© OnEarth/Lynn JohnsonActivist Carrie Hahn explains the potential risks of the natural gas drilling technique known as fracking to one of her Amish neighbors.
A bleak December sky hangs low over rural Lawrence County, Pennsylvania. Here, in areas populated by large Amish families, open fields roll toward the horizon uninterrupted by electrical wires and telephone poles. Stepping from a car that seems grossly out of place in this 19th century landscape, Carrie Hahn, a newcomer to the area, takes a deep breath of mud and cow outside an Amish farmhouse. Suddenly, like an apparition, Andy Miller appears on a flagstone path, his face hidden beneath beard and broad-brimmed hat. He quickly ushers us inside a large, unfurnished mudroom to escape the wind.
Miller, who is in his late 40s and has nine children, is a leading member of the Old Order Amish, who eschew all modern conveniences. (Like all the Amish names in this story, Miller's has been changed at his request, to respect Amish traditions and preserve his anonymity.) Standing against a western window, a silhouette of felt hat, bushy sideburns, and stiff cotton work clothes, he explains how he came to be in the uncomfortable position in which he finds himself today: dealing with multibillion-dollar energy companies that use high-tech methods to shatter the earth and release mile-deep pockets of natural gas.
Decades ago, Miller says, oil and gas companies began prowling around western Pennsylvania, locking residents into leases for conventional gas wells, which are relatively shallow and unobtrusive. Many landowners, Miller included, had no idea that once they had assigned their mineral rights, often for a thousand times less than the going rate, the leaseholders could return and burrow deeper into the same piece of property.
This time around the gas companies intend to drill into the Marcellus Shale -- a 400-million-year-old, mile-deep formation that sweeps from West Virginia, across Pennsylvania, and into New York -- then turn their bits horizontally and continue boring for another couple thousand feet. Wells are then injected with millions of gallons of highly pressurized water laced with sand and chemicals; the solution fractures the shale and releases pockets of natural gas. This is fracking.
Miller sold his mineral rights to a company called Atlas, which was bought by Chevron in 2011. "The money helped," he says, "but I wished I knew more of what to expect." Now, thanks to people like Carrie Hahn, Miller understands that producing gas in this manner is no simple matter. Over a period of months, workers carve a multi-acre drilling platform out of forest or field, then cram it with mixing tanks, storage tanks, compressors, gas pipes, flaring towers, diesel generators, office trailers, and porta-potties. Nearby, they dig plastic-lined ponds of several acres to hold either freshwater or "produced" water that flows up and out of the wells. During development of the site, trucks carrying water, chemicals, sand, and other equipment come and go -- up to 1,000 of them a day.
"We don't want huge gas companies coming here because of the heavy pollution, the traffic, and so much money," Miller says. "When money rules, a lot of bad things happen to a community." But good things have happened, too. With his payout from Atlas, Miller installed new drainage tiles to reduce excess water in his fields (yes, using only horse power). Other Amish families in the area have used gas royalties to build greenhouses or sawmills. "Buildings have to be kept up," Miller says, shrugging. "But we would have survived without the money, somehow."
Since the shallow well went in, Miller has managed to keep energy companies off his property, despite his lease. He gave an earful to a representative who tried to get near his well on a Sunday, and he continues to refuse access to a Texan seeking to seismically map his land (Miller has no obligation to permit this testing). I press Miller, who is now invisible to us in the darkness, to explain how he can legally stop a company from fracking if it owns the mineral rights on his property, but he deflects my inquiries. "It's time for the community to take a stand," he mutters enigmatically. When his wife, in a long skirt and a bonnet, lights a kerosene lantern and places dinner on the kitchen table, Hahn and I know it's time to leave.
Four hundred Old Order Amish families live in and around Lawrence County's borough of New Wilmington. Extended families live in plain white houses -- no shrubs, no shutters -- surrounded by gardens, barns, farm fields, and long stringers of ever-flapping laundry. Horses, cows, and sheep graze on rolling pastures; horses and buggies deliver children to one- or two-room schoolhouses served by an outhouse and an outdoor water pump. Old Order Amish don't use cars or phones, electricity from the grid, indoor toilets, or upholstered furniture. Many live off their land; some run small businesses. Wooden signs at the ends of driveways advertise their wares: rocking chairs, maple syrup, eggs, fudge, donuts, firewood, sawdust, and fresh produce.
Soon, however, customers -- including the thousands of international tourists who visit the Amish countryside each year -- may be chased away from this homegrown bounty as New Wilmington, like other communities before it, is transformed by the industrial frenzy of shale-gas extraction.
This time around the gas companies intend to drill into the Marcellus Shale -- a 400-million-year-old, mile-deep formation that sweeps from West Virginia, across Pennsylvania, and into New York -- then turn their bits horizontally and continue boring for another couple thousand feet. Wells are then injected with millions of gallons of highly pressurized water laced with sand and chemicals; the solution fractures the shale and releases pockets of natural gas. This is fracking.
Miller sold his mineral rights to a company called Atlas, which was bought by Chevron in 2011. "The money helped," he says, "but I wished I knew more of what to expect." Now, thanks to people like Carrie Hahn, Miller understands that producing gas in this manner is no simple matter. Over a period of months, workers carve a multi-acre drilling platform out of forest or field, then cram it with mixing tanks, storage tanks, compressors, gas pipes, flaring towers, diesel generators, office trailers, and porta-potties. Nearby, they dig plastic-lined ponds of several acres to hold either freshwater or "produced" water that flows up and out of the wells. During development of the site, trucks carrying water, chemicals, sand, and other equipment come and go -- up to 1,000 of them a day.
"We don't want huge gas companies coming here because of the heavy pollution, the traffic, and so much money," Miller says. "When money rules, a lot of bad things happen to a community." But good things have happened, too. With his payout from Atlas, Miller installed new drainage tiles to reduce excess water in his fields (yes, using only horse power). Other Amish families in the area have used gas royalties to build greenhouses or sawmills. "Buildings have to be kept up," Miller says, shrugging. "But we would have survived without the money, somehow."
Since the shallow well went in, Miller has managed to keep energy companies off his property, despite his lease. He gave an earful to a representative who tried to get near his well on a Sunday, and he continues to refuse access to a Texan seeking to seismically map his land (Miller has no obligation to permit this testing). I press Miller, who is now invisible to us in the darkness, to explain how he can legally stop a company from fracking if it owns the mineral rights on his property, but he deflects my inquiries. "It's time for the community to take a stand," he mutters enigmatically. When his wife, in a long skirt and a bonnet, lights a kerosene lantern and places dinner on the kitchen table, Hahn and I know it's time to leave.
Four hundred Old Order Amish families live in and around Lawrence County's borough of New Wilmington. Extended families live in plain white houses -- no shrubs, no shutters -- surrounded by gardens, barns, farm fields, and long stringers of ever-flapping laundry. Horses, cows, and sheep graze on rolling pastures; horses and buggies deliver children to one- or two-room schoolhouses served by an outhouse and an outdoor water pump. Old Order Amish don't use cars or phones, electricity from the grid, indoor toilets, or upholstered furniture. Many live off their land; some run small businesses. Wooden signs at the ends of driveways advertise their wares: rocking chairs, maple syrup, eggs, fudge, donuts, firewood, sawdust, and fresh produce.
Soon, however, customers -- including the thousands of international tourists who visit the Amish countryside each year -- may be chased away from this homegrown bounty as New Wilmington, like other communities before it, is transformed by the industrial frenzy of shale-gas extraction.
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