I've blogged a couple times about this over the last few months, but recent photos have prompted me to write about this again. Oil and gas drilling has reached epic proportions in northwest Pennsylvania. This is a NATIONAL ISSUE but is just not getting the attention it deserves (like many of our environmental issues). If something is not done to stop the rate of oil and gas development, Pennsylvania's only national forest, the Allegheny National Forest, will have to be renamed the Allegheny National Oil and Gas Field.
The organization that I work for, Allegheny Defense Project, recently had the opportunity to fly over the Allegheny National Forest in northwestern Pennsylvania to document the impacts of oil and gas drilling. We have a slideshow of those photos on our website.
As you can see from the photos, the impact of oil and gas drilling is a sprawling fragmentation. This has serious consequences for wildlife that depends on large tracts of undisturbed forest habitat. It also has significant impacts on recreation. Who the hell wants to hike, camp, backpack, fish, or hunt in areas that have been completely industrialized by this type of development?
Look at the slide that shows the rate of drilling over the last 20 years in the Allegheny...Look at the years 2003-2004. Is there any coincidence between the invasion and occupation of Iraq and drilling in the Allegheny National Forest...and subsequently the heavy push by the Bush administration to drill elsewhere on our public lands? This is roughly the same time that oil prices started increasing...go figure.
This is pure exploitation of the land for the profits of oil companies to the long-term detriment of the communities in northwest Pennsylvania. The oil companies are making hundreds of millions of dollars and the public will be left with a denuded landscape.
Here's some of the worst photos via photobucket.
For my previous discussions on this topic, you can read here and here.