staging areas for well and pipeline operations look like D-Day launch sites.
Susquehanna is a poor county. While having more jobs is great, much of the pay goes out of state. Gas companies have purchased a lot of goodwill with their generous donations, but they will not go on forever. Businesses supporting drilling have opened, but they also have limited lifetimes.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has done well to slow things down in New York. It's imperative for progress to be made mindfully, as the state considers the physical and civic environments and enacts regulations that provide protection from the many problems of fracking that go beyond polluted water.
Bob Kochersberger lives the rest of the year in North Carolina and teaches at North Carolina State University. His email address is rckeg@ncsu.edu.