As the Wayne Highlands School District considers a possible gas lease for its Preston and Damascus Area School properties, residents are weighing in.
At Tuesday night’s regular work session, close to a dozen area residents shared their thoughts with the board, many concerned over: possible water contamination, health hazards from fracking chemicals, and student safety.
The Wayne Highlands School Board assured the audience they’re not going to make a snap decision when it comes to a potential gas drilling lease; that they’ll do their homework.
“This is not going to be a quick thing. The concern about school property is my concern also,” said Superintendent Tom Jenkins. “Whether things will move ahead or not, I don’t know ...We’re going to get all of the information that we can. And over the next several months, maybe the next year, we’re going to take a look at this, as other school Districts have done and see what all of the information is.”
Lone voice in favor
Seemingly the only pro-gas drilling voice in the crowd was Owen Frederick of New York City, a lease advisor who’s assisted about 150 landowners with leases in Bradford County. Frederick said he was visiting relatives in Preston Township, when he learned of the committee meeting and decided to attend. Frederick, who grew up on a farm in Wayne County, said his background is in agricultural economics and rural sociology.
When it comes to natural gas extraction, Frederick says people need to “dig into the science of it, find out what the real statistics are, the pros and cons,” he said. “People get a hold of a story and just go crazy with it. I don’t know, are there 50 or 100,000 Barnett shales that have been welled? How many people are dead? How much harm is done? There’ve been a couple of problems up here, no question. It’s an industrial process. Companies are slowly getting used to the geology ...They’re going to be doing everything they can to not make any more mistakes if they even made the mistakes,” he said.
“The University of Texas, in Arlington, Texas, there’s a well site ... right in the middle of campus,” Frederick said. “(They’re) going to drill 32 wells. Are there dead students lying around? Are they going to risk the population of their school body?
“Natural gas in Pennsylvania ...is a huge resource. It’s not out of the question that within five or seven years that Pennsylvania could be producing five to six billion cubic feet of gas a day. If it’s six, that’s 10 percent of what the Country uses at this point in time,” Frederick said.
Industry or scenery?
Jackie DeSau of Beach Lake, a mom of two, said, “It’s important that we worry about the welfare of our children and our lands. People come here as a tourist town because of the scenic area. If we turn this into an industrial site, we won’t have any scenic area. And we’ll all be polluted and dying of weird cancers and children will be dying of leukemia. I understand people want to make money; I want to make money, too. But I’m not going to do it at the expense of anybody else.”
DeSaw brought with her a list of just some of the chemicals used in the fracking process and related health risks:
•acetone: damage to liver, kidneys, and nerves; increase in birth defects.
•benzene: human know carcinogen that causes leukemia.
•ethylbenzene: tumors and birth defects in animals; damages liver, kidneys, nerves.
•toluene: fatigue, confusion, hearing loss, and birth defects.
•xylene: irritation of eyes and nose; effects hearing; stomach discomfort; changes to liver and kidneys.
Pat Carullo, co-founder of the Damascus Citizens group, brought up the Elk Lake School District in Dimock Township, Susquehanna County. “Dimock is the poster child for how great drilling is going to be,” Carullo said, sarcastically. “So, what you’ve got now is an ongoing class action suit by 39 families who have lost their water. The PA DEP has officially fined and found liable Cabot (Oil & Gas company) for contaminating nine square miles of the aquifer. The Dimock School is in the center of this.”
“[Monday] the Director of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) said, ‘We are very concerned about the public health issue and about its affects upon water,’” Carullo said. “Water is our bridge to the future; gas isn’t. Nothing natural about this gas, by the way, injecting 300 secret toxic chemicals, there’s nothing natural about it ...There’s only one industry in the country exempt from all the environmental laws— the Oil and Gas Industry — that’s got to tell you something. ”
Too close to school kids
Bernie Handler of Damascus said, “You wouldn’t put a bar next to (a school). You wouldn’t put a pedophile within a distance of a school. Kids are to be treated with utmost care. When you look at these chemicals that are being used ...a child is much more susceptible to chemical reactions to these toxins ...in their developmental stages.” Handler recommended the school look into creating a safety zone, a “mile or so barrier where they couldn’t have drilling.”
“Maybe we would look for a lease that would pay the district for any gas that’s pulled out from under the property, but not allow drilling in or around the school ...If we did sign the lease, maybe there would be no drilling on the property and no drilling within a certain perimeter around the property,” Jenkins said, if they decided to lease at all.
Following 30 minutes of testimony, Board President Tom Fasshauer thanked the audience for their comments and invited anyone who hadn’t had a chance to speak to attend a future meeting.
Superintendent Jenkins invited people to send him verifiable information as they consider the issue.
