Date: 1.12.13.
Location: Elk Grove Road, Davidson Township, Sullivan County, PA. Pennsylvania State Game Lands.
Location: EXCO frack drill pad staging area.
Please follow these pictures from beginning to end for the story of this particular day in the effort to document the industrialization and destruction of Pennsylvania at the hands of the extraction corporations-in this case EXCO: (3) It is war in the once beautiful forests of frackland
The pictures begin with the drive up Elk Grove Road-into Pennsylvania State game lands-pristine forest, spectacular mountain vistas, beautiful wildlife.
The road is muddy and slippery and being prepared for the legions of rigs that will scale up this mountain. One of the most important themes in these is the destruction of the soil-mud and soil that, eroded, churned over, heaped up on the side of a creek embankment will spill right down into the creek-and along with it diesel, and tire pieces, and other refuse from the rush to get this site into production. There was nothing at all to prevent this seeping into the creek. No hay bales no “socks.” Nothing all the way up or down the road.
But you get to the top of the mountain-beyond the destruction of road and forest, and this immense vista opens up.
The thing that’s so jarring is that you’re supposed to reach this beautiful scene after an equally beautiful drive up to the crest-but instead it’s as if you are expelled from a nightmare.
It’s like waking up back to a world that is sane-and as lovely as it is supposed to be.
Look at these pictures-could serenity be captured any more poignantly? Not because the pictures are all that great-but could anyone even take a poor photograph of something so marvelous?
And then we descended back into the nightmare called EXCO-back through the failure to prevent erosion, back through the machinery.
I was taking a zillion pictures of the muddied pile high embankment. A man drove up going the opposite direction in a white truck. He pulled up next to us and stopped, rolled down his window. He began to screech at us:
YOU MOTHER FUCKERS!
Over and over.
I climbed out on the window of the truck to get better shots. He just kept screaming at us.
Then he followed us.
Here’s why this matters: I have no idea who this man was. He was angry. He did not want us to be there. He did not want us to see what was going on on these once pristine state game lands.
He did not want us to take pictures.
And this is the kind of behavior EXCO encourages in its money-makers-entitled, ugly.
Indeed, given the pressure EXCO CEO Douglas MIller is under to turn a profit against falling stock values, one might wonder if this kind of anger is standard worldview in EXCO’s Fracklands.
Mr. MIller wants very much to buy EXCO-and he hasn’t been able to get up the money to do it. This clock is ticking-and he is heavily leveraged. Mr. Miller’s is one hell of a hurry I would imagine to get these wells producing.
So, I don’t imagine his people want our people in their way.
Some light reading:
Failure Has Its Rewards: Exco CEO Gets $3.3 Million - Deal Journal - WSJ
Fake “Community” Meeting: EXCO Lookin’ for Some Love-Money
Exco CEO Pressured to Raise Bid for Company
EXCO Resources: A Highly Leveraged Bet On A Natural Gas Price Rebound - Seeking Alpha
Betting on Exco Resources and Natural Gas - NYTimes.com
Ross Builds Exco Stake After CEO’s Bid To Take Co Private Ex Resources XCO
Exco Board Weighs Douglas Miller’s Buyout Offer - NYTimes.com
Related posts:
Buried Beneath some Shrubs and Grass and Wildflowers is Nothing but Frack-Tastrophe: Compressor Station Construction, Janet Hock Road, Sullivan County, Pennsylvania, 10.13.12
Fake “Community” Meeting: EXCO Lookin’ for Some Love-Money
DEP Permit Hearing: Moxie Patriot Power Plant, Clinton Township, Lycoming County, PA,1.3.13
Fracking New York State Forests
Dishsoap Explodes?
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
This needs to be presented to every town board in NY and other states too. There are still people who cannot see or hear with too much money blocking their eyes and ears. Although my land and some of my family are still in the Southern Tier of NY, I am living with my daughter and her family in MA - where gas deposits were confirmed by USGS last summer. People in western MA are slowly becoming aware, before any landmen show up. Could I share these photos with Green people up here? We just finished sending 220,000 plus comments to our DEC concerning “regulation.” Wish we could help you folks as much as you have helped us.
Thank you Rema-I just hope that folks in lots of places-NY, MA, WV, OH-wherever fracking is happening or not-yet-see that this destruction is not only to the environment but to communities as well. The “name-calling” man is probably a leased landowner from the bnearby village-a village dependent on revenues from fisherpersons, campers, hunters, hikers….this village is going to be DESTROYED-and if not by the pollution and the noise and the trucks-by the people themselves.
Wendy
Ugh, I had no idea they would be drilling here. Again, fairly close to my house. We like to hike those gamelands and they are normally very quiet. Doesn’t even seem like a winning proposition seeing how the Exco well at Bear Fuel has been abandoned for not being promising and the previous well by the Rickett’s Glen Hotel was also non-productive. Sad that they are tearing things up there. Guess it’s close enough to Lairdsville that they’re taking another poke at it.
And there’s a double frack site just (and I mean walk for three minutes) outside Lairdesville (Article about Energy in Depth-but all of the pictures are from EXCO-Lairdesville):
http://blog.shaleshockmedia.org/2012/12/19/energy-in-death-depth-refuses-dory-hippauf-hit-piece-award-joe-massaro-opts-for-silence-over-truth-0/.
There are also a number of compressor stations-Janet Hock Road, for example.