Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
1
THE BATTLE FOR THE FUTURE
OF AMERICAN ENERGY
“Are you with the pipeline company?”
h e question was undoubtedly a recent addition to the young
trooper's arsenal. A year earlier, had you asked the oi cer patrolling
State Route 43 outside Carrollton, Ohio, whether people would be
crisscrossing his territory in search of oil and gas, he probably would
have laughed. h e state had its smat ering of wells, most let over from
booms turned to busts decades earlier, but fossil fuels, like much else
in rural Ohio, had long been in decline. h e area had briel y become
famous the previous October when eighteen tigers, along with a menag-
erie of other exotic animals, escaped a zoo about seventy miles away
and rampaged over the surrounding countryside.
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Back then, the pros-
pect of an earth-shaking oil boom would have been less plausible than
a highway encounter with a cheetah.
Yet change had come fast, which helped explain why the oi cer,
his squad car lights l ashing, now found himself suspecting that I was
involved in the oil business as he questioned me by the side of the
road, having pulled me over for an ill-timed pass. Earlier that at ernoon,
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