The Real Cost of Fracking (11 page)

The results from the drilling companies became available in the fall of 2011 (the results from the EPA would not become available until December 2012). Although one company initially withheld some of the data, the results of the testing done by the two companies eventually confirmed contamination of Josie’s and Sarah’s water sources. Especially concerning to me, as a mother and a veterinarian, was that three new chemicals ending in
-ene
were detected in their water: 2-methylnaphthalene, phenathrene, and fluoranthene. Each of these three compounds belongs to a group of chemicals known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), so named because they are composed of more than one fused aromatic ring (benzene has one aromatic ring). Because PAHs tend to persist in the environment and are easily absorbed, they have great potential to cause toxic or carcinogenic effects, or both. These are the chemicals that have been found to negatively impact fetal growth and childhood cognitive development.
²³
These are also the chemicals that the FDA looks for in our seafood following oil spills, such as the Deepwater Horizon in 2010.
²⁴

As if being PAHs weren’t enough, the 2-methylnaphthalene, phenathrene, and fluoranthene found in Josie’s and Sarah’s water also had another distinction: all have been identified as components of fracturing fluid and wastewater.
²⁵

After all the testing done on their water sources, no one informed either Josie or Sarah that her water was contaminated. More importantly, no one warned these families not to drink their water. Two years had passed since drilling operations began in their neighborhood, two years since they lost their water quality, two years since they lost their health and that of their animals, and yet no one was taking responsibility. No one was being held accountable. Another year would go by before they received advice, and even then, it would be muted.

The EPA tested Sarah’s and Josie’s water in July 2011 and March 2012. The cover letters accompanying the results stated that while the testing done on each woman’s well water covered a broad spectrum of constituents, none were detected above the EPA’s national primary and secondary drinking-water standards, except for nitrate and aluminum in Josie’s water, and iron and manganese in Sarah’s water. There was no warning
not
to drink the water, so did this mean their water was safe to drink?

It did not. But the families would not know this until later, when conference calls were held with EPA/ATSDR (Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry) representatives to discuss the results of the tests and the potential health problems from continued exposure to each contaminant detected in the water. One simple question Josie and Sarah asked, one they’d been asking themselves all along, was, “Is our water drinkable?” The answer was “No. Your water is not drinkable. Your water is not potable.”

Finally, someone confirmed what Josie and Sarah had suspected all along, but only verbally. Curiously, the EPA and ATSDR, for whatever reason, have thus far failed to put this advice to these families in writing.

When I first studied the EPA results, the last column, “MCL*” (primary maximum contaminant level), caught my eye, for most of the spaces in this column were blank. The primary MCL is the highest level of a contaminant allowable in drinking water;
²⁶
without a primary MCL, we don’t know what the possible health effects or risks could be or will be. For example, in Sarah’s EPA results, three semivolatile organics (2-butoxyethanol, phenol, and butyl benzyl phthalate) and one acid (formate) were detected in her water, and none of these has a primary MCL. The chemical 2-butoxyethanol was of particular concern. Used as a surfactant (foaming agent) in many fracturing fluid products, it is rapidly absorbed by all the major routes of exposure, including ingestion, inhalation, and through the skin. It can affect our red blood cells, bone marrow, liver and spleen,
²⁷
and there is some evidence that 2-butoxyethanol could be carcinogenic.
²⁸

There was another problem with the MCLs, one voiced at several meetings I’d attended, including a recent Centers for Disease Control (CDC) conference on the health impacts of shale gas drilling. Because MCLs are set for exposures to individual chemicals only and not combinations of chemicals, we don’t know the health effects of exposure to multiple toxicants, such as what Josie’s and Sarah’s families faced on a daily basis, possibly for months on end. Without knowing the primary MCLs of the contaminants in Josie’s and Sarah’s well water, no one can accurately predict the health problems they might face in the coming months and years, and no one was offering definitive answers.

In the spring of 2012, Sarah informed me that she and Josie were in litigation against all the companies and individuals involved in gas drilling operations and environmental testing associated with Mr. Leverkuhn’s site. Pushed beyond the limit of tolerance, the women were fighting for their families’ health, their animals’ health, and their right to clean air and water.

Josie still awaits resolution of the civil proceeding against the PADEP. The drilling company, while not taking responsibility for changes in her water sources, has provided Josie’s family with a water buffalo—twenty-five hundred gallons every five days since October 2011—something that is, according to Josie, very expensive. And while this helps, the water in the buffalo is not for drinking, and Josie and Jeff must continue to supply themselves with bottled water. Her family still suffers from headaches, nosebleeds, extreme fatigue, and a metallic taste in their mouths; the symptoms are exacerbated when flaring is taking place and the air becomes noticeably dense and smoky. In the spring of 2012, the family members were forced to leave their home for forty-eight hours when the air quality became intolerable, causing the people and the animals to gag and gasp for air. Josie’s family developed large patches of raw blisters on the face, nose, and throat; the photos Josie showed me from this event look like people who have suffered chemical burns.

In the summer of 2012, Josie was blessed with a normal litter of puppies, the first in two years—no stillbirths, no malformations. Yet, the family is looking for property in states with no shale plays and with the acreage needed for their horses and dogs. “A hydrogeologist told us that what’s in the water can be there for twenty to fifty years,” Josie said. “That’s a long time. What’s our property going to be worth? Will they continue to give us water? We don’t know the answers. Now, it’s the air—we don’t even know what we’re breathing.”

When I asked Josie what advice she could give people who are considering leasing their land, she gave these words of warning:

As mentioned previously, Sarah and her children left their home for good after moving back in for only about a week at the end of the summer of 2011. They then stayed in Sarah’s unheated camper until the end of the year, when the cold forced them to live with relatives and friends for months while they searched nearby for a home that would be big enough to accommodate all their animals. But most importantly, Sarah said at this time, “I just want a place to live and my kids to be healthy.”

In June 2012, Sarah’s family finally found a house to rent. She and the children began to recover their health here, and their animals’ health improved, too; the cats lived with the family, but all the remaining animals—a horse, a donkey, a dog, and rabbits—lived with friends and relatives. Sarah’s family felt settled for the first time in many months, but in May 2013 was forced to move again to another rental property.

As compressor stations and well pads continue to blot the landscape, Sarah realizes that any move is a gamble. At the end of a recent tour of her neighborhood, she pointed to a hill—fifty acres—owned by a friend who was approached by a company to lease the land for a compressor station. He knew everything that David had gone through, and Sarah warned her friend that it wasn’t worth it: “If you want to ruin your family, your kids’ and all your neighbors’ lives, then go right ahead.”

According to Sarah, the compressor station was never built, because people living beside the fifty acres refused to allow pipelines to cross their property. “They were worried about health problems,” Sarah said. “They knew everything we went through.”

In August 2013, Sarah decided to buy the second rental home, even though it wasn’t large enough for all the animals and she hadn’t sold her first home yet. The family was tired of moving, she told me, and I could hear the weariness in her voice, born of fighting for her family’s health and her home for too many years.

Once more, I dare to hope that things will begin to turn around for this family. But Sarah’s faith in her ability to survive this ordeal was tested again soon after she purchased the new home. During a routine check of her family’s first home, she found that the doors had been ripped off, the wood burner and air conditioner stolen, copper piping and sinks ripped out of the walls. Police and insurance investigators’ questions kept her too long at this house—where she seems to become ill more quickly with each visit—and after more than three hours, she was sicker than she has been in a long time, with stomachache, headache, a metallic taste in her mouth, and burning in her nose and throat. These things will clear up soon if she stays away, she told me, but the rash on her face has returned with a vengeance, and this will take a long time to resolve.

More than four years have passed since Sarah and Josie’s neighborhood was invaded. Both women dream of selling their properties, but who will buy homes with tainted water and air and located in a neighborhood surrounded by well pads, compressor stations, and impoundments? Who will buy a home that has been vandalized because it has been sitting too long and subsequently lost its homeowners’ insurance (as Sarah’s did)? As more wells are drilled, more neighbors are experiencing the impacts that Sarah and Josie have described: the noise, the smell, the changes in the water, the health problems. And during that time, other neighborhoods have been invaded. More water buffaloes have appeared outside homes. More people spend as much time as possible away from their neighborhoods, and when home, stay inside with the windows shut. More community meetings are being held, more people shout and sob, and more representatives from the drilling company sit at the front of the room, wring their hands, look away, and deny responsibility for any problems.

Many proponents of gas drilling consider families such as these sacrificial lambs. They have lost their way of life so that the rest of us can continue to enjoy ours. We can purchase our 100,000-BTU barbeque grills and heat our poorly insulated homes to seventy-five degrees in the dead of winter. They are told that they are being patriotic, supplying the energy needs to our country so that we do not have to import oil from the Middle East. At the same time, multinational corporations are purchasing leases in Pennsylvania and planning to ship the gas to China and other lucrative markets. In most cultures, lambs that are sacrificed are treated with some respect, objects of reverence before the ultimate deed. Our sacrificial lambs are objects of derision that are cast aside and made to beg for water.

And what of the farmer, Mr. Leverkuhn, who unwittingly started this downward spiral for these two families and the entire neighborhood? On a tour of gas drilling development in her community in August 2012, Josie slowed down just after leaving her driveway and pointed to a steep dirt road on the right, leading up to the Leverkuhn well pad and impoundment. On the left side of the access road, there was recent excavation—remodeling of the site, according to Josie. I had been hearing about this pad, the wells, and the impoundment for over eighteen months, and now I desperately wanted to see it—this place that had brought so much grief to these families. But there was a sign at the entrance forbidding trespass, and Josie warned, “There are guards here 24/7.” A little further on, Josie motioned to a spot where a new water well was recently dug, apparently because Mr. Leverkuhn had lost all his water. But now, there was talk of drilling another water well for Mr. Leverkuhn “clear up on that hillside, away from everything,” she said, gesturing broadly to a rise in the distance. “Away from where the water is contaminated.”

According to Sarah and Josie, Mr. Leverkuhn is being provided with bottled water and a water buffalo for his family and his beef cattle. They say he is embarrassed by this turn of events, that he is a proud farmer but hides the water buffalo behind a small hill, out of the neighbors’ view, and continues to send his cattle to slaughter.

Mr. Leverkuhn did not return my calls.

Livelihood: a means of support; subsistence. This word came up frequently during my conversation with Samantha Waller. It’s how she got started breeding Newfoundlands, and it’s why health—that of her and her partner, as well as her bitches, puppies, and studs—is such a complex issue. It’s the reason her neighbor sold his cattle, bought a dump truck, and is working for the drilling industry. And it’s why, after six years of breeding dogs, she has a full-time job outside the home because she and her partner are down to just a few dogs, and breeding is all but impossible anymore.

Bradford County, Pennsylvania, is, first and foremost, a rural, farming area. Leaving the main road in my small Prius was a challenge—with deep ruts and boulders everywhere, the roads were built for pickup trucks. But country roads have been a fact of life in Bradford County for decades. What has changed in recent years is the traffic on the main roads. Traveling through Towanda, the county seat (population about three thousand), can take as long as traveling across New York City in rush hour. Drilling traffic is nonstop, and lines of trucks bring traffic to a standstill seemingly for hours. This is the center of the gas drilling boom in northeastern Pennsylvania. Drilling permits are in place for a full build-out of the county—a process that will eventually extract gas from the Marcellus Shale in every corner and hamlet. But only a small fraction of the planned wells have been drilled, many have not been hydraulically fractured, and most of them are not yet producing. Nevertheless, traffic was incessant, and my attempt to get to where I was going was an exercise in frustration.