Gas Driller at Center of 2019 Pulitzer-Winning Book on Fracking Still Faces Legal Battles

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Eliza Griswoldโ€™s book Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America examines the impacts of fracking in western Pennsylvania,ย and on Monday it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Generalย Nonfiction.

Griswoldโ€™s book carefully refuses the birds-eye view of frackingโ€™s impacts โ€” readers will find few state or national statistics โ€” and instead presents the detailed results of seven years of on-the-ground reporting. It traces the story of one extended family in western Pennsylvania, a small handful of neighbors, and eventually the two-person legal team that took on their case, now covered by a sealed settlement withย natural gas driller, Range Resources, which still faces additional related legal battlesย today.

The New York Times Book Review called Amity and Prosperity a โ€œvaluable, discomforting book.โ€ The 336-page narrative presents the Haney familyโ€™s experiences as a story of failed systems, both legal and political, and the pummeling of small town residents in the Marcellus Shale, not only by the arrival of fracking, but also by the regionโ€™s long history with extractive industries like timber, coal, and steel;ย by the national painkiller addiction epidemic;ย and by the extraordinary difficulties created by the decline of familyย farming.

The book begins at โ€” and frequently returns to โ€” the county fairโ€™s 4H competition, where Stacey Haneyโ€™s son and daughter are entering โ€œtwo goats, two pigs and four rabbits.โ€ Griswold recounts how Stacey, a nurse, and her neighbors suffer as family pets, prize goats, and treasured horses become ill and die โ€” and at the same time, Staceyโ€™s son Harley is suffering from a mysterious ailment that neither Stacey nor the doctors are initially able toย diagnose.

Book Spoilerย Alert

Note: the next two paragraphs contain spoilers that readers may wish toย avoid.

The family, it turns out, was living just down the hill from a massive wastewater impoundment used by Range Resources to store waste from over 100 different shale gas wells. Not only was Range spraying that chemical-laced wastewater into the air to evaporate it, Griswold slowly reveals, but state inspectors discover that the impoundment’s waste leakedย and usedย improperly designed leak detectionย systems.

At one point, Griswold reports that Range pumped freshwater and soap into the dirt below the impoundment not long before the Environmental Protection Agency arrives, hoping to โ€œflushโ€ the ground below โ€” over objections from a state regulator who warned the actionย might only force contamination farther below the surface and towards the familiesโ€™ waterย wells.

Spoilers endย here.

The Wastewater Woes of Frackedย Gas

Unlined waste pit for fracking wastewater in California.
Unlined waste pit for fracking wastewater in California.ย Credit:ย Sarah Craig/Faces of Fracking,ย CCย BYNCNDย 2.0

For shale gas drillers, handling and disposing of the industryโ€™s toxic wastewater remains one of its most difficultย issues.

Unconventional oil and gas drillers told Pennsylvania that they produced 9.8 million barrels of liquid waste in the first two months of this year. Drillers listed over 650,000 barrels as stored in lined pits called surface impoundments, nearly a million barrels shipped to injection wells (for underground storage), roughly 2.5 million barrelsย sent to waste treatment plants, and 5.8 million barrelsย designated for re-use (i.e., drilling or fracking otherย wells).

A tiny amount of the waste from unconventional gas wells even went to public sewage treatment plants this year. Alliance Petroleum Co. reported sending 120 barrels of โ€œother oil and gas wastes (in barrels)โ€ to the Reynoldsville Sewage Treatment plant in Jeffersonย County.

The corrosive salt-laden wastewater has been spread on roads as aย de-icer, been dumped illegally into abandoned coal mines and rivers, and was even recently reported as finding its way into swimming pool salt sold byย Chlorox.

Fracking andย Farming

Amity and Prosperity keeps its focus largely outside of Washington D.C., Philadelphia, or Harrisburg, mostly limiting its examination of public policy to a landmark case that Staceyโ€™s lawyer, John Smith, successfully argued before the state Supreme Court. Instead of tracing the familiar history of fracking de-regulation, Griswold carefully describes the regionโ€™s colonial history andย violence.

The appeal of fracking for many of Griswoldโ€™s protagonists centers on farming and raising animals โ€” the hope is that royalty money can fix up a barn or buy a wood splitter to help feed woodstoves through the winter. Range Resources and other drillers curry favor by paying top dollar for prize-winning 4H animals. And it isย the desire to remain local, to still live in the same rural towns where great-grandparents spent their days, that drives residents to seek local jobs โ€” whether those are in the drilling industry orย not.

Those agrarian ties also leave families vulnerable when fracking goes wrong.ย Stacey Haneyโ€™s difficult decision to move out of her home after discovering evidence of toxic pollution in the water and air is compounded by questions about how to take care of the animals if she leaves. A goat is born in three pieces. Horses and dogs collapse mysteriously, thenย die.

While many narratives about the Rust Beltโ€™s thirst for jobs reach as far back as the decline of the 20thย century’sย age of coal and steel, Griswold describes how locals viewed those earlier industries, writing that the wealth from coal fed only a tiny handful of mine owners and left behind not only tainted water, but also nearly abandoned towns (like Amityโ€™s neighbor Prosperity, population: 1,497, which is roughly 10ย percent of Amityโ€™s 13,015ย residents).

Fracking sites in Pennsylvania in a Google Earth view
Google Earth image of Pennsylvania fracking sites from September 5, 2010. Credit: SkyTruth,ย CC BYNCSAย 2.0

In a June 2018 interview, Griswold described an encounter with a farmer-slash-barber early on in her reporting, telling NPR‘s Marketplace that when she revealed sheโ€™d lived in Philadelphia and New York City, the man replied, โ€œThatโ€™s two strikes againstย you.โ€

โ€œAnd that conversation began for me a learning, which was why over so long have rural Americans felt increasingly disenfranchised and really enraged at urban Americans?โ€ Griswold told Marketplace. โ€œAnd part of that has to do with people who are supportive of fracking, legitimately so, saying, โ€˜Listen, you guys are going to come in here and wag your fingers at us? This is the first opportunity we’ve had to make money off of our land in more than aย century.’โ€

Legal Battles Stretchย On

After the many grueling years chronicled by Griswold, the Haneys and their neighbors eventually reached a confidential settlement with Range Resources. The book ends shortly after that settlement, described as โ€œdisappointingโ€ for theย families.

But legal battles over the activities of shale driller Range Resources โ€” which included allegations that a water testing laboratory helped to conceal evidence of water contamination โ€” remainย underway.

In February, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette asked a Washington County judge to unseal confidential settlement documents from the lawsuit. The Post-Gazette was previously successful in seeking the public release of records from a 2011 confidential settlement between Range Resources and another Pennsylvania family, theย Hallowiches.

In February, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette also reported that the state attorney general, Josh Shapiro, โ€œsent a letter to attorneys representing Ms. Haney and Range that referenced the โ€˜Stacey Haney/Range Resources Investigation,โ€™ and requested that the case record be preserved, under penalty ofย law.โ€

Shapiroโ€™s office is reportedly pursuing a grand jury investigation into possible criminal activity by the shale drilling industry in Washington County. A spokesperson for the attorney general has told NPRโ€™s State Impact that their office โ€œcannot confirm or deny the existence of anyย investigation.โ€

Stephanie Hallowich testified before that grand jury on Februaryย 21, and another Washington County resident has said she was called to testify about a waste impoundment near her home and the health impacts sheย hadย experienced.

The Post-Gazette reported in January that Shapiroโ€™s criminal investigation may extend beyond Washingtonย County.

Separately, three criminal investigations โ€” by Shapiroโ€™s office, by the Chester County district attorney, and by the Delaware County district attorney โ€” have been reported as looking into potential criminal activity related to Energy Transferโ€™s Mariner East pipelines, which are slated to carry fracked fossil fuels. Range Resources has contracts with Energy Transfer to ship ethane and other natural gas liquids from its fracked wells across the state for export via the Mariner Eastย pipelines.

Main image:ย Summit Elementary School playground in Butler County, Pennsylvania, with a fracking well in the background. Credit:ย Moms Clean Air Force,ย CC BYNCSAย 2.0

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Sharon Kelly is an attorney and investigative reporter based in Pennsylvania. She was previously a senior correspondent at The Capitol Forum and, prior to that, she reported for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, Earth Island Journal, and a variety of other print and online publications.

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