In Pennsylvania, Fracking Is Most Likely To Occur In Poor Communities

[cliff miller]

Deb Nardone does a lot of traveling. As campaign director for
the Sierra Club’s natural gas reform campaign, she goes to the
places where fracking is prolific, speaking to affected families.

When she’s in Pennsylvania, she’s most often in poor, rural
townships — like Dimock, in Susquehanna county.

“There’s one family we met with where she turns her tap water on
and it’s brown, spewing, smelling — she never had any water
issues before they began fracking a well so close to her home,”
Nardone told ThinkProgress. “The industry is saying they’re not
responsible.”

Whether the industry is responsible or not, new research makes
it clear: If you see a fracking site in Pennsylvania, chances
are it’s in a poor, rural community. In a study published in the
June issue of Applied Geography, Clark University scientists
showed that when it comes to potential pollution exposure from
fracking, “the poor are the most affected population group.”

“Our analysis shows that environmental injustice was observed
only in Pennsylvania, particularly with respect to poverty,” the
study reads.

“In seven out of nine analyses, potentially exposed tracts had
significantly higher percent of people below poverty level than
non-exposed tracts.”

The petroleum industry says this is a good thing — not the
potential pollution exposure (which it disputes), but the fact
that fracking operations are located in poorer, more rural
communities.

“I’ve spent a lot of time in rural Pennsylvania,” Joe Massaro,
field director and spokesperson for the petroleum industry group
Energy In Depth, told ThinkProgress. “When you look at the
income in these areas, it’s all farming. A lot of average income
for these farmers falls below the poverty line.”

According to Massaro, fracking is able to provide income for
these communities — not just with jobs, but with tax incentives
and fees set by the state of Pennsylvania. Specifically, Massaro
mentioned “impact fees,” a sort of tax imposed on the natural
gas industry, where the money goes directly back to affected
communities. Bradford County, for example, received $8.2 million
from impact fees in 2012, according to the Pulitzer Center on
Crisis Reporting.

“So in turn, they’ve been able to fund projects and lower
property taxes,” he said. “Farmers can buy new equipment, pay
off debts … in a way it’s a blessing for these communities.”

Nardone disagrees. She says the industry operates on a “boom or
bust cycle” — in other words, the good money only lasts for so
long. And when it comes to jobs, she says they’re dangerous.
Indeed, the fatality rate for workers in onshore oil and gas
drilling is seven times higher than the average job, and
injuries are far more common. According to the Occupational
Health and Safety Administration, there are also various health
concerns for fracking workers, including exposure to hydrogen
sulfide, silica, and diesel particulate matter.

Still, though oil and gas prices have been plummeting and
causing worker layoffs across the country, Pennsylvania is still
doing relatively well jobs-wise.

Pollution- and health-wise are different stories, Nardone says,
and those are the key facets of environmental justice
complaints. It’s the poor, she says, who are so often exposed to
health and environmental threats in Pennsylvania, while the well-
off are not.

The new research points to several peer-reviewed studies which
have explored the potential impacts of fracking on public
health. The studies showed the potential for air pollution
resulting from drilling, processing, and gas leaks, particularly
when companies are not operating responsibly. In addition, they
noted that increased traffic from trucks can cause elevated air
and noise pollution. Noise pollution can lead to hypertension,
sleep disturbance, and cardiovascular disease.

Massaro disputes those studies. “Any industrial industry when
it’s not done correctly will have negative affects. Every
industry is like that,” he said, asserting that Pennsylvania’s
industry has been operating responsibly. He noted a study
recently done by the state Department of Environmental
Protection showing that, while emissions have increased in the
natural gas sector, air quality has been improving across the
state. He also noted that Pennsylvania lacks private water well
regulations, meaning naturally-occurring contaminants can seep
into improperly constructed water wells, giving the impression
of fracking pollution.

The issue with that, according to Nardone, is that poor
communities don’t have the money to afford water sampling which
could prove contamination came from fracking. She noted the
family in Dimock with the brown, smelly tap water. They can’t
prove fracking caused the contamination, she said, because they
could not afford water sampling before the nearby drilling
operations began.

“So now they have a water buffalo, a great big white tank full
of 300 or 400 gallons, and they rely on community donations to
help pay for their water truck to come and deliver water so they
can have drinking water,” she said. “They’re still bathing and
showering in it, though.”

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/05/08/3656456/fracking-in-
poor-pennsylvania/