CitizenShale (www.citizenshale.org) is a recently formed, all-volunteer non-profit organization.
Our mission is simple: through research, policy review, and education, we seek to encourage dialog and support comprehensive efforts to protect individual citizens and communities from the wide-ranging potential impacts of shale gas development in our region.
In the spirit of fostering that dialog, we wish to respond to recent comments by Garrett County Commissioner Jim Raley about the public debate over shale gas drilling (“TGCC showcases capital talking points,” Jan. 6 Times-News).
We hope to expand our working relationships with the Garrett and Allegany County commissioners, and believe Commissioner Raley’s comments — referring to our organization’s work — deserve clarification.
During a public meeting about an unrelated topic, Commissioner Raley referred to “educational pieces” — such as the programs CitizenShale puts on — as the work of “opponents.”
CitizenShale and its members do not support banning shale gas development in Maryland; we do, however, oppose unsafe or predatory development that takes advantage of the counties’ residents. And, given that many neighboring states have initiated such industrial gas-drilling, we believe it prudent to learn from their experiences.
CitizenShale was founded on the belief that only through public education — and the industry accountability that such education will demand — will we empower ourselves and our elected officials to make the right policy decisions.
For those who have not heard of CitizenShale, or been able to attend our meetings at Garrett College in McHenry, here is a brief summary of those with “eyewitness” experience whom we brought to speak during the last year, and some of the other educational content presented:
• A former land-owner near Pittsburgh where one of the first horizontally fractured gas wells was drilled in Eastern America. That well contaminated water on his farm — something he has seen since on numerous properties around him — and forced him into a protracted legal dispute with the driller that almost bankrupted his family, and changed their lives forever.
• A university microbiologist who showed aerial photographs depicting the new wells, compressor stations, and processing plants south of Pittsburgh (where two explosions took place last year) that transformed a generally rural area into an industrial zone in five years.
• An executive from the Oil and Gas Accountability Project who presented her experience working with people from New York to West Virginia who sought help defending their interests against the activities of energy corporations and, in many cases, against compliant state and local government authorities.
• A first in-region film screening of the two most acclaimed, and admittedly controversial documentaries about the natural gas industry.
• A program with the Maryland Attorney General and the Garrett County Bar Association devoted to answering legal questions about the hundreds of gas leases that energy corporations purchased from landowners in Garrett and Allegany counties.
• A speaker from a Washington, D.C.-based organization whose year-long study refutes claims by business and local governments about the jobs bonanza predicted with industrial drilling.
The economic, political, and land-use impacts of shale gas development are certainly worth better understanding, but any benefits must be measured by an equally thorough understanding of their costs and the longer-term effects on our region.
Anyone interested in the full range of our activities is invited to visit our website at www.citizenshale.org.
Mike Koch
Paul Roberts
CitizenShale.org
Oakland
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