Keystone Tour

Washington County, southwest of Pittsburgh, sits in the heart of the Marcellus Shale, ground zero for America's gas fracking for the last fifteen years. The Pulitzer Prize winning book "Amity and Prosperity" describes the impact of fracking in the rural community of Amity, PA. Protagonist Stacey Haney deals with the fallout from a leaking frack pond on her neighbor's land that contaminates her ground water and by extension her family's ability to continue to live their lives in their ancestral home, as there is no town water available. Fracker Range Resources is cast as the villain. It sprinkles money through the community via ground lease payments and cultural support, but plays hardball in court against environmental claims. Stacy's neighbors accuse her of angering the area's new patron and putting at risk the flow of money they are all benefitting from. Ultimately, Range settles with Stacey and her neighbor Ashley Voyles, but you get the feeling no one is happy with the outcome. Stacey decides to sell her property to Ashley and put her physical and psychological trauma behind her.

I overnighted in Washington, the county seat, and caught a lucky break. I went into the hotel breakfast area and met a work crew getting ready for their day. I listened for a few minutes, then asked them "are you guys a fracking crew?" "No, we are a DRILLING crew". 'Unconventional drilling' for fracking is highly technical, with precise underground surveys, complicated instruments like gravitometers and magnetometers to track exactly what they are doing thousands of feet underground, and engineers to take readings and calibrate instruments. Their drilling twists and turns underground, drills horizontally and not just vertically. The crew leader noted "I went to advise on a project in Saudi last year - they were talking about 'unconventional drilling' - and I realized that to me, that was just 'drilling'. It's what we do."

Downtown Washington looked massively different, massively healthier than any similar town I had seen on the tour. Shiny ten story office towers. Bustling downtown streets. Big trucks hauling equipment. Vibrant commercial buildings downtown and well-kept houses everywhere. The city and county population has been stable over the last fifteen years since fracking began, but that has stemmed what had been a steady decline in the forty years prior.

The village of Amity, where the Haneys lived, is ten miles south of Washington, and my immediate destination. Like my visit to the coal country in Somerset County, I was impressed by the bucolic and pristine countryside. While you see occasional signs of fracking, overwhelmingly what you see is woodlands and pastureland. The surface action requires a very small footprint, like in coal country, but the activity stretches for miles in three dimensions below the surface.

I was curious to see what the Haney house looked like today, seven years after Stacey's departure. I turned up the very isolated street that I knew would take me to her former farm. Birdsong was everywhere. Half a mile of steep climbing and I was suddenly surrounded by a pack of boxers barking madly. I stopped in the street as a woman in the yard called the dogs off. I greeted her, praised her beautiful dogs, and asked her if she had lived in the area for long. "My whole life, I love the quiet here". I asked, "I know there is a lot of fracking in the area, is that a problem for you?" "It used to be, but not for a long time". I decided I had worn out my welcome, asked for permission to take a photo of her and her dogs, and took my leave. It wasn't until I got home and looked the GPS that I realized I had been stopped in front of Stacey's house and I had been talking to her former neighbor Ashley Voyles. I'm glad she has found peace and happiness after the physical and legal struggles portrayed in the book.

I enjoyed my tour through the pastoral beauty of "Frackland". The covered bridge was a treat, as was getting waved down by a frack liquid hauler trying to find his pumping site. After 40 miles, I reached the Mon River, enjoyed lunch in Mon City and worked the remaining 40 miles down the river back to Pittsburgh, a Steel Valley reprise. I made a stop in McKeesport, "Tube City". Sponsor Chuck had shared that his grandfather had been one of those "Hunkies" who worked in the McKeesport tube plant. I've put a photo in for him.

I'm confident that if you put fracking on the ballot in Washington County, the citizenry would overwhelmingly be in favor. The allure of jobs and money is strong, and whatever environmental costs exist are deeply hidden underground. While the Haneys' problems are isolated ones, there are some local concerns about water quality. I was there on a local election day, and I've put a photo of a sign below of candidates asking for "Safe Water" who I saw won their local township primary. Personally, I approve of a political process that allows for the communities most impacted by the costs and the benefits to opt in or out of fracking, rather than a top-down state or national policy where outsiders dictate to locals what is "good for them". The irony that these decisions are being made in the same area that spawned the Whiskey Rebellion was not lost on me.