The Real Cost of Fracking (10 page)

Sarah sent me a package with photos, medical results, veterinary records, and journal entries, so that I could see what happened when. On the date when she first learned about the phenol in their bodies, she wrote how she and the children had been waiting for these results, and now they know these chemicals are in the air and they are breathing them off the wastewater impoundment. She wrote how upset they are by this news, but concluded the entry with a statement: “Our animals were not tested for these things.”

Toxicology testing is very expensive, as stated above, and screening can be tricky because you have to know what you’re looking for. Otherwise, it’s just an expensive way of searching for a needle in a haystack. None of the animals that died had screens for organic chemicals, and more importantly, the drilling company never provided a full list of what chemicals were used in drilling and fracturing. Nor did it provide a complete analysis of the wastewater.

Two months after initial urine tests showed elevated levels of phenol in David’s urine, repeat tests showed dramatic increases in his level as well as that of his mother and sister—all consistent with chronic exposure to benzene at levels of 0.5 to 4.0 ppm in the air. Also, the levels of hippuric acid were dramatically increased for all members of the family.
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Sarah thought daily of leaving her home, but she always had the same conclusion: “We can’t afford to move, and what about the animals?” What would she do if for some reason they were forced to move? This now seemed her worse nightmare. She tried not to think or talk about it—it was too depressing. It was like being in a bad dream where everything you cherish turns to dust when you touch it. Approximately one and a half years after drilling began, it happened. Her worst nightmare came to life.

There had been a power outage in the neighborhood in May 2011; ironically, it occurred on Mother’s Day, and would be something that Sarah would never forget. It lasted only a few hours but caused a cascade of events that would throw Sarah and her children’s lives into even more turmoil. Due to the outage, the aerators at the wastewater impoundment stopped working and the impoundment became septic. The odors were much worse than they were a year before, when the impoundment was treated chemically and more aerators were added after Sarah and Josie complained. Now, the odors were similar to walking through the tunnels of a city’s sewer, the smell of human feces triggering an irresistible urge to vomit. The weather didn’t help, changing from bright and dry to wet and humid, the smell hanging around their neighborhood like a toxic fog.

The physical signs they had been experiencing—headaches, fatigue, nosebleeds, and sore throats—intensified. In Sarah’s household, David again suffered the most, sleeping for eighteen hours and having to be dragged from his bed and awakened by Sarah, as if from a drugged sleep. She recalled the health impacts of benzene and toluene: they can affect the nervous system at even low levels, making a person appear drunk and extremely tired. Sarah stayed on, not knowing what else to do. They became nauseated. They lost their sense of smell, but didn’t realize it until a friend visited and asked how they could possibly tolerate the stench. Sarah had convinced herself that her family had simply acclimated to the smell, but after her friend visited, she scheduled an appointment with her doctor and learned that she and the children had anosmia—they were losing their sense of smell. Sarah also learned that she was losing her hearing. The doctor advised her and the children to leave their home for at least thirty days—or suffer more severe health consequences.

For Josie, the septic impoundment caused the same problems, but perhaps more intensely because she worked at home and refused to leave her horses. Again she kept careful notes and called the drilling company and the PADEP, reporting that the stench had worsened; it was making her so sick she couldn’t function. She made a reasonable request to both the drilling company and the PADEP—to test the air quality. Not only was her request for testing denied by both parties, but the regulatory agency did not cite the drilling company for air pollution. Ignored too many times, Josie decided to force the PADEP to investigate her complaints of water and air pollution in a “complete, scientific and non-arbitrary manner” by seeking a writ of mandamus in June 2011. Such a writ orders a public agency or governmental body to perform an act required by law when it has neglected or refused to do so. Basically, Josie was demanding that the PADEP do its job.

While Josie decided to stay put, Sarah responded by taking her doctor’s advice and moved her family out of her home in May 2011. During the time away from their home, Sarah would live out of her car before moving in with a friend and sleeping on a couch. David would stay with a friend from school, and Patty would stay with Sarah’s mother. Meanwhile, medical tests would show that phenol and hippuric acid levels in the children were down, and David would continue to have low arsenic levels, but Sarah’s phenol levels would remain elevated: her daily trips home to take care of the animals she was forced to leave behind exposed her to the air for one or two hours every day. During this time, the children would beg to go back to the house and visit the animals. Sarah would relent, and after a few visits, David would become so sick that he would have to return to the hospital, with abdominal pain, swollen lymph nodes, and headaches.

But ultimately, for Sarah’s family, there was no good solution, no good choice. They were wearing out their welcome staying elsewhere, they missed their friends and their farm, and no place except their own house was big enough to keep the family and all their farm animals and pets together. With the end of the summer of 2011, the approach of the county fair, and the start of school, they moved back. With the family back home less than a week, the symptoms that had disappeared after they left the farm would now return with a vengeance: sore throats, swollen lymph nodes, headaches, nosebleeds, fatigue, the metallic taste in their mouths. And with two compressor stations up and running within one mile from their home, a sickeningly sweet chemical smell permeated the air and exacerbated their symptoms, making them want to vomit. Initially forced to leave because of health issues and forced to return because of economics, they were forced to leave again because of health issues, but this time it would be for good.

The former gas company employee who had originally asked me to contact Sarah and Josie sent me a video of a community meeting in an area that was being intensively drilled.
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He wanted me to see and hear that Sarah and Josie were not alone in their opinions of the impacts that unconventional gas drilling had on their neighborhood. When I first viewed this video, I assumed it was recorded in their neighborhood because the course of events and the citizens’ comments were the same as what I was hearing from Sarah and Josie. It wasn’t until I went back to watch the video a second time and transcribe what was said that I noticed that this meeting was recorded in a nearby community, more than a year before the impoundment in Sarah and Josie’s neighborhood went septic.

In the video, the meeting is held in a small room with a long table in front. At the table, men and women representing the gas drilling company sit. Some appear calm while others look down or away from the camera. The audience is respectful, but there is no respect for what the drilling company has done to this neighborhood. Off camera, a man states his name and address then asks, “What is the odor coming from the seven wells? It’s unbearable. It’s a terrible acrid odor. I have never smelled anything like that before. Is this going to be continuous, or what?”

The drilling company PR man answers that the impoundment initially held only freshwater but now it was being used to hold “flowback [waste] water,” and that’s why it’s smelly. He says that the flowback consists of hydrocarbons, brine, and bacteria and that “the warmer it gets, the more putrid it gets.” He promises that the drilling company will remove all the wastewater, replace the liner, and refill the impoundment with fresh water for now . . .

The man interrupts to ask if the odor will ever come back, and the PR man answers cautiously, “It may.” The man then adds that sometimes he can’t keep his windows open. Others in the audience agree, and then he asks if the smell is dangerous or harmful, and what are the hydrocarbons? Many people from the audience start shouting similar questions at the PR man all at once. He defers to a colleague, but the meeting is out of order and is temporarily halted to repeat the rules (standing up and stating names and addresses before each question). The meeting resumes, with perhaps the most important questions left unanswered.

An elderly woman stands, gives her name and spits her words at the PR man. “I know you know who I am. I live right next to those wells, and that frack pit [wastewater impoundment] was put directly behind my home. You people have ruined my life. Wednesday night I had to call the emergency response system because we could not breathe up there. I am not going to tolerate this going on. You have ruined my property. I smell these smells all year long—it’s not just a one-time thing because the weather got warm. I’m tired of all these people being all around my house twenty-four hours a day, lights on. I have no privacy, I don’t even know who these people are around my house, and I’m there by myself now.”

The PR man tries to calm her, for she is on the brink of breaking down. “It must have been hellish for you—”

She cuts him off hysterically. “That’s an understatement! You almost gave me a heart attack when you flared that well. Do you realize what kind of hell you put me through? I don’t think you do, I really don’t think you do.”

“We are working towards fixing that site,” the PR man responds. “We plan to put screening up, trees—we are working towards undoing what we did.” But his words, meant to calm, only inflame.

“What about the hell you put me through the last two years?” the woman demanded. “I mean, you don’t have any idea! When they were drilling, the walls in my house were vibrating. And all this while my husband was dying—and it just went on.” She breaks down sobbing, but collects herself to look at him one more time before sitting down and saying, “I’m done.”

The PR man wisely does not respond to this woman, instead calling on a short, stout gentleman in the front row. This man sweeps his arm from one side of the table to the other and says that the drilling is happening across from his house, and now his property is “not worth nothin’, can’t give it away.” He tells the men and women in the front about the structural damage on his house—damage caused by vibrations when the company put the road in. He has waited two weeks for a response from this drilling company and is now threatening to turn the matter over to his homeowners insurance, where it will be “Goliath against Goliath, not David [points to himself] against Goliath [points to the men and women at the front].” The PR man takes his number and promises to call.

There is a break in the recording; it continues with the PR man stating that the drilling company is looking at solutions, and if it means moving the impoundment, then that is what they will do. A voice, sounding like the elderly woman who spoke earlier, begs, “I just want you to move it, and get it away from my house.” The PR man answers that it’s not easy to move something that big, but agrees that yes, they’ll take it away, but only if it’s in everyone’s best interest.

One clean-shaven middle-aged man stands up and states his name, and for a moment, it almost seems as if perhaps he will be the one who believes this drilling company really is a good neighbor, for he is speaking calmly. But it is not to be. He berates the men and women at the front for being poor neighbors since they first came into his community two years ago to clear the land. “You brought all these people in, did all this work, and never talked to a single homeowner about what was going on. You were in such a hurry to get that well punched in there that you didn’t take time to talk to any of us.” As he continues in a calm voice, the people in the audience turn to look at him, as do the company representatives sitting at the table. “Secondly,” the man says, “none of you people have a stake in our community—none of you live here. We do. I’m here 24/7, I pay taxes, and I’m the guy that has to put up with this well site. The guy that owns the rights to that well site—he’s not even a stakeholder in this community. Where they put the compressor station—that landowner is not a stakeholder in our community. None of these guys are stakeholders in this community. They don’t live here. I do.”

The PR man does not attempt to address these issues. No one interrupts. The man then continues, calmly, and now it seems that he has everyone’s attention. “I plan to stay here. I got two little girls and a family. I think it’s terrible what you guys have done. My property line butts right up to that well site. And you guys have wrecked my house. You guys have wrecked my community. You guys have come in here and made this a nonlivable community. You’re like a family member who comes to visit and never leaves.” He finishes forcefully, telling the men and women at the front, “Get done, and get the hell out.” The room erupts in applause. In response, the PR man assures these people that what has happened in this community is an anomaly—is atypical for his drilling company. He then admits that this particular well site and impoundment were a disaster. It just didn’t turn out the way they planned, that’s all.

Even though the gas drilling company continued to assert that its operations had no impact on either family’s water quality, Josie’s and Sarah’s water woes and their reluctance to keep quiet had by now gained the attention of the federal government. In July 2011, the EPA included Josie and Sarah in its study on the impacts of unconventional drilling on groundwater quality and tested their water as a part of that study. The EPA also invited two gas drilling companies to test both households’ water at the same time: the company that was currently drilling on Mr. Leverkuhn’s land and had previously arranged for Josie’s and Sarah’s water testing in November 2010, and a different drilling company.