Drilling Down (Fracking) on the Family Farm

By artappraiser on Mon, 10/24/2011 - 12:06pm |

By Seamus McGraw (author of "The End of Country,") New York Times Sunday Review, October 23, 2011

Ellsworth Hill, Pa.--A cloud of dust and sand and diesel exhaust, thick as a desert windstorm, snaked up into the sky and blotted out the midsummer Pennsylvania moon. The scene was backlighted by 100 high-powered lights glaring from the top of a 70-foot-tall, hundred-yard-square acropolis of broken stone carved into our hillside.

Standing there, in what used to be my family’s pasture, I was surprised by my own feelings as I watched a small army of workers rev up the machines that would crack open the Marcellus Shale deep below my land, the same rich cache of gas that New York now seems poised to exploit.

I thought I was prepared for it. I had seen this operation before, on other people’s land....

URL:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/opinion/sunday/fracking-on-my-land.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper