Morgantown, WV Update: Fracking to Begin Next Week

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It seems the opposition to two Marcellus Shale gas wells being drilled outside Morgantown’s borders is petering out. Press accounts talk of “a handful” of area residents protesting outside of the drill sites this week—meaning less than a dozen, perhaps a single family, who knows?

A handful of Morgantown area residents held two separate roadside protests Thursday near a Marcellus shale drilling site just a few miles from downtown Morgantown.

The group continues to call for a ban on Marcellus shale drilling.

Protestor Cathy Cash says Northeast Energy plans to begin hydraulic fracking at the site Sept. 22.

"We are very deeply concerned about this issue and we are going to be monitoring what’s going on," she said.

Attorney Richard Cohen, who was at Thursday’s protest, said residents haven’t given up the fight.

"We will hold them (Northeast Energy) to task. We intend to continue organizing," he said. "They need to be very careful what they do. Because it’s our community they are going to effect."*

MDN has covered the controversy extensively. Northeast Energy applied for and was granted permits to drill two Marcellus gas wells about two miles outside of Morgantown city lines, but Morgantown, using a West Virginia law, banned hydraulic fracturing up to two miles outside of its borders. Northeast sued and a court overturned the ban. The wells are now drilled and ready to be fracked, which, according to Northeast, will begin next week.

*West Virginia MetroNews (Sep 15, 2011) – Protest Near Drilling Site In Morgantown

5 Comments

  1. Just get out of our town. There are a million other places you can drill. Not in the home of our college and the mountaineers. Please just sue us! I’d rather be poor, then lose my property value or have to drink poisoned water, or let my children go to an elementary school down wind from the  fracking pollutants.

     

  2. u people do not understand what the gas can do for ur area i was raised and born in morgantown the gas will bring higher paying jobs and alot of jobs for are children and childrens children i moved just 2 years ago to pa to work in the gas field and now im liveing a better life people who get jobs in this field. the fracking and everything u people are yelling about is not bad for are health and it will not harm your children u should study things before u complain about them and see how good it is going to be for the area.more money more jobs ands more work all around so shut ur moths and let them drill

  3. The fracturing of these wells will not poison our water. They are fracturing the well so far below the water table that there is no way the chemicals could even make it to the water supply even if it conditions we ideal for it. Please stop being liberal idiots and do your research. Don’t be classic leberals and argue just to be argueing. We are tired of people argueing just for the sake of argueing. Don’t be ignorant, do the research so that you understand what you are argueing about.

  4. Please do the research yourself. The shale has natural vertical fissures that some of the of gas (only 20% is recovered and 80% is left to migrate underground after being released from the rock formations) left in the ground after fracking can  migrate into and upwards to the aquifers above. This is how people get water that can be set on fire. The Duke study ( May, 2011) clearly found that well water in a one mile radius of horizontal hydrofracking is 17 times more likely to be contaminated with natural gas. Also the aquifers are more like rivers than pools of water. The drilling sometimes goes through the aquifer to get to the shale and the cement that lines the wells are prone to damage from repeated fracking. There is definite potential to pollute aquifers.

  5. to gogas: How is a job and more money going to help you when you are destroying your health and the environment you and your family and friends are living in? Does that trade make sense to you? Just wait until you can heat your house with the water, coming out of your kitchen faucet. Looking at the way you write and spell, the toxins released during the work you are doing probably have already affected your mental well being.