Over the last decade, Pennsylvania has emerged as a powerhouse when it comes to drilling and pumping and making money off of natural gas—
in short, fracking.
Both oil and natural gas production had been in decline in the U.S. for decades before hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling techniques allowed companies to plumb deep shale formations that had previously been unreachable. Since then, natural gas production has increased by 20 percent, and it is expected to more than double in areas like Pennsylvania and Ohio over the next ten years. Similarly, oil production, which had been on the decline in the U.S. since the 1980s, shot up by nearly 50 percent between 2008 and 2013.
Those shale booms — in Appalachia, North Dakota, and elsewhere — now have pipeline builders playing catch-up. Today, more than 1.5 million miles of natural gas pipeline pass beneath city streets, highways, parkland, and waterways — and more than 100,000 miles of that was added just between 2002 and 2012, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Oil pipelines are booming, too, with 25,000 miles added to a 190,000-mile network in the last decade.
Pennsylvania has billion dollar pipeline projects in the
works as we speak. With so much money it is not surprising that amnesia has settled in about the
ecological fate of some of Pennsylvania's own inhabitants—trout.
The colorful fish, which need cold, clean, water to survive, were devastated in Pennsylvania during the coal boom of the early 20th century. For decades, old mines leached acidic poisons into thousands of streams. After many years of work and millions of dollars spent on stream rehabilitation, trout have returned to some of these waters.
Another pipeline is proposed for completion in 2017—
the penneast pipeline. The company says it will deliver one billion cubic feet of gas per day! A total of 4.7 million homes will be heated! A total of 12,000 jobs
supported! But, unlike the
obvious safety hazards being a focal point of protests, there are other environmental issues posed by
pipeline construction.
Like erosion, sedimentation is as old as rock and rain, as serious as a flash flood, and it can get far worse after workers dig holes, scrape roads, topple forests and change natural waterways to make way for pipelines. Sedimentation can kill a trout stream by making the water dirty, shallow and warm, biologists say. And the effects can trickle down to people’s taps. The PennEast pipeline will cut across steep mountains veined with brooks and creeks, the likes of which feed municipal water supplies used by 8 million Pennsylvanians — almost 60 percent of the state.
When you consider the
magnitude of oil and gas violations in Pennsylvania over the past decade, the standard statements from pipeline proponents can make one look askance. And while things like
legions and tumors growing on fish in Pennsylvania have not yet been directly attributed to potential water contamination—
water contamination is indeed happening in Pennsylvania.
There are numerous issues at play, both with water contamination and ecological contamination, in the actions and infrastructure of the natural gas industry. The money is too good right now, but how good is it really and who is it good for, exactly?
Tens of millions of dollars have been invested in Pennsylvania over several decades to clean waterways that were polluted by coal mining in the 19th and 20th centuries. Success stories include Kettle Creek, which pours into the Susquehanna River in the north-central part of the state; the Lackawanna River in the northeast; and dozens of other streams that again support healthy populations of rainbow, brown and native brook trout. The benefits have rippled up through the ecosystem in the form of income for the state from hunting and fishing licenses and cleaner water for farms and homes.
That's a lot of investment in the state that will potentially go to waste in order to make the private sector more wealthy.