0
Did you know...
While hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has been in the news in recent years, the technology actually was first proposed in the 1940s.
The first viable well in the Appalachian Basin was drilled in 1975. It was a joint venture with the U.S. Department of Energy and private industry. The project included the first horizontal shale well and used seven individual hydraulically factured intervals to access the gas in the rock.
Pennsylvania's Marcelus Shale reserve is rich in oil and natural gas. Companies develop deals with individuals to lease mineral rights in the region.
Individual lease rights can be very lucrative, and include rental payments (when the well is being drilled), which may continue for the life of the well) as well as royalty payments (when the well is producing oil and gas). People may also be offered a one-time bonus payment from the energy company when you sign the lease. Plus some companies pay well siting fees.
However, only landowners can lease, and some cities or subdivisions ban leasing for oil and gas development.
Pennsylvania has been the site of several high-profile lawsuits regarding water pollution allegedly due to fracking operations.
In one settlement, the gas drilling company Range Resources and other defendants agreed to pay $3 million to three Washington County families who alleged that nearby fracking contaminated their properties and made them sick.
In late 2022, the company Cabot pleaded no contest to 15 criminal charges, including 9 felonies, and agreed to pay $16.29 million to Pennsylvania American Water to build a public water system that will provide clean water for peopel in the town of Dimock. That lawsuit stemmed back to a fracking site explosion in 2009 that leeched methane case into private water wells.
Nina Berman is a New York-based photographer
and member of the photo collective
Noor Images
Her series Fractured: The Shale Play documents the altered landscape and human consequences of unconventional gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale formation in Pennsylvania.
Click here to hear more.
The industry nationwide generates billions of gallons of toxic wastewater annually, made up of used fracking fluid as well as naturally occurring contaminants including heavy metals, salts, benzene, and even radioactive materials such as uranium.
And the danger is the wastewater treatment process can fail. Spills can happen because of a broken pipeline (a 2015 pipeline rupture in North Dakota spilled 3 million gallons of wastewater into a creek), due to air pollution or leakage when stored in open pits, or because treatment facilities aren't proplerly equipped to handle all of the fracking pollutants.
And recycling creates byproducts such as TENORM (technologicalaly enhanced nataurally occurring radioactive waste) and other toxic concentrated waste.
Source: NDRC
Martha Rial is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist
based in Pittsburgh.
Her series Marcellus Shale looks at the places and people in
Western Pennsylvania who are impacted
by hydraulic fracturing.
Click here to hear more.
Pennsylvania is one of four states within the Delaware River Basin that in 2021 made fracking illegal in the watershed (the others are New York, New Jersey, and Deleware. Some Republican lawmakers and municipalities outside of the watershed filed a lawsuit challenging the ban.
In 2022, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the cities and lawmakers don't have standing to file the lawsuit. That means the law remains in effect for now, but could be challenged again in the future.