Marcellus Drilling: Is the PA Gas Rush Worth the Cost?
AUDUBON MAGAZINE TAKES A LOOK AT THE WILD WEST OF THE EAST
Gas Pains
Pennsylvania, reeling from a budget crisis, exploits—at any and all costs—what might be the largest U.S. natural gas deposit. The results could be disastrous.
By Ted Williams
If the current orgy is allowed to continue and if it becomes a model for the other Marcellus states, vast swaths of the East’s best forests will be fragmented, groundwater and surface water polluted, and fish and wildlife wiped out on a scale that would dwarf the recent tragedy seen in the gas fields of Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.
