As reported today in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, the gas industry companies are reaching out to communities via fairs and other projects. These global giants are looking to improve local ties. Projects in West Virginia may well have influenced the Wellsburg city council to remove the ban on drilling and fracking within the city limits. New Martinsville has now removed a ban. And, the Morgantown ban has been overturned in the local Circuit Court.
At a conference in Morgantown in June, the Independent Oil and Gas Association of West Virginia touted their new “Just Beneath the Surface” campaign and website. President Mike McCown said it’s designed to provide factual information to anti-drilling groups he referred to as “wing nut organizations … friends of the whatever” – groups that he argues should be supporting one of the state’s most promising economic engines.
In the Northern Panhandle, local residents have seen natural gas explosions, fires, spills, traffic accidents, allegedly unauthorized earthmoving and alleged drinking water contamination as a result of the drilling. Yet McCown insisted that “Our industry is safe.” He said, “I take accidents very seriously. We must keep our people and our environment safe.” Then, “We understand there is a disturbance to the area, but the benefit is of a much greater value,” he added of the drilling.
The Marcellus “drilling news” out of Binghamton, NY has been reporting on landowner groups and issues. Barbara Jarmoska lives in a “Marcellus sacrafice zone” in north-central Pennsylvania. She lives on 20 acres of rural PA land and will not lease because of the risks and potential damages to this land. She asks, what are the true costs of Marcellus fracking? A family in western PA has recently reported that drilling has contaminated their water supply, saying that their water has started turning black.
Tina Spencer Wooddell in Taylor County, WV, recently received copies of five (5) permits in the mail for her property, from the same company who has had two spills onto this property from the neighbors land, in the last eight months. These permits show her water well placed between two pits. She and her husband own the surface land only. She said, “They want to take up the entire back part of our farm, some of the pretties views we have and right above a watershed.”
The WV Surface Owners Rights Organization has already described “the industrialization of rural West Virginia” due to the development of shale gas in the State. A royalty owners meeting is set for the Greenbrier Hotel on September 7 thru 9 at which advice on solving royalty underpayments will be presented. NOTE: See also The Human Story in the Impacts section of this web-site: /impacts/the-human-story/
Point Your RSS Reader to FrackCheckWV.net/feed/
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
TO NEW MARTINSVILLE, REMOVE THE BAN OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES. Mike McCowan, past president of the WV Independent Oil and Gas Association, in his August 3rd letter to the Wetzel Chronicle of New Martinsville, stated as follows: “The New Martinsville City Council ordinance that prohibits natural gas drilling and exploration within city limits is detrimental to the local economy. If this ordinance stays in place, companies will take their business to other parts of the state.” After a public hearing, the City Council voted on first reading to approve a motion to cancel this ban. The final vote (second reading) will take place on September 5th.