The REAL face of fracking. What it does to a neighborhood.. (AlterNet)

[annabanana]

http://www.alternet.org/story/152919/fight_or_flight%3A_meet_the_residents_taking_on_gas_drillers%2C_and_those_packing_their_bags_%5Bwith_photo_slideshow%5D?akid=7817.71875.-XG77J&rd=1&t=2

Fight or Flight: Meet the Residents Taking on Gas Drillers, and Those Packing Their Bags

The flare had been raging for more than a week, night and day, the sound as loud as jet engines. The flames lit up the sky and danced in the windows of the now locked-up home of Anna and Maurice Aubree. An elderly couple from Long Island, N.Y. the Aubrees had moved to Forest Lake near Montrose, PA, in the early 1990s seeking peace and paradise in a small prefabricated house set on a few acres.

Instead, they found themselves in a "doughnut hole," the last holdouts in a methane sweet spot. All their neighbors had leased property to Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation, seeking fortunes in the natural gas rush. But it was the Aubrees who paid the price.

In their promotions, gas companies emphasize images of completed well pads, tidied up and seemingly benign. But it can take eight months just to prepare one well site for fracking. During that time trees are cut down, roads are cleared, ground is leveled, seismic tests are done, an entire infrastructure is laid down so a behemoth rig, equivalent to a 15-story-building, with supports, lights, containers, and manpower, can start drilling down. Activity is 24/7. To frack one well -- and the Marcellus Shale region is mapped for potentially 30,000 wells -- requires millions of gallons of water and 1,000 trucks.

[Altoid_Cyclist]

1. Have you noticed that the corporate media has bumped up their positive spin on this BS?

All that we hear are the number of jobs added or that people are being saved from financial ruin all thanks to fracking.

They conveniently forget to mention that the jobs are for people from Texas or other states who can leave the devastation behind and move on to another state once they've sucked and blown the life out of the fracked area.

We just had another explosion and fire in this area a few days ago. For an industry that boasts (incorrectly) of their outstanding (their words...not mine) safety record, they have had a lot of major accidents in PA.

Dick(head) Cheney must be laughing his dead hearted ass off over this blatant destruction of areas "lucky" enough to be cursed with shale oil deposits.

These motherf***ers need to be stopped. One way or another......seems a little harsh, but something has to stop these criminals.

Wouldn't you just love to live in the middle of something like this?????????

[onethatcares]

2. all one has to do

is look at the coal towns of eastern pennsylvania to see how successful the citizens there are. Try Trescow, Haddock, Hazelton, Wilkes Barre, Shamokin and Mahanoy City as a start.

[spinbaby]

3. We have about a dozen wells within a couple of miles

We live in rural Pennsylvania in gas-well central. Not only have a lot of wells gone in nearby, but they put a gas distribution depot of some kind in about a mile from here. We own only about a quarter of an acre, so have not reaped the profits many local farmers have.

The trucks are a nuisance. Flaring wells are kind of interesting for the few days they're burning. Water wells in our immediate area seem to be untouched. Most of the local gas wells have gone into farmers' fields. A couple of wells have gone into a wooded area that had to be cleared but they cleared a lot less than the giant housing development that was planned there before the housing market crashed and they started drilling for gas. I don't know what they do for water, but suspect all those giant tanker trucks have something to do with it.

All in all, it's not been great, but certainly not as awful as many of the anti-gas people make it out to be. Just from casual observation, the building of the latest batch of big box stores caused more environmental damage than the gas wells.

[ThomWV]

4. What amazes me most is many of my neighbors are signing up for nothing - nothing at all

I have just under 100 acres here at our home that I own the gas/oil rights for and my wife has 7 acres in another county on which she holds the rights. We have been bombarded by "offers" to lease our gas rights, as were all of my neighbors - at lest the ones who have managed to retain their rights over the years.

The guy next door - a moron if there ever was one - signed his away and did not get a dime for his trouble. They companies make all sorts of pie-in-the-sky offers, all based on premisses of future payments and huge royalties once things get up and running. But of course no cash up front. They told the idiot that he would probably make $40,000 once they got going and the stupid son of a bitch couldn't sign (make his mark) fast enough. I asked him how much they paid him to sign and he looked at me like a man who had just cut a wet fart.

[dgibby]

5. What part of WVA are you in?

I'm in the Alleghany mountains of Va, about 40 miles from White Sulpher Springs, WVA. My hometown sits in the middle of the George Washington National Forest, and I know some fracking groups are trying to get gas drilling and mining rights for the GWF. I've already signed a petition to prevent this, but fear it's just a matter of time.

Our economy is based on outdoor recreational tourism. If the frackers get their way, it will destroy us. If they set up operations up river (the Jackson), we're screwed.

[Ilsa]

6. They should check their deeds. Sometimes there are neighborhood restrictions.

My in-laws had one, but no one exercised it, and it expired because the community didn't call a meeting to extend it.

I hope the neighbors had the sense to get their water tested before the drilling started and will get it tested afterwards.

[ThomWV]

7. North eastern

South east of Pittsburgh, west of the straight part of Maryland. To the east of Morgantown, WV but at considerably higher elevation.

[tex-wyo-dem]

8. Here's what fracking has done to parts of my home state of Wyoming...

It's near this area where in the documentary Gasland the guy famously lit the well water coming out of his faucet on fire.

[Ilsa]

9. God, that is ugly. I have family there, too. nt