Shalefield Stories: "I will not be quiet anymore."

Michelle Beegle: PA farmer, nurse, grandmother
Clearville, Bedford County, PA

We’ve lived on our land since 1983. It was given to our generation by my father-in-law. I loved it here. It was quiet. If you saw more than one car all day something was going on. We could sit on
our porch and be out in the yard, and only hear birds singing all the time. We never worried about what we were drinking or breathing. Our three children were born and raised here. Back then everyone got along with their neighbors. Everyone is family. We keep an eye out for everyone. You could count on people. Now there’s a division between people.

In 2014 we applied for a second mortgage. We wanted to update the furnace, the bathroom, and put in a pool for the grandchildren and my husband, Robert. The water therapy is good for him. He suffers from severe back pain and neuropathy that was caused when a tree fell on him in January of 1988. We applied for a $15,000 loan. Our credit was excellent and our home had recently been appraised at $125,000. We didn’t expect a problem. Our home and our credit is all we have.
Robert doesn’t believe in credit cards. “If you can’t afford it, you don’t need it,” he always says. We had previously taken out a loan on the house to help pay for our youngest daughter to go to nursing
school. We’ve never missed a payment on the house and we paid off our last car loan early. We went straight to Hometown Bank of Pennsylvania. We have banked with them for the last 10 years. We filled out the paperwork and were initially approved. A few days later, Carol at the bank called us. She explained that the attorney had looked at the loan and it was too big of a risk for them. She said that since the water well was contaminated, the property wasn’t even worth the $33,000 we
still owed on it. They said it was worth nothing. We tried three other banks, but the result was the same. At first they would approve us but as soon as they saw the tax assessment said “contaminated well” they turned us down.


Read the full article here.

Why Are Cows Tails Dropping Off?

"In Pennsylvania, the oil and gas industry is already on a tear—drilling thousands of feet into ancient seabeds, then repeatedly fracturing (or “fracking”) these wells with millions of gallons of highly pressurized, chemically laced water, which shatters the surrounding shale and releases fossil fuels. New York, meanwhile, is on its own natural-resource tear, with hundreds of newly opened breweries, wineries, organic dairies and pastured livestock operations—all of them capitalizing on the metropolitan area’s hunger to localize its diet."

But there’s growing evidence that these two impulses, toward energy and food independence, may be at odds with each other.

[Read the entire article from The Nation here.]

"Jacki Schilke and her sixty cattle live in the top left corner of North Dakota, a windswept, golden-hued landscape in the heart of the Bakken Shale. Schilke’s neighbors love her black Angus beef, but she’s no longer sharing or eating it—not since fracking began on thirty-two oil and gas wells within three miles of her 160-acre ranch and five of her cows dropped dead. Schilke herself is in poor health. A handsome 53-year-old with a faded blond ponytail and direct blue eyes, she often feels lightheaded when she ventures outside. She limps and has chronic pain in her lungs, as well as rashes that have lingered for a year. Once, a visit to the barn ended with respiratory distress and a trip to the emergency room. Schilke also has back pain linked with overworked kidneys, and on some mornings she urinates a stream of blood."

New York State is now doing a study on the possible negative health effects of of fracking.  How many cases do we have to read about before we have to concede that, yes, fracking makes us sick along with our animals and environment?  In the words of an old song, "How many years will it take till we know that too many people have died?  In many cases, the answer is "blowin' in the wind," quite literally.

We all are subjected daily to the drug commercials, and at the end, of course, we hear all the side effects, including death in some cases.  Well, how about lingering rashes, nosebleeds, respiratory trauma, oh, and cows' tails falling off?  Still want to take the medicine?

The Real Cost of Fracking: Angela and Wayne

Angela and Wayne Smith live in Clearville, PA. They have beef cattle and grow bluberries. In 2007 gas companies put in storage wells near the Smiths. Water pollution ensued. A horse died an agonizing death (*footage disturbing), followed by the deaths of a cow, a dog, and a chicken. The Smiths suffered headaches. They had to install and pay for an $11,000 water treatment system. A compressor station was built near them which blew up, spraying everything with oil. Their blueberry sales went down. They had wanted to give the farm to their grandchildren eventually. Angela says, "Why give death to our grandchildren, because that's what this is. Who would want to live here?"

Video filmed and edited by Kellan Davidson. For more information, go to Coalition To Protect New York.

Frack Pit Love Song

Download song at http://www.kriskitko.com. Kris Kitko's song about toxic frack waste pits. For more info about fracking, especially in North Dakota: http://www.bakkenwatch.org. (This link sometimes doesn't work on the first click; try again and you should be taken to the Bakken Watch site.) Thanks to Texas Sharon for submitting photos: http://txsharon.blogspot.com/. JOIN the effort to stop fracking for oil and gas before it's too late. Proceeds from download sales go to Bakken Watch, North Dakota's only fracking awareness non-profit.

A Fracking Cartoon from Earth Justice

And now a word from EarthJustice.............

Natural Gas Industry: Garfield County, CO

Residents of Garfield County are sick and their animals are dying.  Watch this video from the New York Times.

PBS Station Airs "Marcellus Shale: The Price of Progress"

Chris and Stephanie Hallowich of Hickory, PA
Photo: National Geographic
Used by permission.

Some say it's the answer to an energy-hungry nation's needs, and that properly monitored it's a boon to the economy. But people who live on or near Marcellus Shale drilling sites say the process has ruined their drinking water and property values. WQED's Chris Moore examines the promise and heartbreak of Marcellus Shale drilling in the Pittsburgh region.

Watch this video.  Chris and Stephanie Hallowich and other homeowners tell the real story.  The Hallowich home, which they built, is now worthless and unsellable.  They are forced to leave their home due to health risks and lack of safe drinking water, not to mention air pollution, noise pollution, and truck traffic.
 
From WQED TV, Pittsburgh

To read an excellent article from National Geographic about the Hallowich family and their personal tragedy caused by gas drilling, click here.

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!

BP Slick Covers Dolphins and Whales

On July 4th, I will think of these fish and plants of the sea that are being destroyed.  I will mourn while the parade goes by.

Compressor Stations Wreak Havoc in PA

Compressor stations are causing a lot of problems in Pennsylvania. This video was taken after a release of an oily substance from Steckman Ridge Compressor in Clearville, PA, on August 23, 2009. The owners of this farm are fearful that their land is hopelessly contaminated, and they don't know what is in the oily substance they found sprinkled all over everything: their farm equipment, the hay wagon, their crops and plants, their pasture land, their blueberry bushes, their springfed pond. They found soot on their roof. The pond has an oily scum on it. Their plants wilted after this incident. They are asking: Is our farm safe or not?

Clearville farmers have watched their animals die- two cows, a horse, many cats, and all of their hens. There are three compressor stations, all within 10 miles. According to the DEP, air tests are not done around compressor stations, despite many requests from residents who live near them. Is the air safe in Clearville? The residents are worried.

Chemist Wilbra Subra calls compressor stations, used in the gas drilling process, "mini-refineries." Dr. Subra's work has included studying the air quality around compressor stations in Dish, TX, where extremely high levels of benzene, toluene, and other carcinogenic and neurotoxic compounds were found "hanging in the air." Residents of Dish have been forced to breathe in these toxins for the past few years since gas drilling has come to their community. Will Clearville develop the same problems? People want to know the answers. Does any industry have the right to "do business" if it means polluting the air, soil, and water?

An article by Nastassja Noell reports on the incident in Mt. Pleasant, PA, when the Nancy Stewart compressor released a stream of high pressured natural gas for over an hour- a supposedly "normal operational procedure." Raw natural gas was escaping from a pipeline with such force that it caused nearby homes to shake. Martin O'Lear, who lives about a quarter mile from the compressor said,

It sounded like a rocket taking off. My eyes started to burn, and then I started to cough which lasted through the afternoon and night. I've lived here for 34 years and never before had my eyes start to burn when I stepped outside.

In another instance, Spectra CNG sprayed Omala Oil RL 329 over surrounding fields. A week later, the company told residents not to eat any of their crops and to wash their skin thoroughly. The DEP came a week later to test surface water near the compressor station and found at least two cases where toluene was present. This meant that toluene may be in the air. How are residents going to know for sure? Are their children safe? Are their animals safe?

Read more here about the problems in Clearville and how the DEP is not willing to take serious measures to protect the public. (Warning: Strong language.)

This video shows footage of a huge compressor staton in Clearville, PA, just up the hill from a cemetery. Rest in peace, anyone?

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!

Ten Reasons Why Shale Gas Drilling Rocks

TOP TEN REASONS WHY SHALE GAS DRILLING ROCKS


10. Creates jobs for road repair crews, EMTs, lawyers, nurses,
physicians, marriage counselors, firefighters, law enforcement
officers, & meth dealers & has added bonus of providing extra income for corrupt politicians

9. Drilling noise easily drowns out next-door neighbor's kid's
garage band

8. Devastated landscape, loss of green space, & clouds of killer
smog mean less hiking & biking & LOTS more time for TV

7. Eliminates hours of tedious trout fishing by "pre-killing" your
catch

6. Flammable tap water livens up any party

5. Putting off the inevitable switch to renewable energy sources is
the American way

4. Fulfills your California-dreamin' fantasies by bringing
earthquakes to YOUR home town

3. Makes slow & boring process of disintegration of the American
community a lot more exciting by actively setting neighbor against
neighbor

2. Provides important object lesson on why you should read a gas
lease BEFORE you sign it

1. Helps the kids learn that money is more important than anything
else