The Real Cost of Fracking (24 page)

Proponents of gas drilling often argue that that if people think their water is contaminated, they can just use their royalty income to pay for water—problem solved. A flaw in that argument is that not everyone in shale gas country receives royalties, and pollution does not magically avoid those without a drilling lease. If you are receiving royalties, you can perhaps pay for a water buffalo or a lawyer to plead your case in court. But a poor family not receiving any income from drilling can afford neither a new water source nor the legal muscle to compel the township or drilling company to supply water.

We are going to end our series of illustrations on a bittersweet and inspiring note. This is the story of one family living in an intensively drilled area with stark contrasts between rich and poor. A subdivision with large, expensive homes is situated within a few miles of a relatively poor community. The subdivision has good roads, mail delivery, trash pickup, and, perhaps most importantly, newly laid water lines that will supplant the well water that the residents had previously used. Interestingly, construction of water lines carrying city water to the more prosperous areas of the shale gas regions of Pennsylvania rivals even the pipeline construction for natural gas. The nearby community that we visited has barely passable roads, no mail delivery, and no trash pickup. In fact, ambulances and fire trucks are reluctant to enter the community depending upon the weather. Most importantly, no water lines are being laid and the residents are forced to either use well water or come up with another solution for their water. The EPA’s promise of environmental justice is not being fulfilled here. This community is not receiving “the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards”; nor does it have “equal access to the decision-making process.” The residents of the community are not empowered by society, but they are empowered to help each other.

The major problem in this community is that many of the homes have seen significant changes in the quality or quantity of their water, or both, since unconventional gas drilling began. We have made the point that drilling has pitted neighbor against neighbor. To some extent, that is true here. The people of this small community who have chosen to speak out about the water and air problems are not well received by nearby farmers with considerable royalty income. But within the small community, we experienced a different dynamic, one that provides hope and inspiration. These are people who have not been blessed with material wealth or political power, but who pull together day to day to help each other deal with the loss or contamination of their water supply.

NINE

CLAIRE AND JASON
Forsaken Community

Amid the dozens of people I’d visited in Pennsylvania to discuss gas drilling, Claire and Jason Wasserman stood out. I had expected that at least some of the people I’d be meeting would have signage on their lawns expressing their lack of support for fracking. So I was surprised that while driving through a large swath of Pennsylvania, where shale gas extraction is making its mark, I saw few signs of protest until I arrived at the Wassermans’ residence. I’d seen plenty of signs, especially in Washington and Greene Counties, referring to the upcoming 2012 election and Obama’s supposed “war on coal.” The signs in front of the Wassermans’ house reading “No Fracking” were not a surprise, as Claire had mentioned these as a landmark when I asked for directions. But it was so very striking that there were no other signs in this neighborhood where more than a third of the residents had been afflicted with poor water quality coincident with the arrival of shale gas operations. I was also surprised by the Wassermans’ humble surroundings. Because Claire and Jason took the lead in organizing a water drive, and because they gave up their own water rations to neighbors who were running low and paid for some neighbors who couldn’t otherwise afford water, I had expected that they would have more because they were giving more. But if anything, the opposite was true. While many of their neighbors seemed to be living at a similar level of sustenance, quite a few others lived in nicer abodes, had nicer cars and yards. These were my observations, not the Wassermans’. To them, these things were not important, were not discussed. The most important thing was water and helping others.

Claire and Jason are both from Butler County, just north of Pittsburgh. They attended the same high school, Claire hailing from the country, and Jason from the city. Their property, with its mineral rights leased before they bought it, occupies 1.5 acres in a wooded community that seemed to me from the outset to be isolated from other houses in the area simply by the change in the surface of the roads. On the satellite map, this community looked as if someone doodled a small square of crosshatched lines onto a large canvas of hills, fields and forests, and filled in the lines with side-by-side small boxes. The road leading into the community was a very bumpy, narrow, unpaved lane, and I assumed that the surface would change soon, for who could be expected to tolerate a road such as this day in and out? But this was not the case: another turn, and I was onto the Wassermans’ lane, surface unchanged. As I discovered later when Claire graciously took me on a tour, all of the roads threading throughout this small community were in the same terrible condition.

Over the few hours that I spent with the Wassermans, I would learn that their community was segregated from the rest of the town regarding the services the people living here received: namely, in this small wooded community of homes and trailers, garbage must be taken to the entrance of the community, the roads go unplowed and unsalted in the wintertime, and fire trucks and ambulances stop at the entrance, fearing that they will get stuck. On several occasions, Jason has brought people to the ambulance in his pickup truck.

For the past twenty years, Claire and Jason have lived in this community—Claire, a housewife, and Jason, a retired water-well driller descended from generations of water-well drillers. When I first learned of Jason’s former occupation, I was excited to meet him. Here was someone who had expertise in drilling wells and could give me insight into what was happening in his community. One of the first questions I asked him in person was one that I’d had in mind for the past year, since the summer of 2011, when I first spoke with the Wassermans by phone. At that time, it had been more than six months since they stopped drinking their well water, more than six months since purple suds and foam first erupted out of their taps, and more than six months since both they and their pets first became ill after drinking the water. I learned that soon after their water had become undrinkable, the drilling company had provided a water buffalo, and Jason had noted that the level of water in their water well was twenty feet higher than usual.

Now, a year later and meeting them in person, I asked him why he thought the water had risen so high. Before Jason could answer, Claire interrupted, “But some of the neighbors on this road—the wells have risen up to a hundred feet or more.”

“That’s because they are a different style of well,” Jason answered. “The shallower wells will be a pounder, and the deeper ones—three to four hundred feet deep, they’ll be rotary wells. We have a neighbor three roads over with a three-hundred-foot well. The water level was always at two hundred feet; now it’s thirty feet from the top.”

I understand that the levels in the water wells in this community rose after shale gas drilling began, but I want to know exactly what was it about this process that caused these levels to rise.

“They pumped four to seven million gallons of water per hole, and there are about thirty holes across that hill,” Jason said, referring to nearby shale gas wells. “Basically, the aquifer was flooded. It blew out my hot-water tank. It blew out my pump.” Jason believes that casings—several, an inch between each one, cemented off—were not used below one thousand feet, and shale gas wells typically reach five thousand to eight thousand feet in this area of Pennsylvania. “We are surrounded by old oil and gas wells,” he said, “twenty-five hundred to thirty-five hundred of these. Plus old coal mines. Everything filled up after fracking.”

Jason’s well is approximately one hundred feet deep, and before unconventional drilling began in his area, the top level of water in his well was eighty feet down; now, the top level of water is at sixty feet. He asked me, “How do you raise an unlimited supply of water like that? There has to be a tremendous, absolutely tremendous amount of pressure. And a tremendous amount of water.”

The Wassermans contacted the PADEP. Because Jason was a well driller by trade, and because he so intimately knew the water wells in his neighborhood, I assumed his complaints would be taken seriously. But both Jason and Claire have been disappointed by how the PADEP responded. They were left with the impression that they were the only ones in their neighborhood with water problems and with illness associated with the water quality changes. Then people began knocking at their door, asking, “What’s going on here?” The Wassermans were surprised to learn that some of their neighbors had problems with their water and were experiencing bloody noses and gastrointestinal problems too.

Before Claire described what happened to her family’s health when their water quality changed, I first learned what happened to their cats’ and dogs’ health, in particular Rex, their beloved six-year-old Lab mix. On the week of January 24, 2011, both Claire and Jason experienced digestive turmoil, projectile vomiting, and diarrhea. At first they thought it was due to something they had eaten or a stomach virus. They continued to drink their water even though their two cats and three dogs refused to do so. But it was Rex who had the most severe symptoms—quickly, he became very weak and unable to stand, began vomiting blood, and died before Claire could bring him to her veterinarian.

At this time, another family who hauled water from the Wassermans’ well (because it was ordinarily of such excellent quality) also became violently ill with vomiting and diarrhea. Yet both families kept drinking the water until January 31, when Jason arose at two o’clock in the morning to bring some water to his wife, and was shocked to see purple-pink suds and foam coming out of the tap, filling up the sink. Claire later recalled that the week before January 31, she had noticed that plastic dishware left in the sink was turning a pink color that could not be removed, and the water in the toilet bowl was pink.

After complaining to both the drilling company and the PADEP, Claire and Jason received a water buffalo and bottled water. In the coming months, testing by the PADEP on the Wassermans’ well water detected toluene,
tert
-butyl alcohol, acetone, 1,3,5-trimethylbenzene, and chloromethane—all chemicals found in hydraulic fracturing fluid or wastewater.
¹

Despite this finding, both the water buffalo and the bottled-water deliveries were stopped several months later because an environmental consulting firm hired by the drilling company concluded that the taste, cloudiness, odor, staining, and oily film in the Wassermans’ well water appeared to be common in their area, and these changes were not related to the drilling company’s activities.

The Wassermans’ situation, like many others, is complex because there is usually more than one event happening at a time. Not only are wells being drilled and hydraulically fractured, but processing plants are spewing particulates into the air, wells are being flared, and wastewater is being spread onto the roads or illegally dumped. A timeline, with all available drilling data and reported violations, environmental test reports, and changes to human and animal health, helps me to understand what might have happened and unveil potential exposures, especially in cases such as Claire and Jason’s.

In the Wassermans’ neighborhood, shale gas operations began in earnest in 2009 and continue to this day. By late 2013, there were approximately one hundred permitted shale gas wells within five miles of their home, approximately fifteen shale gas wells within one mile, and six shale gas wells approximately one-half mile away. The nearest wastewater impoundment is within one-half mile, and there are compressor stations and processing plants within a few miles of their home.

When I searched the PADEP records, I found a number of reported violations at several well pads within a mile of the Wassermans’ home. During hydraulic fracturing of a well at the closest pad in November 2010, the equivalent of a forty-pound bag of bentonite drilling gel spewed out into an overlying stream and created a
frac-out hole
(a cavity caused when excessive pressure during hydraulic fracturing causes drilling fluids and muds to spill out onto the surface of the land being drilled). The inspection comment was dismissive: “There was no evidence that a spill had even occurred” and “there was no visible impact on aquatic life,” even though the violation was resolved on the same day it occurred (indicating no further follow-up) and even though surface waters had apparently been contaminated. Should a spill of bentonite be taken so lightly? According to its material safety data sheet,
²
bentonite is an eye, skin, and respiratory tract irritant, and according to animal studies, it may also cause cancer.

Of even greater concern was a report of “defective, insufficient, or improperly cemented casing” of a nearby well in September 2010. When a well casing fails, aquifers face a double jeopardy: contamination may occur when the flow of drilling fluids and hydraulic fracturing chemicals are on their way down the bore hole, and again, when the chemicals, gas, and toxicants naturally occurring in the shale return to the surface. In November 2010, another nearby well was reported for “failure to properly store, transport, process or dispose of residual waste.”

These occurrences may or may not have led to changes in the health of the families and the pets in this community—I knew too well that cause and effect were very difficult if not impossible to prove in these cases. And my timeline didn’t start to yield any potential incidents of exposure until I studied a report written by an environmental consulting firm hired by the drilling company to investigate complaints at four domestic water wells in the Wassermans’ neighborhood, including theirs. According to this report, hydraulic fracturing of two gas wells at the pad where the aforementioned casing failure had occurred was completed just two days before the families drinking the Wassermans’ well water and Claire’s dog Rex became severely ill.