Jeff & Kerri Bond speak on fracking issues
From an Article by Julie Grant, StateImpact PA, May 4, 2018
As the shale gas industry has moved west to Ohio, people there are concerned about the impact that new well pads, pipelines, compressor stations and diesel truck traffic are having on the environment and the quality of life in their rural communities. What can they learn from what has happened in southwestern Pennsylvania?
After forty years, Kerri and Jeff Bond are moving from their small farm in Seneca Lake, Ohio. The rural hillsides have changed in recent years. The trees in their yard started to lose foliage and die last year. Their sheep, chickens and cats died, and their dogs developed tumors. The Bonds, themselves, say their family has developed ongoing rashes.
“We’ve never had any of this before, ever,” Kerri Bond says. “And we’ve lived area our whole lives. We wanted to retire here. We can’t. We’ve got to move.”
LISTEN: “Gearing Up for Frack Fight, Ohio Residents Turn to PA Experts”
The Bonds blame the gas development that’s been building up all around them – numerous well pads, and the Crum Compressor Station sits about a quarter mile over the ridge from their farm. The night time sky lights up orange the compressor station is vented. Then, there’s all the diesel trucks creating traffic problems and emitting pollution. “My community has been inundated with drilling and fracking, and waste,” she says.
Many people in the Bond’s community support the fracking industry because of the jobs and money it’s brought. So, she says she’s not popular when she complains about the drilling activity that lights up the hillside next to her house after the sun goes down.
“No one ever knows what’s going on out there,” she says. “It’s constant. My house shakes. It’s like trying to sleep next to a jet engine out there, every night.”
Jeff Bond took a photo after being woken up in the middle of the night by the fracking operation just beyond his farm. The glow in the background is from the Crum Compressor Station which sits about 2500 feet from the Bond family farm.
“TOGETHER WE CAN STAND STRONG”
Bond was one of about forty people who gathered recently at Salt Fork State Park in eastern Ohio for a meeting organized and funded by the Freshwater Accountability Project. It was an opportunity for residents to voice their concerns, and to hear from experts about the environmental, legal, and health issues of fracking.
Environmental activist Teresa Mills says people like Bond aren’t getting assistance from Ohio officials. “The industry has everything locked down,” she says. “So people feel helpless.”
This feeling of helplessness is why Mills helped organize this community meeting.
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