The Real Cost of Fracking (4 page)

We quickly learned that people were experiencing the same problems with conventional wells (shallow or deep vertical drilling with low-volume hydraulic fracturing) as they were with unconventional wells (horizontal drilling with high-volume hydraulic fracturing). But because of the scale of industrialized oil and gas operations occurring throughout the country, unconventional wells were more commonly associated with animal and human health problems.

Perhaps the most consistent finding from case to case and one that most people discussed at length was the irresponsible behavior of the drilling companies and the state environmental regulatory agencies in handling problems occurring after the onset of oil or gas drilling. In most cases, people complained bitterly of unfair treatment during the process of reporting, testing, and remediation of a contamination incident. Several people also complained of occasions where friends were harassed and intimidated at work when they spoke out. In several instances, documentation of cases was thwarted due to the signing of a nondisclosure agreement.

Nondisclosure agreements often make the information on contamination incidents and health effects impossible to obtain, as we found while investigating several cases. These agreements are signed in exchange for compensation in the form of cash, an offer to pay for all settlement expenses, an offer to buy the owner’s property, and payment for medical expenses of the owners and, rarely, their animals. After the agreement is signed, further comment is prohibited. If the owner breaks the nondisclosure agreement (the confidentiality is breached), the oil or gas company can then hold back on cash or other payments, and the owner then may be liable for damages. Nondisclosure agreements are common in all areas of business and are often essential to protect intellectual property, but when used to block documentation of health problems associated with oil or gas drilling (or any other public health issue), these agreements are clearly a misuse of this important business tool.

From a veterinary medicine standpoint, two issues arose during these interviews that disturbed and unsettled us. The first concerned food safety and economics. All of the farmers we interviewed found themselves financially squeezed by gas drilling. In many cases, farmers experienced heavy losses due to death and reproductive failure of their herds in association with drilling-related events; in one case, losses were compounded by long quarantine hold times of the herd following wastewater exposure. A number of farmers spent thousands of dollars on environmental testing. As a result, many of them felt pressed to send their exposed food-producing animals to slaughter. In all except one case, exposed animals that didn’t survive or couldn’t walk went directly to the renderer. To our knowledge, none of these animals were tested before slaughter or rendering, and farms in areas testing positive for air, soil, and water contamination are still producing meat, eggs, and dairy products for human consumption without testing the animals or the products. This situation makes it likely that some of these chemicals could appear in food products made from these animals. On the economics side, farmers not only lost animals but also lost pastureland and hayfields, depending on the placement of the access road, well pad, wastewater and freshwater impoundments, drilling muds pit, compressor station, and pipeline. Most of the farmers and other people we spoke with received no compensation from the driller for the loss of their animals, the loss of their land, or for the treatment of the animal and human health problems they encountered since oil or gas drilling came to their neighborhoods.

The second issue emerged during interviews with veterinarians. We were not surprised to hear that many veterinarians were seeing similar cases of health-related issues associated with oil or gas drilling. We did not expect, however, to hear that fear of loss of clients was driving some veterinarians to avoid speaking out and more thoroughly investigating suspect cases by sending them on to necropsy. One large-animal veterinarian requested permission to submit cases under another veterinarian’s account, to avoid being associated with the results, and the possible loss of business.

At the outset, we did not intend to collect specific information on human health issues associated with oil and gas drilling exposures. However, as many owners reported similar symptoms in themselves and their pets or livestock, it soon became obvious that both people and animals were being affected by the same set of circumstances. We decided early on that it was crucial to ask specifics on human health: how it was affected, and to what degree. We also found that the human health data were another important piece of the timeline we generated for each case. For example, we charted the dates when drilling and hydraulic fracturing occurred; when water, air, and soil quality changed; and when animals and their owners fell ill. Our stories tell of how people were affected in the short term, and now, as we continue to collect updates on these interviews, we are able to describe the long-term effects in owners as well as their animals. After more than two years of following our cases, we have observed that health impacts significantly decreased over time for families and animals moving away from intensively drilled areas, or living in areas where the level of industrial activity has decreased; otherwise, health impacts have remained the same. We have also observed that in food animals, both respiratory problems and growth problems (stunting and failure to thrive) have increased over time. This is interesting, especially in light of the epidemiological studies of human births occurring in intensively drilled areas (mentioned above).

In the process of reviewing medical records on animal owners, we were surprised and dismayed to learn that several physicians failed to record their patients’ history of exposure to oil or gas drilling operations on the medical records, despite the patient’s oral history at the time of the office appointment. We can only hope that as awareness of health issues linked to unconventional oil and gas drilling increases in the medical community, all physicians will include such history on intake and will report such cases to their respective state health departments.

As discussed previously, in comparing the health effects of drilling-related activities on animals to those of their owners, it is not surprising that both small and large animals should experience more health problems sooner and to a greater degree than their owners because in most situations, they are exposed to the environment for longer periods than their owners. They don’t drive to work or run errands: they are subjected to the air, soil, and water provided to them, however good or bad it may be. This difference emerged in the interviews, in sometimes unexpected and astonishing ways.

When we began speaking with people, we couldn’t have imagined the void we were filling by taking this project on. The updates never end, because in many cases exposures never end: contamination of water, air, and soil is difficult if not impossible to remedy. Because known carcinogens, mutagens, and endocrine disruptors are used in industrial gas drilling operations, and because these chemicals can cause long-term health problems to many systems in the body at very low concentrations (parts per billion or less), we expect to be following the health issues of animals and their owners for many more years.

After countless hours of listening and recording these stories, we realized that our role was not only one of interviewer, but also of crisis counselor. People tell us stories they can tell no one else. They need to talk. They are like victims of a rape. The rapist says, “Be quiet or I will kill you.” In some of the stories we have documented, the drilling companies have told the people, “No more water.” These people plead and beg for water. They live on the edge of sanity, day to day, trying to get by, but how can you live without water? Some people are afraid that their water buffalos will be taken away—if they were lucky enough to have received one when their water became undrinkable—so they say, “No, I can’t speak out. No, you can’t use my name,” and then they tell us their stories. Some whisper, some shout. We feel their sense of relief on getting their stories out, like getting rid of the rot inside, making you sick. We invite them to let it out, dump it on us, the people listening, trying to find out something, anything, as much as possible about what awaits should their fate become our fate.

A farm close to a small town would seem to be an ideal place to raise a family, with fresh air, clean water, open space, animals both domestic and wild, and only the sounds of children playing. But despite our idyllic view of the countryside, the jobs have largely moved overseas, and in many areas of the country, people are struggling to make ends meet, raise a family, and take care of beloved animals. In shale gas country, this is also where the riches lay, deep underground. In Pennsylvania, some people embrace the shale gas revolution, hoping for a better life. Others accept it, hoping for the best and praying that it will work out for them. And still others are deeply skeptical. In
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, we illustrate how very different families in different parts of Pennsylvania face the challenge of living amid shale gas drilling and find unique ways of dealing with trouble.

As much as parents or animal owners would like to think of themselves as protectors of their child or pet, it is ironic that both children and animals are actually more like the canaries in the coal mine. Because children are smaller than adults and tend to eat, drink and breathe more air relative to their body weights, they tend to be more affected by environmental insults. Add to this an increased sensitivity of the still-forming nervous system and a reduced ability to detoxify substances,
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and we can state with some assurance that children are particularly susceptible to chemicals in the environment. While children are sentinels, for many reasons animals are even more so. When families leave for work and school, their animals are often left at home either in the house, barn, or yard, increasing exposure times. Whereas children can be given bottled water to drink, few people can afford to buy bottled water for a horse. So for different reasons, we think of both children and pet or farm animals as sentinels of environmental disease. They are the first to fall sick, and the symptoms and consequences can be dire.

Picture for a moment a quiet country lane barely wide enough for two cars to pass, with some homes and farms that have been in the family for generations. With dark skies at night and clean air and water, this is the perfect place for a family to live, to care for a dog and maybe a horse and a few chickens. On the other hand, while the good things in life are present in abundance, it may not be the most prosperous area of the country. In many cases, the land has been leased to drilling companies for many years with little or no impact. The leases were for a dollar or two an acre and if a small gas well was drilled, few people other than the landowner ever heard about it. It is in this context that landsmen appeared on the scene, offering more lucrative leases, with little indication that life was about to change for people living in such communities. Many people signed leases hoping for a better life, while others signed thinking that with a lease, they could have more control over what was about to happen.

In many, if not most, cases, people welcomed this newfound potential for wealth. One individual who had worked for many years for an oil and gas company was thrilled by the prospect of leasing his farm. He had known gas wells as a company insider and thought that his dream of having a working farm in a beautiful area of southwestern Pennsylvania could easily coexist with the small changes brought about by a well or two on his property. What he didn’t know was that the lease he had signed allowed the company to place multiple large drilling pads on his farm, each pad with several horizontal wells. As it turns out, the dream of a working farm never materialized. He did build a pond and stocked it with fish, more for the pleasure of fishing and enjoying nature. The next step was to purchase some cows and start a beef cattle herd. He thought that it would be easy—he could just negotiate where the access roads would go and where the drilling pads would be located. Instead, the drilling pad was placed just above his fishpond, and the access road ran past his children’s bedrooms. After his fishpond was contaminated by runoff from the well pad and he caught workers on his property stealing his machinery, he realized that his dream was slowly turning into a train wreck. But he was one of the lucky ones. He and his family escaped with their health mostly intact, and we heard his story while he was living at his mother’s home, the farm a distant and painful memory.

But was this an isolated instance? Could all of the woes that we heard from him be exaggerations? To look into this further, we visited a neighbor who keeps goats and fish as pets and had lived in the same house for forty years, a rented property with the mineral rights leased to the drilling company. Around the time that the would-be farmer’s fishpond was allegedly contaminated, the neighbor found that his goats were experiencing severe neurological symptoms, and five of eight suddenly died. At about the same time, he had replaced the water in a small pond where he kept koi with his well water. To his amazement, all of the fish died soon after. He removed the water and restocked the pond with water from a remote source and has had healthy fish to this day. While dealing with the tragedies associated with their pets, both the neighbor and his elderly mother began experiencing rashes and a distinct change in the smell and color of their well water.

Can we prove that drilling on the farm specifically caused these health issues? Neither water nor air testing was done prior to drilling, and only water testing was done afterward. Given the forty-year history in the same home and multiple instances of human and animal sickness associated temporally with drilling and hydraulically fracturing multiple wells, at least the suspicion is raised that the problem may have arisen from recent unconventional drilling operations. We will never know the answer for sure, but the question that we raise is where the burden of proof lies.