Hundreds upon hundreds of tiny pink flags are beginning to mysteriously crop up along the county’s highways and byways. 
Consecutively placed on roads for miles, they have been spotted as far north as Equinunk and Lakewood and as far south as the Owego Turnpike, running from Cherry Ridge to Hawley.
A bunch also lines Beech Grove Road in Texas Township, one flag, standing about two feet high, for every three or four-car lengths.
The question remains: why are there suddenly pink flags fluttering along the right-of-ways?
Last week, a Texas Township resident questioned a group of workers who were - at that exact moment - poking these flags into the ground, near the Red Schoolhouse restaurant on the Great Bend Turnpike.
“The way they talked I was sure it was about testing for natural gas” deposits, said Mary Evans, of Texas.
She also saw road signs pertaining to seismic testing, which led her to believe that they will be recording the size of the unexploited Marcellus Shale - thousands of feet below - with the flags serving as measurement markers. Her observations, and others provided to the Wayne Independent, are in fact dead-on, so far.
On Tuesday afternoon, three trucks, equipped with a large metal, earth-rumbling foot beneath the trucks’ frames, moseyed west along the Owego Turnpike, approaching the Route 191 overpass in Cherry Ridge Township, the Wayne Independent confirmed.
The trucks had Dawson Geophysical logos - a Texas energy exploration firm.
The natural gas survey vibrates sound waves into the ground thereby revealing the physical makeup of the Marcellus Shale below to sensors on the surface, said Stephen Jumper, Dawson Geophysical president and CEO in a phone interview on Monday.
“We do seismic tests for oil and gas deposits. We ... input sound energy into the ground (and) ... put together a model” of geological boundaries, said Jumper. It’s “something you can’t even feel. Unless you’re standing right next to the (vibrator) truck.”
If large deposits are found through this process, it could plausibly lead to actual drilling and gas extraction.
Since the discovery of more advanced gas drilling methods, the Marcellus Shale has been targeted as the next massive U.S. natural gas reserve. The shale, a vast subterranean sedimentary rock formation, contains trillions of pounds of natural gas, which remains, for now, mostly untapped in northeastern Pennsylvania.
Wayne County has only one well drilled, according to state Department of Environmental Protection records. But at least 1,800 county landowners have signed leases, allowing natural gas companies, like Chesapeake Energy, to explore their land and possibly drill - filling local landowners’ pockets, they hope, with lucrative royalties.
Last year was mainly a period of intense lease activity, but this year, it appears the industry is gearing up - and making its presence known.
The workers told Evans that more testing equipment would be arriving this week. She could not confirm which company was there.
A Canaan Township resident also saw these flags being placed along the Owego Turnpike last week. Carole Miller, of Canaan, said there is talk amongst neighbors in the area about the flags and its relation to seismic testing.
Landowners in the Northern Wayne Property Owners Alliance, an 80,000 acre partnership seeking to negotiate reasonable land leases and royalty rights with natural gas companies, also have their eyes on the survey markers.
Marian Schweighofer, of the alliance, said she has received reports of markers - pink flags - placed on Route 590 in Paupack Township, Routes 247 and 370 in Lakewood, and in an area generally southeast of Lake Wallenpaupack in Pike County, including Blooming Grove Township.
“It’s our assumption that the pink flags are related to the survey,” she said, adding that Dawson Geophysical trucks were seen in some of these areas.
The flags that lined the Owego Turnpike for miles alone, got company on Tuesday; two yellow and black cables snaked beneath them, connected every so often to a vibration sensor unit
The units will record the shale’s geological information in that particular area and send it back to a central unit, said Jumper.
The data will then be sent to seismic data processing centers in Houston and Midland, Texas, and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
“The process is pretty simple,” he said.

Background

In December, Dawson Geophysical was granted permission by the Texas Township Supervisors to conduct a survey of natural gas deposits there.
At the township meeting, Douglas Holmes, a permit agent with the company, said they would survey Beech Grove Road, which is off Route 6 in Seelyville, for natural gas deposits.
Holmes also said they will focus on a much larger area beyond Texas Township - up to the New York border in the far northern reaches of the county to Milford Borough in Pike County.
Dawson Geophysical provides this service - and the valuable data - to interested companies, said Jumper, who added: “we don’t disclose who we’re working for - confidentiality agreements.”
Company representatives also could not confirm if the remaining areas the eyewitnesses reported - marked with flags - are indeed the next places to be surveyed.
“They did get (highway) permits” to perform seismic surveys in the county, said PennDOT spokesperson Karen C. Dussinger.
The company needed to obtain the state’s permission to work in some of the county’s roadway right-of-ways, she said.
The company has also applied for highway occupancy permits for natural gas surveys in Lackawanna (downtown Scranton and Clarks Summit), Luzerne, Susquehanna, Pike and Wyoming counties, according to the Times-Tribune newspaper.
In Lackawanna County, the “vibrator” trucks arrived shortly after the pink flags were placed, said Schweighofer.
The Wayne Independent has filed a highway occupancy records request with PennDOT in order to pinpoint where exactly Dawson Geophysical plans to survey.