If you
want to understand shale gas drilling, you have to start with the rock, says
Tom Wilber. He should know; he covered gas drilling in NY and PA for the Press
& Sun Bulletin since before the Millennium Pipeline, and now has a book out
on the topic: Under the Surface:
Fracking, Fortunes, and the Fate of the Marcellus Shale.
“Everything
central to shale gas production – and the controversy surrounding it – involves
understanding rock fractures,” he writes. But the shale isn’t the only thing
being fractured in the rush to extract gas. Wilber also writes about the drilling
debate fractures communities overlying the Marcellus.
Wilber’s
book is steeped in a sense of place. He describes the roads and landscape of
Dimock, the trailers and homesteads and contemporary homes tucked along back
roads, the stone walls and swing sets of Dimock. He introduces the Carters, the
Sautners, and other families brought together unexpectedly by the shale gas
rush. He grounds us in history, from the first hand-excavated gas well in
Fredonia NY (1825) to the intensely industrialized horizontal hydraulically
fractured Marcellus wells of the new millennium.
Under the Surface examines the geology of shale, the
technology of drilling, the promise of prosperity. Wilber’s evenhanded
treatment gives voice to all involved: landowners and farmers hoping to
capitalize on royalty income, regulators and politicians struggling with
increasingly divisive issues, and residents-turned-activists trying to protect
their water and air from contamination. Even when he is talking facts, complete
with endnotes and citations, he maintains his role as a storyteller... one bent on uncovering the “truth”.
His book
might be finished, but Wilber isn’t; he continues to follow the issue, writing
about it on his blog. “Things are happening on a daily
basis,” he says, noting home rule as one of the developing issues.
He’s been
keeping tabs on the recent tests of Dimock water wells conducted by the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Though the EPA reports that they have
found nothing of concern, test data show “traces of sodium, methane, arsenic,
chromium, and lithium and other elements at or near action levels,” he says.
Those are “red flags” – they indicate a need for more analysis. As for the
people in Dimock, the ones who are complaining about contaminated drinking
water … “they are victims,” says Wilber.
“They certainly didn’t make this stuff up.”
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