Extensive Reporting by National Geographic
"It’s ruined our lives."
"It’s ruined our plans that we had for the kids."
"It’s ruined what we thought was
our perfect ten acres."
The Hallowich Family - Washington County
A Dream Dashed by the Rush on Gas
Forcing Gas Out of Rock With Water
Breaking Fuel From the Rock
A Drive For New Jobs Through Energy
Meadow Run at Ohiopyle State Park
Parks, Forests Eyed for the Fuel Beneath
The Hallowich Property
A Changed Environment
University of Pittsburgh environmental researcher Conrad Dan Volz, whose center, along with the University of Washington, Seattle, is researching the Hallowiches’ case as part of a larger study on the industry impact, believes the Marcellus air pollution risk is largely being overlooked. Air pollution is one of Volz’s areas of focus in a $1.8 million, three-year project funded by the Heinz Endowments, which includes the launch of a web site called FracTracker, to be used by citizens, community groups, government agencies, and public health officials. Information, he says, has been as dispersed as the industry. “If any new industry moved into an area and essentially wanted to build a factory, they would have to submit all these environmental plans,” he says. “This industry, because it’s more diffuse over such a large geographic area, has avoided getting that kind of scrutiny. The [federal] Clean Air Act is very much devised to regulate the largest industrial processors, not necessarily an industrial process spread through an entire region.”
OUTSTANDING
RISE UP - NOW
THE HOUR IS GETTING LATE
This family is asking 500K for their property------yet it is not worth anywhere near that that because of the nearby polluting "factory"...!
ReplyDeleteWhen a person's property is damaged, devalued, as for instance when someone hits their parked car-----------doesn't the property owner have every right to sue to recover their losses, what was unfairly taken from them, to have the situation put back to where it was?
They should.
Yet the way this going, the gas companies have an endless legal team, the ability to outspend both the financial and temporal reserves of the afflicted property owners, and a legal system favorable to corporate "rights" over individual citizen rights.
It would be nice if a family such as the Hollowiches could file and obtain a restraining order forcing cessation of the drilling until health issues were resolved------------but it is nothing near a level playing field in the courts.
And even if all the concerned groups were to band together and file unitedly against the drilling------the drilling companies are each separate entities. And unless I am mistaken, citizens do not have the power to sue State agencies, such as DEP, to force them to seek an overriding injunction.
It is all one more perfidious example of corporate America having seized power to itself, GovCorp, as I refer to it now.
Great post, thanks!
ReplyDelete"Those who develop the technologies, who promote them and stand to profit most from them, are not those who suffer their risks." — H. Patricia Hynes “The Recurring Silent Spring” [1989]