Trends Show Impacts Are Getting Worse
by Melissa A. Troutman, Sierra Shamer and Joshua B. Pribanic for Public Herald
After a three-year investigation in Pennsylvania, Public Herald has uncovered evidence of widespread and systemic impacts related to “fracking,” a controversial oil and gas technology.
Ending over a decade of suppression by the state, this evidence is now available to the public for the first time.
In Pennsylvania, the power over fracking rests in the hands of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). When residents observe a problem, they call the Department to report it. That call gets recorded as a “complaint” as required by Chapter 58 § 3218 of the state’s oil and gas act.
A citizen complaint record from Amwell Township, Washington County, PA reported to the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection on Nov. 28, 2010.
In 2011, Public Herald’s first file request to DEP for complaints never produced a single document, and we learned that complaints were being held as ‘confidential.’ When asked why, an attorney from DEP’s Southwest Regional Office explained that Deputy Secretary Scott Perry didn’t want complaints to ‘cause alarm.’”
After pushing through DEP’s resistance to disclose these records, our team was able to conduct its first file review for complaints in the spring of 2013. Three years later, after more than 50 file reviews, Public Herald has scanned records for 6,819 complaint cases.
Today, due to this work, anyone can access these cases via the Pennsylvania Oil & Gas Complaint Map.
The Pennsylvania Oil & Gas Complaint Map by Public Herald & FracTracker Alliance shows the density of citizen complaints reported to the Department of Environmental Protection from 2004 – 2016. The widespread dispersal of complaints matches the shape of the Marcellus Shale formation. Clicking a township reveals a database of complaints where viewers can download files.
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