“THE BARBARIANS ARE AT THE DOOR” - The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future - page 47

weeks near each well, trucks drive around twenty-four hours a day,
seven days a week, disturbing neighborhoods and sometimes wreck-
ing inadequate roads. 73
Development can happen remarkably close to where people live.
When I visited the Neider well with the men from Chesapeake, there
wasn't a house to be seen for miles. But later that day, as I drove through
the state, I noticed a small sign on the highway and turned of to another
drilling pad. No fewer than six homes stood in its immediate shadow.
When the fracking started in earnest, an endless procession of trucks
full of water and sand would presumably rumble by, with no end in
sight for weeks. Someone there was making a ton of money, but the
odds were high that many others were get ing lit le or nothing.
It's the mix of winners and losers that ot en makes gas development
so fraught. You don't need to be employed in the industry or own gas-
rich land to cash in on the bonanza; everyone from restaurant owners to
dentists in places that are booming have seen payof s. But for some, like
retirees on i xed incomes, the local inl ation that accompanies an inl ux
of shale money can be tough. Even more galling to some is the fact that
lots of property owners in certain states (particularly in Pennsylvania)
don't hold title to the gas under their property. Because shale gas
involves horizontal drilling, it's possible for the industry to drill deep
under people's homes without paying the homeowners a cent . 74
h is would all be bad enough if industry were doing a good job of
managing inevitable frictions. h at's sometimes the case, but too ot en
companies have done just the opposite. Many executives, steeled from
decades of i ghts over development, have elected to simply ignore any
backlash, only fueling further suspicion that they have something to
hide. Chuck Sammarone experienced this during the i ght over who
was responsible for the tremors that shook his home. Decades before,
he was a teacher: “I used to tell the kids: don't bullshit me. If you
know the answer, good. If you don't know it, just say 'I don't know
it.' Nobody knows everything!” h e stonewalling extended to govern-
ment: “I think the state made a mistake 'cause they tried to give rea-
sons for this earthquake. And all those reasons were everything but
the well.”