Recently, tourism overtook agriculture as the #1 industry in Butler County. A big part of the county's tourist draw is Moraine State Park, with its 3,225-acre Lake Arthur and 28.6 miles of hiking trails, including a section of the North Country Trail.

The Nature Conservancy's Marcellus Shale drilling site map shows many projected well pad sites in and around Moraine State Park, and one active well just south of the park.

In the Penn State University publication, Marcellus Shale: What Local Government Officials Need to Know, the following two statements are listed under the heading “Environmental Impacts”:

“Heightened noise and the effects of drilling may affect the aesthetics and recreational value of a resource for both nonconsumptive (e.g., hiking, birding) and consumptive (e.g., fishing, hunting) recreational use. This may affect communities that are promoting natural-resource-based tourism.”

“Water consumption [i.e., water used in fracking] and wastewater disposal may affect aquatic resources both locally and within the larger watershed.”

In light of these statements, and the frackwater spill in Bradford County, PA, do we really want to permit Marcellus Shale drilling and fracking in and around Moraine State Park?

j.p.m.

It's unfortunate that it's so much fun to say! It makes you feel like you're getting away with saying something naughty in a public place (as in: “Get that fracking thing out of here!”).

It's also unfortunate that it's so much more convenient to say “fracking” than it is to say “high-volume slickwater hydraulic fracturing and its associated infrastructure.” But that's exactly what opponents of the current method for drilling in the Marcellus Shale are talking about when they say, perhaps too simplistically, “Fracking poisons your air and water.” They are talking about the faulty well casings (still a problem, according to the DEP violations database) that allow methane and other substances to contaminate groundwater aquifers. They are talking about compressor stations with their toxic emissions which the EPA has identified as a serious health risk. These things are part of the “associated infrastructure” of hydraulic fracturing.

The gas industry responds to opponents' linguistic shorthand by saying, very condescendingly: “Fracking doesn't do that. Fracking occurs well below groundwater aquifers, certainly below the air we breathe,” referring, of course, to the deep-level subterranean fracturing of shale and nothing more.

By these statements the industry tries to make opponents of “fracking” (all-inclusive definition) look like fools.

It's time to stop this war of words. It's time to look at this process as a whole, to examine violations databases and health-impact studies and illness reports from drilling areas and properly assess the hazards of the entire process.  It's time to shut it down until it can be conclusively proven that it does no harm, not wait for a 10-year study to conclusively prove that it is doing harm. By that time, so much more harm will have been done due to inadequate safeguards, based on: “You can't prove that your symptoms are due to drilling, even if they are the same symptoms that people are experiencing in drilling areas of Texas and Colorado and weren't present until drilling started taking place...”

Yes, “fracking” is a most unfortunate word. It is also a most unfortunate industrial practice. And I think that you know which fracking definition of “fracking” I mean...

j.p.m.

“The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania's public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.”

What you have just read is not some proclamation from the Sierra Club or the Audubon Society. It is Article 1, Section 27 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.

This article is a clear directive to all local municipalities in the state to enact or enforce ordinances that protect, not only the purity of our natural resources, but the quality of our lives, in the face of the Marcellus Shale natural gas rush: ordinances that defend, not only against local air and water pollution, but also nuisances such as noise and light pollution, especially when well pads are located in close proximity to residential areas.

Any state law, such as the outdated (1984) Oil and Gas Act, which prohibits a local municipality from doing so while not offering adequate protections to the rights guaranteed in Article 1, Section 27 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, must be deemed unconstitutional in our state. It must be updated and amended to bring it into compliance with the state's constitution.

The citizens of the Commonwealth need to hold their elected officials accountable for upholding their rights to clean air, pure water and the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic, and esthetic values of their environment, as is guaranteed them by the Pennsylvania Constitution.

-j.p.m.