Sunday, January 30, 2011

Photographer Documents Marcellus Shale's Impact on Farmscapes

Natural gas drilling site on mountainside, Tioga County.
Photograph © Jack Preston/Terry Wild Stock.

My google alerts turned up this brief interesting notice from Lancaster Farming which I assume is a local publication in rural Pennsylvania. It is a review of sorts of a little photography exhibit "at Julie’s Coffee, a shop in downtown Williamsport, Pa"; the work being exhibited is by Terry Wild who, in his spare time, has been documenting the impact of gas drilling industry on the local landscape. You can find this "sideline" work here.

The changes ot the landscape may seem innocuous, but they are, as Wild establishes, pretty pervasive. And the drilling process, as I've noted here before, threatens the water supply in frightening ways. New York State currently has a moratorium on the drilling process (through July 1st) and I hope the legislature will make it permanent. Virtually everything we know about fossil fules and how they are extracted (or nuclear energy and how the fuel is extracted and the waste stored) makes supporting wind and solar energy it seem like a no-brainer.