An Old and Rusted Sleep

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Hunting For Pennsylvania’s Orphaned And Abandoned Wells By Dimiter Kenarov for The Huffington Post Laurie Barr is a hunter. Each year, around November, when the trees in Pennsylvania lose their foliage and the shrubs are nothing but bare [...]

Triple Divide: The Judys

Judy standing with contaminated water drawn from her well. © J.B.Pribanic

A Look at Drill Waste Pits and Groundwater by Melissa Troutman, Laurel Dammann, and Joshua Pribanic “It was 2007, and my water well was fine. I mean, I didn’t have any problem with it. I was cooking, drinking, [...]

A Dairy Farmer Shares Her Story About Fracking: “What Have We Done?”

Carol French stands on her dairy farm in Bradford County, Pa., with heirloom tomatoes harvested from her garden. Once a supporter for fracking with a lease, she turned against it after her neighbors began to experience problems and her water became undrinkable.

In the early spring of 2006, a nice man was in the area, promoting a chance to dream of better times for Bradford County and its farmers. There was promise of jobs for everyone and the farmer would generate money from signing a lease, and if a gas well was drilled on the farmer’s property he would become rich. Two years passed with little activity. By now, the older leases were about to expire, gas companies were beginning to drill, and excitement was in the air. Here, the majority of farmers signed early, receiving $5- $85/per acre. There was this belief that the person with the gas well would become the next “shaleionaires.” We later found out small acre properties started signing leases at $2,500/ per acre. By the spring of 2009, there was uneasiness among some of the farmers who had a gas well drilled on their property. The local newspaper was reporting contamination found in water wells, death occurring on a gas pad and the farmer was facing the fact that he could lose his farm due to a lawsuit based on the gas companies operation. For myself, I was thinking that our lucky neighbor was going to become the next Millionaire, because they had the gas well drilled on them. Soon my mind changed. Those farmers were facing penalties lodged against them, due to their land becoming industrial use instead of agricultural use.

Triple Divide: Fracking Pennsylvania’s Exceptional Value Waters

The Cherry Springs vista [pictured here] forms headwaters for Pennsylvania's largest spread of Exceptional Value streams, the state's highest recognized classification by DEP for healthy ecosystems. These virgin hydrologic landscapes also hold exceptional resources for the Marcellus Shale Play. © J.B.Pribanic

Public Herald will be publishing the script for 10 of the 11 chapters from our first feature length documentary film, Triple Divide. The following is a chapter on natural gas drilling violations in Exceptional Value watersheds where fracking has occurred — [...]

The Failure of Waste Injection Wells Nationwide

Illustration of a deep injection well for disposal of hazardous, industrial and municipal wastewater. Categorized as a "Class I Well" under the U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act. photo: Wikimedia Commons

Injection Wells: The Poison Beneath Us by Abrahm Lustgarten for ProPublica Over the past several decades, U.S. industries have injected more than 30 trillion gallons of toxic liquid deep into the earth, using broad expanses of the nation’s geology as [...]

Pennsylvania Violations: With Every New Oil & Gas Well Drilled There Are No Guarantees

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According to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Oil and Gas Reporting Website,  oil and gas operators in the state have amassed 20,942 violations in the past decade, 3,393 of them issued for Marcellus Shale oil and gas wells. From [...]

Journalists Detained, Labeled Ecoterrorists by Natural Gas Workers

Melissa Troutman approaching a guard shack in Tioga State Forest. photo: Joshua B. Pribanic

By Joshua Pribanic & Melissa Troutman Public Herald journalists photographing natural gas operations in Pennsylvania were falsely detained in the middle of the night by two water truck drivers on an unmarked road in Tioga State Forest and [...]

Top Photos, Natural Gas, DEP: The 2012 Letter to Readers

The Public Herald's top photo for 2011, John Strong Bag in "These Economies." An iconic tribute to the occupation of Wall Street and economic uncertainty. © Joshua B. Pribanic

Dear PublicHerald.org readers: As we look ahead at this important year, we’d first like to thank all of our readers. The unfettered nature by which you share, invest in, and contribute to +Truth and +Creativity energizes our original [...]

Shoveling Water: Predrill Tests

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This story was updated on January 4, 2012. What if a predrill water well test conducted during the biggest boom for natural gas became meaningless? At least one predrill test in Pennsylvania has been deemed insufficient by natural [...]