Recently, my staff and I toured fracking sites in Washington County near Pittsburgh. Our tour included well-heads, pipeline construction and related infrastructure. We also met with numerous residents and local officials effected by fracking. As a member of my state senate’s “Environmental Resource and Energy” Committee, I have read a great deal about fracking, and I have participated in dozens of hearings on the topic. Yet, until I actually flew out to see what was happening for myself, I didn’t fully grasp exactly what living in a hot-bed of fracking is like. In many ways, this trip was an epiphany for me.I used to think I could live with fracking. We were told, by both Democratic and Republican administrations, that fracking was a much cleaner alternative to the coal my state produces so much of. It was a ramp down on the road towards a fully-renewable society. Plus, it was going to be an economic life-line for a part of the state that desperately needs one. I thought that as long as we taxed it for good purposes, fracking was a relatively benign form of energy.However, over the past couple years, I’ve nursed growing doubts about my position. The more I read, the more I saw what was happening in other states and what those states were doing about it, and the more I spoke with the members of my staff who have toured western Pennsylvania repeatedly, the more suspicious I became that I had been sold a bill of goods. That’s why I decided to head out west to see for myself. As I took tour after tour in Washington County, I came to see that I was very wrong. After this tour, my growing concerns about fracking are an abstraction no more. What we saw was very real, and it was devastating.As we toured well pads, the paths of pipelines, the “swimming pools” which held fracking water and the new roads winding through people’s property, it became clear how the thousands of wells dotting western Pennsylvania are decimating the environment and destroying lives. People can’t pull out of their driveways in the morning. People can’t sleep because the process is loud. People are being pitted against each other as the shale industry tells one neighbor that he can’t make any money because another neighbor won’t agree to let them use her property. Creeks and streams are being polluted. But most consequentially, people are getting sick.While the environmental impact was troubling, the human impact was almost unbearable. We met a woman named Janis who lost her son to Ewing’s Sarcoma, one of the rare cancers appearing with shocking frequency throughout shale-country. And we met another woman who started losing her teeth shortly after fracking came to her neighborhood. Her skin is covered with pink splotches and her mouth always tastes of aluminum. Four of her cats have died young in the past year. We met numerous others who described similar symptoms. Obviously, people who are dealing with a situation like this are almost always trapped. Their houses are virtually worthless, so they can’t sell them and move to a safer community. One of the most heartbreaking things we encountered were the tearful people who desperately want to move and stop exposing themselves and their families to what they perceive to be poison, but there is simply no way for them to do that.It’s easy to understand why people are deceived. Most of the emissions are invisible to the naked eye. It all seems so clean. But if you look through the lens of an infrared camera, you see toxic discharge belching into the air. We also learned how the glut of methane means that the sale of ethane is how the wells really make money. Ethane is destined for the “cracker plant” in Potter Township along the Ohio River where it is converted into “nurdles”, tiny plastic pellets which last virtually forever and are the cause of much of the plastic pollution inundating our landfills and oceans.We were also told that the industry also invests heavily in local supervisor and judicial elections, so people who complain have no redress from officials who owe their position to the frackers. They fracking companies also give donations to local libraries or little league teams to build good will in the community. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. But the people fighting to protect community health and the environment can’t match, so their voices are often drowned out.This is only a small sample of what we saw in Washington County. I deeply regret my earlier belief that regulation and taxation could make fracking palatable for Pennsylvania. It’s clear to me now that we have no choice but to end it now, and I have just introduced legislation to do just that.
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