One of the non-profit organizations that crops up in lists of those whom MDN would classify as anti-drilling is Trout Unlimited (TU). The 50 year-old organization is national in scope with 140,000 volunteers and 400 local chapters—really one of the country’s premier conservation organizations. The TU charter is “Conserving, protecting and restoring North America’s coldwater fisheries and their watersheds” according to their website.
MDN has noticed that over the past several years TU runs programs—mostly on the weekends and mostly in Pennsylvania—to train volunteers in how to test streams and rivers. The aim is to test before there is drilling (or pipelines or compressor plants) in an area, to test during drilling or construction and then to test after, to see if those streams and rivers are in any way affected by drilling and related activity. So what have they found?
